Who does Apple say this touch is for

In the announcement, Apple divided the sensor into two parts. Daily operations include swiping to scroll pages, pinching to enlarge images, dragging and dropping slides from one presentation to another, and double tapping to fill the screen with a window. The section for professionals mentions names quite clearly: graphic designers, music makers, video creators and app makers.

Apple also reworked the hinge to make the screen less shaky when touched, and added anti-shake to the camera when users touch the screen during video calls. These two details show that Apple knows that touching an upright laptop screen is unnatural, so it had to fix both the hardware and software.

It's also worth mentioning that the touch screen is only available on the OLED version. The regular MacBook Pro released a day earlier still has the old, non-touch screen. So anyone who buys the OLED version because of the beautiful screen will also receive the touch screen, whether they need it or not.

Drawers and 3D artists

This is the group Apple mentioned first. The idea is to use the whole screen as a canvas, no longer confined to the trackpad area. In Pixelmator Pro, users can draw, paint, and select areas right on the image. For 3D people, Apple talks about rotating and adjusting models manually, and apps like Blender, Cinema 4D, ZBrush, Shapr3D will support touch, but according to Apple, it won't be available until the end of this year.

Where I suspect Apple didn't mention anything about the pen. Drawing with your fingers allows for quick sketches, but for precise drawing, artists still need a pen with pressure. Professional artists now have drawing boards or iPads with Apple Pencil, and they are also used to drawing on a horizontal plane rather than a vertical screen. So for this group, touch is more suitable for rotating the model, zooming, and quickly selecting an area, rather than completely replacing the drawing tool.

Music Maker and Video Editor

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This is the group I find most reasonable. In Logic Pro, musicians can play virtual keyboards with multiple fingers at the same time, press drum pads and chords right on the screen. When you're at a coffee shop or on the street, without a music keyboard, it's convenient to quickly try out a melody with your fingers. DJ apps like djay Pro are also on the support list.

For video editors, Final Cut Pro allows you to tap to mark cuts, drop clips in the right place, and pinch to zoom in on the timeline. DaVinci Resolve will also assist. Drag, drop and zoom are things fingers do more naturally than with a mouse. But in serious film editing, people still live by shortcuts, and Apple also makes it clear that touch is to be used in parallel with shortcuts and trackpad, not as a replacement. That means having more is convenient, but not a reason to change devices.

App developers and normal users

People who make iPhone and iPad apps are the most obvious beneficiary group that few people pay attention to. Before trying the app on Mac was to click on the emulator screen, now I can actually touch it right on the MacBook, checking whether the gestures and buttons fit my fingers. This is a real need and is used every day, only this group is not large.

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What about normal users? Apple lists Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Notion, Canva, Zoom, but also says these apps won't be supported until the end of the year. In reality, people probably mainly touch to scroll web pages, view photos, click on Dynamic Island to answer the phone or pause music. Convenient yes, but it's convenient when the hand is close to the screen, difficult to call it necessary.

Is the touch sensor compatible with macOS

macOS was born for pointers. The menu is small, the button to close the window is small, and the toolbar in the professional app is dense. Apple says many apps can be touched immediately because macOS automatically understands a touch as a click. This allows for an out-of-the-box app, but it also means the finger just acts as a larger and less accurate cursor, unless the developer reworks the touch interface with a new gesture toolkit.

Then there's the matter of arm fatigue. In 2010, at the Back to the Mac event, Steve Jobs explained why Apple doesn't make touch-sensitive Macs, the idea being that a vertical screen that requires raising your hand to touch is tiring for a while. It looks good but can't be used for a long time. The new MacBook Pro still opens clamshell style, not folding back into a tablet, so that problem still remains. Not to mention fingerprints on a glossy OLED screen are also something colorists will have to pay attention to.

So who needs it in the end

Taken together, the people who really need sensors are a fairly narrow group: people who make iPhone and iPad apps, and people who make music and try out ideas on the go. Video editors, 3D artists, and designers will find some of the gestures useful, but their main tools will still be keyboard shortcuts, trackpads, pens, and drawing tablets. Normal users touch for convenience, but not touching is okay.

So if you are thinking about buying, the question you should ask is whether you buy it because of the OLED screen or because of the touch screen. If it's because the screen is beautiful and the device is lighter, then the touch screen is just an accompaniment. If you buy just because you want to touch the MacBook screen, I think you should wait for the major apps to finish updating, see how the touch screen on the Mac actually works, then decide. Which group do you see yourself as belonging to?

Source: Apple Newsroom, The Verge, 9to5Mac, MacRumors