Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also hate that MacBook Pro touchpads are oversized and easy to touch with your thumbs by accident. I had one issued for a job and had annoying, error-inducing swipes about three times a day.
You complained about the best part of the Macbook, the trackpad! I wish I could get that Mac trackpad on my thinkpad x1
My take: I think the touchbar and giant touchpad are both symptoms of Apple’s aversion to put a touchscreen on the Mac. With many Thinkpads and other PC laptops, you may not get quite as good of a touchpad experience (though Microsoft Precision Touchpad is a pretty good experience I would argue,) but my touchscreen experience with even Linux has been pretty good in recent years, and it has ended up being a useful, if not quite killer, feature to have.
Touchbar makes little sense to me. Power users don’t look down at their keyboards. I think the same reason Valve dropped the screen on the Steam controller applies to keyboards, and is probably part of the reason why similar visual keyboard utilities have largely not sold well. Interestingly, ones that have, like the Streamdeck, are often designed to be positioned on a much more convenient angle. On top of all of this, it didn’t seem worth getting rid of the useful fixed-position keys for a programmable bar.
And on top of everything... I don’t even think Apple has made the most compelling innovative designs in this space anyways. PC laptop manufacturers have been trying arguably more interesting and possibly even more useful concepts for a while to varying degrees of success. For example, MSI has a keyboard where the number pad is a programmable touchscreen. I believe ASUS has a laptop where instead of a touchbar, you get 3 small desktops that you can pin things to. Granted, none of these things are likely to stick in the long term, but I also believe the touchbar won’t either.
I think I get why Apple does not want to put a touchscreen on Mac: the interface isn’t really designed for it. But as much as I have a strong dislike of Windows 10s propensity to install Candy Crush without my consent, I will also concede and say it does a seriously excellent job handling a touchscreen on a desktop. It’s a shame that it will take so long to clean up decades of UI cruft, but even with it, Windows turns out to be a good experience with a touchscreen so as long as you have another precise pointing method simultaneously.
So after all is said and done, and contrary to probably many people’s sensibilities, I actually think the PC laptop market is doing peripherals better, even if the touchpad drivers can be a bummer.