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> In short, it’s for the 90% of software users that float between general public and pro users. It works. Then they should have not called it a “MacBook pro” t
by usaphp 9y ago
> In short, it’s for the 90% of software users that float between general public and pro users. It works.
Then they should have not called it a “MacBook pro” there is nothing “pro” about touch bar, it’s something useless that I have to pay extra for and I don’t need it at all.
- beamatronic 9y agoThe only time I touch my Touch Bar is to hit the Escape key. Because I use vi. Because I am a professional and theoretically the target audience of $3,000 premium quality laptops.
- userbinator 9y agoI haven't tried it on a Mac, because I normally use a PC, but there Ctrl+[ is equivalent to Esc and saves reaching upwards (some PC laptops have badly placed Esc too.) I've been using Ctrl+[ ever since I discovered it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- taftster 9y agoFunny that you need a $3000 laptop to run vi. Funny in a sad way.
- haukilup 9y agoJust because they work in vi as their text editor does not mean they do not run other software on the same laptop. There are fields of software development where performance of your development environment matters.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoEmacs believer here, but the same applies: it's not the editor, it's the supporting software. Like local instances of the project you're working on. Compilers. Web browsers. More web browsers in various team working crap you might need to be using (though I stick to using web versions of stuff like Slack; downloading them as apps is just pure waste of memory and compute). Videoconferencing for remote work. Etc.
- PeterisP 9y agoThe $3000 laptop runs the VMs that execute the software that's being built and configured using vi.
- jakebellacera 9y agoI just remapped caps lock to esc and my woes (and left pinky pain) went away.
- emmelaich 9y agoSame pretty much. Got a mac because it's Unix, awesome hardware, good battery life and never fails to sleep and wake. Don't care about the touchbar and it's never bothered me.
- hellofunk 9y agoEvery professional vi/vim user I know does not use the Escape key.
- aiham 9y agoHow do they escape input mode?
- DandyDev 9y agoBy mapping escape to the otherwise useless caps lock key
- nothrabannosir 9y agoC-c. Easier for some reason.
- sushibowl 9y agoCtrl+c is technically not quite the same as Esc: it doesn't trigger InsertLeave autocmds, and doesn't finish abbreviations. But as long as you don't have those you'll be fine.
- prewett 9y agoCtrl-[
- gilnaa 9y agoWell, due to a bug in a specific version of vi, holding the space-bar for a few seconds causes the laptop to overheat. I bought an external thermometer that connects via USB, and I have a daemon that monitors it to notice the overheating and send the ESC key to the application.
- reificator 9y agoLook. I thought it was funny too, but at least put a link so you're not just stealing the joke. https://xkcd.com/1172/ https://xkcd.com/1172/
- cup-of-tea 9y agoHaving to "touch" a completely different surface to press escape sounds absolutely awful. Unless there's a way to swap escape for a real key that you don't need I would consider that machine defective.
- reificator 9y agoThere's a builtin toggle to map the capslock key to escape. Not that that makes the touchbar good, but at least you can remove a useless key in favor of a useful one.
- cup-of-tea 9y agoCapslock isn't entirely useless. I have mapped my capslock key to control but I still have access to it via a function key and do use it occasionally. Why do you think capslock is useless?
- reificator 9y agoBecause on the very rare occasion in which I want to capitalize more than one word, I can either hold shift, use tab-completion, or highlight in my editor and switch case.
- bvy 9y agoCtrl+[ is more ergonomic anyways. After I started using that, I realized how much I hated using Esc for anything.
- jmiserez 9y agoDon’t you attach a keyboard and monitor for your daily work anyways? The MBP keyboard buttons aren’t too great for typing all day every day.
- gargravarr 9y agoWhich is another part of the problem in marketing an extremely expensive device for Professional users...
- LaGrange 9y agoUh, no? I mean, the software you write _may_ be the reason, but it's in no way implied by the fact that you're a "vi user", I've ran fairly large pieces of software from old MacBooks with little problem, though _yes_, I did some data mining stuff that would kill the poor little things - but not every "vi user" ever does that. In the largest deployment I've worked with even Vi would be ran via SSH on a remote VM. It's when you bring out Photoshop or (gasp!) Blender or Unity, or doing something else that requires serious memory, when things start getting dicey. It's a specific sort of professional they mean, otherwise almost every employed person would fit.
- ubernostrum 9y agoThe "Pro" in "MacBook Pro" has never meant "developers, exclusively developers, and nobody but developers". As far as I'm aware, Apple doesn't and hasn't ever explicitly targeted its higher-end models at developers. They just happen to have been good developer machines, and so developers confused that for "I am explicitly the target market of this".
- cocktailpeanuts 9y agoPlease enlighten me, what's "Pro" about the touch bar?
- hug 9y agoThe vast majority of working professionals have not memorised what the F-keys do in arbitrary situations. (If you don't believe this, you've never worked in as a consultant for a wide variety of companies in a wide variety of professional fields.) Not only do people not know what the F-keys do, but they have no ability to determine what an F-key might do in any given situation. Not so with the touch bar. The touch bar will do what the touch bar indicates it will do, which is displayed on the touch bar itself.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago> The vast majority of working professionals have not memorised what the F-keys do in arbitrary situations. (If you don't believe this, you've never worked in as a consultant for a wide variety of companies in a wide variety of professional fields.) That's actually pretty sad (and should be remedied with some education, starting with emphasizing the fact that tools have a learning curve and you're supposed to follow it). I mean, look at non-professionals working with computers daily, like e.g. shop clerks. They have every possible shortcut used in their sales/inventory management software in muscle memory.
- tigershark 9y agoI don’t know recently but in my experience it’s absolutely false. In the ERPs or other enterprisy software they HAD to press the F-keys to do anything. If they could do it 20 years ago I simply can’t believe that suddenly humanity has devolved and it’s unable to use function keys today.
- wycy 9y ago"Pro" doesn't stand for "professional developer," it just stands for "professional." Professional includes designers, executives--anyone using the laptop for work. Pro doesn't even imply computer power user. It just means the opposite of home/personal.
- usaphp 9y agoI never said it stands for "professional developer". I am also pretty sure any "professional" designer knows their shortcuts and does not need to look at the touch bar, nevermind the executive. How are executives going to use a touch bar in a useful way? Adding emojis in their email conversation?
- dpkonofa 9y agoI disagree completely. The Touch Bar is invaluable for me in Final Cut and the tools I use for development also use the Touch Bar. I like iTerms use of the Touch Bar. Just because it doesn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work for other "pros".