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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

#181

Post by nol13 »

r00fus wrote: post #28
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…

I can live with all of the half-baked features of the latest MBPs (I have one for work, my home one is much older) but the false recognition of the overly large touchpad drives me crazy. It's bad enough that I have to disable tap-to-click (which I greatly preferred - much more elegant) and it still mis-clicks if I rest my hands on it. I used to think the MBP trackpads were a cut above everything else - now they're to…

I <3 this trackpad. But ya no tap to click.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#182

Post by jakebellacera »

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 suppose I am a “pro” user and I like the touch bar. Do I love it? No, but I appreciate the customizability of it. This is something which is pretty rare in Apple’s ecosystem.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#183

Post by cottsak »

userbinator wrote: post #174
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 wonder how hard (easy) it would be to swap the parts between them, given that these are (mostly) still PCs, and determined people have done some pretty amazing things to other pieces of Apple hardware: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15190199

Don't wonder, see for yourself:

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+D...

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Touch+Ba...

Not a lot has changed in the past few years. Macbook Pros are NOT easy to mod/change or swap parts. This is very clearly the intention of Apple.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#184

Post by paxys »

ajkjk wrote: post #156
paxys wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's still a problem with Apple as a company, not the touchbar itself.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#185

Post by ktta »

dragonshed wrote: post #169
ktta wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a 13" new one without touchbar.

As others have pointed out, the 13" max specs are inferior to the 15" max specs.

True, but its 13" non-touchbar max specs are same as touchbar 13". So the comparison isn't really fair.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#186

Post by on_and_off »

stiGGG wrote: post #160
SomeHacker44 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

To use the OS; indeed

For some software like Intellij IDEs, function keys are used very often. Since that where I spend 90% of my time on my work MBP; it makes the Touch Bar very painful.

ESC is still my top button there; but just getting it back would not be enough for me.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#187

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

ubernostrum wrote: post #180
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 "Pro" in "MacBook Pro" has never meant "developers, exclusively developers, and nobody but developers". As far as I'm aware, Apple doesn't and hasn't ever explicitly targeted its higher-end models at developers. They just happen to have been good developer machines, and so developers confused that for "I am explicitly the target market of this".

Please enlighten me, what's "Pro" about the touch bar?

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#188

Post by stillkicking »

SllX wrote: post #165
bouke wrote: post #4

I’ve been using the 2016 MacBook TouchBar for little over a year now and feel the same pains as mentioned in the article: > 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. At least Siri doesn’t get in t…

> Not related to the TouchBar, but I don’t understand why Apple won’t improve on the Spaces feature. Why does it force me to use one space for an app. I'm thinking I might be misunderstanding this part, but here's a few tips for you: * Open Mission Control however you invoke it, top right corner there's a + button for adding a new Desktop. You can drag any windows you like into the new desktop or even force an entire…

The fact that these features are so undiscoverable proves the point, I think. The split view management in particular is clunky as hell even when you do know how to use it, as you can't edit the view once it's been created... only tear it down. Whether it's hiding the other desktop thumbnails until you hover, or the fact that fullscreened apps always become the last space (instead of just the next one), there are loads of little things that would be trivial to fix or at least provide preferences for, hidden or not, like in the old OS X days. But new Apple seems to be infected with the same "we know better" and "everything has to work the same for everyone" authoritarian UI design that makes Android such a pain in the rear too.

I miss the Apple that did things like letting you right click a document's title bar to access its parent folders, or letting you drag that icon right off the window to manipulate it. They used to understand the principle of direct representation and manipulation. Not a single new OS X feature has made it worth upgrading in recent years.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#189

Post by _5meq »

I bought a Dell XPS for less than half the price and better specs. No regrets.

Apple hardware isn't that amazing, and even if it is, who cares. "Build quality" is just an excuse to spend more money on a luxury designer laptop that is becoming more and more hostile to its end users.

I dont need a thinner laptop or a dumb touch bar or a"minimalist" os design. I need decent Docker impl and ports to plug my phone and monitor into and to not spend $3k on a computer with mediocre specs.

The OS everyone loves to harp on about isn't as revolutionary as people like to pretend. Windows has better Docker support and that is a huge win in my book. Also windows doesn't make me enter payment info when I'm trying to install tools I need to compile my code.

For a few years I worked for a consulting firm. The laptop I chose was a $500 Lenovo with a decent processor and 1080p screen. I bought 32 gigs of RAM and an SSD and upgraded it. The cost of a comparable Mac is laughable.

Installed Linux on it. Used it for years, never had any issues, even with external monitors. The thing is still running to this day, though now I have it sitting under my TV as a media PC.

#itsjustoverpriced

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#190

Post by userbinator »

cottsak wrote: post #183
userbinator wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how hard (easy) it would be to swap the parts between them, given that these are (mostly) still PCs, and determined people have done some pretty amazing things to other pieces of Apple hardware: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15190199

Don't wonder, see for yourself: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+D... https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Touch+Ba... Not a lot has changed in the past few years. Macbook Pros are NOT easy to mod/change or swap parts. This is very clearly the intention of Apple.

Macbook Pros are NOT easy to mod/change or swap parts. This is very clearly the intention of Apple.

Of course, but that hasn't completely stopped determined people from trying (and succeeding) --- look at the link I posted to where someone added a headphone jack back to an iPhone.

As long as the dimensions are vaguely compatible, the guts of the touchbar model might fit into the non-touchbar case. Some machining and creativity required.

The only downside is the cost (unless you somehow find salvage parts), but someone who really wanted to could do it.

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