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Keys stopping to work is one thing, but for me the Touch Bar and the screwed arrow keys are similarly disappointing. Apple should've seen this coming. What were

Keys stopping to work is one thing, but for me the Touch Bar and the screwed arrow keys are similarly disappointing. Apple should've seen this coming. What were they thinking?

mFixman 8y ago
I never understood the hate for the touchbar. I found no decrease in productivity after remapping Escape to Caps Lock, and both the special options for applications and the more granular volume and brightness controls make it more enjoyable than having F-keys.
- cschep 8y ago
  I find that having to look down at it to hit any of the "buttons" accurately is a huge decrease in productivity. I loved having play/pause right where it goes. Now I have to look at it, hit a button to go to a second level menu, then hit the button. AND it costs more money. That's not good.
- shabble 8y ago
  If you plan to use capslock for anything else (some people do actually use it as caps-lock, and I have gotten used to it as an alternate Ctrl for Emacs use) it's definitely more of a pain. I've yet to encounter a single good use for the touchbar, even the volume control is annoying to use. Especially since it's essentially impossible to hit without looking since there's no 'key feel', and I keep finding myself triggering touchbar actions because my fingers slightly overshoot the number or backspace key on occasion. It'd be great as an optional addition above the F-keys, or even a little further away since it requires a concerted effort to use anyway. Even the fact that the pretend 'escape' key doesn't properly operate all the way to the end of the bar (such that it might align with the keys below it) suggests it was far more about aesthetics or some weird notion of 'design' than actual usability. Or I'm just not the right sort of Pro.
- Dunedan 8y ago
  As others already mentioned the biggest pain point with the Touch Bar is, that you can't use it without looking at it. That's a major annoyance, especially if you use the function keys in your daily work. Yet there is still a solution which would probably satisfy most users: A traditional function key row and an additional Touch Bar above.
notadoc 8y ago
> Keys stopping to work is one thing, but for me the Touch Bar and the screwed arrow keys are similarly disappointing. Apple should've seen this coming. What were they thinking? It appears they weren't thinking. The Touch Bar is a huge mystery to me and a colossal nuisance, who wants to look down at their fingers to type? Did we not spend our earliest computing years mastering touch typing specifically for the efficiency of NOT having to look down at your hands when typing? Growing up, our computer lab teacher would place a box over your hands to force you to memorize the key locations to drive home the point, and once memorization occurred it really clicked and WPM and general computing efficiency skyrocketed for everyone. So then comes the Touch Bar to solve no problem but instead introduce new problems, where your hands and fingers literally block the Touch Bar visibility from any normal usage viewing angle, meaning you have to move your hands away from the keyboard, then awkwardly poke around imprecisely with a single floating finger on a little tiny screen to hit "escape" or the "X" button to find the escape key or the brightness and audio output adjustments and other function keys. Did nobody at Apple test it out? Or even think it through? Where is their person to say "no" to what are clearly bad ideas?
- deong 8y ago
  I think it's a general Apple failure mode. They're so wrapped up in the idea of making something completely unheard of, that they overly weight novelty. Most of these "clearly bad ideas" aren't all that clear at the time. I don't think I ever thought the touchbar was going to be a positive addition to a laptop, but when it was announced, there sure were a lot of people who seemed convinced it would. You can make an argument for why it's great, and if your company culture is predisposed towards valuing novelty, you'll anchor to those arguments, and there isn't going to be one guy in the room who can say "no". That same culture has obvious upsides as well; I'm not trying to just knock Apple as incompetent. I just think the flip side of that coin makes things like the TouchBar more likely to survive scrutiny there.
  - notadoc 8y ago
    That's an interesting way to look at it, and the novelty factor may well have something to do with it. I suppose Touch Bar just doesn't seem particularly novel to me though, many consumer level PC laptops used to have little touch bars as FN keys in the early and mid 2000s, and they were just as much of a hassle then which is probably why no manufacturer kept them around.

Keys stopping to work is one thing, but for me the Touch Bar and the screwed arrow keys are similarly disappointing. Apple should've seen this coming. What were they thinking?

mFixman 8y ago

I never understood the hate for the touchbar. I found no decrease in productivity after remapping Escape to Caps Lock, and both the special options for applications and the more granular volume and brightness controls make it more enjoyable than having F-keys.

cschep 8y ago
I find that having to look down at it to hit any of the "buttons" accurately is a huge decrease in productivity. I loved having play/pause right where it goes. Now I have to look at it, hit a button to go to a second level menu, then hit the button. AND it costs more money. That's not good.
shabble 8y ago
If you plan to use capslock for anything else (some people do actually use it as caps-lock, and I have gotten used to it as an alternate Ctrl for Emacs use) it's definitely more of a pain. I've yet to encounter a single good use for the touchbar, even the volume control is annoying to use. Especially since it's essentially impossible to hit without looking since there's no 'key feel', and I keep finding myself triggering touchbar actions because my fingers slightly overshoot the number or backspace key on occasion. It'd be great as an optional addition above the F-keys, or even a little further away since it requires a concerted effort to use anyway. Even the fact that the pretend 'escape' key doesn't properly operate all the way to the end of the bar (such that it might align with the keys below it) suggests it was far more about aesthetics or some weird notion of 'design' than actual usability. Or I'm just not the right sort of Pro.
Dunedan 8y ago
As others already mentioned the biggest pain point with the Touch Bar is, that you can't use it without looking at it. That's a major annoyance, especially if you use the function keys in your daily work. Yet there is still a solution which would probably satisfy most users: A traditional function key row and an additional Touch Bar above.

notadoc 8y ago

> Keys stopping to work is one thing, but for me the Touch Bar and the screwed arrow keys are similarly disappointing. Apple should've seen this coming. What were they thinking? It appears they weren't thinking. The Touch Bar is a huge mystery to me and a colossal nuisance, who wants to look down at their fingers to type? Did we not spend our earliest computing years mastering touch typing specifically for the efficiency of NOT having to look down at your hands when typing? Growing up, our computer lab teacher would place a box over your hands to force you to memorize the key locations to drive home the point, and once memorization occurred it really clicked and WPM and general computing efficiency skyrocketed for everyone. So then comes the Touch Bar to solve no problem but instead introduce new problems, where your hands and fingers literally block the Touch Bar visibility from any normal usage viewing angle, meaning you have to move your hands away from the keyboard, then awkwardly poke around imprecisely with a single floating finger on a little tiny screen to hit "escape" or the "X" button to find the escape key or the brightness and audio output adjustments and other function keys. Did nobody at Apple test it out? Or even think it through? Where is their person to say "no" to what are clearly bad ideas?

deong 8y ago
I think it's a general Apple failure mode. They're so wrapped up in the idea of making something completely unheard of, that they overly weight novelty. Most of these "clearly bad ideas" aren't all that clear at the time. I don't think I ever thought the touchbar was going to be a positive addition to a laptop, but when it was announced, there sure were a lot of people who seemed convinced it would. You can make an argument for why it's great, and if your company culture is predisposed towards valuing novelty, you'll anchor to those arguments, and there isn't going to be one guy in the room who can say "no". That same culture has obvious upsides as well; I'm not trying to just knock Apple as incompetent. I just think the flip side of that coin makes things like the TouchBar more likely to survive scrutiny there.
- notadoc 8y ago
  That's an interesting way to look at it, and the novelty factor may well have something to do with it. I suppose Touch Bar just doesn't seem particularly novel to me though, many consumer level PC laptops used to have little touch bars as FN keys in the early and mid 2000s, and they were just as much of a hassle then which is probably why no manufacturer kept them around.