MARCH 2020 MACWORLD 15macOS for both mice and fingers.
“We think of the whole platform,”
Schiller said. “If we were to do Multi-Touch
on the screen of the notebook, that
wouldn’t be enough — then the desktop
wouldn’t work that way.”
Apple itself, though, proves that you
don’t have to expect an identical Mac
experience regardless of device with the
Touch Bar itself. The controversial strip
appears on every current-generation
MacBook Pro model, sure, but it doesn’t
appear on the MacBook Air or on the Magic
Keyboards used for iMacs and sure as heck
doesn’t appear on the new silver and black
keyboard designed for the 2019 Mac Pro.
I don’t think anyone’s complaining that
the Mac Pro doesn’t work the same way as
a MacBook Pro because it doesn’t have a
Touch Bar. It is a convenience used for
simple tasks on easily transportable
machines like MacBooks, much as direct
touch interaction with a display would be.
And unlike the Touch Bar, multi-touch
interaction wouldn’t even require us to look
away from our keyboards. Indeed, the
ever-shifting Touch Bar defeats the entire
point of touch-typing.
And Sidecar itself proves the
superiority of direct touchscreen
interaction over the Touch Bar in
MacBooks—and, for that matter, inHere’s the
macOS version
of Word running
on Sidecar.
You can see
the Touch Bar
options at the
top. They’re
bigger and little
easier to touch,
but they’re not
THAT much
bigger.