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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

#101

Post by RickS »

eropple wrote: post #82
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #24

This thread is going to dissolve into a pile-up on the Touch Bar, so I wanna jump in front of this. 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, w…

I am a touch typist. I never look down at the keyboard, ever. The only time the Touch Bar is involved is when I accidentally switch tabs because the Touch Bar buttons trip even while you're pressing the 2 or 3 key on the keyboard, and then I'm lost in a different tab than the one I was working on in the first place. Is there a preset that never shows anything on the touch bar, ever , except for the Escape key and the…

Yes, his is how I have mine, roughly (I kept the playback controls for spotify)

Prefernces > Keyboard > Customize control strip (bottom of first tab)

There's a strange GUI for like dragging stuff in and out... I don't remember how it works exactly..

but it is very close to 5 seconds.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#102

Post by hellofunk »

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 am in agreement with you that my current MBP will be my last if my only options in the future are with that damn, silly, expensive gimmick so eloquently called the touch bar.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#103

Post by djsumdog »

js2 wrote: post #91
josho wrote: post #17

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 use caps lock as control. It would be hard to relearn that muscle memory.

I've done this for years and keep typical a capital C every time I try to copy something or send a break in a terminal when I use someone else's machine.

More people need to map Caps Lock to Control. It just makes sense, and it's where control use to be on many old Sun keyboards.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#104

Post by airstrike »

ShaneOG wrote: post #69
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!

Hammerspoon is also good https://www.hammerspoon.org/

... but both pale in comparison to the mighty AHK for Windows, imho https://www.autohotkey.com/

AHK is so incredibly useful it should be bundled with Windows at this stage

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#105

Post by nsxwolf »

js2 wrote: post #91
josho wrote: post #17

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 use caps lock as control. It would be hard to relearn that muscle memory.

As an old Sun keyboard user, Caps Lock as Control feels right. That's also where it is on my HHKB keyboard.

As a vim user, escape is too high up on most modern keyboards anyway. The ADM-3A terminal vi was invented on placed it to the left of the Q key, which was a lot easier to reach. HHKB puts it where the tilde key traditionally is, which is pretty close to the original intent of vi.

Remapping tilde on touchbar MacBook Pros would be a good solution, if there was an obvious other place to put tilde/backtick.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#106

Post by andyfleming »

The answer is obvious to me.

Add back the physical top row, but keep the touch bar. Just put it above the physical top row.

I like the idea of the touch bar for customization and various use cases, but I don't do that now, because I want my top row to continue to act as simply and consistently as possible.

For example, the contextual menus for programs. I think the whole concept is really interesting and adds a cool layer of interaction. However, I don't want to give up my quick access to my normal functions like volume, expose, etc. So the end result is that I just turn all the contextual options off. So I've never had a chance to fall in love with the touch bar, because all I use it for is a crappy version of what my top row use to be.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#107

Post by na85 »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #24

This thread is going to dissolve into a pile-up on the Touch Bar, so I wanna jump in front of this. 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, w…

I applaud this sentiment.

I use emacs reasonably often and I reached out to Mitsuharu Yamamoto about touchbar support in emacs and sadly never heard back.

The ability to bind arbitrary emacs functions to the touchbar, programmatically, would be a killer feature.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#108

Post by dsego »

futureastronaut wrote: post #60
iscrewyou wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. When I bought the MacBook, that was one of those things I noticed as “of course it makes sense. Why doesn’t everybody do this?” Then Apple went ahead and took an axe to it. This was truly an idiotic move. Don’t add usbc if you can’t find a way to make it MagSafe!

Opposite here, the magsafe was a constant nuisance, always disconnecting. I like being able to drag the cord with the laptop.

And the laptop with the cord.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#109

Post by Eric_WVGG »

addicted wrote: post #87
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #24

This thread is going to dissolve into a pile-up on the Touch Bar, so I wanna jump in front of this. 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, w…

I’m not sure why you couldn’t do the same with the Fn keys instead. What you’d lose in being able to look down and see what a key does at the moment, you’d gain in having more tactile response allowing for easier pressing without looking. Also, when I find an inscrutable keyboard shortcut I use frequently, I simply remap it. There are enough KB shortcut combos possible that running out of keyboard shortcuts is rarely…

That's a good point, and I did do exactly that in the pre-Touch Bar days as I had no use for most of the "media keys."

What the Touch Bar gives me is context sensitivity, different suites of commands on a per-app basis. Evidently I'm just lacking the mental agility of remembering that F2 is "open responsive desktop mode" in Safari and "clean build cache" in Xcode.

As for the arguments of touch-typists here, I'm a touch typist and don't look at the keyboard either, but the idea behind the Touch Bar is that it's just within visual range of the screen. Bumping it half a centimeter higher would make it even more so.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#110

Post by TYPE_FASTER »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #24

This thread is going to dissolve into a pile-up on the Touch Bar, so I wanna jump in front of this. 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, w…

I can't type on the keyboard without accidentally triggering the Touch Bar. I really wanted to hack it, but wow is it annoying. I have to relearn typing because of it.

If there was a small gap between the top of the physical keyboard and the touch bar, that might be enough to prevent false taps. Or I have to hack the Touch Bar to figure out where I'm accidentally hitting it, and don't put any buttons there.

I'm also triggering false taps on the Touch Pad, which never used to happen. I suspect if there was another gap between the bottom of the physical keyboard and the top of the Touch Pad, this wouldn't happen.

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