WWDC 2020 has come and gone, and I've had time to think things through a little bit since then. As the presenters were going through the details of MacOS Big Sur, aka MacOS 11, I remember crying out: "That's it, we're getting touch-based Macs !" My feeling, at that moment, was based solely on the design language of the new OS: bigger controls, buttons, surfaces etc. Since then a lot more evidence has come to light to lend credence to that theory.
First of all there is the general idea of an entirely new hardware line, no longer based on Intel processors, but using what is being referred to as "Apple Silicon". A golden opportunity to modify something as fundamental as "input methods".
Add to that the fact that there were sessions at WWDC that dealt specifically with design for screens with rounded corners (a la iPad and iPhone screens).
Go one step further: on the new Mac hardware you'll be able to run iPhone and iPad apps, unmodified. Care to do that with a mouse or trackpad ? I think not.
So, looking back at my last blog entry here, I had it wrong. I was imagining a big change in the way we use the iPad. I thought we would see the introduction of Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro for iPad. And while that may still happen one day, what we're getting instead is a way to run iOS and iPadOS apps on the Mac. Exactly the other way round. And that brings me to the biggest change this might mean to me, personally: here I am using the Magic Keyboard for iPad, hardly ever touching the screen of that "touch-first" device, while I might very soon find myself leaving finger prints all over my Mac screen, a traditionally keyboard and mouse driven machine. Le monde a l'envers.