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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

#151

Post by analogmemory »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #119

I’m a non-tech savvy person who happens to work in tech. I find the touch bar very useful. This is what I believe: the touchbar is for people like me... people who never learned to use the F keys, people who aren’t obsessive about shortcuts but appreciate them when discovered. In short, it’s for the 90% of software users that float between general public and pro users. It works.

This is it, I rarely use the TouchBar except for esc and mute.

My partner on the other hand enjoys using it and is always looking to see what the current app displays.

I see it as a way to expose useful items that usually buried in the menus. Non-technical people like this

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#152

Post by ktta »

merb wrote: post #130
rwz wrote: post #106

The biggest problem with touchbar is that Apple intentionally made non-touchbar model inferior in terms of hardware and the amount of USB-C ports to make sure ppl buy touchbar. This is truly infuriating and I'm sure, was done for purely marketing reasons. I'd buy a non-touchbar model if it had the same hardware as a touchbar model in a heartbeat.

15" has no "new" hardware. the 15" non-touchbar model is the old one, without usb-c and old processor.

There's a 13" new one without touchbar.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#153

Post by exabrial »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #142
exabrial wrote: post #114

The only thing genuinely useful on the touchbar is the fingerprint reader, after you enable the PAM module. Well technically the reader isn't part of the touchbar, so I guess that doesn't count now that I think about it.

I dislike the fingerprint reader and don't use it on my tbMBP. Someone could physically force me to use the fingerprint reader, or might just cut off my finger to use it, which is even worse. I wish macOS had a built in TOTP system.

Ubikey has a free U2F PAM module! And I've seen a PAM module got TOTP, I think someone demod it for ssh logins!

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#154

Post by [deleted] »

dfee wrote: post #143
wiredfool wrote: post #14

I’ve been living with a touchbar machine for about two months now, and the only useful thing about it for me is the touchid spot. Escape, slow as hell. Brushing the touchbar and bringing up the man app on some random argument, useless and annoying. It’s gotten a lot better now that I’ve switched it from context to function keys, and am using an external keyboard 95% of the time. It’s really my third favorite laptop t…

Have you considered making your caps lock key an escape key? That’s been my game plan when I’m obligated to upgrade. Honestly, though I’ve held off for two years because I don’t know that I’ll be able to live with this.

[deleted]

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#155

Post by taftster »

beamatronic wrote: post #127
usaphp wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In short, it’s for the 90% of software users that float between general public and pro users. It works. Then they should have not called it a “MacBook pro” there is nothing “pro” about touch bar, it’s something useless that I have to pay extra for and I don’t need it at all.

The only time I touch my Touch Bar is to hit the Escape key. Because I use vi. Because I am a professional and theoretically the target audience of $3,000 premium quality laptops.

Funny that you need a $3000 laptop to run vi. Funny in a sad way.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#156

Post by ajkjk »

paxys wrote: post #117
rwz wrote: post #106

The biggest problem with touchbar is that Apple intentionally made non-touchbar model inferior in terms of hardware and the amount of USB-C ports to make sure ppl buy touchbar. This is truly infuriating and I'm sure, was done for purely marketing reasons. I'd buy a non-touchbar model if it had the same hardware as a touchbar model in a heartbeat.

I get what you're saying, but that doesn't seem like a problem with touchbar, rather the advantage of it..

How can you think that? "Screwing over your customers" is a problem.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#157

Post by u801e »

eddyg wrote: post #92
kough wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get bye with capslock remapped as control and using ctrl-[, which is the pinky of each hand and requires minimal movement. Control in general is useful for everything, escape not as often.

Ctrl-C is another option that works the same as Escape and is easier to activate with one hand.

Not quite. If you want to append or insert characters using blockwise visual mode in vim, it won't work with Ctrl-C. It will work with Ctrl-[ or Esc.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#158

Post by exotree »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #119

I’m a non-tech savvy person who happens to work in tech. I find the touch bar very useful. This is what I believe: the touchbar is for people like me... people who never learned to use the F keys, people who aren’t obsessive about shortcuts but appreciate them when discovered. In short, it’s for the 90% of software users that float between general public and pro users. It works.

I’m pretty technical, use a ton of keyboard shortcuts, and I’ve found it incredibly useful. Apps that take advantage of the touch bar have actually showed me new features in the applications I’m using. And I completely agree about this middle ground user who wants a solid computer, is above average technical, but not inclined to dig into the shortcuts of their system.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#159

Post by rorykoehler »

rwz wrote: post #106

The biggest problem with touchbar is that Apple intentionally made non-touchbar model inferior in terms of hardware and the amount of USB-C ports to make sure ppl buy touchbar. This is truly infuriating and I'm sure, was done for purely marketing reasons. I'd buy a non-touchbar model if it had the same hardware as a touchbar model in a heartbeat.

In the same boat as you. Had the money ready to buy a maxed out mbp to replace my 2009 mbp. Ended up buying a maxed out 2013 model for $800 instead.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#160

Post by stiGGG »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #139
on_and_off wrote: post #131

from the article : > the Touch Bar still remains the useless shit and there is no hope Apple will fix it. > As a machine, MacBook Pro is great. But not because of the Touch Bar. Touch Bar is an inflamed appendix, the same dumb shit as Siri. If Apple had implemented it as an additional row and not the F-keys replacement, everyone would forget about it in a couple of days. > The reason is simple — that's how you see yo…

"If it had been an additional row I would not have minded." Exactly. I would have configured it to be blank, stay off, and remain off. Give me my physical ESC and F-keys.

I only want my ESC back, F-keys are not needed on macOS. They should have made the TouchBar smaller and kept ESC
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