Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

vas3k.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 477 posts

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#311

Post by tokenizerrr »

yoz-y wrote: post #307
tokenizerrr wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E. Don't buy Apple. You'll spend much less, and won't be supporting practices you don't approve of.

This is not very useful advice, kind of similar to "just use Linux" when people complain about some issue they have with Windows. For many, dropping macOS would be a much larger disruption than having less usable F-keys. That does not mean we can't complain about it.

There are plenty of other hardware manufacturers out there. One of the practices you might not wish to support is an OS being tied to a specific hardware vendor.

If you don't like the hardware you shouldn't be buying it.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#312

Post by sirclueless »

IanCal wrote: post #288
rickycook wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because pressing on words involves taking your finger off the keyboard, and the text is anyways often too small to be precise. You can fix it with the control bars on the sides, but it's more finicky and more interaction and requires you to move your hands.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#313

Post by baq »

yoz-y wrote: post #307
tokenizerrr wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E. Don't buy Apple. You'll spend much less, and won't be supporting practices you don't approve of.

This is not very useful advice, kind of similar to "just use Linux" when people complain about some issue they have with Windows. For many, dropping macOS would be a much larger disruption than having less usable F-keys. That does not mean we can't complain about it.

so you're saying that apple has many people in a bind, many of those willingly. that's not a good negotiating position for them.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#314

Post by lentil »

u801e wrote: post #157
eddyg wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's true for the default behaviour. Ctrl-C also won't call autocommands (like InsertLeave).

But - you can always map to , so that it'll work exactly the same.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#315

Post by gargravarr »

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.

Beyond infuriating, we buy them as developer machines here. Most of the staff loathe the TB so we bought another batch without them. I was stunned by the compromised specs. Even upping the CPU and RAM couldn't make them exactly equivalent to the base TB model. And only 2, very close together, USB-C ports is just flipping the bird. Plug in the power lead and just try to sneak a non-Apple (i.e. affordable) C->A adapter into the port.

Apple's hardware is just a total farce.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#316

Post by rkangel »

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.

> 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.

I don't think they've done it on purpose, this is just how it has ended up because of other priorities. I think their priority is tight packaging - across every hardware line they have, doing that well has allowed them to ship more hardware features (and/or more battery life) in a smaller package that anyone else. Designing in user servicability would get in the way of this.

They may be happy that not being able to swap parts is a side effect of this, but it'snot the priority.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#317

Post by hennsen »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #301
lloeki wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

E. Don't buy Apple. You'll spend much less, and won't be supporting practices you don't approve of.

And have even crappier hardware (thinkpads with screen resolution and disk sizes of last decade, not much cheaper, anyone?) with Win 10 preinstalled...

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#318

Post by gargravarr »

samsolomon wrote: post #306
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 was certain I was going to buy the 2016 Macbook Pro. I had an aging 2011 Macbook Air that badly needed to be replaced. Loss of MagSafe, carrying around a dongle, Touchbar—In the end it just added too much complexity to my life that I didn't need. I decided to purchase an iMac instead. For everyone else I hope Apple produces a decent non-Touchbar model this year.

They won't. Apple's history has never been to back down but to pursue the money spinning features.

Power users have begged for a desktop between the iMac and the Mac Pro for years. Apple has totally ignored them.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#319

Post by gargravarr »

theafroc wrote: post #271
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 bought a 15" MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar today. It doesn't have any usb c ports but neither did my old MacBook Air, so I don't care. Maybe I am a dinosaur.

I persuaded management to buy a pair of older Retina MBPs in our latest batch of non-TB machines. Sure enough, a colleague expressed interest, switched and was much, much happier with the 3-year-old hardware than the gimmicky brand-new machine.

And FFS, the number of USB-C adapters I need to keep on hand is a joke, at least you can plug things directly into a Retina without a dongle!!

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#320

Post by gargravarr »

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.

The worst part is that their SSDs use proprietary interfaces, and the TB ones even drop that and have the chips soldered to the logic board. That's just spiteful.

Just you wait for the class-action lawsuit when people's logic boards start failing and there is zero hope of pulling any data off the dead drive.

Post reply on HN