Also looking on Amazon, there's at least some Asus Zen books already out which have a touchscreen, so what?, then you'd have a touch screen and a small touch screen over your touch pad...
I think this kind of thing is pretty cool, but ultimately, a touchpad below my keyboard is akin to the ones on the dashboard of many modern cars (though a lot less dangerous) in that I don't want to look there.
It depends...for some tasks, it's less context switching. For example, Apple's Preview app has a feature where you can add a signature to a document. You can scan your signature, but you can also enter it on the touchpad. But the latter is very difficult because you can either look at your finger or the screen, but not both. Having this kind of screen would solve that problem.
When I was looking for an inexpensive touch pad for a product idea, it appeared that small touch screens were only marginally more expensive -- and worked better -- than available off-the-shelf touch pads. That was without even lighting the display up. But of course the temptation to use the display for something would have been irresistible.
My theory is that economies of scale for 5.5 inch 1080p touchscreens in mainland Chinese manufacturing make it a lot cheaper now. That is just about the most common screen size and not the higher than 1080 resolution found on high end phones.
ASUS is Taiwanese but as with most Taiwanese oem and odm these days, does the bulk of its manufacturing in the mainland. Same for others like msi, tyan, supermicro, quanta, hon hai precision industry (foxconn), etc.
It does the bulk of its assembly in mainland China, assembly != production obviously, which is why, for example, most of an iPhone isn’t made in China even if it is assembled there.
Components not made in China are actually more expensive to source there outside of SEZs.
Nearly all LCDs in China are made in China.
The largest OLED and LCD manufacturers are now in China and I'm not talking about LG Display or JDI those are now dwarfed by the likes of TCL (biggest LCD manufacturer AFAIK), Visionox (biggest OLED manufacturer AFAIK), Tianma, EverDisplay, BOE and many many others.
The LCD and OLED panel in your phone is more likely made in China by a Chinese company, the irony is now that even Samsung had use Visionox AMOLED in their phones especially recently because they were constrained with supplying their OLEDs to Apple.
ASUS does not make displays the only Taiwanese display manufacturer is AU Optronics IIRC and they don't make small and medium size displays.
The only thing that China still doesn't do well are large screen OLEDs (LG is now building a factory in China for that) and that's about it.
China is oddly pushing AMOLED to the limit and are leading the development as far as flexible displays go much further than Samsung or LG do at least publicly.
It's a trackpad. What do you think it will do if you touch it accidentally? It's gonna fuck your shit up so bad that you can't undo it, just like a real trackpad would.
Not true at all. macOS has some rather intelligent tracking if it’s a palm touching, or a finger for example. Alternatively, there’s also completely turning off tap to click.
But that’s for taps, not for a full scale UI on my trackpad with dragging sliders etc.
The entire notion of the trackpad is flawed. They are awful, and no one cares. People just use them so much that they get used to them and they don't notice how anymore.
I think this is a wonderful idea, given that touchscreen responsiveness and power optimization have been a focus of research over the last decade. At worst it's a touch pad, at best it's so much more. Of course a lot depends on how software developers will embrace it - and I hope Linux users get some love. (I wish Asus and reviewers will stay away from gimmicks like watching movies on it.)
In any case, far better than removing a set of useful keys from the top of a physical keyboard.
Add: this also enables new types of casual games, similar to Wordament, Angry Birds etc. Oh, and better smudge tools on Photoshop.
Office appears to have non-trivial ribbon integration:
> The [Excel and Word] ribbon where they live occupies 20% of the screen on the ZenBook Pro, so shifting those functions to the top edge of the trackpad gives you more space to do your work.
At first sight the thing is terrifying, but it seems a rather quite reasonable alternative play on the touchbar that does not mess with the ability to sell the device. Two massive benefits: the tactile response of the keyboard is totally preserved, and the feature can be entirely disabled for conservative users who cannot think of an immediate use for the display.
Clearly it will appeal to gadgeteers (as much as I expect the touchbar does) who can use it for instrumentation or other generally distracting applications. Then there is the blindingly obvious: video editing on a laptop always sucks, there is never enough screen space. But moving the monitor window (rendered video preview) to the touchpad area might change that considerably -- it amounts to a 25% increase in display area, and in a 'natural application' of video editing, the monitor would be separate anyway.
I think this design, simply by virtue of being optional, and large and rectangular, is hugely more applicable than the touchbar.
The modality (pumping F6 to enable/disable) could definitely be improved upon. I can imagine it quite natural to use a hot corner of the pad itself as a toggle, or perhaps some gesture or similar.
Very excited to see how these work out in the real world
I like my touchbar and I think I'd probably like a touchscreen trackpad too. The key in my opinion is the programability of the 'buttons'. They don't need to be just buttons, you can have sliders, video scrubbers, button hierarchies (button menus) and so on.
I'm also up for dual display laptops where the clamshell of a laptop is two touchscreens. It would help water proof the device, simplify the mechanics (lower cost?), give options for keyboard layout (improved ergonomics?) increase full screen size when fully unfolded and might be more comfortable than the stiff keys on the latest gen of MBP. I use an external keyboard when I'm at my desk and want a tactile full size keyboard, so I wouldn't be stuck with only glass.
It costs additional power (with no clear benefit).
Its another point of failure.
It has a big learning curve.
It requires one to look away from the screen (pro users needn't to look at their keyboard).
It replaced something which worked very well: esc key and function keys (who also had F-keys with "fn" combo).
IMO it is an interesting usability concept from an R&D PoV, but not something to be shoved in the throat of users. Unfortunately, Apple decided it is the way forward for MBP users with no option to turn back except for legacy products or switching ship.
A Windows 10 tablet (I can't name one, but some probably exist) has this out of the box with the wireless screen projection (win+K). I had to do this laptop to laptop to projector for a lightning talk once after the first laptop had a broken display port adapter - surprisingly fast to setup and 0 latency.
I'd be surprised if something didn't exist for Android tablets. But if you have an old laptop laying around, maybe throw w10 on it and see if it works?
Not all Win 10 tablets support the wireless projection. I think you can do it with a higher end one like a Surface Pro, but you can't with less powerful ones like the Asus Vivotab 8. You'll get an error message having to do with not meeting the minimum requirements.
On the other hand, you can use something like Synergy, but that's not quite the same thing.
I use Spacedesk for this. It supports Windows as the server and Android, iOS, Windows and web browsers as clients (extra displays).
It's still in beta, but it works almost flawlessly. If your wifi chips are good quality, the latency is almost unnoticeable.
I'd like to run a terminal output on the touchscreen. Launcher sounds okay, but the one I have with Enlightenment 22 is just so much faster with the keyboard than any pointer device ever could be.
Pretty good point, Mac OS is already using the touch pad to input signatures (you use the touch pad as paper and your finger as a pencil) which works extremely well but currently has no visual feedback, there is probably space for much more useful applications when that becomes available.
I just really has to be an OLED display though.
I'm actually surprised it hasn't been tried before. It sounds super cool but I wonder if it's still a bit of a gimmick (and you end up just using it in touch pad mode all the time).
It still has the problem where you have to take your eyes off your screen in order to interact with it, so I imagine there'd be some effort involved in getting used to actually looking at the touch pad while you poke at it. That said, if there are good app integrations that are intuitive and turn the thing into more than a pointing device (and not just a Spotify controller or some such), then I'm interested to see what those could be.
It'd be quite nice, for example, if it allowed notifications to pop up on a part of the touchpad instead of obscuring what you're working on, allowing you to tap that part of the touchpad to open it up instead of moving the pointer to the corner of the screen.
Razer something similar about 5 years ago.[1] I personally really like the idea. Feels more functional than a bar and should be easily dropped into "dumb touchpad" functionality if the user wants to save battery life or just doesn't need it. Would be nice to see this migrate across the entire laptop pc segment.
Besides, at best, your touchpad has little fingerprints, at worst it has a lot. With a normal touchpad this doesn't matter, but with a touchscreen (or touchpad-touchscreen) it suddenly does. Furthermore, it is a spot where your hands are, so in order to see it, you gotta move your hands. Both are not very useful features. If I want a tablet, I'll get one instead. Furthermore, the touchpad is pretty small (compared to Apple's latest) and doesn't have the haptic feedback the latest have. Though mine doesn't have that either on the MBP 2015, but that's because I don't want butterfly keyboard or TouchBar.
I'll put this one in the category of the TouchBar (which has already been discussed to death): with all honesty a very interesting research product indeed but don't put in your flagship product please. TYVM /bow.
When I first saw the Dave2D video on Youtube a couple of days ago, I thought it would be a useless feature, but on further consideration, I'd totally use it.
I have an Zenbook ux501 that runs on wired power most of the time anyways so battery life isn't a concern for me personally, but I'd use that touchscreen as a security cam monitor, system resource monitor or some type of dashboard. I use a mouse most of the time anyways, so most laptop touchpads are useless to me.
The impact on battery life is marginal. The ZenBook Pro 15 has a 71Wh battery and "up to" nine hours of battery life. An iPhone 8 has a 10.5Wh battery.
Real-world power consumption for a good smartphone display is ~500mW. That represents just under 5% of the iPhone 8's battery capacity per hour, but 0.7% of the ZenBook's battery.
In the worst-case scenario, the touchpad display will reduce battery life from 9 hours to 8.5 hours. In a more realistic scenario, the power consumption of the touchpad display is a rounding error compared to the consumption of the i9-8950HK processor, the GTX 1050 GPU and the 4K main display.
Somehow, people cope with their smartphone being covered in fingerprints.
The point is that its on top of the thing it replaced (keyboard). It doesn't matter much if its 10 minutes or 30 minutes, its an unnecessary waste in both situations.
> Somehow, people cope with their smartphone being covered in fingerprints.
I don't, but if I mostly type and scroll on the bottom, the fingerprints are mostly on the keyboard part. So I tend to read the top and maybe mid of my screen and then scroll further.
I actually preferred the time with hardware keyboards for example because screen stayed pristine back then, and phones were much more durable. Alas, those phones are exceptions, and if you also have other special interests such as long-term support, high uptime on one juice load, or the liberty to e.g. run SailfishOS your options quickly diminish. So my smartphone does not have a hardware keyboard, but that does not mean I don't prefer that. Choosing a smartphone is a matter of concessions. Choosing a MBP, idem.
Finally, given how often people are replacing their smartphones, I'm not exactly sure if "people cope with their smartphone" in general.
The big difference between the ASUS usage (which I wouldn’t consider buying) and the Apple TouchBar (one I don’t love, but can understand for non-pro users) is that the TouchBar is intended to not be an extension to the display[0]. The trackpad as a complimentary display seems pretty gimmicky - at least while the market share for the maker is so limited. Of course some level of that is up to the implementation of the various apps (but since it’s not 1st party to the OS, I expect usage issues).
I’d expect a standard user (and even myself) to be highly confused about if they can use the area as a trackpad or if they need to toggle some mode.
> Use the Touch Bar as an extension of the keyboard and trackpad, not as a display.
The examples they've currently demonstrated are useless, and that's probably because ASUS alone cannot bring software partners on board. Real use cases will arrive when Windows adds support for touchscreen pads, which I think they should do. Once software support is available, ASUS's implementation can be used by "pro-users" in novel ways; especially in content creation apps.
Apple's bar is one dimensional, which limits what it can be used for. I wouldn't trade that for physical keys I press every day.
For this to provide a great user experience Asus will need a really high level of software + hardware integration.. (Think Apple or Nintendo) Without that this is just a gimmick.
This is really going to distract touch typists due to peripheral vision. If they really want to do something revolutionary, they should try replacing the entire keyboard with a touch screen with haptic feedback (like the MacBook touchpad). Force touch when the keyboard is displayed will act as a keypress. Soft touch will control the mouse pointer.
I was walking through a computer store recently and I couldn't help but notice how tacky all the computers looked. The Touch Bar may be frivolous, pretty useless and a waste of money, but it blends into the design of the laptop and most importantly, is subtle. Now, Asus could certainly prove me wrong and implement some beautiful, understated software for the touchpad, but judging by the demo photos, that isn't the case. Not to mention, how does it perform as a touchpad? Will I have to avoid hitting some corner for fear that it will open a new app? At least the Touch Bar took away features that most consumers (i.e. non professional computer users) won't miss.
I’ve been trying to find a cheaper MBP replacement after 10 years with 3 MBP. Everything else is ugly. Some decent choices end up at the or worse price point as Apple.
After nearly a decade with MBP, I finally decided to replace it with a brand new, top-spec 13" dell XPS. Initially I was super happy with the choice, but after more than a year with it I would not recommend going that route to anyone, it's just full of little problems that don't exist with Apple hardware. The coil whine is insane and a known problem with those, from time to time the computer goes to sleep but isn't actually off - the fan is off but something is still running, and when you pull it out of your bag it's literally hot to touch(it's also a known problem with loads of threads on Dell forums about this). It happened to me once at an airport and when I pulled it out of the bag I was certain someone was going to stop me, the computer was literally boiling. I've had the motherboard replaced with dell 3 times now, both coil whine and spontaneous staying on when in sleep still happen. Plus the touchpad is actually crap, when you press down the cursor sometimes jumps a little bit resulting in you clicking on something else, and the screen while gorgeous has a stupid amount of backlight bleed near the edges. At first glance, the computer is as nice as any MacBook - but after living with it for a while I'm seriously considering going back to MBP again.
Except that macbooks have gotten worse (and pricier) :/
My 2016 base pro model overheats and some keys literally fell out while I was typing. Sometime when I open the lid, I see the apple logo, which means it's rebooted.
I got myself a Thinkpad T480s. I ended up spending around 2.5k for a machine that has 24GB of RAM, 1TB of PCIe SSD and weights a pound less than a MBP. The keyboard is stellar, the screen is matte, and it has HDMI, both old and new USB ports, ethernet, and an SD card slot.
I think that the panel is on par with the one my 2013 MBP had, so yes, a little worse than the newer models. However I feel that the difference is more than made up by the matte finish especially in bright light situations. But then again I'm a software developer, I really don't have much use for wider gamut, I just need crisp text and not to see my reflection in the screen.
Which model are you currently on because my top of the line 2013 15 inch MBP is still running like a champ.
If you are willing to try out windows, the surface pros are actually pretty sweat. I got one for my gf for grad school and will probably get one for myself if my MBP ever dies.
Don't know if you'll get much of a cpu upgrade these days but ram definitely helps. I got mine with 16GB of ram to be future proof since I saw that ram tends to be a major cause for slowdowns as developers constantly eat up more as computers get better. This seems especially brilliant in hindsight considering top of the lines are still at 16GB.
I still have a 2013 Macbook Air going strong and I will be extremely sad the day it finally kicks the bucket. It's not a powerhouse by any means, but it's lightweight and it runs any text editor I need with no gimmicks and better battery life than anything else its size despite its age.
Until much more recently than I care to admit I'd never experienced an TrackPoint, and was (consequently) of the opinion that laptops were nearly unusable without a table and external mouse. TrackPoints make laptops actually usable (for me, at least).
yeah I had an old thinkpad that had one (pre-lenovo). Once I got used to it, it was the best pointing device by far. But anyone trying to use it on my laptop would instantly go 'nah-ah'.
I have an older X200 which does lack a trackpad. I'm currently using a X230 which does have a trackpad, but I ended up physically disabling it (and the finger-print reader) simply by unplugging them, so when the Microsoft-powered 'teaching interface' in my own class failed (well, actually lots of times, but memorably – in two different semesters – when the students were giving presentations) I had to put my own machine in service as the 'projector driver', almost of the students were flummoxed by the TrackPoint (since the TrackPad obviously won't work, being unplugged), despite being business students who (I thought) should be familiar with ThinkPad and their TrackPoints.
I thought I would hate the TouchBar. But after two days of using it, I like it. I have been using Pro version for about 3 months and I still love the TouchBar.
I don’t know how to explain this, but I just no longer feels the need to press an esc key, and no more tapping for adjusting volume/brightness. I can also adjust font size or color in Words using the touchbar. My I can choose an emjoi in hipchat client using touchbar application. It feels great.
This, I don’t know, really weird. I might have to try it, but I doubt I will like it at all. The whole purpose seems like a secondry screen to me. Constantly having to look down instead of looking at the bigger screen so you can control is so backward to me.
This would be cool /if/ it added more functionality. For example—a digitizer, Force Touch, or both.
I love my MbP Trackpad, but a digitizer would absolutely slay, especially combined with some sort of display.
This is really good for users of international keyboards like me! When I need to type Chinese or Korean then it's much easier on my phone than my laptop, because my laptop lacks the engravings.
I'm glad someone is experimenting with new interfaces, but for me this is kind of a gimmick, like the MacBook touchbar or the big touch-sensitive screens in cars. Any interface that requires looking at it will slow me down/distract me. There's huge value in the keyboard keys all being in the same place and in not shifting your gaze in order to move the mouse pointer.
I don't see the value in this myself either but nice with experiments I guess. I've never used my laptop and wished for a small screen in the touchpad. But for some tech, you have to try it to understand.
How long until there’s a system dashboard running on that thing. That’d be really cool spot for it on a laptop. Especially if the touchpad works as usual and you can just glance at it for system updates.
Why? As far as visuals go, the Touch Bar (which dislike) is at least in line of sight and you hands are not over it all the time.
Regardless, why not just improve on using one's phone the way you can already with some 3rd party apps... since almost the first day touch screen phones were available? It can at least be positioned anywhere that works for you.
You'd also save the world a cycle of e-waste for the sake of “we too” 2nd hand innovation.
Imagine Microsoft would have actually worked with them to salvage and re-purpose the millions of Windows phones (now in dumpsters and land fills), as detachable touch pads.
I think Asus's Project Precog[0] deserves more interests than this. We programmers always complain about display size , ratio and amount. Using this dual screen laptop vertically with your beloved external keyboard could be sublime. It's like having two Surface Pro tablets right in front of you, or a dual screens desktop setup that fits in a backpack. As long as my way to interpret this product works, I don't care whatever Asus comes up with to make it feels like a normal laptop.
It seems that by AI they mean "non keyboard input", and not... any of the other wildly more practical uses of that term.
> Project Precog is designed to provide a smooth and intuitive experience for industry-leading AI technologies. With support for the Windows Cortana and Amazon Alexa voice services, the dual-screen design lets you keep your main tasks in full view while Cortana and Alexa process other tasks on the second screen
Definitely feels like a weird marketing gimmick atop an already strong looking product offering.
There isn’t any real description of how the thing operates either. I mean, a big part of the reason I’m using a MacBook Pro is because it’s touchpad is damn near magic.
I don’t care about office integration, all I care about is how well it operates compared to the trackpad on a MacBook, and I donut I’m the only one.
The most stressful thing about starting my next job is that I've got to choose a new laptop only for work. I've only used a Mac for years and this is the first time I've ever considered switching because there are no computers they make that I actually want.
Apple has really dropped the ball on their entire line and the touchbar eliminating a lot of useful keys is a pretty bad idea compared to replacing the touchpad.
I've gotten used to using the touch bar for function keys and [esc] after only a week or so. It's fairly customizable, which surprised me. I don't think it's that bad, but then again I am not paying for it (company hardware).
Put a new Mac side by side with a touchbar Mac and try doing anything using the function keys on both. The lack of physical buttons makes it atrocious on the touchbar model.
My company gave us all brand new MacBook Pros with the touchpad and new terrible keyboard.
It is amazingly fast and the speakers sound great, but overall I cannot approach the productivity of my 2015 model given the increased typos and accidental Touch Bar inputs that cause weird things to happen.
I managed to land a dev job where the entire enterprise is Mac-based and they issued us laptops with the touch bar. Everyone runs them lid-closed with external keyboards and monitors. Touchbar issue solved.
Plenty of publications have always straddled the line between reporting and reviewing. The Verge in particular gives its writers a lot of freedom to editorialize, for better or for worse.
Especially since it doesn't seem like the author has a MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar anyways; the picture provided shows one with a row of standard function keys.
I thoroughly enjoyed that article. It was a weird decision to not make the default state of the Touch Bar be a widget bin. They could even have launched yet another App Store for it.
It's... a product review. Giving the author's opinion is the whole point. I mean, the subtitle of the thing is "Technically delightful, practically dubious", so it's not like you weren't clued in. Why did you wait until he bashed an Apple product to complain?
This could be useful for app development. A 1080 landscape device on the keyboard, mirrored at 4X on screen.
(Although the digits used are different. When in landscape, my fingers cradle a phone at a 45-60 degree angle with both thumbs used for input. On a horizontal touchpad the index finger(s) are doing much of the input)
The biggest question I have is if the input resolution and latency are better than a traditional touch pad. The additional display will never be useful enough to overcome a mediocre touch pad experience.
It seems to support acting as a second display so I'm feeling optimistic about Linux.
223 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 260 ms ] threadi am sure the next step, someone will replace the physical keyboard, with full size touch screen and software keyboard
and future laptops will come with two screens and no keyboard ... and they will be like tablets with double screen,
and then someone will sell a physical keyboard accessory to the two screen laptop
and .. it will be very confusing
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/no-keyboard-no-problem-welcome-to-...
Already done many years ago:
https://www.theverge.com/2011/10/29/2509236/acer-iconia-6120...
I think this kind of thing is pretty cool, but ultimately, a touchpad below my keyboard is akin to the ones on the dashboard of many modern cars (though a lot less dangerous) in that I don't want to look there.
Also I think there was a gaming computer with a screen for a numpad.
Components not made in China are actually more expensive to source there outside of SEZs.
http://www.boe.com/en/index/pei.html
http://www.tcldisplay.com/en/home/index.html
https://www.tianma.eu/
http://www.visionox.com/en/index.aspx
http://www.everdisplay.com/en/
The LCD and OLED panel in your phone is more likely made in China by a Chinese company, the irony is now that even Samsung had use Visionox AMOLED in their phones especially recently because they were constrained with supplying their OLEDs to Apple.
ASUS does not make displays the only Taiwanese display manufacturer is AU Optronics IIRC and they don't make small and medium size displays.
The only thing that China still doesn't do well are large screen OLEDs (LG is now building a factory in China for that) and that's about it. China is oddly pushing AMOLED to the limit and are leading the development as far as flexible displays go much further than Samsung or LG do at least publicly.
But that’s for taps, not for a full scale UI on my trackpad with dragging sliders etc.
The entire notion of the trackpad is flawed. They are awful, and no one cares. People just use them so much that they get used to them and they don't notice how anymore.
Around the 5:50 mark: "Obviously you could watch movies and stuff on this [the touchpad screen]."
Who writes this stuff.
In any case, far better than removing a set of useful keys from the top of a physical keyboard.
Add: this also enables new types of casual games, similar to Wordament, Angry Birds etc. Oh, and better smudge tools on Photoshop.
> The [Excel and Word] ribbon where they live occupies 20% of the screen on the ZenBook Pro, so shifting those functions to the top edge of the trackpad gives you more space to do your work.
https://edgeup.asus.com/2018/take-control-with-the-zenbook-p...
Clearly it will appeal to gadgeteers (as much as I expect the touchbar does) who can use it for instrumentation or other generally distracting applications. Then there is the blindingly obvious: video editing on a laptop always sucks, there is never enough screen space. But moving the monitor window (rendered video preview) to the touchpad area might change that considerably -- it amounts to a 25% increase in display area, and in a 'natural application' of video editing, the monitor would be separate anyway.
I think this design, simply by virtue of being optional, and large and rectangular, is hugely more applicable than the touchbar.
The modality (pumping F6 to enable/disable) could definitely be improved upon. I can imagine it quite natural to use a hot corner of the pad itself as a toggle, or perhaps some gesture or similar.
Very excited to see how these work out in the real world
I'm also up for dual display laptops where the clamshell of a laptop is two touchscreens. It would help water proof the device, simplify the mechanics (lower cost?), give options for keyboard layout (improved ergonomics?) increase full screen size when fully unfolded and might be more comfortable than the stiff keys on the latest gen of MBP. I use an external keyboard when I'm at my desk and want a tactile full size keyboard, so I wouldn't be stuck with only glass.
It costs additional power (with no clear benefit).
Its another point of failure.
It has a big learning curve.
It requires one to look away from the screen (pro users needn't to look at their keyboard).
It replaced something which worked very well: esc key and function keys (who also had F-keys with "fn" combo).
IMO it is an interesting usability concept from an R&D PoV, but not something to be shoved in the throat of users. Unfortunately, Apple decided it is the way forward for MBP users with no option to turn back except for legacy products or switching ship.
I'd be surprised if something didn't exist for Android tablets. But if you have an old laptop laying around, maybe throw w10 on it and see if it works?
On the other hand, you can use something like Synergy, but that's not quite the same thing.
Are you familiar with the state of the art? Is this thing going to be as responsive as a regular touchpad?
Why isn't that plus haptic feedback good enough for the examples you mentioned?
It still has the problem where you have to take your eyes off your screen in order to interact with it, so I imagine there'd be some effort involved in getting used to actually looking at the touch pad while you poke at it. That said, if there are good app integrations that are intuitive and turn the thing into more than a pointing device (and not just a Spotify controller or some such), then I'm interested to see what those could be.
It'd be quite nice, for example, if it allowed notifications to pop up on a part of the touchpad instead of obscuring what you're working on, allowing you to tap that part of the touchpad to open it up instead of moving the pointer to the corner of the screen.
[1]https://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/laptops-portable-pc...
Besides, at best, your touchpad has little fingerprints, at worst it has a lot. With a normal touchpad this doesn't matter, but with a touchscreen (or touchpad-touchscreen) it suddenly does. Furthermore, it is a spot where your hands are, so in order to see it, you gotta move your hands. Both are not very useful features. If I want a tablet, I'll get one instead. Furthermore, the touchpad is pretty small (compared to Apple's latest) and doesn't have the haptic feedback the latest have. Though mine doesn't have that either on the MBP 2015, but that's because I don't want butterfly keyboard or TouchBar.
I'll put this one in the category of the TouchBar (which has already been discussed to death): with all honesty a very interesting research product indeed but don't put in your flagship product please. TYVM /bow.
I have an Zenbook ux501 that runs on wired power most of the time anyways so battery life isn't a concern for me personally, but I'd use that touchscreen as a security cam monitor, system resource monitor or some type of dashboard. I use a mouse most of the time anyways, so most laptop touchpads are useless to me.
Real-world power consumption for a good smartphone display is ~500mW. That represents just under 5% of the iPhone 8's battery capacity per hour, but 0.7% of the ZenBook's battery.
In the worst-case scenario, the touchpad display will reduce battery life from 9 hours to 8.5 hours. In a more realistic scenario, the power consumption of the touchpad display is a rounding error compared to the consumption of the i9-8950HK processor, the GTX 1050 GPU and the 4K main display.
Somehow, people cope with their smartphone being covered in fingerprints.
> Somehow, people cope with their smartphone being covered in fingerprints.
I don't, but if I mostly type and scroll on the bottom, the fingerprints are mostly on the keyboard part. So I tend to read the top and maybe mid of my screen and then scroll further.
I actually preferred the time with hardware keyboards for example because screen stayed pristine back then, and phones were much more durable. Alas, those phones are exceptions, and if you also have other special interests such as long-term support, high uptime on one juice load, or the liberty to e.g. run SailfishOS your options quickly diminish. So my smartphone does not have a hardware keyboard, but that does not mean I don't prefer that. Choosing a smartphone is a matter of concessions. Choosing a MBP, idem.
Finally, given how often people are replacing their smartphones, I'm not exactly sure if "people cope with their smartphone" in general.
I’d expect a standard user (and even myself) to be highly confused about if they can use the area as a trackpad or if they need to toggle some mode.
> Use the Touch Bar as an extension of the keyboard and trackpad, not as a display.
[0]: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
Apple's bar is one dimensional, which limits what it can be used for. I wouldn't trade that for physical keys I press every day.
CES 2017 coverage by Engadget: https://youtu.be/LrbJWiAc6JI
If you are willing to try out windows, the surface pros are actually pretty sweat. I got one for my gf for grad school and will probably get one for myself if my MBP ever dies.
Too bad it's on a computer that is called the MacBook Pro. For those not in the know, Pro stands for "Professional".
As an option, that'd be nice. But that'd probably require re-engineering the inside shell...
I don’t know how to explain this, but I just no longer feels the need to press an esc key, and no more tapping for adjusting volume/brightness. I can also adjust font size or color in Words using the touchbar. My I can choose an emjoi in hipchat client using touchbar application. It feels great.
This, I don’t know, really weird. I might have to try it, but I doubt I will like it at all. The whole purpose seems like a secondry screen to me. Constantly having to look down instead of looking at the bigger screen so you can control is so backward to me.
Better: "But after only two days of using it, I liked it; I have been using Pro version for another ~3 months now and I still love the TouchBar."
...unlike doing the same thing with TouchBar (?)
I honestly forget that's a thing most of the time.
Regardless, why not just improve on using one's phone the way you can already with some 3rd party apps... since almost the first day touch screen phones were available? It can at least be positioned anywhere that works for you.
You'd also save the world a cycle of e-waste for the sake of “we too” 2nd hand innovation.
Imagine Microsoft would have actually worked with them to salvage and re-purpose the millions of Windows phones (now in dumpsters and land fills), as detachable touch pads.
[0]: https://www.asus.com/Project-Precog/
[0]:https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/660x/assets/images/144750-la...
> Project Precog is designed to provide a smooth and intuitive experience for industry-leading AI technologies. With support for the Windows Cortana and Amazon Alexa voice services, the dual-screen design lets you keep your main tasks in full view while Cortana and Alexa process other tasks on the second screen
Definitely feels like a weird marketing gimmick atop an already strong looking product offering.
I’m not big fan of the touch bar either, but to state an opinion as fact is just bad journalism.
I don’t care about office integration, all I care about is how well it operates compared to the trackpad on a MacBook, and I donut I’m the only one.
Apple has really dropped the ball on their entire line and the touchbar eliminating a lot of useful keys is a pretty bad idea compared to replacing the touchpad.
It is amazingly fast and the speakers sound great, but overall I cannot approach the productivity of my 2015 model given the increased typos and accidental Touch Bar inputs that cause weird things to happen.
Do people not read these anymore or know what they are?
[0]: http://vas3k.com/blog/touchbar/
(Although the digits used are different. When in landscape, my fingers cradle a phone at a 45-60 degree angle with both thumbs used for input. On a horizontal touchpad the index finger(s) are doing much of the input)
It seems to support acting as a second display so I'm feeling optimistic about Linux.