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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

#231

Post by windexh8er »

kkylin wrote: post #46
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…

I blame this mostly on Apple's human interface guidelines: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... Scroll down to "Design Considerations": "Use the Touch Bar as an extension of the keyboard and trackpad, not as a display." But what I really want is for the touch bar to be a display and input device for things normally elsewhere: time, date, maybe CPU usage, etc. This to me is not a hardware pr…

Personally, I feel as though Apple got it wrong in the HIG. It is a display and it can't be treated as an extension of the keyboard (in a useful manner) given its lack of tactile differentiation. If Apple doesn't want people to look at it like a display, and the content of it is dynamic such that I don't know what the bar represents, then you can't fulfill the HIG. If Apple had an in-OS feedback mechanism that asked users, once a month, if they found Touch Bar useful or an impediment and then also collected number of keystrokes (opt-in) in that month my guess is the distribution of users who interact with their computer primarily through keyboard input will respond that the Touch Bar is an impediment. Those largely clicking for a majority or interaction would likely find it useful. Either way Apple got it wrong by assuming users would always find it better than giving buyers the option without.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#232

Post by cookiecaper »

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…

I really don't know why Apple doesn't do the typical Apple thing here: make it a $600 add-on item. If they can transform 3.5mm headphone jacks into a huge upsell opportunity, I don't know why they'd miss out on that opportunity for something like the Touch Bar. People can then have their standard keyboard with function keys AND an external controller if they make use of an application that would make it useful.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#233

Post by EpicEng »

magduf wrote: post #85
lioeters wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

I really don't see the problem with any of this stuff. I like physical escape keys, I really don't want expensive Bluetooth headphones, and I like having a headphone jack on my phone. I also like being able to repair and upgrade my equipment. So what do I do? I don't buy Apple stuff. Then I read discussions like this one and chuckle at all the people griping about all these things, and then continuing to buy and use…

The GP is literally throwing out the reasons s/he won't buy a MacBook... in the same way that you did. What don't you understand?

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#234

Post by scarface74 »

robert_tweed wrote: post #226
Someone1234 wrote: post #32

When the Touch Bar is discussed the discussion often turns into "is the Touch Bar useful or not?" When the crux of the whole issue is that they removed a row of keys (F- keys and escape key), because the new oversized touchpad needed to be 10mm bigger. If they had simply left all the keys, shrunk the touchpad, and added the Touch Bar above the keyboard, people who didn't like the Touch Bar would simply choose not to…

While this is true, I am also put off by the increased attack surface of a proprietary embedded OS (watchOS) running in the touchbar, outside the control of the main OS and by extension, not under my control either. Given how much everyone around here hates similar things like UEFI and the Intel IME (with good reason), I'm surprised this one seems to slip under the radar. Probably because everyone is much more incens…

The T1 chip also serves as an authentication chip, a disk controller, and can be used for video encoding/decoding.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#235

Post by stdclass »

ngngngng wrote: post #6

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.

Has anyone experience with System76 laptops?

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#236

Post by wlesieutre »

docker_up wrote: post #222
wlesieutre wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MagSafe was nice, but I'm a big fan of being able to use an industry standard $30 charger with 60W USB-C, 3x USB-A ports, and a removable charging cable. Having to replace a whole $80 proprietary charging brick because the cable connection frayed was a pretty shitty deal.

I have collected 4 magsafe chargers from the various companies I've worked at because when I returned my laptop or got an extra, they never asked for the chargers back. It was very convenient, but now that I'm on the 2018 USB-C one, I have to throw all of them away via e-waste because I have literally no use for them.

You could try eBay or Craigslist for those.

Since Apple never licensed out MagSafe, the market has been full of poorly built counterfeits rather than anything from reputable manufacturers. That’s another thing I don’t miss.

Anyway, I’d bet there’s still some market for used MagSafe chargers to be used with older macs whose chargers have frayed.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#237

Post by snowwrestler »

dmitriid wrote: post #100
patejam wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm legitimately curious. Please help me understand. Again, I don't see how its worth all the hassle and surely extra cost for Apple to push it, but really don't see how it's any worse than the previous bar.

The previous bar was: - consistent button locations across any apps. An F1 is an F1 whether you are in Finder, in Safari, or in a programming IDE. By default Touchbar displays whatever the developers of the currently focused app put there. So switching to any app will change the touchbar rather unpredictably. - consistent physical button locations. For any shortcut that involves physical buttons you don't have to loo…

It's a touchscreen instead of physical buttons. People had the same concerns about the iPhone screen replacing the hardware keypad on smartphones. In that instance, the improved flexibility of the touchscreen was more than enough to compensate for the reduced affordances. We'll see about the Touchbar. I like it a lot--for example, having the mute button persistently handy (and obvious) during web conferences.

Touchbar affordances are better than the iPhone in that the persistent touch buttons are immediately above hardware buttons. My mute button is directly above the + key. My volume control is directly above the - key. My brightness control is directly above the 0 key. I can get a finger there without looking and immediately adjust by sliding left or right.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#238

Post by jmull »

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 think they design computers not because they're arrogant but because it's their job.

I get that they don't always hit the nail on the head, but then who does? Hopefully they will learn from their mistakes and get better.

Also, I think a lot of their users do like the computers they make. There are inherent tradeoffs in any product that isn't isn't entirely custom designed for a specific customer. (Actually, that's a tradeoff too, since an entirely custom designed computer with tiny production runs would be very expensive.)

Anyway, I don't think you should get mad. For yourself, go get the computer you want. (And for work, well, like most of us, you lose some personal flexibility when you work with other people. Hopefully, the greater things you can accomplish as part of a group is good compensation, or if not that, then at least the paycheck is.)

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#239

Post by cujo »

nikivi wrote: post #66

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 f…

I love to hate on it, because it is impossible to "program it to show what I want". I want keys I can feel. I want to not silently trigger whatever goddamn touchbar "button" because one of my fingers grazes over it. I want to be able to hit the appropriate "button" by touch.

"And as for physical keys, with Karabiner, there is no need for those keys as they are too far away from home row anyway."

Or you know, we could just have the physical keys.

So maybe slow your roll on how all of the haters just didn't "invest the time". Sometimes stuff doesn't work for people and it's not a learning curve issue.

I can appreciate that it may work for some folks. Maybe you should appreciate that it doesn't work for others.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#240

Post by mdavidn »

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 use both Mac and Windows at home. Trust me when I say that you'll prefer the Touch Bar, as bad as it is, over Windows.
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