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I’ve got an issue with the Touch Bar that, as far as I can tell, only I am experiencing: Take your MacBook Pro, put it in a room indoors, and flick the lights
by cytzol 8y ago
I’ve got an issue with the Touch Bar that, as far as I can tell, only I am experiencing:
Take your MacBook Pro, put it in a room indoors, and flick the lights on and off in that room several times a second. You’ll notice high CPU usage on a process called “TouchBarServer”, as it tries to adjust itself to the changing light levels so it can display its screen. For some reason, as it does this, it lags the entire rest of the computer: scrolling will freeze every couple of seconds, clicks won’t register, the mouse will lag, and keystrokes will just be ignored.
Why would you do this, you might ask? I work on trains a lot, and I get this same flicker effect as the trees by the tracks go past. As they pass the windows of the train, it’s like a bright light source is being rapidly turned on and off.
I don’t ever use the Touch Bar — nor did I want one — but merely having one renders my laptop unusably slow for two hours every day. I hate this computer.
- eridius 8y agoThat sounds both very frustrating, and quite bizarre. I can't imagine why ambient light sensing would need to peg the CPU ever. If you haven't done so already, I strongly encourage you to file a bug report with Apple at https://bugreport.apple.com https://bugreport.apple.com
- cytzol 8y agoI have filed a bug report. But yeah, it’s crazy that one part of the machine makes all the rest of it slow down! There was a time before I figured out it was the Touch Bar when I thought it was _moving fast_ that was making it lag (because it didn’t happen when the train stopped at stations). I was paranoid that it was trying to keep tabs on my location... so it could be worse, I guess.
- adpirz 8y agoThis is fascinating, but wouldn't this be the case on older MBPs since they have ambient light sensors?
- cytzol 8y agoI’m not sure, but for what it’s worth, I’ve got “Automatically adjust brightness” unchecked in System Preferences. So either it’s just ignoring that option, or it’s using some secondary light sensor.
- aikinai 8y agoThat's my main issue with the touchbar as well, not this specific light issue, but the fact that it drags the rest of the computer down with it. I would have preferred buttons, but I'm pretty adaptable and can deal with the touchbar if I have too. But what really gets me is that mine frequently crashes and when it crashes it's impossible to control system volume. And since trying to mute or lower the volume is one of the specific situations that causes it to crash, it results in one of the worst user experiences you could have.