Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines • Hacker News Board

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#381

Post by jtbayly » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:07 PM UTC

sametmax wrote: post #278

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.

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.

You know you set the price right when people are angry at you, but they buy it anyway.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#382

Post by jtbayly » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

amdavidson wrote: post #365

hennsen wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why people downvote posts who wonder why people downvote posts in which others state personal experiences...

"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." [0] 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think people feel like they need to do something to try to stop a “bad behavior.”

My guess is that it’s more effective to simply upvote a comment that is getting downvoted “unjustly” in your opinion. At least that’s what I’ve started doing. Even when it isn’t a comment I would normally upvote.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#383

Post by lapfi » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:13 PM UTC

artpi wrote: post #277

I use BetterTouchTool to remap § to ESC on touchbar MBRO. It solves any ESC problems.

You can do that with a simple terminal command as well, btw.

https://gist.github.com/lauri/84674ab22aafc4e0f398a52a53cfd7...

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#384

Post by aroman » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:36 PM UTC

bpicolo wrote: post #374

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.

It can be useful and still be terrible interaction design - it's uses are entirely lacking in discoverability

Something can lack obvious discoverability and still be good interaction design. In fact, I'd argue it's beneficial in this case, since it's generally an advanced/power user feature.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#385

Post by culturestate » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:42 PM UTC

allendoerfer wrote: post #296

culturestate wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've started faking 3D Touch on iPads - see e.g. the new control center, which will respond mostly the same as it does on a modern iPhone if you use a similar "force touch" action (even though you're really just holding it for n milliseconds). I'm betting on a force-sensitive iPad sooner than later, probably the next-gen iPad Pro.

Can't you just detect force, because the surface of the touch increases slightly, due to your skin being flexible? Seems like a feature you could emulate anyway.

I'd imagine that would result in a slew of false triggers, because one can slightly vary the angle or pressure of their touch without intending to invoke any kind of secondary action. One of the reasons I like the implementation of 3D Touch versus e.g. long press on Android is that it's a deliberate, positive input.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#386

Post by GordonS » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:44 PM UTC

glogla wrote: post #327

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.

And give up the only good desktop operating system, retina screens and the only usable touchpad in laptops.

Personally, I hate the touchpad on my MBP - I find I have to press the buttons too hard, even with the sensitivity up to the max. Literally gives me sore fingers.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#387

Post by gurkendoktor » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:52 PM UTC

gargravarr wrote: post #318

samsolomon wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a rare counter-example, but Apple released the iPhone SE for those of us who are happily living in the past. I wish they had more "SE" products.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#388

Post by gargravarr » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:52 PM UTC

gargravarr wrote: post #325

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vibration could be added via a speaker, not exactly a moving part. This is how Apple's current vibration scheme works, at any rate.

Not entirely accurate, the Force Touch device uses a linear motor to accelerate a small mass to 'thump' into its housing. In principle it's similar to a speaker, but in implementation it's very different (a speaker voice cone never intentionally impacts its housing, for example).

*Taptic Engine, I think I meant

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#389

Post by gargravarr » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:54 PM UTC

adambyrtek wrote: post #347

gargravarr wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use these XPSes and the current MBPs here. I do not recommend the QHD screens on a 13", if you ever flip Linux to text mode it is just about unreadable, and I think only MacOS handles HiDPI elegantly. Ubuntu needs a lot of tweaks to be usable. I also agree that the trackpads are very poor, and that's still one of Apple's main strengths. Although quite why the trackpad needs to be quite so enormous on the current m…

I actually prefer QHD screen since it looks great with 2x scaling (and I don't really care about text mode which is only useful for recovery). I have no problems with HiDPI or touchpad after upgrading from the ancient 16.04 LTS that comes preinstalled. I hope that the next edition would come with 18.04 LTS which should offer a much better user experience out of the box.

I've tried the alpha on a Acer Surface-esque tablet with a HiDPI screen and agree 18.04 is much, much better out of the box - scaling was set sensibly and usably on first boot. Very much looking forward to the release.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#390

Post by lloeki » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

tokenizerrr wrote: post #359

glogla wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried that for half a year, and it has some issues: - Linux applications have a lot of trouble with the HiDPI screen - Coil whine - Shitty battery life - Shitty touchpad So as whatever is Apple doing is annoying faddy bullshit, it's still the better option, especially considering the XPS 13 cost as much or more than MBP.

I'm using my XPS13 for like a year now. > - Linux applications have a lot of trouble with the HiDPI screen Honestly haven't noticed a single thing. > - Coil whine None of that. > - Shitty battery life What's shitty? It lasts 5 hours of me working with VMs. I don't think expecting more is reasonable. It's much less laggy than my collegue's MBP, which leads me to assume that Mac just throttles the CPU down to achieve l…

>> Linux applications have a lot of trouble with the HiDPI screen

> Honestly haven't noticed a single thing.

I've got a coworker sitting right next to me with a HiDPI main + non-HiDPI secondary screen. X or Wayland, it's a thousand cuts of hell: set native resolution and render scaling to 200% and you get some (most) apps at 200% on the non-HiDPI screen. Drag an app from HiDPI to non-HiDPI and notice how the overflow is wrongly scaled. There's no way to render at 200% on a non-native resolution then downsample to native, you have to set a non-native resolution, upsampled by the GPU/panel, which results in a useless blurry mess.

> it doesn't get burning hot to the touch when doing actual work on it. Nor does it sound like it's about to take off.

Early '13 and mid '14 13" rMBP here, VMs don't lag, slightly warm, but in no way "burning hot". Early '13 is dead silent thanks to dual fan design, mid '14 slightly less so, and only when I peg all cores for long enough.