Quote of the day from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs on touchscreens: “After a long period of time, your arm wants to fall off,” savagely attacking a bitter rival’s PC pivot
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The late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had a reputation for being ahead of the curve. At the time, Microsoft was heavily pushing touchscreen computing in an attempt to innovate and embrace new possibilities when interacting with machines; Jobs stood his ground and refused to take Apple down the same path.
“We’ve done tons of user testing on this and it turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical. It gives a great demo, but after a short period of time you start to get fatigued and after a long period of time, your arm wants to fall off. It doesn’t work. It’s ergonomically terrible. Touch surfaces want to be horizontal.”
Swimming against the current
Steve Jobs spoke during the ‘Back to the Mac’ media event at Apple’s corporate headquarters while introducing Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
quote of the day
This article is part of TechRadar Pro’s QOTD project to provide insights into the minds of the tech industry’s brightest and most recognizable figures today and in years past. Read the entire series here.
Instead of adding a touch screen to the MacBook, which Jobs saw as something of a gimmick, Apple focused on multi-touch gestures using the trackpad and mice instead of adding a touch screen into the display structure. The reason, according to Jobs, was simple: the use of this technology would quickly lead to strain, fatigue, and loss of precision the longer the user navigated using touch.
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It stood firm despite immense industry pressure at the time in the form of the emergence of new types of devices like the HP Touchsmart family.
Times are changing
As Windows continued to introduce new touchscreen and 2-in-1 devices to the market, Apple remained steadfast in its resolve over the next few years, but the manufacturer experimented with bridging technologies like the Touch Bar, which were eventually phased out.
Since then, there has been renewed pressure on Apple to embrace the touch screen and incorporate this into its devices; The company is now expected to break its stance for the first time and introduce a new MacBook Pro with a touchscreen and OLED panel, according to rumors.
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