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Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

vas3k.com

421–430 of 477 posts

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#421
post #390

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…

> 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.

I have quite literally both sides of this problem on my Windows laptop at work. Either the 4K display on the laptop renders everything really tiny, or the 1080p displays make everything huge. I haven't found a decent solution, so I just end up using the 4K display only for Conemu because it's the only thing that doesn't render in some goofy way. Even then, the toolbar icons for it are tiny, and any windows it spawns (e.g. warning that I'm about to paste something with newlines) have tiny icons.

I stick to 1440p displays at home for now. Those work great with everything.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#422
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.

What do you use it for?

flashlight and camera on iPhone X homescreen. 3D touch on music in the control center for more controls.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#423

I wonder if haptics will ever be good enough that we'll have a purely touchscreen keyboard that doesn't suck.

> a purely touchscreen keyboard that doesn't suck Many people would consider an iPhone keyboard to be this…

for serious typing, replacing a physical keyboard? no way. You really need good haptic feedback for touch typing.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> One of the practices you might not wish to support is an OS being tied to a specific hardware vendor. Which is literally the reason why OSX is that good/stable.

I feel like the "stable" part of things has been eroding away lately. I've been very disappointed with Apple over the past few OS rollouts. The new FS went flawlessly but there have been so many fit and finish bugs, I feel like Microsoft is making it.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#425

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.

Having to "touch" a completely different surface to press escape sounds absolutely awful. Unless there's a way to swap escape for a real key that you don't need I would consider that machine defective.

Ctrl+[ is more ergonomic anyways. After I started using that, I realized how much I hated using Esc for anything.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> One of the practices you might not wish to support is an OS being tied to a specific hardware vendor. Which is literally the reason why OSX is that good/stable.

>> High Sierra bug where empty password gives you root

>> High Sierra patch released, breaks file sharing

>> High Sierra patch re-enables passwordless root access on certain machines

> stable

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#427

...and sadly, Apple will never admit the mistake, and give us back the nice keyboard of the 2013 model. All in the quest to save a millimeter or two of height. My Late 2013 15" MBP is starting to fall apart in its old age - its battery is broken, its feet are starting to come off, it's got a ding in the display... it's just barely sufferable, but not for much longer. At this point, I don't see myself replacing it wit…

> and bumped the RAM to at least 32GB

You'll probably have to wait for Cannon Lake to do that; they're previously said they're not interested in using non-LP RAM in these.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#428
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

Here's the top things I use force touch for -

- Moving the cursor

- Opening Incognito mode for Safari

- Requesting Desktop version of a site.

- Turning on/off tethering from the control center

- Setting brightness on the flashlight

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#429
post #327

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.

You need to catch up. That was true, and a line I often repeated, five years ago. It couldn't be further from the truth today.

High-density ("retina") screens are a standard feature in high-end laptops. Asserting that it's an Apple exclusive feature proves your ignorance.

Many companies now make good touchpads, probably better because they actually have a physical click, which Apple has removed.

Many companies make much better keyboards today, while Apple makes worse. Even my Lenovo Yoga's keyboard, which retracts into the body of the laptop, is better than what Apple offers.

Operating systems are more subjective, but consider whether you really think and operating system whose developers have entirely abandoned it for the better part of a decade is really likely to be the best.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#430

I refuse to buy the new MBPs for corporate use. Just keep buying the older model. The new one is an unmitigated, overreaching, disaster. Oh and BTW, if Apple discontinues the older MBP, I will NEVER buy a MBP with a Touch Bar. Utterly ridiculous. I look forward to reading about what a stupid technology blunder this was years from now in a listicle of tech mistakes.

> Oh and BTW, if Apple discontinues the older MBP, I will NEVER buy a MBP with a Touch Bar.

Aren't they already discontinued? I can't find them except (very rarely) in the refurbished store.

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