Connect your Claude, Codex or OpenClaw for full transcripts on millions of podcasts. Two week free trial, cancel anytime.

Start free trial →
SR Stephen Robles On Mac Power Users

“App developers are going to have a time. They've already had a time with iPhone Duo, and now to think about their apps on a touchscreen. Mac developers, if you only made Mac apps, never had to think about touch at all. And starting today, now you do. And you have to figure out how your app is going to interact with a touchscreen, which is wild.”

Mac Power Users · November 2026

“App developers are going to have a time. They've already had a time with iPhone Duo, and now to think about their apps on a touchscreen. Mac developers, if you only made Mac apps, never had to think about touch at all. And starting today, now you do. And you have to figure out how your app is going to interact with a touchscreen, which is wild.” — Stephen Robles, Mac Power Users

Context

Weighing what the touchscreen MacBook Pro means in practice, Stephen points to third-party developers, who until now could ignore touch on the Mac entirely.

Transcript

Mac Power Users Around 33:16 into the episode
Stephen Robles

Yeah, yeah.

David Sparks

But this really doesn't feel like this. This feels to me like a really nice screen improvement to a really good computer for an extra 400 bucks. And maybe that's why I didn't get the ultra name because I don't think it really lives up to it.

Stephen Robles

I am curious, man. App developers are going to have a ton. They have already had a time with iPhone Duo. And now to think about their apps in a touchscreen. You know, Mac developers until today have never, if you only made Mac apps, never had to think about touch at all. And starting today, now you do. And you have to figure out how your app is going to interact with touchscreen, which is wild. Well,

David Sparks

the first data point is how is Apple dealing with it? Like if you open pages, what affordances are made for you with a touchscreen.

Stephen Robles

Yeah. And this isn't what's interesting too is like, this is not a flip around screen like we've seen in other laptop makers where you can make it into a tablet. You know, you're only going to interact with the screen when it's lifted up. And aside from the piano and scrolling, you know, for the…

David Sparks

I mean, it could go so many different directions, right? This could blow up and everybody could love it. And Apple could really like double down on improving the interface for it. It could be another touch bar where nobody cares. Like, and people just don't buy the extra. I mean, because computers…

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from Mac Power Users