Jason Snell, writing for Macworld:
I can’t imagine a future Mac laptop with an iPad where the keyboard should be, but with a few additional bits of technology, it seems a lot less wild an idea.
As someone who enjoys typing on a physical keyboard, I’m vaguely nauseated by the idea of a keyboard that’s just a sheet of glass–but the travel on the MacBook Pro keyboard is so small already, would it be that different to remove it altogether?
And:
You can’t operate a touch-screen keyboard by feel, because the act of feeling it causes it to react.
Unless you built in pressure sensitivity that would allow that surface to react differently to hard typing taps.
By a long, long shot, I prefer a physical keyboard to one presented on a sheet of glass. As Jason says, it’s all about feel. Is it possible to use taptic feedback to improve a touch keyboard to the point where it approaches the feel of a physical keyboard?
Interesting read.
Well if touch keyboards were the future, why doesn’t the Apple provided keyboard in iOS have a numeric row (even as an option) for entering those complex passwords quicker? Shame I have to get a 3rd party keyboard to solve this.
Glass touch keyboards TODAY don’t offer you the ability to navigate keys by feel. But thats today, 2016. In the future, can that change? Um, yea. Don’t underestimate the power of creative engineering and problem solving. I’ve already seen haptic technology that somehow turns a flat glass surface into a surface that feels textured. This was several years ago. Imagine if Apple decided this was a problem they would like to tackle, and invested large engineering resources into it.
Because Touch ID will eventually eliminate the need for alphanumeric passwords? I think it’s possible in the near future.
Apple might replace mechanical keys with advanced 3D Touch and Taptic Engine. Or maybe the current MBP mechanical keys’ feel could be augmented with Taptic Engine feedback. But only if it doesn’t affect battery life to the point of inconvenience.
The harder trick to pull off would be to eliminate the separate trackpad and add Multi-Touch sensitivity to the keyboard and keycaps themselves. I’m not sure it’s actually a good idea, but it could eliminate awkward transitions between keys and pad when moving the cursor around.
What about mouse clicks? How would a mouse click be differentiated from a keypress? Well currently I have my MBP trackpad set to recognize mouse clicks without physically clicking the trackpad. (For example: I click-to-drag with a short-long double-tap-then-drag. Have been doing that for years.) Still not sure that this would work with a multi-touch keyboard though.
And of course there’s the Mac users’ knee-jerk reaction against anything new. Change, even for the better, is always resisted by most Mac users. (And Wintel PC users too, for that matter, though change “for the better” is rare in that world.)
They’ll still be inferior. Just like today’s laptop keys are far inferior to the old IBM Model M keyboards.
In a world with pressure sensitive screens this is just silly. Sure, he contradicts it next sentence, but why post something obviously wrong just to correct it?