6 ms·

I wasted two hours the other night because of the touchbar. I had turned my macbook pro's screen brightness down to complete black as I was using an external m

I wasted two hours the other night because of the touchbar. I had turned my macbook pro's screen brightness down to complete black as I was using an external monitor only, and in a dark environment. Some time later I happened to restart my machine, and both the internal and external displays came up completely black. The touchbar displayed only "Esc", without the normal brightness control. I had to figure out from memory how to log in without being able to see the screen, i.e. exactly how far I needed to move the pointer on the trackpad to click on my username, without any indication of what state the UI was in. There was no controls on the touchbar to adjust the display brightness and an external Apple USB keyboard which did have the brightness control keys was not recognised. Fixing it required both an SMC and PRAM reset. I would pay a significant premium for a macbook pro without the touchbar. I've had other cases where the machine appears to be (but isn't necessarily) bricked and there's no indicator lights anywhere to show what's going on, even if the machine has power. I hope with Ive's departure they'll dial it back a bit and start building machines which might be slightly less beautiful but include some of the more practical affordances. /rant

arthurdenture 7y ago
Heh, be thankful you figured out the problem before taking it in for hardware repairs: https://9to5mac.com/2019/06/11/macbook-pro-problem/ https://9to5mac.com/2019/06/11/macbook-pro-problem/
winter_blue 7y ago
> I would pay a significant premium for a macbook pro without the touchbar. If a less-powerful CPU is fine, the MacBook Air is great. It doesn't have the touch bar, and in my opinion, its tapering design look way cooler than a MacBook Pro (acknowledging the fact that the MacBook Pro is already one of the coolest looking laptops out there).
- anthonybsd 7y ago
  If they came in 15 inch sizes I'd be sold. :(
anthonybsd 7y ago
Hah. I have dozens of horror stories like that. Listening to Spotify at work, headphone jack plugged in to the Macbook. Get a phone call from the wife, need to run to meet her in the restaurant in the city. Close macbook, pull out headphone jack, grab a soda from company fridge on the way down,run into a semi crowded subway car. Remember that I had Tomcat running in IntelliJ, need to kill it. Sit down, open the Macbook. Now Macbook is blasting Norwegian death metal at full volume to the entire subway car while I'm trying to make the touch ID stupidity work with my wet finger with no way to reach the volume controls. Embarrassed, close the macbook, music inexplicably takes 30 seconds to shut down. Sigh. I don't even want to go into the horrors that is working in vi with touchbar escape key...
- dzhiurgis 7y ago
  You need automute, buddy https://apps.apple.com/us/app/automute-preventing-awkward-situations/id1118136179?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/automute-preventing-awkward-si...
moksly 7y ago
I just finished selling my MBP to a refurbishing company because I got so sick of the keyboard and touchbar. OS/X isn’t really the advantage it used to be either with Ubuntu becoming actually tolerable and Microsoft doing WLS. At least the resale value of the MBP is something no other hardware can really compete with. I mean, I know I kind of cheated by buying on a students discount for a diploma course I was taking on the side at the university. But I managed to get 80% of what I originally spent on a 8 month old machine, and I most certainly won’t be able to do with whatever I replace it with.
43920 7y ago
If this happens again, you can start typing the first few letters of your username to select it (similar to how typing in a <select> input works), and then hit enter to get the password input. Probably a bit easier than guessing at the location! (I definitely agree this is a bad design, though).

arthurdenture 7y ago

Heh, be thankful you figured out the problem before taking it in for hardware repairs: https://9to5mac.com/2019/06/11/macbook-pro-problem/ https://9to5mac.com/2019/06/11/macbook-pro-problem/

winter_blue 7y ago

> I would pay a significant premium for a macbook pro without the touchbar. If a less-powerful CPU is fine, the MacBook Air is great. It doesn't have the touch bar, and in my opinion, its tapering design look way cooler than a MacBook Pro (acknowledging the fact that the MacBook Pro is already one of the coolest looking laptops out there).

anthonybsd 7y ago
If they came in 15 inch sizes I'd be sold. :(

anthonybsd 7y ago

Hah. I have dozens of horror stories like that. Listening to Spotify at work, headphone jack plugged in to the Macbook. Get a phone call from the wife, need to run to meet her in the restaurant in the city. Close macbook, pull out headphone jack, grab a soda from company fridge on the way down,run into a semi crowded subway car. Remember that I had Tomcat running in IntelliJ, need to kill it. Sit down, open the Macbook. Now Macbook is blasting Norwegian death metal at full volume to the entire subway car while I'm trying to make the touch ID stupidity work with my wet finger with no way to reach the volume controls. Embarrassed, close the macbook, music inexplicably takes 30 seconds to shut down. Sigh. I don't even want to go into the horrors that is working in vi with touchbar escape key...

dzhiurgis 7y ago
You need automute, buddy https://apps.apple.com/us/app/automute-preventing-awkward-situations/id1118136179?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/automute-preventing-awkward-si...

moksly 7y ago

I just finished selling my MBP to a refurbishing company because I got so sick of the keyboard and touchbar. OS/X isn’t really the advantage it used to be either with Ubuntu becoming actually tolerable and Microsoft doing WLS. At least the resale value of the MBP is something no other hardware can really compete with. I mean, I know I kind of cheated by buying on a students discount for a diploma course I was taking on the side at the university. But I managed to get 80% of what I originally spent on a 8 month old machine, and I most certainly won’t be able to do with whatever I replace it with.

43920 7y ago

If this happens again, you can start typing the first few letters of your username to select it (similar to how typing in a <select> input works), and then hit enter to get the password input. Probably a bit easier than guessing at the location! (I definitely agree this is a bad design, though).