Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 68 posts

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#31

Post by rahoulb »

robert_tweed wrote: post #10

One thing I got from this review is that the touchbar brings keyboard shortcuts to people who wouldn't normally bother to learn keyboard shortcuts. I personally won't buy one because I've very picky about my keyboards (the squashed arrow keys are as much of a problem for me as the missing escape key). But for average users, I think Apple has managed another UX win here. I just wish they had made the bar a bit smaller…

From what I read, the touch bar is a separate system, with its own processor and running watchOS - effectively a remote display - so an app crash shouldn't affect it.

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#32

Post by rahoulb »

intoverflow2 wrote: post #18
blauditore wrote: post #6

It looks like Apple is trying to find an alternative to touchscreens just because Steve Jobs once said they're bad. For me, touchscreens are perfectly useful on laptops, since directly tapping something is much quicker than moving my hand to the trackpad, locating the cursor, moving it around and finally clicking something.

Think it's more a case that a Surface-like MacBook Pro would completely cannibalise the iPad Pro and Cook is more fond of the iPad Pro than the Mac line. The touchbar as a design decision makes a lot more sense when the brief is "Add touch to the Macbook Pro line... but under no circumstances step on the toes of the iPad Pro"

I've used my iPad as a remote display into OS X (now macOS) and it's painful.

The OS would need an interaction overhaul to make it work with touch - the hit targets are all the wrong size and a lot of behaviour relies on hovering over something. Couple that with the fact that the screen is at the wrong angle (I find it makes my arm ache just using an iPad with a keyboard and having to reach over to touch the screen) and I think Apple aren't too far wrong.

However, as someone who likes drawing, the way the Surface Studio folds down to an angle that is better for touch and pen does look pretty good to me.

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#33

Post by Matthias247 »

tbrock wrote: post #21

Fine, it has a new keyboard thing that you may or may not like, we are going to buy it anyway. But how does the verge not address what everyone really cares about: the CPU! The MacBook without the touchbar has a MacBook Air class CPU while the one with a touchbar is in another class. How do the non touchbar models compare with the previous air models and how do the touchbar models compare with the previous pro genera…

As far as I have seen in some benchmarks the new non-touchbar model (with the lower TDP CPU) is as about the same speed as my last-gen (2015) MBP 13" with the 28W TDP CPU.

So it's a lower speed CPU class but due to the newer CPU generation the performance is the same.

You can see it in a positive way: It didn't get slower

Or in the negative way: You get an actually worse CPU class for more money than the previous gen was.

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#34

Post by robert_tweed »

rahoulb wrote: post #31
robert_tweed wrote: post #10

One thing I got from this review is that the touchbar brings keyboard shortcuts to people who wouldn't normally bother to learn keyboard shortcuts. I personally won't buy one because I've very picky about my keyboards (the squashed arrow keys are as much of a problem for me as the missing escape key). But for average users, I think Apple has managed another UX win here. I just wish they had made the bar a bit smaller…

From what I read, the touch bar is a separate system, with its own processor and running watchOS - effectively a remote display - so an app crash shouldn't affect it.

I would certainly guess that the OS gets pre-emptive access to it in much the same way as it can trap system key interrupts before they go to applications, but I'm still wary until there's a lot more information available on this. Another case is what if the app decides to replace the ESC key altogether? If that's prohibited somehow then what's the advantage of removing the physical key?

TBH, a separate OS sounds like one more thing to go wrong, which is also worse, not reassuring. I'm also not keen on the idea of someone remotely rooting my touch bar - also not a problem I currently have to worry about.

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#35

Post by rayiner »

tbrock wrote: post #21

Fine, it has a new keyboard thing that you may or may not like, we are going to buy it anyway. But how does the verge not address what everyone really cares about: the CPU! The MacBook without the touchbar has a MacBook Air class CPU while the one with a touchbar is in another class. How do the non touchbar models compare with the previous air models and how do the touchbar models compare with the previous pro genera…

Does anyone care about the CPU? In any case, Intel laptop CPUs are basically thermally limited since Sandy Bridge or even before. Skylake isn't a major advance in that regard, neither will Kaby Lake be.

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#36

Post by rahoulb »

robert_tweed wrote: post #34
rahoulb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I read, the touch bar is a separate system, with its own processor and running watchOS - effectively a remote display - so an app crash shouldn't affect it.

I would certainly guess that the OS gets pre-emptive access to it in much the same way as it can trap system key interrupts before they go to applications, but I'm still wary until there's a lot more information available on this. Another case is what if the app decides to replace the ESC key altogether? If that's prohibited somehow then what's the advantage of removing the physical key? TBH, a separate OS sounds lik…

Just read the Ars review - it looks like the bar is divided into three, with only the middle area fully under app control (the left hand area showing dialogue box controls or escape). It does say that the bar slows down under heavy load though.

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#37

Post by jessriedel »

robert_tweed wrote: post #10

One thing I got from this review is that the touchbar brings keyboard shortcuts to people who wouldn't normally bother to learn keyboard shortcuts. I personally won't buy one because I've very picky about my keyboards (the squashed arrow keys are as much of a problem for me as the missing escape key). But for average users, I think Apple has managed another UX win here. I just wish they had made the bar a bit smaller…

> the squashed arrow keys are as much of a problem for me as the missing escape key

Could you elaborate on this aside? To me, it looks like a strict improvement on the arrow keys since the up/down keys are identical and the left/right keys have simply been embiggened (stretched upwards). Or do you think the negative space above the left/right keys gave important touch feedback?

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#38

Post by mtw »

One major let-down for me in macbook pros is the lack of a nvidia GPU. You can't do serious machine learning on those laptops. I actually had to buy a previous-gen macbook pro

I'm not sure what to do if I had to get a new laptop. On one hand, I have a few iOS projects, and on the other hand, it's always nice to run locally and quickly a few deep learning algos.

The limited connections are also a let down

Re: MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

#40

Post by reacharavindh »

59nadir wrote: post #12

There's nothing in this review that convinces me that the touch bar is improving anything. If anything, paragraphs like these convince me it's at best on par with just regular keys: > you no longer have one-touch access to brightness and volume adjustments; instead, you need to tap the button and then dial in your changes on a slider that pops up beside — not beneath — your finger. I’d be annoyed by that, but fortuna…

The easiest solution to keeping both power users and the other users would've been to keep the function keys and the escape key as they were and add the touch bar located one row above.
Post reply on HN