Matt Birchler wrote what I can’t help but feel was a rebuttal to my piece arguing that you can’t have a maximally productive touch UI on a portable screen. Here’s what I wrote:

It’s foolishly optimistic to think that Microsoft or even Apple can make pointer interfaces as touch friendly as iPadOS without also destroying the very thing that makes them more productive than iPadOS — information density. Smaller controls means these platforms can disclose more information and interactivity to their users at once. That’s why a bunch of windows on even an 11″ MacBook Air feels natural while only four windows on a “large” 13″ iPad feels ungainly.

And here’s what Birchler wrote, after comparing UI density on a 14″ MacBook Pro and an iPad Mini:

There’s a narrative out there that touch is just so incompatible with macOS and that in order to make it work, the macOS UI would have to get blown up to comical proportions, but I don’t think that’s the case. Changes will be made, but I think macOS is more touch-friendly today than many people give it credit for.

While I certainly wouldn’t hold up an iPad Mini as an ideal of touch friendliness, I actually agree that there are many aspects of macOS today that lots of people wouldn’t have any issues interacting with via touch. I also agree with Matt that changes can be made to macOS to better facilitate touch input without blowing it up to comical proportions. That agreement may come as surprise to anyone who read these sentences from my last piece.

Don’t try to make macOS touch friendly. Add touch and pencil support, but leave macOS’s interface unchanged.

Agreeing with Matt today after writing these sentences two weeks ago doesn’t mean my opinion has suddenly changed in the intervening time, rather it means that these two sentences require more elaboration than an off-the-cuff remark in a bullet point.

When it comes to adding touch to macOS, I think there are three camps:

1. Apple shouldn’t add touch to macOS.
2. Apple should add basic touch support to macOS for things like gestures and tapping on buttons to meet the expectation of a population that increasingly assumes touch is supported.
3. Apple should reinvent macOS to create a touch first experience on par with iPadOS that is also somehow as productive as macOS is today.

I have been firmly in camp 2 since 2018, and I really do think there are areas of macOS that either already are or can be made as touch friendly as an iPad Mini without meaningfully sacrificing information density. That said, implicit in “don’t try to make macOS touch friendly” is “don’t try to make macOS touch friendly as iPadOS“. Adding a smattering of touch friendly controls won’t make macOS nearly as touch friendly as iPadOS.

The reason my last piece started with a series of quotes from an increasingly frustrated Federico Viticci is that I get the sense, perhaps incorrectly, that a driving force behind camp 3 is disgruntled iPad Pro users who are still dissatisfied by being productively limited on their preferred platform, and now think that some hypothetical new version of macOS that is designed for touch could be the platform of their dreams. This is because Macs today already solve many of their needs. They are more powerful, have better support for third party peripherals and software, and have the same great battery life and lower temperatures thanks to the same Apple Silicon found on their iPads. The only thing keeping the Mac from being the platform of their dreams is lack of touch support, but not just any touch support. What I suspect iPad Pro users ultimately want is the same touch first experience found on their beloved iPads today. The crux of my argument is that there is a tension between touch friendliness and information density that makes what camp 3 wants impossible on any platform.

The lesson to take from this half decade of disappointing iPadOS and iPad Pro updates is not that the iPad platform is fatally flawed and that Apple needs to jump ship to macOS for its pro tablet OS. It’s that Apple’s been trying to solve what increasingly seems like an impossible set of constraints — touchability, productivity, and portability. It’s foolish to think Apple or anyone can move those same constraints and demands to a different platform and assume a better outcome. I am all for adding touch support to Macs, but that won’t satisfy the dreams of iPad Pro users who want the same touch first experience found on their iPads today. Furthermore, overhauling macOS¹ to create a touch first experience would only introduce the same problems found on iPadOS today, and if that’s the case, then what’s the point?