21–30 of 397 posts
The Touch Bar was what finally pushed me over the edge to remap caps lock to escape. I'm shocked at how much I enjoy ESC being close to the home row (I'm not even a big vim user). For this change alone I am glad to have the Touch Bar.
I will never ever buy a MacBook Pro if they don't get rid of the TouchBar. The sheer arrogance of Apple to think they know better than their customers infuriates me. I only use a 2018 MacBook Pro because work supplied it, and because my 2015 MacBook battery was dying and the only option the IT department gave me was to upgrade to the 2018 model. I may simply go back to Windows at home if that's the case, and will use…
99%+ of my usage of the touchbar is pressing escape, adjusting screen brightness, speaker volume, or accessing music controls. All of these worked flawlessly when I had physical keys, but now it's hard to know what I'm pressing without looking, and sometimes the controls become unresponsive to touches or drags. I'm a programmer/business owner, so perhaps it's useful for other sorts of creative professionals, but it f…
Readers of this site are mostly “hackers,” however mutated or dumbed-down that term has become over the years, correct? Everyone here has their windows and spaces just so, a full complement of shortcuts and trackpad gestures, and if they're serious about the Macintosh tools like TextExpander.
As standard as GUIs are, we've all experienced a moment of disorientation when borrowing another person's computer. The more experienced and skilled that other person is, the greater that disorientation due to the amount of “hacking” they've done on their own environment.
So how come this impulse stops at the Touch Bar?
I've hacked the hell out of mine. I've mapped inscrutable keyboard commands like cmd-opt-ctrl-D to context sensitive buttons, included globals for quick terminal visors and development tools and password managers… it's slick as hell and I hate giving it up when I occasionally opt for the external keyboard at home.
The Touch Bar is amazing, you just need to hack the damn thing. Yeah, Apple should have done a better job making it more useful out of the box, but it's possible to do some really wild stuff with it.
map your Caps Lock key to Escape and go to town. https://github.com/vas3k/btt-touchbar-presets
It’s unfortunate that so many design decisions are made with little regard for the true utility of what’s being designed, of which the touch bar has essentially zero.
What utility did the previous bar have? Volume changing? Screen brightness? Those are better with the touchbar. Escape key for vim or whatever? Switch your caps lock with escape! You should have been doing that the whole time! The actual function keys? I don't use them enough to need them showing up all the time. And an extra key to get them up again is no big deal. I agree that the touch bar doesn't add a whole lot…
Function keys are used heavily in IDEs, and forcing a large reach of fn + f# key isn't adding any utility either.
I have yet to see a situation where the touchbar adds some utility that merits the loss in other areas for users.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What utility did the previous bar have? Volume changing? Screen brightness? Those are better with the touchbar. Escape key for vim or whatever? Switch your caps lock with escape! You should have been doing that the whole time! The actual function keys? I don't use them enough to need them showing up all the time. And an extra key to get them up again is no big deal. I agree that the touch bar doesn't add a whole lot…
> Volume changing? That's better with the touchbar. Not really. My wife has low vision. Changing the volume used to be a muscle memory sort of thing. Now it's an awkward fumbling mess, especially if she's in the middle of a meeting and trying to mute her laptop. We've locked the buttons to a static position so she knows where to press but there's still no tactile feedback.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What utility did the previous bar have? Volume changing? Screen brightness? Those are better with the touchbar. Escape key for vim or whatever? Switch your caps lock with escape! You should have been doing that the whole time! The actual function keys? I don't use them enough to need them showing up all the time. And an extra key to get them up again is no big deal. I agree that the touch bar doesn't add a whole lot…
> Volume changing? That's better with the touchbar. Not really. My wife has low vision. Changing the volume used to be a muscle memory sort of thing. Now it's an awkward fumbling mess, especially if she's in the middle of a meeting and trying to mute her laptop. We've locked the buttons to a static position so she knows where to press but there's still no tactile feedback.
Not tactile, haptic only but there is https://github.com/niw/HapticKey
I will never ever buy a MacBook Pro if they don't get rid of the TouchBar. The sheer arrogance of Apple to think they know better than their customers infuriates me. I only use a 2018 MacBook Pro because work supplied it, and because my 2015 MacBook battery was dying and the only option the IT department gave me was to upgrade to the 2018 model. I may simply go back to Windows at home if that's the case, and will use…
Disclaimer: I like the touchbar. I swapped escape and caps lock, installed Pock, and never looked back. This is my last MacBook. Xubuntu on a Thinkpad x1 carbon works great for everything I do, at a fraction of the price, with a keyboard the doesn't stop working with dust, and with more than just USB-C.
The Touch Bar was what finally pushed me over the edge to remap caps lock to escape. I'm shocked at how much I enjoy ESC being close to the home row (I'm not even a big vim user). For this change alone I am glad to have the Touch Bar.