Anyone know if the new Macbook Air is still using the butterfly keyboard or the new scissor?
According to Macrumors they have the 3rd Generation butterfly keyboard: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/07/09/all-2019-macbooks-have-...
Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro
191–200 of 397 posts
Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably don't want to advertise using Zoom right now LOL
I didn't know what this refers to. Apparently Zoom has a vulnerability where someone can send you a web link and if you click on it, it will start the camera immediately, allowing them to see you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20387298
It's worse than that, IMHO. The zoom client installs a web server that remains after zoom is uninstalled with the ability to reinstall zoom.
Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro
#193Has anyone ever used the word completion or quick emoji picker on the touch bar? I've found both of those to be very useful!
Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro
#19499%+ 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 agree with all this. However, even though I still use Macs for everything, it's been clear to me for a while that Apple 'Pro' users are not tech people. There is a big difference in keyboard necessity between a developer and any 'Pro' user. Key travel, actually having real keys, are all a big deal to devs.
I think Apple lost their function and form way a while ago. It's never coming back. The new Mac Pro is the latest example of this. I bought a 2018 MB Pro 13" last year and the touch bar is a waste of space in my mind. We see now that Apple is ditching the scissor keys, but regardless, their design decisions for a while have just been wanting to have something look cool instead of a balance of looking good and functioning great.
Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro
#195My 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 think it's a sign Apple has given up on the philosophy of trying to make everything accessible to the average user.
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.
I think there's a MASSIVE opportunity right now for someone to build a new OS, designed around a very limited set of inputs, and a highly constrained widget library. With an emphasis on speed, putting as little as possible on the screen, and like Apple of old, having simple apps that let people do things pros typically do.
For example, you could design a UI that would allow you to easily cut together clips from multiple videos. This was hard, and then iMovie made it easy, but now it is hard again. Those kinds of features make good ads, and lead to good word of mouth.
Basically, take Steve Jobs' original strategy with the iMac/iPhone and do it over again. Apple has totally departed that path.
Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro
#196This 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…
If they added it _but also didn't steal the fn row_, I'd be all for it. But losing known, solid functionality for the opportunity to maybe hack together something useful is not a fair trade.
Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
FYI you can press and drag on the brightness/volume buttons to make adjustments immediately, no need for a second touch
I'm not complaining about the drag. I'm complaining that I have to tap once to open the slider and then drag it. Whereas it was easier just to have two buttons, one for increment, and one for decrement, that I could just tap or hold down.
Just put your finger on the icon and slide it one way or the other. You don't have to wait or tap more than once.
Edit for clarity: when you do this, your finger is not actually "on" the slider handle itself. The slider shows up in its usual place, which is offset from where your finger is. But the sliding still adjusts it.
It's a shame that this is not intuitive or discoverable. Its much more efficient but I had to have someone tell me about it.
Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro
#198I 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…
As a developer, the thing that excites me the most about the Touch Bar is the fact that there's a dedicated Xcode "pause" button on it when you're debugging an app in Xcode. If I were developing a macOS app that would finally be a great way of pausing in the middle of a mouse gesture or keyboard chord. But since I'm doing iOS development these days I don't actually end up using it, oh well.
Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro
#19999%+ 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.
Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro
#20099%+ 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…
It could have worked so much better as a display above the function keys. An extra long-and-thin screen that showed stuff and happened to be touch enabled.
App specific stuff, window-manager customisable stuff, all kinds of things. This would have given app developers an opportunity to do stuff with it that you can't do on a PC.
Developers could have liked it instead of feeling mightily pissed off and betrayed by the company they had given so much money to over the years.