With the Touch Bar, Apple has turned its back on touchscreen laptops

For a few years now, PC makers have been making laptops with touchscreens. Some can be folded into tablets, some not, but the trend has been prevalent enough for Microsoft to rethink its entire strategy circa Windows 7 and optimize its desktop OS to work in two different modes: desktop and tablet mode.

Opinions on how well that works vary; personally, I’ve never found it elegant enough for daily usage.

Apple appears to agree; the company stubbornly refused to add a touchscreen to any of its laptops (for power users, it's offering the iPad Pro line, but it's just not the same as a MacBook). At first, many thought it would be a case of Apple adding a feature two years later than everyone else and then calling it its own invention, but it was soon apparent that Apple wants to keep its touch-oriented iOS and mouse-and-keyboard-oriented macOS separate. Read more...