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Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

engadget.com

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Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#61

Post by lloeki »

I am a developer. The Touch Bar is useless to me. I remapped Caps lock to Esc expecting to be annoyed, but still hit Esc nonetheless because it works. And I deftly adjust volume using the Touch Bar slider using press-and-slide (not tap then pick-and-slide), relying on the += key for tactile positioning (but the position itself is largely muscle memory by now)

I am also a musician. The Touch Bar is fantastic to adjust tuneables in GarageBand, without the gorilla arm or wobbly screen effect you get on touchscreens.

If it were annoying to me I'd just remap the two or three functions I use as a developer to some keyboard shortcut. After all I'm a developer, I think I can handle that fairly swiftly by myself if no tool were available (and I'm fairly convinced there is).

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#62

Post by lioeters »

docker_up wrote: post #9

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…

I'm in agreement with your eloquent response.

The touch bar is an unacceptable gimmick for me, a solution in search of a non-existent problem (my physical escape key is doing just fine). I'm also not going to buy Bluetooth headphones, just because they decided to drop support for standard headphone jacks.

The right to repair and extend my personal computer is another. It's common human decency, which apparently is not a priority at Apple anymore.

Sadly, this seems to be a symptom of a larger systemic issue among most large/"successful" tech companies - sheer arrogance and lack of respect for users ("useds").

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#64

Post by philwelch »

magtux wrote: post #47
jimmy_f wrote: post #14

Is the baseline MacBook Air sufficient for a CS major? I don’t want to spend extra for the pro.

I don't think you even need a MacBook Air. I've always used Linux for development. If you're not tied to MacOS, get a Thinkpad with Ryzen + Radeon. It will run better on Linux. If you want the MacOS experience, get a Air. Irrespective of what you get, you cannot do serious compute on a laptop. Because actually using it at full power kills your battery.

You can plug laptops in, actually.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#65

Post by reaperducer »

I wonder if this is going to encourage developers to finally make full use of the Touch Bar.

To date, support has been spotty, even within Apple's own programs. Now programs without Touch Bar support will stand out. It's not something that can be seen as a gimmick anymore, even if to many it is.

(Still, I think dumping the escape key was a mistake.)

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#66

Post by nikivi »

I genuinely love my Touchbar. It's an extension of my macbook.

I use it to show my active TODO, time and date, when I am on break and soon current calendar event running + Karabiner profile.

https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/my-mac-os/tree/master/btt

People who like to hate on it, didn't invest time in learning that you can program it to show what you want. And as for physical keys, with Karabiner, there is no need for those keys as they are too far away from home row anyway.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#67

Post by sbr464 »

ravenstine wrote: post #23
retrac98 wrote: post #10

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…

Why on earth do I need to tap twice to adjust the screen brightness? I couldn't find a way to just have two increase/decrease buttons. Why can't I adjust how long the touchbar stays active for? Why does it disappear at all? I can't imagine the touchbar would exist in its current form if Steve were alive.

My issue more is, if not looking and you press the wrong one (brightness/volume), you have to either wait for it to go away and try again or move your hand to clear it.

I feel that if you do the press and slide, the interface shouldn’t change to a slider (that needs to fade away).

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#68

Post by jasonm89 »

magtux wrote: post #47
jimmy_f wrote: post #14

Is the baseline MacBook Air sufficient for a CS major? I don’t want to spend extra for the pro.

I don't think you even need a MacBook Air. I've always used Linux for development. If you're not tied to MacOS, get a Thinkpad with Ryzen + Radeon. It will run better on Linux. If you want the MacOS experience, get a Air. Irrespective of what you get, you cannot do serious compute on a laptop. Because actually using it at full power kills your battery.

Why Ryzen? Mobile intel processors are better x1000

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#69

Post by ShaneOG »

lloeki wrote: post #61

I am a developer. The Touch Bar is useless to me. I remapped Caps lock to Esc expecting to be annoyed, but still hit Esc nonetheless because it works. And I deftly adjust volume using the Touch Bar slider using press-and-slide (not tap then pick-and-slide), relying on the += key for tactile positioning (but the position itself is largely muscle memory by now) I am also a musician. The Touch Bar is fantastic to adjust…

There is Karabiner Elements (https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements) which is amazing!

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#70

Post by saberience »

patejam wrote: post #12
jtdev wrote: post #4

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…

What utility did the other keyboard have? Well it meant you could adjust volume, brightness, press escape etc, WITHOUT LOOKING.

So many times I would want to adjust volume, keyboard brightness, display brightness by muscle memory and feedback alone, which isn't possible with the horrible touch bar.

I literally am still using my beloved Macbook Pro 2015 because I can't stand the damn thing. At my old job I had to use one of the new MBP machines at work and the keyboard + touch bar killed me every time.

I won't be buying a new MBP unless Apple fixes the keyboard and makes the touch bar optional. In fact, with the new improvements to Linux in Windows I may just got for a new AMD based Windows laptop instead, which is huge for me because I've been Macbook Pro since Apple first went to Intel...

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