After reading the countless posts on Macrumors and other sites regarding the statement Jobs made about not working on a touchscreen Mac, I was inspired to write. No, I’m not writing a plea to Steve, begging him to begin development on a touchscreen Mac. I’m not going to be one of those guys. What I’m here to say is that I wonder why there is so much hype and so much Apple bashing because of touchscreens. This innovation shouldn’t be tearing Apple apart! We should embrace it, cherish it, love it; not hate old Stevie for it.

Is it time for an apple touchscreen computer? In my opinion, it is not. The market is too small and while people argue that Apple should create their own market in touchscreens, I just feel that it is just not innovative enough. Yes, apple has created a market before. Back in the early 2000s when Apple released the iPod, there was really nothing like it. After that, the mp3 player market took off, because of the innovation of the iPod. That changed the world; a touchscreen computer will not. At least not yet.

A touchscreen desktop or laptop just isn’t as useful as we think. Initially, the idea sounds great. More user-computer action, fun gestures, possibly more productivity and most of all, a more involved computing experience. It would be a great thing to show your friends, and initially upon release, it would attract a lot of people. Friends would see friends with it, become interested, check out the product and perhaps even buy their own. It all sounds like a great product Apple could develop. But, Jobs is a smart guy. Sometimes we don’t give him enough credit. He sees the flaws in this ignorant approach to introducing a new device. Honestly, who is going to want to “play” with their computer all the time? When it comes down to getting work down, wouldn’t you much rather do gestures with a trackpad or mouse rather than reaching to your screen to move items around? Productivity would be slow for many people and soon enough they would realize what a terrible decision they made in purchasing a touchscreen device. The result of this would most likely be a fall-out of the product, and a potential discontinue of the line all together. This would be a hard hit against Apple and they simply cannot take that risk at this day in age. It is just not the time.

The future of touch-style devices is still young. It needs more time to bloom and maybe someday we will see an Apple computer based off of touch gestures. Someday indeed; but not now. We aren’t ready for such a device and believe it or not, we do not need one.  We will all have to wait and see what new developments will come as time goes by. Hey, it may be sooner than we think.

Matt Scinto ( Nov. 4, 2008)