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Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

vas3k.com

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Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's their "because we know you'll buy it anyway" factor.

I know I’m just one guy, but I was planning on an upgrade before they released it and I did not, in fact, buy it anyway.

Same, I went back to Linux on a thinkpad instead.

I'm still happy with that move.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I’m just one guy, but I was planning on an upgrade before they released it and I did not, in fact, buy it anyway.

Good. :) The touch bar would be why - as opposed to price, right?

I'm getting near two years past refresh date on my work laptop. The touchpad is getting pretty funny, but I've not upgraded because of the bar and the approximately one acre that the new touchpad takes up, like they want me to hit it mistakenly while typing...

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#283
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought so too but the Pebble Time had snappy, colorful animations[1] that looked really good, and changed my perception completely on what is possible with e-ink. With regards to touch feedback, MacBooks come with a pretty hefty “haptic engine” already so it should be possible. [1] https://youtu.be/v-vP9D062aM

>I thought so too but the Pebble Time had snappy, colorful animations[1] that looked really good, and changed my perception completely on what is possible with e-ink. Except they didn't use e-ink. Pebble used transreflective LCD's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-crystal_d...

I see. The confusion on my part is that they used the term "e-paper" which I've now learned is an umbrella term including e-ink and any other technology that works to electronically replace paper.

Based on cursory research I believe the most important aspect of the LCD used on the Pebble time is that it's a "Memory in Pixel" or "Memory LCD"[1] – a technology specifically built for screens that may show the same thing for a sustained period of time.

Memory in Pixel seems to be a feasible alternative to e-ink if you want a low-power display that tends to show the same thing for extended periods of time. And it would probably work well for the use case of Apple's Touch Bar (assuming you can get a good pixel density with this technology).

[1] https://www.sharpsma.com/sharp-memory-lcd-technology and https://www.sharpsma.com/products?sharpCategory=Memory%20LCD

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#284
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.

Don’t you attach a keyboard and monitor for your daily work anyways?

The MBP keyboard buttons aren’t too great for typing all day every day.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#285
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.

Same pretty much. Got a mac because it's Unix, awesome hardware, good battery life and never fails to sleep and wake.

Don't care about the touchbar and it's never bothered me.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that people that frequent HN complain about something does not make it an obviously bad idea. Most of the developer complaints about the touchbar are about losing the hardware function and escape keys (which depending on how you use your laptop can be a bad trade off). Outside of that audience (and for those that code most of the time using an external keyboard) it’s actually pretty great. I say this based b…

So if developers are not (a part of) the target audience for a "Pro" branded device, then who are?

people that have money but no idea of what they are doing

like the guy in front of me on the train last week that used an iPad pro as a laptop, with an external keyboard and an external trackpad occupying way more space than my real laptop...

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#287

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.

creative professionals don't rely on touchbar, they already own real jog wheels and wanna use them not throw them away, because they are used to them

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android let's you touch & drag the spacebar for this - thing is, it works just fine on my cheap old phone, no pressure-touch required.

android doesn’t however do the drag selection like ios does: hard press keyboard to get a cursor -> drag around keyboard to place cursor -> hard press on word to start selection -> drag around keyboard to place end of selection it’s a phenomenal way to select text, and everyone i know that i show it to uses it every day from them on. it’s not discoverable, but DAMN it’s handy

I'm not sure I understand. To drag select text on android I just long press on text and drag my finger. It leaves little control points on each side to adjust to the character level (otherwise generally snaps to whole words). The first two steps seem unnecessary - why not just press on the word to start with?

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#289
post #241
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I'm thinking I might be misunderstanding this part, but here's a few tips for you (...) Thanks, I'm aware of these features. I was typing on my iPad in this small (non-resizable) comment field so was a bit short in explanation here. What I meant is that whenever I'm working inside a space, I don't want any other Space to interfere. So when I cmd+tab to an application, or click it in the dock, I want that app to ope…

Ah, that makes sense. Actually this is part of the reason I don't use more Spaces than I do now, I have two Desktops usually and the rest are all various fullscreen and split-screen spaces.

I think ideal for me would be:

1. If I am in a Desktop space (i.e. nothing is fullscreen), then ⌘⇥ ought to remain within the current space unless the app I am switching to is pinned to a particular space or the only instance of it is fullscreen. Switching to Firefox when the only extant window is on my other desktop should switch to the app without switching to my other Desktop space, that way I can open a fresh window. Clicking an http:// link should open a new window in the current space. Switching to NetNewsWire though should take me to the fullscreen app, for it is always fullscreen in its own space.

The reason for this is the whole point of Spaces for me is content separation. A web browser or file browser is a general purpose tool, I might have multiple windows of each open pointed to different resources related to different projects. I want to maintain that separation, and if I want to change what I'm working on, then I can do so through Mission Control without ⌘⇥ taking me out of Space I'm in. I want it to be an app switcher, not a Space switcher.

2. If I am in a fullscreen space, then ⌘⇥ should go to the most recent window of that app that I was looking at. If I was looking at a Firefox window in Desktop 2 and I have 3 fullscreen windows of Firefox and 5 more open windows in Desktop 1, then ⌘⇥ ⌘⇥ ⌘⇥ should toggle between that window, the fullscreen app, and then back to that window again.

#2 actually happens though, but #1 does not unless I keep a (often blank) Firefox window on all of my desktops, and then I have to do the same for each app that I would want that behavior. That is to say, Spaces needs some work, but for the most part apps that you click on in the Dock should launch in the Space you are in unless you have them pinned to a specific Space.

> While a nice new feature, when working on my 27" iMac this isn't very useful to me. I usually switch between ~5 apps and having two full-screen doesn't fit my mental model. Maybe I still need to get used to it.

It isn't for everyone, which is fine. Having my Mail and Calendar open side-by-side was something I picked up from a friend. He has the same setup except he has a multiple monitor setup with Mail and Calendar occupying the screen of his laptop. There's much to be said for not trying to incorporate each thing that exists on your system into your work if you simply have no place for it. It will be there if you need it.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#290
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.

It's not that infuriating, since you gave them your money anyway. And a lot of it. You warmly, and strongly screamed "do that again please" with a big heart shape.

The thing is, you:

   A. can scream money for nerfed hardware with F-keys
   B. can scream money for nerfed TB with serious hardware
   C. can't scream money for F-keys with serious hardware
   D. can't scream money for TB with nerfed hardware
This means I'm currently stuck in a non-choice because either of A or B is lacking, as this is C that I want (or possibly B, but without the shitty guidelines, as demonstrated by TFA). D would have been a great way to show confidence in the TB from Apple. So maybe it's about reducing the SKU count, but it seriously feels like it's combined with a manipulative ploy, which is definitely eroding the trust of people that love Macs, and that is what's really infuriating.
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