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This thread is going to dissolve into a pile-up on the Touch Bar, so I wanna jump in front of this. Readers of this site are mostly “hackers,” however mutated
by Eric_WVGG 7y ago
This thread is going to dissolve into a pile-up on the Touch Bar, so I wanna jump in front of this.
Readers of this site are mostly “hackers,” however mutated or dumbed-down that term has become over the years, correct? Everyone here has their windows and spaces just so, a full complement of shortcuts and trackpad gestures, and if they're serious about the Macintosh tools like TextExpander.
As standard as GUIs are, we've all experienced a moment of disorientation when borrowing another person's computer. The more experienced and skilled that other person is, the greater that disorientation due to the amount of “hacking” they've done on their own environment.
So how come this impulse stops at the Touch Bar?
I've hacked the hell out of mine. I've mapped inscrutable keyboard commands like cmd-opt-ctrl-D to context sensitive buttons, included globals for quick terminal visors and development tools and password managers… it's slick as hell and I hate giving it up when I occasionally opt for the external keyboard at home.
The Touch Bar is amazing, you just need to hack the damn thing. Yeah, Apple should have done a better job making it more useful out of the box, but it's possible to do some really wild stuff with it.
map your Caps Lock key to Escape and go to town. https://github.com/vas3k/btt-touchbar-presets https://github.com/vas3k/btt-touchbar-presets
- petereisentraut 7y agoCaps Lock is already mapped to Control.
- thih9 7y agoSame here. But I've used https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements to map the key under touch bar's esc to esc. I've also used the same program to disable touch bar esc. This way there are no accidental presses. I did it by mapping esc to 'vk_none' for the 'no product name' device, which is how Karabiner sees touch bar. I still dislike the keyboard because of its failure rate, but the layout is ok for me now.
- wyclif 7y agoI also have Caps Lock mapped to Command (Ctrl). And since my biggest use of the Esc key is when using Vim, I simply press Caps Lock + [ ( Ctrl + [ ) to switch to Normal Mode. So only my right pinky leaves the home row. I have the MBP "Escape" (without the Touch Bar), but if I did have the Touch Bar this would avoid 90% of the issues involving not having a hardware Esc key for me.
- Eric_WVGG 7y agoThere are two huge low-hanging fruit that Apple could do to make the Touch Bar better and appease (some of) the haters. First, add half a centimeter of clearance between the touch bar and the number keys. I've never once accidentally hit the Touch Bar, but one of my close coworkers does all the time, after years with this, so I can't deny that it's an issue. Second, allow users the ability to map any keyboard shortcut or menu item to a Touch Bar button. This would work similarly to how any menu item can be mapped to a keyboard shortcut in the System Preferences.
- eropple 7y agoThe bigger and most immediate thing they can do is put a physical Escape key back on. It would violate their Holy Symmetry or whatever, but it'd fix the number-one problem with the thing. The idea of shifting it up a little is a good one. But at that point they might as well shift it even more and put back the hardware function keys, too. I don't think they can move it without effectively conceding that it's not the winning solution that they want to position it as.
- lostmsu 7y agoOr... Just get a damn touchscreen and use existing tools
- Someone1234 7y agoI touch type therefore don't look at my hands while using a Mac. It doesn't matter how much I can hack/mod a screen I simply am not looking at, because it distracts from the screen I am looking at. I'd find a customizable "touch bar" below the dock I can use with my mouse more useful than where it is currently located.
- eropple 7y agoI am a touch typist. I never look down at the keyboard, ever. The only time the Touch Bar is involved is when I accidentally switch tabs because the Touch Bar buttons trip even while you're pressing the 2 or 3 key on the keyboard, and then I'm lost in a different tab than the one I was working on in the first place. Is there a preset that never shows anything on the touch bar, ever, except for the Escape key and the "global" brightness/volume buttons? Can this be done in, like, five seconds? If not, then I might Frisbee this computer straight out the window. If so, I would love to know how.
- RickS 7y agoYes, his is how I have mine, roughly (I kept the playback controls for spotify) Prefernces > Keyboard > Customize control strip (bottom of first tab) There's a strange GUI for like dragging stuff in and out... I don't remember how it works exactly.. but it is very close to 5 seconds.
- stu_k 7y agoSystem Preferences > Keyboard > Customize Touch Bar (at bottom). Drag off buttons you don't want, drag on buttons you do. Not 5 seconds, but probably less than a minute.
- eropple 7y agoThis works for "global" buttons but VSCode, Firefox, etc. put their junk on their anyway. I want all of it gone. Some applications so conveniently let you turn them off (VSCode is one of them, now that I've looked)--it's absolutely ridiculous that I have to do it for every application and I want it all to GTFO, globally. How does one do that? EDIT: So I found it - if, in the Keyboard preferences pane, you pick "Expanded Control Strip" instead of "App Controls", apps can't awfulify the touch bar. I now have haptically null touch points that do what I expect a Mac's top row to do, which is worse than having keys that do what I expect a Mac's top row to do, but it isn't as bad as it was at the start of the day.
- addicted 7y agoI’m not sure why you couldn’t do the same with the Fn keys instead. What you’d lose in being able to look down and see what a key does at the moment, you’d gain in having more tactile response allowing for easier pressing without looking. Also, when I find an inscrutable keyboard shortcut I use frequently, I simply remap it. There are enough KB shortcut combos possible that running out of keyboard shortcuts is rarely an issue. And bonus, you can touch type those shortcuts in.
- Eric_WVGG 7y agoThat's a good point, and I did do exactly that in the pre-Touch Bar days as I had no use for most of the "media keys." What the Touch Bar gives me is context sensitivity, different suites of commands on a per-app basis. Evidently I'm just lacking the mental agility of remembering that F2 is "open responsive desktop mode" in Safari and "clean build cache" in Xcode. As for the arguments of touch-typists here, I'm a touch typist and don't look at the keyboard either, but the idea behind the Touch Bar is that it's just within visual range of the screen. Bumping it half a centimeter higher would make it even more so.
- matwood 7y agoI'm a touch typist, but never used the F keys enough to not have to look down. I think a lot of the TB hate is because the ESC key was removed and people just don't like change.
- saberience 7y agoI've used Macbook Pros with the same keyboard for years and can reliably hit the volume buttons, display brightness, keyboard brightness, etc. without looking.
- dmix 7y agoBut why encourage people to look down when typing anything? Basically everyone learns to type without looking at some point which is the ideal zone you want users in (a one-to-one connection with the machine, eyes straight, hands down). Context switching the UI in a computer interface, often randomly depending on the app, while requiring the user to look down to use it is terrible UX. This whole technology screams ‘because we can’ (aka there was space to do it) rather than developers needed help with anything. The worst part was including Escape key into it, which is where most of the complaints come from as it’s a critical part of modern OS and browser interfaces - not just vim/emacs. By including the escape key it went from a voluntary / side interface for certain use-cases (complex music, photo, or editing apps for example) to becoming part of the primary keyboard/HCI itself which is where it crossed the line from a mediocre idea into a bad idea.
- jayd16 7y agoIf they added the bar above the f-row everyone would love it. As it is they fucked up a lot of workflows.
- darkarmani 7y ago> map your Caps Lock key to Escape Then where will I map my ctrl key? Apple stupidly put the fn key in the corner and i can't map ctrl to it.
- brandonhorst 7y agoKarabiner can map it to Esc on its own, but to Ctrl if you combine it with another key. Best of both worlds.
- na85 7y agoI applaud this sentiment. I use emacs reasonably often and I reached out to Mitsuharu Yamamoto about touchbar support in emacs and sadly never heard back. The ability to bind arbitrary emacs functions to the touchbar, programmatically, would be a killer feature.
- willtim 7y agoQuoting the Emacs web site: "To improve the use of proprietary systems is a misguided goal. Our aim, rather, is to eliminate them. We include support for some proprietary systems in GNU Emacs in the hope that running Emacs on them will give users a taste of freedom and thus lead them to free themselves."
- na85 7y agoNot sure what point you're trying to make, but the person I contacted maintains a mac-specific port of emacs which adds nice features that GNU emacs lacks and won't add because of politics. So I'm not concerned about GNU zealotry and how it relates to the touchbar.
- willtim 7y agoI was making the point that this would never get to Emacs mainline. But sure, no reason why it couldn't end up in a fork, but the fork is not going to give you the same "taste of freedom" ;)
- na85 7y agoIf I wanted less functionality in exchange for more freedom I'd run Hurd ;) Emacs isn't any less free with touchbar support.
- TYPE_FASTER 7y agoI can't type on the keyboard without accidentally triggering the Touch Bar. I really wanted to hack it, but wow is it annoying. I have to relearn typing because of it. If there was a small gap between the top of the physical keyboard and the touch bar, that might be enough to prevent false taps. Or I have to hack the Touch Bar to figure out where I'm accidentally hitting it, and don't put any buttons there. I'm also triggering false taps on the Touch Pad, which never used to happen. I suspect if there was another gap between the bottom of the physical keyboard and the top of the Touch Pad, this wouldn't happen.
- turtlebits 7y agoI don't get this - wouldn't you just accidentally press the F-keys if the touch bar wasn't there? Also, when my fingers are on home row, I can't even reach the touch bar without overextending/completely flattening my hand, which is hard to accidentally do while typing (and I have larger than normal hands).
- atombender 7y agoThe Touch Bar is very sensitive and picks up accidental touches. F-keys require pressing down. Personally, I tend to unconciously rest my hands spread out over the keyboard when I'm not typing. My thumbs are down by the space bar, and my fingers on top of the Touch Bar.
- quicklyfrozen 7y agoExactly this. Didn't even realize I did this until I spent 5 minutes trying to log in to my new MacBook while the user name/password fields kept resetting -- I was accidentally brushing the escape button.
- darzu 7y agoNo, it takes less pressure to active the touch bar than physical keys.
- d1zzy 7y ago
- la_barba 7y agoI think 'hacker' is too generic. Fiddling with the OS is just one form of hacking. Not every hacker enjoys doing that. One aspect of hacking the OS is dealing with the breakage when you end up with a system state that isn't part of some devs text matrix. I think a 'Pro' or 'Workstation' or similar badge should mean that the system is conservative from a UX standpoint, and delivers on performance and reliability. Maybe Apples gamble was that this new UX would cause a revolution in productivity.
- dpkonofa 7y agoI'm with you. BetterTouchTool introduced me to some pretty cool possibilities with the Touch Bar and it's just been even more awesome as I've customized it more. On top of that, it motivated me, for some reason, to try and get DooM running on it just for shits and giggles even though it's mostly unplayable.
- BonesJustice 7y agoI think the Touch Bar is an interesting tool with plenty of potential. My objection is that I'm forced to forego physical function keys to get it. When I'm stepping through code, I want physical keys with tactile feedback. I would be thrilled if Apple offered an alternate "developer's configuration" with a row of physical function keys and a Touch Bar above it. There is plenty if room; they'd only need to shrink the almost comically oversized touchpad (which would still be plenty large).
- closetohome 7y agoI think this configuration would have made the most sense as a first version of the feature in general. Let people get used to having it above the function keys, and find uses for it. If it's a well-received feature, maybe maybe at some point in the future move it down and replace the function keys.
- chadlavi 7y agoIf they added it _but also didn't steal the fn row_, I'd be all for it. But losing known, solid functionality for the opportunity to maybe hack together something useful is not a fair trade.
- giancarlostoro 7y agoI don't mind the touch bar, I don't get why they couldn't of kept the old keyboard which was more reliable and the Function Keys. I'm writing this on a MBP purchased earlier this year that has nothing but room for both with it's oversized trackpad that is nothing but a waste of space to me. I get more out of a trackball personally, but even if I am exclusively using the trackpad, I don't need all this wasted space, it is even bigger than my phone. I like physical keys, I can get used to them and never have to look down to use them. You cannot deliver the same experience with a touch-anything (at least not in 2019).
- d1zzy 7y agoMaybe it depends on how you type and rest your hand over the keyboard. For me I've had a macbook pro with touch bar for the last 6+ months and it hasn't gotten better at all. But in all honesty it's not just the touch bar, it's also the extra sensitive touchpad. For example you may notice extra spaces int his message or spaces in the middle of the words, that because of the touch pad, I think (I can't even be sure of what's going on but I've never had any typing issues like this in the past 30+ years since I've been using computers, starting with really crappy non-PC 8 bit computer keyboards all the way to fancy gamer keyboards). It's not getting better over time, it's forcing me to constantly have to correct my spelling so now I just keep typing at a minimum on this computer and I'm waiting to get rid of this crappy device at the earliest possibility.
- vanilla_nut 7y agoI also had a lot of trouble with my work-supplied 2017 MBP. I found the touchbar completely useless and never got used to it. It would randomly experience crashes or lags, a problem I never had with the old function keys when I changed the brightness, altered the keyboard backlight, or modified the volume. Even worse, the keys seemed to be laid out in a way that my touch typing couldn't adapt to -- every time I worked off of that keyboard, I would make constant typos and type significantly slower than on any other keyboard I've ever used. Switched back to a 2015 and I couldn't be happier. Battery life is better, too.
- wildrhythms 7y agoI also received a touchbar Mac for work and within a week handed it back in exchange for a slightly older Mac without one. I realized I need a physical escape key. Getting the buttons back felt like an upgrade.