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Ask HN: No mechanical escape key in new Macbook Pros?

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Re: Ask HN: No mechanical escape key in new Macbook Pros?

#41

Post by devopsproject »

gamedna wrote: post #11

Back when the iPad was released, I ran a 6 month experiment to see if I could live as a developer using only the iPad and the cloud. My initial findings were quite positive, and the first few weeks were exciting and new. As time progressed, task switching and copy/paste were obvious shortcomings due to limitations with iOS, but the experience was mostly bearable but not awful. Towards the end it became unbearable as…

> Why would they want to alienate us?

I would imagine that most of apple's customers are not developers.

Re: Ask HN: No mechanical escape key in new Macbook Pros?

#42

Post by mod »

taurath wrote: post #39

I think they'll just replace the tilde key with the escape key if the photo is a new MBP. I press escape OFTEN, but tildes rarely. For the most part its to get into consoles in games or other dev functions - I could see myself losing it and not being too sad.

The tilde key is also the ` key. (I have no idea what the name of it is).

That's used in markdown and ES6 pretty commonly.

Losing that key is a problem for me.

Re: Ask HN: No mechanical escape key in new Macbook Pros?

#43

Post by mod »

1_2__3 wrote: post #38
snowwrestler wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, the touch bar might introduce opportunities for more sophisticated and flexible interfaces.

Will it, though? I feel like we're in the part of history right now where - when it comes to computers anyway - we're going with what's cool rather than what works. I'd say in general touchscreens have continued to be an utter failure as a general-purpose input device, and that's why we only see it on toy devices. Anything where what you type matters still uses some kind of mechanical feedback. Maybe with haptic feed…

Toy devices? Are you not exposed to modern mobile devices?

Anyone with a child that has access to a tablet can tell you that touch-input is succeeding.

Re: Ask HN: No mechanical escape key in new Macbook Pros?

#44

Post by mod »

busterarm wrote: post #6

I've been using an external keyboard (Realforce 87U at work. A 104 w/ Cherry Blues at home). Other than the coffee-shop crowd, how many of you would say you're exclusively a laptop-keyboard user? Not a dig, just wondering. If Apple offered an iPad Pro, running OSX with USB ports (or a thunderbolt port usb hub) for a physical keyboard, I would switch over in a heartbeat.

I have an old model-M, and I love it, but I don't use it often. I sit in a recliner quite a lot and that doesn't work.

I did build myself an oversized desk recently, so probably I should get the M back out and have it on the desk for occasional use.

Re: Ask HN: No mechanical escape key in new Macbook Pros?

#46

Post by serge2k »

busterarm wrote: post #7
serge2k wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OLED row makes me excited Can't imagine why. It sounds incredibly dumb. Probably have to live with it since no one else seems to be able to make a really high quality laptop. sigh.

> Probably have to live with it since no one else seems to be able to make a really high quality laptop. sigh. My solution to this has grown more and more to be "do everything on a remote box via SSH" and then it doesn't matter what laptop I use. I am a heavy Vim user, so this is easy!

It's not raw power, although the responsiveness of the OS is a factor. It's the combination of a nice screen, good keyboard, best touchpad (crazy gap to #2), good battery life, and durability. All in a decently small/light package.

edit: Surface book might be okay.

I tried one of those razor laptops last year, it was okay. Not as good as the macbook, but not bad.

Re: Ask HN: No mechanical escape key in new Macbook Pros?

#47

Post by 1_2__3 »

mod wrote: post #43
1_2__3 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will it, though? I feel like we're in the part of history right now where - when it comes to computers anyway - we're going with what's cool rather than what works. I'd say in general touchscreens have continued to be an utter failure as a general-purpose input device, and that's why we only see it on toy devices. Anything where what you type matters still uses some kind of mechanical feedback. Maybe with haptic feed…

Toy devices? Are you not exposed to modern mobile devices? Anyone with a child that has access to a tablet can tell you that touch-input is succeeding.

I call it a toy, you express indignation and then use children as an example.

The way children use toys is not the way adults use tools. Touchscreens have proven great for "consumption" devices like phones, and have proven pretty terrible for most everything else.

I'm not being too hard on them I should say, but anyone who thinks traditional input devices will be replaced in general purpose computing with touchscreens ignores decades of history and basic physical reality.

Re: Ask HN: No mechanical escape key in new Macbook Pros?

#48

Post by eridius »

wodenokoto wrote: post #37
eridius wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should wait until the products are released before judging them. Also, a VIM user that actually uses the escape key? I don't know how you tolerate that. I bound jk to escape years ago, and in the rare case where I'm ssh'd into a machine that doesn't have my vim config I still find ^[ easier to type than escape (which is probably because I bound caps lock to control so ^[ is easy to type).

I don't use VIM a lot, mostly when committing stuff in git, so I'm quite naive about it. How would you get out of insert mode by writing jk? Or, how would you write jk in insert mode without exiting?

Add the following to your .vimrc:

  if !&insertmode
    inoremap jk 
    snoremap jk 
  endif
(the insertmode bit can probably be dropped, but it's technically correct)

With this mapping, typing "jk" in insert mode acts as if you'd hit escape instead (so it doesn't type the j or the k). To type jk in insert mode without exiting, you either wait a second after hitting the j (once it shows up on screen you're good) before hitting the k, or if you're impatient you hit another key and then hit delete before the k, e.g. "jjk". The reason this mapping is popular is because "jk" is extremely rare to type in insert mode; you usually only type it if you're typing out the alphabet, or if you're talking about how you map jk to escape.

The only annoyance here is if you type j by itself, you don't actually see the letter show up immediately. This is because Vim is waiting to see if you're going to type a k. If you type nothing, after a second Vim will timeout and decide you're not invoking the jk mapping after all (and will then show the j). Or if you hit anything besides k then you're obviously not triggering the mapping. You can observe this behavior with any other multi-character mapping you might have as well (e.g. anything with or ).

Re: Ask HN: No mechanical escape key in new Macbook Pros?

#49

Post by miketwo »

weinzierl wrote: post #2

I'm in the market for the new MacBok Pro and the OLED row makes me excited, but as a Vim user the lack of an physical escape key would be problem for me. I have Caps Lock mapped to Ctrl and I'm glad that MacOS provides this option out of the box, but Caps Lock as Esc is not an option for me. I hope there will be an out of the box way to map Escape to something sensible. I'd trade ~ for Esc anytime, as long as ~ and `…

Karabiner (https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner) allows Caps Lock to act as Escape when tapped, but as Ctrl when held down. Unfortunately it doesn't yet work with Sierra.

Re: Ask HN: No mechanical escape key in new Macbook Pros?

#50

Post by landryraccoon »

1_2__3 wrote: post #47
mod wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toy devices? Are you not exposed to modern mobile devices? Anyone with a child that has access to a tablet can tell you that touch-input is succeeding.

I call it a toy, you express indignation and then use children as an example. The way children use toys is not the way adults use tools. Touchscreens have proven great for "consumption" devices like phones, and have proven pretty terrible for most everything else. I'm not being too hard on them I should say, but anyone who thinks traditional input devices will be replaced in general purpose computing with touchscreen…

How does your hypothesis square with the physical reality that a declining share of users use non smartphones for ANY type of computing activity, and sales of touchscreen only devices exceed sales of keyboard controlled devices by an order of magnitude (with that gap growing every year)?
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