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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

#241

Post by brandonhorst »

darkarmani wrote: post #98
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…

> map your Caps Lock key to Escape Then where will I map my ctrl key? Apple stupidly put the fn key in the corner and i can't map ctrl to it.

Karabiner can map it to Esc on its own, but to Ctrl if you combine it with another key. Best of both worlds.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#242

Post by lioeters »

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…

Yeah, sorry for the grumpy rant..

It is a bit hypocritical (or masochistic) for me to complain about Apple products while still using them, albeit older models.

One reason why I'm frustrated is that I fondly remember the era of Apple ][. To quote, "Wozniak's open-architecture design and the Apple II's multiple expansion slots permitted a wide variety of third-party devices, including peripheral cards such as serial controllers, display controllers, memory boards, hard disks, networking components, and realtime clocks."

Recent trends seem to be an affront to the spirit of personal computing, and that's what I'm lamenting essentially.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#243

Post by chipotle_coyote »

basch wrote: post #227
carlosdp wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea this is one of Apple's largest advantages as a platform, they really don't want the Macbook to fall out of favor as the developer's machine of choice.

People dont use osx/ios because developers like the hardware. Developers develop for osx/ios because apple provides them a toolkit and lots of potential customers, and exposure through the appstore.

I've been working in Silicon Valley at tech companies for the past 15 years, and MacBook Pros have been massively dominant for the web developers, server-side developers, database developers, technical developers, and mobile developers on not only iOS but Android. None of this can be explained by "Apple provides them a toolkit and exposure." I am pretty confident that developers use OS X because, yes, they like the hardware. (Which makes developers by and large not liking the last few years of MacBook hardware a danger Apple's been too slow to recognize.)

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#244

Post by kediz »

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.

Speaking from my past experience, any computer would suffice. But if you want to run decent IDE and don't want to wait for minutes for compilation (for some database and system classes), you might want to buy a laptop with decent CPU.(gen 7/8 i5 and above should suffice).

Buying apple product is already "spending extra".

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#245

Post by js2 »

lucky_cloud wrote: post #128
js2 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I do both. Press and release = escape; press and hold = control.

Oh that's neat. I guess you use Karabiner?

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/132564/how-can-i-r...

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#246

Post by wlesieutre »

ravenstine wrote: post #207
wlesieutre wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right - you don't have to let go and then grab the slider after it opens. You can just press and hold then slide left or right to move the slider immediately. I guess there's a still tradeoff: this way you need to move your finger around, but you can immediately skip to exactly the level you want. With holding a button down you have to time it to get to the right spot instead. Personally I like the slider better but…

I understand why some people like the slider, but as someone who can type without looking, I'm used to being able to navigate with my fingers up to the brightness and volume controls without having to pay close attention. Now I have to look down in order to hit the right area of the touchbar.

I don't mind since it's barely below the bottom of the screen, but if you're in the middle of something it does mean taking your eyes off it.

If that bugs you enough to bother with a workaround, you could try something like this using HammerSpoon: https://gist.github.com/spinscale/fd82f00da29447990f27f36b3f...

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#247

Post by fabiospampinato »

Damn, can we get a macbook that works? I think the touchbar is fundamentally flawed in that if I'm looking at the screen I can't look at the touchbar, and vice versa, and there's no tactile feedback at all, basically the opposite characteristics that a keyboard should have.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#248

Post by isomorphic »

nsxwolf wrote: post #105
js2 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Mac…

Not just terminals and UNIX workstation keyboards--Apple's very first keyboard on the Apple II. (I don't think Apple shipped a keyboard with the Apple I.) Of course it helped that there was no lower case, obviating the need for Caps Lock, and who needs Tab, but there were Shift keys.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#249

Post by akvadrako »

scarface74 wrote: post #205
AJ007 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but 99% of Apple hardware sales are dependent on Mac developers.

Developer go where their users are. If that weren’t the case, no one would develop for consoles.

Right; that's why there are so many tools for Linux.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#250

Post by takeda »

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…

99% of my interactions with the touch bar was pressing it accidentally with my right pinky.

Fortunately I got an external keyboard.

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