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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

#181

Post by addicted »

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 mean, you’re basically using the touchbar as a secondary screen.

Which is, to be honest, a much better use of the touchbar than anything else I’ve seen.

But it still doesn’t change the fact that it’s not a great input mechanism. Your usage, however, makes me wonder if Apple would have been better off promoting it as a secondary monitoring screen, which has Touch capabilities, as opposed to primarily an input mechanism.

Of course, that brings up the question why it couldn’t be a bar on the actual screen your looking at, or if you don’t want it to be omnipresent something that comes up with a KB shortcut, but I guess there is some value in a monitoring screen that is visible at the nod of the head.

I especially like the idea of putting your current active task. It can be a nice reminder on doing a fairly passive action, such as tilting your head, as opposed to a more active keyboard press.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#183

Post by teamski »

Imagine a random manufacturer, let's say HP, was the one bringing a touchbar to their notebooks. Some press, a lot of laughter but quickly, nobody would talk anymore about them and/or buy that notebooks.

With Apple, people keep on complaining OVER years. The touchbar, the prices, the crappy keyboards... the reason? IDK, maybe they are locked-in and can't move to another platform but there is only one single reason to be locked-in on macOS: if you develop apps for iOS, otherwise every other platform is currently way better and switching is a matter of days. Once I had the keyboard trouble on a $4K MBP I switched instantly and never returned to macOS.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#184

Post by dmix »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #109
addicted wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tou…

But why encourage people to look down when typing anything?

Basically everyone learns to type without looking at some point which is the ideal zone you want users in (a one-to-one connection with the machine, eyes straight, hands down).

Context switching the UI in a computer interface, often randomly depending on the app, while requiring the user to look down to use it is terrible UX. This whole technology screams ‘because we can’ (aka there was space to do it) rather than developers needed help with anything.

The worst part was including Escape key into it, which is where most of the complaints come from as it’s a critical part of modern OS and browser interfaces - not just vim/emacs.

By including the escape key it went from a voluntary / side interface for certain use-cases (complex music, photo, or editing apps for example) to becoming part of the primary keyboard/HCI itself which is where it crossed the line from a mediocre idea into a bad idea.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#186

Post by bredren »

jdlyga wrote: post #179
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…

Part of an innovative spirit is trying things, and letting them breathe even under criticism. But then killing them if they don't work out. You need to adjust to feedback.

I think they may be clearing inventory. At least I hope so.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#187

Post by babyslothzoo »

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…

Agreed, the Touch Bar is a hassle at best. They should at least make it optional.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#188

Post by matwood »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #109
addicted wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tou…

I'm a touch typist, but never used the F keys enough to not have to look down. I think a lot of the TB hate is because the ESC key was removed and people just don't like change.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#189

Post by travisp »

DanHulton wrote: post #159

For those of you who've remapped Caps Lock as Escape, what do you do when you need to type a long string of capital letters? Do you have some other key combination mapped to caps lock, or do you just hold shift the whole time?

I can't think of the last time I've done that, but I can type at almost full speed holding down right shift with my pinky.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#190

Post by bluedino »

patejam wrote: post #20
jtdev wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know where to start... I hope you’re never in a position to design something that people have to use.

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.

No tactile feedback, for one.

Here's my test. Take a Touchbar-equipped Mac, and a non-touchbar equipped Mac. Sit them side by side. Play a video or song on both of them.

Then, one hand on one mac and your other hand on the other mac, turn the volume up and down using the keyboard and touchbar.

One hand gets confused on where to go on about your third or fourth time turning it back up or down. There's nothing for your fingers to call home.

It's the exact same problem when you try to use a touch screen phone as a game controller, vs an actual gamepad.

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