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I understand what you are getting at, but in reality not everyone has issues with the new design, and I’m as yet unclear whether it’s a vocal minority who do, o

I understand what you are getting at, but in reality not everyone has issues with the new design, and I’m as yet unclear whether it’s a vocal minority who do, or a more widespread thing. Personally, I really like my new 15” Pro. I’m in favour of anything which can make it thinner and lighter, to a point, as I like to be able to carry it around easily, while still having a large screen. The design looks beautiful. In regard to the specific points you raised: - I prefer the keyboard to the old one. It feels satisfying to type on in my opinion. The only thing I would change is the noise of the keys, it’s hard to type quietly. - The touch bar isn’t perfect but I think it’s a worthwhile effort, as most people (me included, and I’m a developer) rarely use the function keys for anything aside from the media functions you mention, mainly because it’s hard to remember what they’ll do and having shortcuts visible there is a good idea. However, the lack of tactile feedback and visibility in sunlight is an issue. I’d rather they’d gone with distinct keys with e-ink displays or similar, but like I say, to me the Fn keys are no great loss (I’ve been remapping escape to caps lock for years anyway!) - I find the new port set up much more flexible and have had no problems using my old USB devices with adapters or via a hub. I did find the article about USB-C interesting though - hopefully the industry can sort this out in due time. I don’t make these points to say you’re wrong, but just to show that not everyone agrees that all these design choices are bad.

darklajid 9y ago
I'm on Windows, so there's that. I constantly (multiple times a day) use F1 (help, least used), F3 (search again, next match), F4 (both for the famous close window shortcut and to get to the explorer address bar), F5 (reload in browser, run in other apps), F9 (toggle breakpoint in VS), F10 (step over in VS), F11 (step into in VS). Occasionally F8, F12. Couldn't live without those, I guess, and I can find all of those blindly.
- tomduncalf 9y ago
  Ahh yes, function key use is much more prevalent in Windows for whatever reason. On the Mac most of those shortcuts have always been Cmd+letter instead (e.g. Cmd-R = refresh, Cmd-W = close window, Cmd-Q = close app, Cmd-F = find), so perhaps that is why Apple see the Fn keys as expendable. On the debug thing, having the debug controls on the Touch Bar with XCode (available from any app) is one of the few actually definitely useful things about it. Spotify integration could be, except they decided not to show song name or anything else useful on there.
  - addicted 9y ago
    Wouldn’t having the debug controls on Fn keys like on VS on Windows be even more useful since you get tactile feedback as well? The major advantage of the touchpad that I can see is for someone who is new to the app, since it increases discoverability if shortcut keys. However this problem was already solved using toolbars. There may be a few apps where the screen real estate may be too expensive to lose to toolbars, but I can’t really think of any where simply fading the toolbars in isn’t a better solution. Maybe 4ak video editing is a better option? I’d also imagine controls where scrubbing is better might benefit from the touchbar, but again, that’s probably better handled by the touchpad which is far more ergonomically accessible than the touchbar.

darklajid 9y ago

I'm on Windows, so there's that. I constantly (multiple times a day) use F1 (help, least used), F3 (search again, next match), F4 (both for the famous close window shortcut and to get to the explorer address bar), F5 (reload in browser, run in other apps), F9 (toggle breakpoint in VS), F10 (step over in VS), F11 (step into in VS). Occasionally F8, F12. Couldn't live without those, I guess, and I can find all of those blindly.

tomduncalf 9y ago
Ahh yes, function key use is much more prevalent in Windows for whatever reason. On the Mac most of those shortcuts have always been Cmd+letter instead (e.g. Cmd-R = refresh, Cmd-W = close window, Cmd-Q = close app, Cmd-F = find), so perhaps that is why Apple see the Fn keys as expendable. On the debug thing, having the debug controls on the Touch Bar with XCode (available from any app) is one of the few actually definitely useful things about it. Spotify integration could be, except they decided not to show song name or anything else useful on there.
- addicted 9y ago
  Wouldn’t having the debug controls on Fn keys like on VS on Windows be even more useful since you get tactile feedback as well? The major advantage of the touchpad that I can see is for someone who is new to the app, since it increases discoverability if shortcut keys. However this problem was already solved using toolbars. There may be a few apps where the screen real estate may be too expensive to lose to toolbars, but I can’t really think of any where simply fading the toolbars in isn’t a better solution. Maybe 4ak video editing is a better option? I’d also imagine controls where scrubbing is better might benefit from the touchbar, but again, that’s probably better handled by the touchpad which is far more ergonomically accessible than the touchbar.