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

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#391

Post by lloeki » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

gargravarr wrote: post #340

adambyrtek wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell XPS 13 has build quality comparable if not better than MacBooks, comes with Linux preinstalled, and has an optional high resolution QHD+ screen. http://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops-notebooks-and-2-in-1-...

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…

> if you ever flip Linux to text mode it is just about unreadable

    setfont sun12x22

[0]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fonts#Console_fonts

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#392

Post by tokenizerrr » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

lloeki wrote: post #390

tokenizerrr wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, I'm not really sure what to say other than that I don't have any of those issues. Sitting here right now with my HiDPI XPS13 screen and a regular HDMI monitor. Things look good and I have no scaling issues. Haven't messed with any of the settings, it's just an Ubuntu install with i3.

I don't know any specific macbook models as I'm not an apple user and there is like no visual distinction between them. All I know is that I have two coworkers who use macbooks, and theirs are incredibly loud & warm.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#393

Post by gargravarr » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

lloeki wrote: post #391

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…

> if you ever flip Linux to text mode it is just about unreadable setfont sun12x22 [0]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fonts#Console_fonts

Thanks, I'll try this. Could have used it yesterday when I had to recover an XPS via the TTY...

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#394

Post by ballenf » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

primitur wrote: post #310

p1necone wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It turns off after 1 min of inactivity" Oh wow I didn't know that, I've been kinda leaning on the "it might actually be pretty cool/useful" side of this touchbar thing, but now I'm squarely in the "it's totally useless" camp. What were they thinking?

Whats great is when seemingly intelligent apps adopt the Touchbar koolaid, such as .. iTerm. So yeah, now I'm greated with the very nice side-effect of having a massive row of blinking crud all over my vision, just because iTerm wants to show me what command is running, what keys I could use to kill the process, blink back to the shell, oh .. another app is running in the shell , better update the touchbar .. Man, it…

Does remind one of those keyboard overlays for Wordstar/ Wordperfect/ Lotus 1-2-3/ etc.

If those overlays would jump off the keyboard if you didn't stroke them every 59 seconds.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#395

Post by ballenf » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:28 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

Right-click on Mac laptop has the same non-discoverability.

I'd argue force touch is more discoverable because it's very common for new users to press hard enough to accidentally activate it. Then you kind of play around for a few second until you realize how to do it intentionally.

A couple Macbook users I know have never once right-clicked and are amazed at how handy it is once demonstrated to them.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#396

Post by alkonaut » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:36 PM UTC

They should make the touchbar have tactile feedback so you can feel where the areas begin and end.

Then tbh they could just fix the areas to make it cheaper, so it's always say 15 equally sized tactile button areas.

And further, they could really just skip the dynamic display bit and just put fixed labels on them such as F1...F12 and let the user remember what button does what.

Oh wait

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#397

Post by zeveb » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:46 PM UTC

Reading this, I realised another fatal flaw in the Touch Bar: if you're using a laptop stand with an external keyboard & mouse (as one would do in an office or at home), then having to reach out and hit the Touch Bar would be a huge annoyance, and might even knock the laptop off of its stand.

What with this, the mouse which cannot be used while charging, removing the headphone jack, AirPods &c., one wonders if Apple computers are made to be actually used or just win design awards.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#398

Post by iak8god » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:50 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #386

glogla wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You might consider turning on "Tap to click" in your Trackpad settings. Instead of pressing anything, you can just lightly tap a finger anywhere on the pad to send a click. There's another option for a two-fingered tap to count as a right-click.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#399

Post by briandear » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 3:11 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #298

I have the MacBook Pro 2017 edition and this is by far the worst upgrade I've experienced for such a high-end, luxury item. It's all USB-C. Virtually nobody else supports USB-C, not even Apple. Oh, you want HDMI? €100 please. I also have an iPhone 8 which is on the Lightning connector. The audio jack is gone and guess what, there's no Lightning connector on the MacBook, so you'll need 2 pairs of headsets or an adapte…

> so you'll need 2 pairs of headsets or an adapter

AirPods.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#400

Post by kalcode » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 3:11 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.

> retina screens and the only usable touchpad in laptops

I mean I don't have a side in this convo. But if you are gonna put up a argument at least make it not sound fanboyish.

Plenty of laptops with similar ppi (what makes retina...retina) and plenty with good touchpads.

Many reasons to choose different laptops including Apples, but those you listed the competitors have themselves. Apple just markets their retina displays as 'special' when its all about pixel density and most laptops have moved in the direction of offering comparable ppi.