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Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

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Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#441

Post by jtbayly »

kolpa wrote: post #431
jtbayly wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not necessarily. Apple could offer the non-TB model for the same price and features as TB, and have more happy customers. Instead, they have people delaying purchases, desperately searching for alternatives to these infernal machines, and generally having second that's about staying with the decaying Apple ecosystem..

Well, my comment wasn't meant to justify them refusing to put a decent keyboard on a performance machine. Just meant to comment on the general reality that if people are ticked off about the price but still buying, most of the time that's a good thing.

There are countless examples where it isn't true.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#442

Post by codefined »

Gregordinary wrote: post #418
OskarS wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like USB-C is on the rise. Nintendo Switch uses it and there's a whole bunch of new android phones starting to use come with it. I bet in a year or two, most new devices (e-book readers, phones, tablets) are going to be USB-C, probably with Apple (ironically) being the only exception. It's neat to be able to charge my Switch from my MacBook charger and vice versa (though the Switch charger barely charges the M…

Careful with the USB-C on the Switch as its current implementation is not compliant. (Still agree its adoption is on the rise). https://plus.google.com/102612254593917101378/posts/2CUPZ5yV... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16706803

This seems to be one of the problems with USB-C implementations, barely any of them seem truly compliant? I remember this comment from a week ago[0]:

> In watching the evolution of USB-C over the last few years, it seems like it's extremely hard to implement correctly with the huge number of modes, alternate modes, and power delivery in the spec. > When you connect two USB-C devices today, you have almost no idea what is actually going to happen, which device is the master, and which way power will flow.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16706803

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#443

Post by abtinf »

lloeki wrote: post #300
abtinf wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always used iPhones and had no idea this feature existed. Thanks.

Do it a second time to perform selection.

I’m both delighted and angry.

Delighted because this just turned force touch from a super annoying feature that makes it a lot harder to click-hold into an extremely useful tool.

Angry because Apple totally failed to communicate the feature to me in all the years I’ve had iPhones.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#444

Post by saagarjha »

wwweston wrote: post #439
saagarjha wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, something that used to be a simple that could be done from muscle memory is now either (a) a slider that requires change of focus or (b) a multi-key combination which is totally the same thing as the thing you miss, and in summary, everything is fine. No. I only suggested the buttons because the author of this post thought that the slider was "bad". I don't buy their reasoning; you don't even have to look down…

> you don't even have to look down to see the slider's progress because macOS will mirror it smack-dab in the middle of your display. Progress isn't the issue. Input is. To operate a slider, your pointer/finger needs to be where the handle is. The location of the handle is variable. The touchbar could potentially handle this smoothly by displaying sliders in such that they always appear with the handle underneath the…

Unfortunately, this is exactly the issue I'm talking about: Apple has solved these problems; it just hasn't done a great job spreading it.

> To operate a slider, your pointer/finger needs to be where the handle is. The location of the handle is variable. The touchbar could potentially handle this smoothly by displaying sliders in such that they always appear with the handle underneath the finger, but this is not the behavior the touchbar was displaying when I tested it out -- sliders opened out to the side of the target you tap to open it, which means you then have to move your finger to the location of the handle, which requires a visual reorientation.

The location of the slider actually does not change, interestingly. What actually happens is the touch target for the slider changes to include your original tap point when you tap it, even if it shifts visually. This means all you have to do is slide, and this works even from the original location.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#445

Post by wwweston »

saagarjha wrote: post #444
wwweston wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you don't even have to look down to see the slider's progress because macOS will mirror it smack-dab in the middle of your display. Progress isn't the issue. Input is. To operate a slider, your pointer/finger needs to be where the handle is. The location of the handle is variable. The touchbar could potentially handle this smoothly by displaying sliders in such that they always appear with the handle underneath the…

Unfortunately, this is exactly the issue I'm talking about: Apple has solved these problems; it just hasn't done a great job spreading it. > To operate a slider, your pointer/finger needs to be where the handle is. The location of the handle is variable. The touchbar could potentially handle this smoothly by displaying sliders in such that they always appear with the handle underneath the finger, but this is not the…

:O

This is an improvement over the choice I thought they'd made, but it's an improvement in utility alone, and also even more of a headscratcher of a choice when it comes to the UI. It means they realized you want the handle right where the touchdown happens, so they can't plead ignorance, but they chose to have the in-touchbar visualization the user is interacting with appear elsewhere. It's not just non-obvious and therefore a failure of spreading the news, it's actually misdirection. Not having any visual feedback in the touchbar at all would have been better UX. As you pointed out earlier, the screen does fine for independent visualizations.

Interesting, it's got a lot in common with one of the complaints around the escape key -- the actual touchable area is different than the outlined area (which is positioned farther in from the keyboard than it's historically been).

Laptops have long had a display surface and a touch surface. If marrying them is worth experimenting with, getting the visual feedback connected with touches correctly is a crucial idea.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#446

Post by usaphp »

wycy wrote: post #362
usaphp wrote: 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.

"Pro" doesn't stand for "professional developer," it just stands for "professional." Professional includes designers, executives--anyone using the laptop for work. Pro doesn't even imply computer power user. It just means the opposite of home/personal.

I never said it stands for "professional developer". I am also pretty sure any "professional" designer knows their shortcuts and does not need to look at the touch bar, nevermind the executive. How are executives going to use a touch bar in a useful way? Adding emojis in their email conversation?

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#447

Post by gurkendoktor »

gargravarr wrote: post #415
gurkendoktor wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They sold the SE alongside the existing model, just like they sell the non-TB 13" MBP alongside the TB model, and just like the SE, the hardware is lower spec.

To me that was the surprising part about the SE: they actually used the same CPU and camera as in the premium model (6s). Other parts like the TouchID sensor and selfie cam are lower spec, but on the whole it doesn't seem like an artificially limited product to me.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#448

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

culturestate wrote: post #236
dmitriid wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's too small for the vast majority of things that creative professionals require.

I am a creative professional - there's lots of stuff that can credibly be done on the touch bar. Just because a tool isn't suited for every possible use case doesn't mean it isn't still a useful tool.

Yes I have thought about it, and I do think "thinking about it" brings me tons of cool ideas about what you can do with it.

But the problem is, there's a huge difference between a cool idea and actual execution, just like Apple's Newton flopped but decades later iPhone succeeded.

I use Ableton pro to make music, I use final cut to make video. I'm pretty sure I fall into the "creative class" of people you're referring to, but I never use any of the touchbar features that ship with the apps unless I'm forced to. It's much faster to use keyboard shortcuts, and I'm sure most "pro" users are already much better with the shortcuts that they don't need the touchbar features.

I'm not saying the idea is bad. It's just a horrible execution.

Since you say you're a creative professional, let me ask you, do you actually use any of these features and think these really improved your life significantly? I'm not talking about imagination, i'm talking about actual product. In my case it's much more of a trouble than any real benefit.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#449

Post by dpkonofa »

2009mobile wrote: post #220
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.

3D touch isn't supported on the iPhone SE or on any iPads. Given that it's not supported across the iOS hardware line, it's not assigned any essential functionality. I expect that it'll play a larger role after the next major redesign of iOS in a couple years.

But, to the parent's point, right-clicking is never (and should never) be assigned any essential functionality. Everyone agrees that the hockey-puck mice were terrible but their initial goal was admirable, IMO - new users should always be able to find commands with a single click of a button or in a menu. More advanced users could do a secondary click for quicker access to commonly used features. That seems like a great design paradigm to follow for any alternate clicking.

Re: Making the Touch Bar useful by abandoning Apple guidelines

#450

Post by dpkonofa »

flukus wrote: post #224
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.

Have you seen non-technical people using their devices, particularly older people? Every button press they make is a force touch and if that doesn't do what's expected they'll press harder. It's hard enough getting them not to long press or double click and now the company known for making things easy to use is making things even more confusing for lay people.

The number of "non-technical" people is only shrinking every single day. Why would they continue to design hardware for everyone just to cater to a constantly shrinking minority demographic?
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