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When I am at a desk, the lid is closed so both TouchID and touch-anything effectively don’t matter, including any display information. In fact, I am worried ab

When I am at a desk, the lid is closed so both TouchID and touch-anything effectively don’t matter, including any display information. In fact, I am worried about applications gradually putting information only on the Touch Bar that cannot be found anywhere else. Perhaps they could have placed a TouchID button on the SIDE of the laptop (usable when open or closed). And hopefully the ENTIRE Touch Bar display is also available as a global window ON the screen so that it is still able to display/activate things when you are lid-closed connected to an external display. The real shock though is that a lot of these changes show a lack of usability testing. Like, “10 minutes in the hallway” level of testing. How much serious work can actually be accomplished with such tiny touch keys that require you to look down at them, constantly changing and mostly unpredictable? Before ever creating new hardware for this, they should have enhanced macOS to provide an on-screen version of this ever-changing toolbar to encourage more universal support from developers and work out the usability kinks. Instead, now they’re stuck: this thing is in your laptop, with all its flaws.

grzm 10y ago
"When I am at a desk, the lid is closed so both TouchID and touch-anything effectively don’t matter, including any display information." "And hopefully the ENTIRE Touch Bar display is also available as a global window ON the screen so that it is still able to display/activate things when you are lid-closed connected to an external display." You make a good point. I can imagine adding a Touch Bar to keyboards. That doesn't address the TouchID button, but I believe that might addressed with tech like the Apple Watch or iPhone.
- SysArchitect 10y ago
  There's no reason they couldn't add a full secure enclave on a USB based keyboard with TouchID. Register your fingerprints into TouchID, they are stored securely on the keyboard, with some secure communication between keyboard/computer... now you can easily log in and or do Apple pay.
  - grzm 10y ago
    I agree. However I think they'd lean towards devices that already have such tech rather than creating another one.
  - rarepostinlurkr 10y ago
    Now when happens when I unplug the keyboard and plug it into something else?
    - SysArchitect 10y ago
      Nothing. Since there is no relationship between the secure enclave on the keyboard and the laptop, TouchID won't function.
Someone 10y ago
That on-screen version would require a full-size touch screen, and eat into precious vertical screen space. The naive implementation also would move the mouse whenever you touch the screen. I think that is loss of usefulness; now, one can select with the mouse, click a function, select with the mouse, etc. I expect there will be cases where this will be convenient (but, unfortunately, only when repeating the same function on each object. Also, power users currently can already do that by assigning a key combination to the function) Also, I'm not claiming they did any, but what do you base "a lot of these changes show a lack of usability testing." on? My gut feeling also tells me this mostly is a gimmick, but I don't dare claim it is correct.
- makecheck 10y ago
  I never said the on-screen version would support touch (I wouldn’t want it to). The orientation doesn’t have to be horizontal (my Dock is vertical). For that matter, it doesn’t even have to be one-dimensional. Every aspect of Touch Bar is constrained by where Apple wanted to put it, and not what would be the best experience. They should have started in pure software, and then they would have figured out just how many possibilities there really are. Some examples: - What if I want my “system-wide ever-changing functions pad” to be a 4x5 grid of icons located in a window at the bottom-left of my screen? - What if not every action/status item is ideally laid out in a bar? Maybe some items are vertically rectangular, some are horizontal, or some are shaped like triangles. Maybe I want lots of space between things. Maybe I want 4 different contextual areas, all over my screen, instead of being confined to one region. (This is a PRO laptop...) - What if I want complete control over the show/hide mechanism? Examples: Floating, non-floating (can layer documents on top), sliding in from the side of the screen, popping up only while a certain key is pressed, attaching to Dock... - What if I want my ENTIRE laptop screen to become a contextual display while doing working primarily on an external monitor? Any one of these scenarios could come up when doing real work on a laptop and none of these can be handled by an expensive Touch Bar control. Conversely, we already have context-sensitive commands mapped to the keyboard and status mechanisms (menu bar, window toolbars, other application functions) and the Keyboard preferences pane lets you map commands any way you want.
  - 10y ago
simplexion 10y ago
This is something I will never understand. Why would you reduce your work space by not extending the displays?
- makecheck 10y ago
  One advantage of closing the lid is that whatever you had open on the laptop will then “jump” to the big screen and may even figure out that there is more screen space and resize automatically. If you just open the lid and plug it in, everything you had open on the laptop remains cluttered on the small screen and your big additional desktop is just blank. I’ve occasionally used both at once (e.g. E-mail in the small laptop window, everything else on the big screen) but that is generally for when I don’t plan to move for quite awhile. If I am constantly grabbing my machine, coming back, etc. then closed-lid is less of an interruption.
igravious 10y ago
Here's my question. Are Apple going to sell the Touch bar and Touch ID as a separate peripheral? The price differential between the 13" non-Touch and 13" Touch is $300 USD. The other differences are 2.0GHz versus 2.9GHz Core i5 and Iris Graphics 540 versus 550. Let's call those other differences $50 for argument's sake. Is Apple going to sell this hypothetical Touch peripheral for $249 for instance? Or would they incorporate it into an external keyboard. What connector would it use? Regular old USB or Bluetooth? Would you pay $249 to upgrade existing non-Touch kit? Would you pay $249 so that you could log on to your Mac (or PC) at a finger press? Would you pay $249 so that your apps have a contextual button bar? Would you pay $249 for a programmable touch strip plus fingerprint scanner? For comparison: Original Xiaomi Redmi 3S, Snapdragon 430 Octa Core, Android Smartphone, 4100mAh Battery, Fingerprint Sensor, 2GB RAM, 16GB ROM, 5.0" Touchscreen. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Redmi-3S-Snapdragon-Smartphone-Fingerprint/dp/B01KV4FIHE https://www.amazon.co.uk/Redmi-3S-Snapdragon-Smartphone-Fing... £149 (translates to ~$189) Imagine if you could run a cable from the phone so that you could use its fingerprint sensor to log on to your Mac. Plus you could have an app called Context that acted like the Touch Bar. And on top of that you'd have a smartphone. My point is. Touch Bar plus Touch ID might be the greatest thing since we started slicing bread into, uh, slices. But it's too frigging expensive by half. That's some premium you're paying for the privilege of a publicly untested hardware feature. Why don't Apple also sell it as a peripheral that both Macs and PCs could use if they are so confident in it? Sell it with software drivers and a configuration tool and smart defaults. And price it at … $99? I bet they could hit that price point. And it might sell like hotcakes. And make the price differential between the 13" non-Touch and 13" Touch $100 while they're at it -- $1,499 versus $1,599. I think anyone who forks over wedge for the Touch Bar and Touch ID Macbook Pros as it stands is being royally screwed. To be blunt about.
- makecheck 10y ago
  I don’t think that Apple needed to create anything separate because they already had separate things: the entire ecosystem of iPhones and iPads! It was ridiculous of them not to leverage those investments. All they needed to make was an iOS app to display arbitrary “keyboard” keys, some Bluetooth/wireless connection to interface with the Mac (as Handoff and Air Drop practically do already), and a way to make the iPhone/iPad enter a special “display always on” mode when in close proximity to a Mac. This would have been way more flexible.
pier25 10y ago
> In fact, I am worried about applications gradually putting information only on the Touch Bar that cannot be found anywhere else. I doubt that is going to happen. What percentage of macOS users are going to have the touch bar? 10% at the most?

grzm 10y ago

"When I am at a desk, the lid is closed so both TouchID and touch-anything effectively don’t matter, including any display information." "And hopefully the ENTIRE Touch Bar display is also available as a global window ON the screen so that it is still able to display/activate things when you are lid-closed connected to an external display." You make a good point. I can imagine adding a Touch Bar to keyboards. That doesn't address the TouchID button, but I believe that might addressed with tech like the Apple Watch or iPhone.

SysArchitect 10y ago
There's no reason they couldn't add a full secure enclave on a USB based keyboard with TouchID. Register your fingerprints into TouchID, they are stored securely on the keyboard, with some secure communication between keyboard/computer... now you can easily log in and or do Apple pay.
- grzm 10y ago
  I agree. However I think they'd lean towards devices that already have such tech rather than creating another one.
- rarepostinlurkr 10y ago
  Now when happens when I unplug the keyboard and plug it into something else?
  - SysArchitect 10y ago
    Nothing. Since there is no relationship between the secure enclave on the keyboard and the laptop, TouchID won't function.

Someone 10y ago

That on-screen version would require a full-size touch screen, and eat into precious vertical screen space. The naive implementation also would move the mouse whenever you touch the screen. I think that is loss of usefulness; now, one can select with the mouse, click a function, select with the mouse, etc. I expect there will be cases where this will be convenient (but, unfortunately, only when repeating the same function on each object. Also, power users currently can already do that by assigning a key combination to the function) Also, I'm not claiming they did any, but what do you base "a lot of these changes show a lack of usability testing." on? My gut feeling also tells me this mostly is a gimmick, but I don't dare claim it is correct.

makecheck 10y ago
I never said the on-screen version would support touch (I wouldn’t want it to). The orientation doesn’t have to be horizontal (my Dock is vertical). For that matter, it doesn’t even have to be one-dimensional. Every aspect of Touch Bar is constrained by where Apple wanted to put it, and not what would be the best experience. They should have started in pure software, and then they would have figured out just how many possibilities there really are. Some examples: - What if I want my “system-wide ever-changing functions pad” to be a 4x5 grid of icons located in a window at the bottom-left of my screen? - What if not every action/status item is ideally laid out in a bar? Maybe some items are vertically rectangular, some are horizontal, or some are shaped like triangles. Maybe I want lots of space between things. Maybe I want 4 different contextual areas, all over my screen, instead of being confined to one region. (This is a PRO laptop...) - What if I want complete control over the show/hide mechanism? Examples: Floating, non-floating (can layer documents on top), sliding in from the side of the screen, popping up only while a certain key is pressed, attaching to Dock... - What if I want my ENTIRE laptop screen to become a contextual display while doing working primarily on an external monitor? Any one of these scenarios could come up when doing real work on a laptop and none of these can be handled by an expensive Touch Bar control. Conversely, we already have context-sensitive commands mapped to the keyboard and status mechanisms (menu bar, window toolbars, other application functions) and the Keyboard preferences pane lets you map commands any way you want.
- 10y ago

simplexion 10y ago

This is something I will never understand. Why would you reduce your work space by not extending the displays?

makecheck 10y ago
One advantage of closing the lid is that whatever you had open on the laptop will then “jump” to the big screen and may even figure out that there is more screen space and resize automatically. If you just open the lid and plug it in, everything you had open on the laptop remains cluttered on the small screen and your big additional desktop is just blank. I’ve occasionally used both at once (e.g. E-mail in the small laptop window, everything else on the big screen) but that is generally for when I don’t plan to move for quite awhile. If I am constantly grabbing my machine, coming back, etc. then closed-lid is less of an interruption.

igravious 10y ago

Here's my question. Are Apple going to sell the Touch bar and Touch ID as a separate peripheral? The price differential between the 13" non-Touch and 13" Touch is $300 USD. The other differences are 2.0GHz versus 2.9GHz Core i5 and Iris Graphics 540 versus 550. Let's call those other differences $50 for argument's sake. Is Apple going to sell this hypothetical Touch peripheral for $249 for instance? Or would they incorporate it into an external keyboard. What connector would it use? Regular old USB or Bluetooth? Would you pay $249 to upgrade existing non-Touch kit? Would you pay $249 so that you could log on to your Mac (or PC) at a finger press? Would you pay $249 so that your apps have a contextual button bar? Would you pay $249 for a programmable touch strip plus fingerprint scanner? For comparison: Original Xiaomi Redmi 3S, Snapdragon 430 Octa Core, Android Smartphone, 4100mAh Battery, Fingerprint Sensor, 2GB RAM, 16GB ROM, 5.0" Touchscreen. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Redmi-3S-Snapdragon-Smartphone-Fingerprint/dp/B01KV4FIHE https://www.amazon.co.uk/Redmi-3S-Snapdragon-Smartphone-Fing... £149 (translates to ~$189) Imagine if you could run a cable from the phone so that you could use its fingerprint sensor to log on to your Mac. Plus you could have an app called Context that acted like the Touch Bar. And on top of that you'd have a smartphone. My point is. Touch Bar plus Touch ID might be the greatest thing since we started slicing bread into, uh, slices. But it's too frigging expensive by half. That's some premium you're paying for the privilege of a publicly untested hardware feature. Why don't Apple also sell it as a peripheral that both Macs and PCs could use if they are so confident in it? Sell it with software drivers and a configuration tool and smart defaults. And price it at … $99? I bet they could hit that price point. And it might sell like hotcakes. And make the price differential between the 13" non-Touch and 13" Touch $100 while they're at it -- $1,499 versus $1,599. I think anyone who forks over wedge for the Touch Bar and Touch ID Macbook Pros as it stands is being royally screwed. To be blunt about.

makecheck 10y ago
I don’t think that Apple needed to create anything separate because they already had separate things: the entire ecosystem of iPhones and iPads! It was ridiculous of them not to leverage those investments. All they needed to make was an iOS app to display arbitrary “keyboard” keys, some Bluetooth/wireless connection to interface with the Mac (as Handoff and Air Drop practically do already), and a way to make the iPhone/iPad enter a special “display always on” mode when in close proximity to a Mac. This would have been way more flexible.

pier25 10y ago

> In fact, I am worried about applications gradually putting information only on the Touch Bar that cannot be found anywhere else. I doubt that is going to happen. What percentage of macOS users are going to have the touch bar? 10% at the most?