4 ms·
As a counterpoint, I am still annoyed by the touch bar. Whenever you're idle for a minute the touch bar powers down, which means the keys stop working. So when
by gizmo 10y ago
As a counterpoint, I am still annoyed by the touch bar. Whenever you're idle for a minute the touch bar powers down, which means the keys stop working. So when you're watching video first the touch bar lights up, reflecting the light onto the screen which is distracting, especially at night. After a minute the touch bar turns dark, even though the touch bar contains the brightness slider and media keys, the only keys you're interested in! So you first have to touch the touch bar, wait for it to turn on, hunt & peck for the icon you need and press it. It's remarkably bad.
The app-specific touch bar features are gimmicky and useless. So I've turned them off and I'm now using the touch bar with fixed icons, because that way at least I regain some touch-typing ability.
I expected the touch bar would be useful to input emojis, but it turns out that scrubbing through 300+ emojis on a tiny horizontal bar takes way too long. Most apps can pull up a list of favorite or recently used emojis, and that works just fine.
When in an intense debugging session I like to rest my fingers on the step-over, step-into, step-out function keys, while I compare mentally what should happen with what happens in reality. Ruining a debugging session and losing your concentration because of the damn touch bar is infuriating.
When using Windows or Linux on a MBP the touch bar is worse than conventional function keys in every single way.
The touch bar is worse still when rebooting the MBP after a system update, because the touch bar doesn't turn on until after you log in. Last time this happened the screen was at minimum brightness, but without the touch bar I couldn't turn the brightness up. And when you accidentally trigger voice control with the power button you can't hit escape to shut it up, because escape isn't powered on either!
The touch bar is after a few months of use still a miserable experience.
There is enough physical space on a 15" MBP for a full size keyboard, but instead we get minuscule arrow keys. Ugh.
- weaksauce 10y agoIt feels like they should have added that touch bar as a bar in addition to the function keys if anything. That is likely off the table because of space and aesthetics though.
- kalleboo 10y agoI think I would have preferred the touch bar as a strip on the top of the trackpad. Could use it with your thumb while typing, or as a fixed space for shortcuts when you're mousing.
- dzhiurgis 10y agoTouchbar needs more customisability. The fact that now I have to make multiple presses and look into it to change the volume is making it a time waste.
- WildUtah 10y agoI used to have a laptop with a built-in tiny hardware volume dial. It was hooked directly into the power to the amp and speakers so it worked instantly even if the machine was bogged down with loud busy autoplay video web sites or other awfulness. I'd pay extra for another one like that.
- r00fus 10y agoBetterTouchTool
- dzhiurgis 10y agoAnd?
- extra88 10y agoIf you don't care about the new App Controls, you can go into Keyboard preferences and set the Touch Bar to show the Expanded Control Strip.
- nerdwaller 10y agoIf you're interested in quickly inserting emojis on Mac, try `Cmd+Shift+Space`[1]. You'll get a searchable input, no need to hunt and peck through the touch bar nor remember how to do them in various apps. [1] http://osxdaily.com/2015/05/27/quick-type-emoji-mac-keyboard-shortcut/ http://osxdaily.com/2015/05/27/quick-type-emoji-mac-keyboard...