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Hacker News News Feed for the Mac Touch Bar

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Re: Hacker News News Feed for the Mac Touch Bar

#141

Post by intoverflow2 »

Osiris wrote: post #52
wambotron wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one for work and absolutely hate it. No tactile feedback at all, so it's easy to mis-hit a key. I also echo the guy who said he accidentally hits Siri now because of it. It happened to me A LOT until I realized you can change what shows on it by default. Now I keep mine with expanded controls at all time. It's still annoying because I have to look down to be able to press the right key. I prefer having physica…

"stuck" -> The tiniest bits of dust or crumbs makes keys still and not work. It's super annoying to blow on the keyboard to try to get a key to start working again.

According the ATP.fm the only safe way to clean the dust out of it is to take it to an Apple store. You can easily destroy the mechanism if you manage to pry the keys off.

I imagine this will be fixed in the next iteration though.

Re: Hacker News News Feed for the Mac Touch Bar

#142

Post by NiceGuy_Ty »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #2

Anyone who has the new model w/ Touch Bar can comment on the usefulness of it, now that it's been out for a while? Do you ever used it / still use it daily?

When I go to hit delete, my fingers curl up and end up hitting something on the touch bar. Before I took the lock button off the touch bar, this lead to some absolutely maddening interruptions in my work flow. Removing that made it better, but I honestly prefer typing on my xps 13 than on my work computer.

Re: Hacker News News Feed for the Mac Touch Bar

#143

Post by brandonmenc »

et2o wrote: post #127
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #2

Anyone who has the new model w/ Touch Bar can comment on the usefulness of it, now that it's been out for a while? Do you ever used it / still use it daily?

I bet you'll get dramatically different opinions based upon people who bought it themselves or had work buy it for them. Former have to self justify cost, latter don't. I am one of latter. The touch bar is garbage. It is less accurate and takes longer than the old media. I rarely use it. I use emaca - try hitting meta-f a few times in a row and tell me that getting rid of the ESC key is not annoying The new keyboard…

> Former have to self justify cost

I spent the extra $200 to get four (vs two) Thunderbolt ports, not so much for the Touch Bar.

Re: Hacker News News Feed for the Mac Touch Bar

#144

Post by mthoms »

marcosscriven wrote: post #138
mthoms wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The touchable area is actually bigger than it appears. It does in fact extend much farther left. Try it. This is probably for aesthetics as you mention.

I've read that a couple of times, but it's only a little bit. About half way between the far edge and the edge of the touchbar display.

But still considerably wider than the physical escape button it replaced.

Re: Hacker News News Feed for the Mac Touch Bar

#145

Post by notadoc »

tsieling wrote: post #94
notadoc wrote: post #9

Interesting proof of concept, but the Touch Bar is still nothing I want any part of. Apple needs to make the Touch Bar a build-to-order option so that the rest of us can get a hardware Escape key and function keys back again.

Non-touchbar are the first models offered on the MacBook pro page.

Sounds great, can you show me where the non-existent 15" MacBook Pro without a touch-bar is?

Re: Hacker News News Feed for the Mac Touch Bar

#146

Post by et2o »

brandonmenc wrote: post #143
et2o wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you'll get dramatically different opinions based upon people who bought it themselves or had work buy it for them. Former have to self justify cost, latter don't. I am one of latter. The touch bar is garbage. It is less accurate and takes longer than the old media. I rarely use it. I use emaca - try hitting meta-f a few times in a row and tell me that getting rid of the ESC key is not annoying The new keyboard…

> Former have to self justify cost I spent the extra $200 to get four (vs two) Thunderbolt ports, not so much for the Touch Bar.

That's quite fair. I should have stated I was considering the 15" model. $200 for the extra thunderbolt ports is probably worth it.

Re: Hacker News News Feed for the Mac Touch Bar

#147

Post by zwily »

LeonM wrote: post #125
zwily wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I replaced the Siri button with a "lock screen" button. I do love that about it. :)

How is that an improvement over ctrl-shift-pwr? Yes I know it's 3 buttons, but is that worth a ~$300 feature?

No, it's not worth $300. But I didn't pay for it, so I like it.

Re: Hacker News News Feed for the Mac Touch Bar

#148

Post by borgel »

marcosscriven wrote: post #46

If they wanted the top row to be flexible, I would have prefered individual keys with an eink-style surface that could change, but would look completely normal otherwise.

For what it's worth, Apple was rumored to be buying this [1] company, who purports to have built an e-ink keyboard with relatively normal chicklet style keys.

[1] https://sonderdesign.com/

Re: Hacker News News Feed for the Mac Touch Bar

#149

Post by ZeroCool2u »

joombaga wrote: post #53
ZeroCool2u wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a developer and one of my work laptops is a MBP 13 inch w/ touchbar. I wasn't a huge Apple fan to begin with, but I used one of the last gen 17 inch MBP's for work, for about 2 years and liked it mostly because of the excellent hardware, specifically the keyboard and trackpad. The new keyboard is absolutely terrible though. Genuinely the second worst keyboard I've ever used. The new switches have caused dramatica…

Are you sure it's the switches? Did you move from a 17 inch to a 13 inch? I'd think that would contribute more to your troubles. Is the layout/key density significantly different?

Yeah, it's definitely the switches. The spacing is perfectly fine honestly.

Re: Hacker News News Feed for the Mac Touch Bar

#150

Post by gumby »

bischofs wrote: post #97

I love my MBP, I think its the best yet. But the touch bar is pretty pointless, I would rather have just paid less money or gotten better hardware. Maybe if I use an app that uses it effectively my opinion will change.

> But the touch bar is pretty pointless, I would rather have just paid less money or gotten better hardware.

The audience for the touch bar is people who look at their keyboard and/or take their hand off the keyboard frequently (e.g. to use a mouse). Come to think of it, the touchbar is probably best considered a mouse+menu accelerator.

As for you, the touchbar is pointless for me, but that's simply because its physical affordances are completely and inherently outside my model of use. I don't want my gaze off the screen and I don't want my hands off the core keyboard. We are likely in the minority.

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