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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

#251

Post by 0815test »

scarface74 wrote: post #199
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…

The touchscreen is even worse on laptops. Windows is a horrible touch screen OS, the interface itself is a mismatch of operating systems seemingly going back to Windows 95. MacOS wouldn’t fare any better as a touch screen OS.

Windows is a tolerable touch OS because at least it has a touch mode. Linux (GTK+3 at least) is a lot better of course, even though this does involve a bit of a disadvantage for pure keyboard+mouse users.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#252

Post by js2 »

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…

> As an old Sun keyboard user

I've been used to the control key in that position since about 1980:

http://www.hp9845.net/9845/history/comparison/images/closeup...

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#253

Post by scarface74 »

akvadrako wrote: post #249
scarface74 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which doesn’t help if you need to develop for the platform where the most money is - iOS

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#254

Post by bdcravens »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #120

Touch Bar as a concept is a good idea, but it should be an accessory, not a built-in thing. It’s the reason I use a Das Keyboard instead of the laptop keyboard when doing just about everything now. It’s too easy to fat finger that blasted thing.

Used a Das, loved it, but was too loud for my environment. (Even brown with dampers) I did switch to the Magic keyboard with 10-key - ergonomics aside, works great, with all the F keys and shortcut keys you give up on MBP.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#255

Post by snowwrestler »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #195
bondolo wrote: post #172

My laptop is connected to an external monitor and keyboard more than 90% of the time. I use the function keys on the external keyboard. Is the touchbar useful? Is it good? Who cares, it is not getting used. Given Apple's butterfly keyboard issues using the laptop keyboard as your primary keyboard isn't really an option anyway. For the limited amount of time I use the laptop keyboard the touchbar certainly isn't worth…

It just occurred to me that the situation with the Touch Bar is similar to what Apple has done with 3D Touch... it seems like Apple is making a bet that more complicated input devices are better, which is a total about face from their past positions. Notably the 1-button mouse, and the original buttonless iPhone. I think it's a bad call. To me, these input devices create a lot of confusion for very little benefit. I…

> it seems like Apple is making a bet that more complicated input devices are better, which is a total about face from their past positions.

Swapping hardware buttons for touchscreen controls has been a huge success for Apple for over a decade, with the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, even the Apple Watch. The Touchbar is just another step down that path.

It's arguable whether a fixed set of hardware "F" buttons are more usable, or well-labeled touchscreen buttons. Again, a decade of evidence suggests that software-defined touchscreen buttons are more usable. An iPad is much easier to use than a Mac. You can hand an iPad to a 5-year-old and they get it right away.

> They have gone over to Microsoft's philosophy, which was that UIs should be like an iceberg, with a deep well of hidden functionality for advanced users to discover, and then a separate "normal people" UI layered on top of that.

Apple invented that paradigm by adding keyboard shortcuts to a GUI. They have continued it by adding a command line interface and multitouch gestures to Mac OS.

The Touchbar is similar. If you take it out of the box it is simple and easy to use. But if you are an advanced user, there are all sorts of options to customize it.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#256

Post by dmitriid »

snowwrestler wrote: post #237
dmitriid wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Touchba…

What does iPhone have to do with a physical keyboard on a laptop? Literally nothing.

> Touchbar affordances are better than the iPhone

Nowhere in my text did I once mention the iPhone. I did mention, insistently, and several times, the actual physical keyboard on the laptop.

And yes, a laptop keyboard is very different from a phone.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#257

Post by salgernon »

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…

During the 80s there was such a plethora of keyboard variants, I learned never to trust where ESC would be; you can use control-[ on most keyboards to generate the same key. When the MacBookPro went useless for ESC, my muscle memory just switched over. (This is somewhat conditional on control being next to 'A', which is the only place it should ever be!)

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#259

Post by tempsolution »

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.

True, but there is a big difference in the quality of produced software between:

* I need to develop for this shitty platform, which I hate, because my customers are on it

* I want to develop for this awesome platform, because I just love it and my customers are also on it

If Apple loses touch & favor with developers, their platform will slowly but surely die out over a decade or two. Apple is expensive, the only reason for Apple to even exist is because they deliver quality products. If they ever go down the road of consistently failing this core value, they will die more quickly than reindeer thrown down a cliff.

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