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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

#311

Post by winter_blue »

peterkelly wrote: post #264

I wasted two hours the other night because of the touchbar. I had turned my macbook pro's screen brightness down to complete black as I was using an external monitor only, and in a dark environment. Some time later I happened to restart my machine, and both the internal and external displays came up completely black. The touchbar displayed only "Esc", without the normal brightness control. I had to figure out from me…

> I would pay a significant premium for a macbook pro without the touchbar.

If a less-powerful CPU is fine, the MacBook Air is great. It doesn't have the touch bar, and in my opinion, its tapering design look way cooler than a MacBook Pro (acknowledging the fact that the MacBook Pro is already one of the coolest looking laptops out there).

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#312

Post by iak8god »

rnikander wrote: post #280
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't be able to put that SSD you buy in the laptop.

I have a 2012 MacBook Pro, and I upgraded the SSD by myself. Has something changed? I see articles online that suggest it's still pretty easy to unscrew the cover and plug in a new SSD.

RAM and storage are soldered to the motherboard: https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/501498/Is+it+possible+to...

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#314

Post by anthonybsd »

peterkelly wrote: post #264

I wasted two hours the other night because of the touchbar. I had turned my macbook pro's screen brightness down to complete black as I was using an external monitor only, and in a dark environment. Some time later I happened to restart my machine, and both the internal and external displays came up completely black. The touchbar displayed only "Esc", without the normal brightness control. I had to figure out from me…

Hah. I have dozens of horror stories like that. Listening to Spotify at work, headphone jack plugged in to the Macbook. Get a phone call from the wife, need to run to meet her in the restaurant in the city. Close macbook, pull out headphone jack, grab a soda from company fridge on the way down,run into a semi crowded subway car. Remember that I had Tomcat running in IntelliJ, need to kill it. Sit down, open the Macbook. Now Macbook is blasting Norwegian death metal at full volume to the entire subway car while I'm trying to make the touch ID stupidity work with my wet finger with no way to reach the volume controls. Embarrassed, close the macbook, music inexplicably takes 30 seconds to shut down. Sigh.

I don't even want to go into the horrors that is working in vi with touchbar escape key...

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#316

Post by the_gastropod »

HyperTalk2 wrote: post #302
gist wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sheer arrogance of Apple to think they know better than their customers Nobody gets it right all the time but Apple has a history with this type of behavior of being correct.

I'm interested to see your list of the times their controversial decisions were correct after Steve Jobs died.

It's still controversial, in part because it's still relatively recent, but removing the headphone jack. No major manufacturer's flagship phones come with headphone jacks anymore, despite all the PR ridicule they initially flung. In another 5-10 years, I doubt any new phones will be manufactured with headphone jacks.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#317

Post by aylmao »

The Touch Bar is just poorly executed— for the gimmick instead of the experience. It would be good if it had haptic feedback and was activated by a force touch like the trackpad does.

Allow me to touch it without pressing anything. Let me slide my finger and feel a click whenever I "hover" a different button. Add an option to show me an indication on screen of what I'm hovering, so I don't have to look down. Then when I decide to "press" the button, trick my brain into thinking there's moving parts like the trackpad does.

Give me the buttons of the future.

The big problem for me is that it's a touch-screen instead. Keyboards and trackpads are designed to have you rest your hands on them until you press, so it's awkward to have something that doesn't let you "rest" on it. They both are meant to be used while looking directly at the screen, so it's annoying to have to look down to know what you're pressing.

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#318

Post by anthonybsd »

winter_blue wrote: post #311
peterkelly wrote: post #264

I wasted two hours the other night because of the touchbar. I had turned my macbook pro's screen brightness down to complete black as I was using an external monitor only, and in a dark environment. Some time later I happened to restart my machine, and both the internal and external displays came up completely black. The touchbar displayed only "Esc", without the normal brightness control. I had to figure out from me…

> I would pay a significant premium for a macbook pro without the touchbar. If a less-powerful CPU is fine, the MacBook Air is great. It doesn't have the touch bar, and in my opinion, its tapering design look way cooler than a MacBook Pro (acknowledging the fact that the MacBook Pro is already one of the coolest looking laptops out there).

If they came in 15 inch sizes I'd be sold. :(

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#319

Post by aorth »

aembleton wrote: post #309

Clicking the link to the article takes me to https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_... This is blocked at my DNS level. Why is engadget.com forwarding to this address? I just unblocked guce.advertising.com and it forwarded to engadget, so this must be some sort of tracking system.

I came to say the same thing... that is super annoying. Happy to just not read the article in this case. :)

Re: Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro

#320

Post by eridius »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #290
eridius wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's nothing stopping you from just remapping a regular key. You don't need a Touch Bar to get a "pause" button for XCode.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20395158
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