Apple’s chief product-pusher Phil Schiller has ruled out the possibility of touchscreen MacBooks and dismissed the idea of a multi-touch iMac as absurd.
Speaking to Backchannel, Apple’s VP of Marketing said adding touch to the laptop range would put it out of sync with the desktop iMacs.
He said: “We think of the whole platform If we were to do Multi-Touch on the screen of the notebook, that wouldn’t be enough - then the desktop wouldn’t work that way.”
“Can you imagine a 27-inch iMac where you have to reach over the air to try to touch and do things? That becomes absurd.”
Schiller says, Apple’s conclusion is not based on some gut feeling, but on years of testing to ensure those suspicions were correct.
He added: "Our instincts were that it didn't [work], but, what the heck, we could be wrong—so our teams worked on that for a number of times over the years.
“We’ve absolutely come away with the belief that it isn't the right thing to do. Our instincts were correct.”
The result is this supposed middle ground, the Touch Bar we see on the new MacBook Pro laptops. Schiller says the whole idea was to enable a better Mac experience using what it had learned from iOS.
Cupertino’s top salesman said: “The thought and vision from the very beginning was not at all, ‘How do we put iOS in the Mac?’ It was entirely, ‘How to you use the [iOS] technology to make a better Mac experience?’”
He also weighed in on the controversy surrounding the shedding of ports, meaning legacy users now have to purchase an array of dongles to continue using expensive accessories.
In very Apple-like fashion, he said: “We’re absolutely more sure than ever that we’ve done the right thing,” assuring that most users won’t need them.
