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

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

#41
post #38

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

Interesting point I had never considered, thanks. Yet another reason why I'll probably be purchasing a PC running Linux as my next laptop.

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

#43

My potential issue with the Touch Bar is that I never look at the keyboard when I type, so if I need to adjust the volume / screen brightness I would have to change my behavior.

I never look at my keyboard when I type, either. I do, however, always look at my keyboard when I adjust the screen brightness or volume, or control iTunes (pause, next, previous). The one exception to this is ESC, and I use it gratuitously.

> The one exception to this is ESC, and I use it gratuitously.

macOS has a built-in option to remap caps-lock to escape. I haven't used it yet (I'm not a VIM user, so I mostly just use it to cancel dialogs), but I've ordered the new MBP and it's the first thing I'll do. Should take care of that issue and even improve ergonomics.

I should have remapped caps-lock ages ago, I never use it, but haven't had the incentive until now.

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

#44
post #38

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

There're some external GPU enclosures with Mac-Compatible Nvidia cards that connect via USB-3. None of that is officially supported, and it is expensive, but based on cursory searches I did, it seems to work for people. It's still expensive and can only be used when you're at a desk, but those are imho fair compromises.

Now, I'd love for Apple to release an official external GPU (like Blazer did with the Blazer Stealth) but I highly doubt they'd do it.

https://bizon-tech.com/us/bizonbox2s-egpu.html/

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

#45
Lets not forget, it is also a touch of the past: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/connecting...

(not claiming the two are similar in some way, just following the idea back to where it was born)

I remember when this laptop was being sold I considered it since was "small" for that time, but ended up buying something else since I didn't like the touch panel below the screen.

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

#46
post #27
post #20

Steve (quite probably imo) wouldn't have allowed this to happen! I have little doubt that in a couple years, the technology Apple has been waiting for will arrive and this vision, or something closer to it, will be complete. Apple just released this machine too soon, or was too aggressive in the decisions it made.

While I agree with you here, I do think that using Steve Jobs as a consistent counterpoint to new Apple developments isn't always useful. Sometimes we forget that Steve was behind the Lisa and the original Apple TV. And the Magic Mouse original.

I'm not old enough (and certainly wasn't in a household wealthy enough to afford it at the time) to know what's going on with the Lisa, but there was nothing with the Apple Tv, or Magic Mouse. For those products, we're simply not the audience. I know plenty of casual mac users who were doing fine with those things. People in tech circles love to go on about Apple's mouse deficiencies but from my experience around casual computer users, PC users too, is that most people barely know about the second mouse button and the very concept of a "context menu" is alien to them. I keep having to remind my stepfather how to do things like copy and pasting in some apps because he always forgets about the context menu and even remembering something as simple as Ctrl+C + Ctrl+V is something he's not willing to do for a reason I can't even fathom myself, it literally makes no sense to me, it's just how it is.

So, from my point of view, Apple insistence on mostly forgetting about secondary functions on mouses is the right thing. The Magic mouse doesn't have a middle click? Most people don't even know how to right click. The only thing a mouse for casual users needs to do right, is left click and scrolling and the magic mouse has perfect touch scrolling. For the same reason Apple has hidden functionality like Cut&Paste from the finder. You need to hold the option key to activate the "move item". Apple wants you to drag&drop instead. The "default" in Apple land has always been to serve the need of the common, not the expert. So there's no traditional CTRL+X CTRL+V. Instead you need to do CMD+C as if you were copying, then CMD+OPT+V to "move". Everything advanced tends to be hidden into OPT key. It also changes the behavior of various menus to show things Apple doesn't want to show to the commons.

The touchbar is actually a very, very clever thing, we're just not the audience once again. I firmly believe it will never have much use among professionals who have nothing against learning many keyboard shortcut combinations or who even do things like customizing them (Karabiner to the rescue!). The touchbar is for people who didn't even use the mouse right click, and who don't understand concepts like context menu that change based on, gasp, context. It's actually going to be a boon for these people. Even exposing basic functionality like copy paste is going to help average users be slightly more productive with their devices.

The only issue is the MBP audience having a lot of techies and audio/visual professionals. The touchbar would be more sensible on something like the iMac and Macbook.

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

#47
post #20

Steve (quite probably imo) wouldn't have allowed this to happen! I have little doubt that in a couple years, the technology Apple has been waiting for will arrive and this vision, or something closer to it, will be complete. Apple just released this machine too soon, or was too aggressive in the decisions it made.

Can we just stop the "Steve would never..." stupidity, please?

1: He's gone. It doesn't matter anymore. 2: We'll never know what he'd have done in this situation.

Seriously. Everyone keeps pinning every single mistake Apple does to Steves absence. Have people completely forgotten that Apple made mistakes with Steve at the helm as well?

There are too many to count, but in this specific case, it could be reasonable to compare to the original Apple TV. Also something which wasn't timed right at all, and was kind of a "meh" in hindsight. In fact I'm not sure their vision for TV has really arrived yet, even now.

What about the original iPhone? What we consider now to be an absolutely essential element for smartphones was not present in the original: (third-party) apps. I remember how many people complained about that.. I'm sure they would've blamed it on Steves absence if Apple did that now.

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

#48

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?

Yes, the inverted T arrangement makes it a lot easier to rest your fingers, or quickly find the correct key without looking when moving between the cursors and the other keys/touchpad.

The keys are already big enough, so it's not a strict improvement and even if bigger keys are better, why are the up/down ones less important than left/right? If anything I use up/down more, because I use them for both reading and writing, whereas left/right are almost exclusively for writing (would be more so were it not for the lack of consistent PgUp/PgDn shortcuts on OSX: these are sometimes bound to left/right and sometimes to up/down depending on the application).

Having used both types of key arrangement (and others) on various cheapy Windows laptops, I know that for me at least, the inverted-T (without extra keys crammed into the spaces) is absolutely essential to being maximally productive at the text-related tasks I spend 95% my time doing. I can adapt to a 3/4 size keyboard more effectively than I can adapt to a full-size one without the inverted-T.

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

#50
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 touch bar is the type of gimmick that Apple loves though, because that's what sells hardware.

When OS X was released, the Dock was that gimmick. It added "curb appeal" and demoability according to Bruce Tognazzini, an ex-Apple employee who wrote the first five editions of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines - http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html

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