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If you like it, great. But the idea that people are just criticizing to knock on the #1 guy is a sloppy story. There are reasons for disliking the touchbar, par

If you like it, great. But the idea that people are just criticizing to knock on the #1 guy is a sloppy story. There are reasons for disliking the touchbar, particularly as a replacement for a row of keys. The tactile feedback from keys is missing. And the "flexibility" has its own problems -- for example, consider changing the audio volume with keys vs with the touchbar. With keys it's easy as pie to silence or incrementally change the volume without even interrupting your visual attention. The new interaction with the UI that requires a shift of your visual attention. You can't tap on a spot repeatedly for a few quick steps, because the UI transforms into a slider, which you have to reorient on, find the correct spot and drag around. Yeah, if I wanted to change the sound volume that way, I already had an option for it with the touchpad that's been there for decades and isn't any less conveniently located than the new touchbar. And in general that's the case. It's been easy to have point-and-slide control over arbitrary UI laptop elements as long as there've been touchpads. The difference between a touchscreen and touchpad is marginal. At some margins -- particularly the operation of pocket computers with a form factor about the size of a laptop touchpad -- that's been tremendously useful, but I don't see any evidence that anyone's come up with something that genuinely matters for laptops yet.

MBCook 9y ago
Honestly if they had kept the function row and put the Touch Bar above it instead of replacing it… I’m sure people would complain tons but I don’t think they would’ve had anywhere near the problems they’ve had.
shadowfiend 9y ago
In my experience, you rarely have to reorient on the slider, because touch-and-drag is a valid gesture on the volume and brightness sliders. i.e., you don't have to tap, find slider, touch-and-drag, you can just directly touch-and-drag the button. Doesn't work for very large changes due to where the buttons are, but it hits 90% of my use cases in a cleaner way than the old buttons did. I do have to flick my eyes down to find the button, but it doesn't bother me---fully understand it might bother others, though.
eanzenberg 9y ago
I guess I never got around to memorizing the location of the f-keys since I had to look down to use them as well. Having a dedicated position to change often-changing settings is more useful than a trackpad, which I’m assuming you mean that you just change the volume with a mouse in the system bar.
- wwweston 9y ago
  With both the screen brightness and the volume I change them with quick taps to the keys, repeated if necessary. And for whatever reason, they were never hard for me to locate. I'd guess that's partly because they're just 1-2 keys in on both sides. I also suspect peripheral vision helps... I can't "read" symbols on keys (or a touchbar) with PV, but I can absolutely perceive key shapes and so without changing focus I know where they are. Once I get farther into the row of function keys, I don't have as much of a memory for them. I'd guess that's at least partly because I don't use the key backlight and playback controls as much (auto key backlighting works very well for me, to the point where I almost never adjust it manually, and the playback controls don't work with much software other than iTunes which I've been avoiding for years now). Maybe mostly that, as in the past I've definitely had a "tap without looking" relationship with F5 for reload (now apparently mentally mapped to cmd-R). "Having a dedicated position to change often-changing settings is more useful" is pretty much the whole point of function keys, except they do a better job of it than the touchbar does, and quite likely a better job than the touchbar can.

MBCook 9y ago

Honestly if they had kept the function row and put the Touch Bar above it instead of replacing it… I’m sure people would complain tons but I don’t think they would’ve had anywhere near the problems they’ve had.

shadowfiend 9y ago

In my experience, you rarely have to reorient on the slider, because touch-and-drag is a valid gesture on the volume and brightness sliders. i.e., you don't have to tap, find slider, touch-and-drag, you can just directly touch-and-drag the button. Doesn't work for very large changes due to where the buttons are, but it hits 90% of my use cases in a cleaner way than the old buttons did. I do have to flick my eyes down to find the button, but it doesn't bother me---fully understand it might bother others, though.

eanzenberg 9y ago

I guess I never got around to memorizing the location of the f-keys since I had to look down to use them as well. Having a dedicated position to change often-changing settings is more useful than a trackpad, which I’m assuming you mean that you just change the volume with a mouse in the system bar.

wwweston 9y ago
With both the screen brightness and the volume I change them with quick taps to the keys, repeated if necessary. And for whatever reason, they were never hard for me to locate. I'd guess that's partly because they're just 1-2 keys in on both sides. I also suspect peripheral vision helps... I can't "read" symbols on keys (or a touchbar) with PV, but I can absolutely perceive key shapes and so without changing focus I know where they are. Once I get farther into the row of function keys, I don't have as much of a memory for them. I'd guess that's at least partly because I don't use the key backlight and playback controls as much (auto key backlighting works very well for me, to the point where I almost never adjust it manually, and the playback controls don't work with much software other than iTunes which I've been avoiding for years now). Maybe mostly that, as in the past I've definitely had a "tap without looking" relationship with F5 for reload (now apparently mentally mapped to cmd-R). "Having a dedicated position to change often-changing settings is more useful" is pretty much the whole point of function keys, except they do a better job of it than the touchbar does, and quite likely a better job than the touchbar can.