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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

#221

Post by TeMPOraL »

userbinator wrote: post #190
cottsak wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Some machining and creativity required.

And high stress tolerance. I mean, if - per recent HN thread - people obsess over putting a CPU into their PC because it feels like breaking a piece of expensive electronics, I can only imagine what a Macbook owner feels when applying a lathe to their prized possession...

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#222

Post by efrafa »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #205
saagarjha wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried pressing the home button on iPhone 7 or 8, or clicking a trackpad on a recent MacBook Pro?

Yes. Still, you can pry my mechanical keyboard from my cold, dead hands. The home button on the new iphones feels _weird_, almost as if there's this strange, unnatural delay to the click actually occurring. For something that purports to be "just like real life" it does a poor job. The click on the mbp trackpads is not too bad though.

Huh I actually thinks home button is pretty much not recognizable that its not a hardware one. My wife couldn’t even believe me.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#223

Post by TeMPOraL »

taftster wrote: post #155
beamatronic wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Emacs believer here, but the same applies: it's not the editor, it's the supporting software. Like local instances of the project you're working on. Compilers. Web browsers. More web browsers in various team working crap you might need to be using (though I stick to using web versions of stuff like Slack; downloading them as apps is just pure waste of memory and compute). Videoconferencing for remote work. Etc.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#224

Post by flukus »

aroman wrote: post #206
chvid wrote: post #192

I am really "worried" about two features coming out of Apple the past few years: The touch bar mentioned here and the "3D touch" feature of the iPhone 7+. These are "obviously" bad interaction designs yet they come out of a company having almost infinite resources when it comes to design. What is going on here? Is it the marketing department taking over? Is it "we have created this chip and now we have to use it some…

Have you actually used 3D touch? Because I use it just about every day, so much so that it's one of the biggest things I miss when using phones that don't have it. It also isn't touted as a major selling point anymore -- it just quietly exists, serving an extremely useful purpose as a better "right click" for touch screens. The touch bar I agree is major marketing hype.

Have you seen non-technical people using their devices, particularly older people? Every button press they make is a force touch and if that doesn't do what's expected they'll press harder. It's hard enough getting them not to long press or double click and now the company known for making things easy to use is making things even more confusing for lay people.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#225

Post by TeMPOraL »

hug wrote: post #199
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The vast majority of working professionals have not memorised what the F-keys do in arbitrary situations. (If you don't believe this, you've never worked in as a consultant for a wide variety of companies in a wide variety of professional fields.) Not only do people not know what the F-keys do, but they have no ability to determine what an F-key might do in any given situation. Not so with the touch bar. The touch ba…

> The vast majority of working professionals have not memorised what the F-keys do in arbitrary situations. (If you don't believe this, you've never worked in as a consultant for a wide variety of companies in a wide variety of professional fields.)

That's actually pretty sad (and should be remedied with some education, starting with emphasizing the fact that tools have a learning curve and you're supposed to follow it). I mean, look at non-professionals working with computers daily, like e.g. shop clerks. They have every possible shortcut used in their sales/inventory management software in muscle memory.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#226

Post by crispinb »

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…

> supposed grievances

> knee-jerk reactions

Anyone who doesn't like the Touch Bar is ipso facto deluded and/or irrational. Fantastic.

My main means of input to my computers is touch-typing on a keyboard. I never look at it (I already have a peripheral for looking at: a screen!). Replacing an entire row of keys with a miniature screen would represent a fairly profound change to how I operate a machine I use for 5-8 hours day, for no benefit.

Furthermore the application I use for 50-70% of that time is IntelliJ Idea, with tweaked default keybindings. I probably hit F keys hundreds of times a day. I would need to either do some substantial keybinding remapping, or start using part of my keyboard as a mini-screen.

I don't either like or dislike the Touch Bar. I just have no interest in it, as it makes the new MB Pros quite irrelevant to my professional requirements.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#227

Post by dmitriid »

aroman wrote: post #206
chvid wrote: post #192

I am really "worried" about two features coming out of Apple the past few years: The touch bar mentioned here and the "3D touch" feature of the iPhone 7+. These are "obviously" bad interaction designs yet they come out of a company having almost infinite resources when it comes to design. What is going on here? Is it the marketing department taking over? Is it "we have created this chip and now we have to use it some…

Have you actually used 3D touch? Because I use it just about every day, so much so that it's one of the biggest things I miss when using phones that don't have it. It also isn't touted as a major selling point anymore -- it just quietly exists, serving an extremely useful purpose as a better "right click" for touch screens. The touch bar I agree is major marketing hype.

I'be yet to discover a single use case where it might be useful. And it's nightmare on laptops

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#228

Post by TeMPOraL »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #137

As far as I'm concerned, the Touch Bar is not useful and will never be useful. I need the physical tactile ESC and F-keys back. There isn't even an option to make it emulate a standard keyboard row of ESC & F-Keys permanently (with the alternative functionality when you hit Fn, like on a Magic Keyboard). This "feature" alone has sealed the fate of Apple computer hardware for me. I will not buy another Mac until it ha…

Somebody should build a row of physical ESC+F-Keys that you could stick to your touchbar, + software fix that would make the touchbar display the appropriate keys. Kind of like those analog controllers you can stick to a smartphone.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#229

Post by terhechte »

dmitriid wrote: post #227
aroman wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually used 3D touch? Because I use it just about every day, so much so that it's one of the biggest things I miss when using phones that don't have it. It also isn't touted as a major selling point anymore -- it just quietly exists, serving an extremely useful purpose as a better "right click" for touch screens. The touch bar I agree is major marketing hype.

I'be yet to discover a single use case where it might be useful. And it's nightmare on laptops

3D Touch on the keyboard to move the cursor or make text selections

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#230

Post by dmitriid »

culturestate wrote: post #212
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Think about all of the ways creative professionals augment their computers for touch-based interactions: jog wheels, sliders, drawing tablets. The touch bar is a good way to make some of those interactions more portable.

it's too small for the vast majority of things that creative professionals require.
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