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Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

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Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#41

Post by ravitation »

dylan-m wrote: post #9

I always find it amusing how developers flock to MacOS saying things like "you don't need to configure it like Linux; it just works", and then there are articles like this containing myriads of workarounds for its problems :b This is cool, though. I'm somewhat envious of the shiny thing. The conky screenshots are fun, since this is quite reminiscent of it, except done somewhat usefully. It's a shame that it's tied to…

I find comments like these amusing.

First, you don't need to spend hours configuring the Touch Bar for it to be a functional machine, like you would trying to run Linux on a laptop... But some people do, because it's there. The Touch Bar works just fine without this article.

Second, having a myriad of workarounds for its problems is a positive not a negative. Everything has problems; I'll take the platform that has a myriad of workarounds over the one that has a handful.

Be my guest to use something else for all of your programming. I'll keep using my MacBook Pro.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#42

Post by simcop2387 »

saagarjha wrote: post #22

> Things got even worse when Apple "reinvented" the Play/Pause button in High Sierra. Actually, this was introduced midway through macOS Sierra; https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mediaplayer is available in macOS 10.12.1+. > Buttons rock. It's always faster to tap, not slide. If you press Fn, the slider will go away and the "normal" function buttons will appear. > I want to have instant access to Finder, anyw…

> Press the power button.

In older macbooks I've used, this also would put the system into suspend mode. That's fine, but it would also disconnect any terminals on remote systems because the system would no longer be on. Is this still the case or has that changed recently? For a coffee break button I wouldn't want to have to reconnect to everything I was working on before, or have to worry about any long running processes (say ML training, copying a file, etc.) that were going on when i'm just walking away for two minutes to fill my water up.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#44

Post by runjake »

saagarjha wrote: post #22

> Things got even worse when Apple "reinvented" the Play/Pause button in High Sierra. Actually, this was introduced midway through macOS Sierra; https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mediaplayer is available in macOS 10.12.1+. > Buttons rock. It's always faster to tap, not slide. If you press Fn, the slider will go away and the "normal" function buttons will appear. > I want to have instant access to Finder, anyw…

> Don't do this. Use AppleScript to watch for changes, instead of polling.

Could you provide more info about this, or even better, an actionable code example?

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#45

Post by sitharus »

everyone wrote: post #43

How do you use a computer without function keys?

Easily. Even as a full time software developer (full stack, SQL Server, C#, Typescript) I barely use the function keys. Everything's bound to chords I can easily hit without moving my hands.

Of course, your set can be completely different, we all have our preferences and there's nothing wrong with that.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#46

Post by quantumleap22 »

tcfunk wrote: post #34
saagarjha wrote: post #22

> Things got even worse when Apple "reinvented" the Play/Pause button in High Sierra. Actually, this was introduced midway through macOS Sierra; https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mediaplayer is available in macOS 10.12.1+. > Buttons rock. It's always faster to tap, not slide. If you press Fn, the slider will go away and the "normal" function buttons will appear. > I want to have instant access to Finder, anyw…

> Press the power button. Where is this power button? I've been searching for it since I got this laptop. Edit: Wow thanks, don't know how I missed that.

Lol Apple made it impossible to understand how to turn on and off the laptop and removed the startup sound leaving you with zero feedback when you start the laptop for an eternity.

Awesome work.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#47

Post by simcop2387 »

dawnerd wrote: post #32
reificator wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure I don't matter to Apple anymore, but the touchbar is the reason I haven't upgraded my laptop yet. I enjoy having an Apple laptop to complement my Windows and Linux desktops, but if the touchpad doesn't go away by the time I decide not to wait any longer, I'll probably grab something else. Maybe a Chromebook with a replacement OS, maybe an Ubuntu or Fedora laptop. Probably not Windows as it's mainly for games…

You know they sell a version without touchbar right?

Only in the smaller lower performance bracket models. They do not make a 15 inch macbook pro without a touchbar.

EDIT: In fact I didn't realize that it's significantly different spec wise to the 13 inch with touch bar. Only going to a 2.5Ghz base clock speed on the non-touch bar. And this is with only intel integrated graphics and a dual core cpu only, compared to the 15 inch models. This can be a big deal for anyone who wants to do even basic video editing or many other content creation type activities.

https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#48

Post by [deleted] »

dawnerd wrote: post #32
reificator wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure I don't matter to Apple anymore, but the touchbar is the reason I haven't upgraded my laptop yet. I enjoy having an Apple laptop to complement my Windows and Linux desktops, but if the touchpad doesn't go away by the time I decide not to wait any longer, I'll probably grab something else. Maybe a Chromebook with a replacement OS, maybe an Ubuntu or Fedora laptop. Probably not Windows as it's mainly for games…

You know they sell a version without touchbar right?

[deleted]

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#49

Post by [deleted] »

simcop2387 wrote: post #47
dawnerd wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know they sell a version without touchbar right?

Only in the smaller lower performance bracket models. They do not make a 15 inch macbook pro without a touchbar. EDIT: In fact I didn't realize that it's significantly different spec wise to the 13 inch with touch bar. Only going to a 2.5Ghz base clock speed on the non-touch bar. And this is with only intel integrated graphics and a dual core cpu only, compared to the 15 inch models. This can be a big deal for anyone…

[deleted]

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#50

Post by saagarjha »

simcop2387 wrote: post #42
saagarjha wrote: post #22

> Things got even worse when Apple "reinvented" the Play/Pause button in High Sierra. Actually, this was introduced midway through macOS Sierra; https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mediaplayer is available in macOS 10.12.1+. > Buttons rock. It's always faster to tap, not slide. If you press Fn, the slider will go away and the "normal" function buttons will appear. > I want to have instant access to Finder, anyw…

> Press the power button. In older macbooks I've used, this also would put the system into suspend mode. That's fine, but it would also disconnect any terminals on remote systems because the system would no longer be on. Is this still the case or has that changed recently? For a coffee break button I wouldn't want to have to reconnect to everything I was working on before, or have to worry about any long running proc…

Does ^⌘Q do what you want? How about customizing the Touch Bar to have the "lock" function key in it?
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