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I think the TouchBar is here to stay. Non-programmers LOVE IT. Its crazy how many people come up and ask me about it at presentations. I was running a presentat
by a2tech 7y ago
I think the TouchBar is here to stay. Non-programmers LOVE IT. Its crazy how many people come up and ask me about it at presentations. I was running a presentation the other day and had PowerPoint full screen and someone walked by and saw the mini slide previews and all the presenter controls on it and was absolutely blown away by it. They called over a few other people and they all left wanting a Mac.
For some its an irritation. For others its a revelation.
- weiming 7y agoMight be one of those "designed to look good and sell more units, not for actual users" Apple ideas. There was a post about it on HN a few weeks ago. Edit: linked below
- waterhouse 7y agoPerhaps something like this? https://asktog.com/atc/the-third-user/ https://asktog.com/atc/the-third-user/
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- chrischen 7y agoYou’re making big assumptions about programmers. I’d rather have the touch bar and I’m a programmer. One of the reasons is that, well, it’s programmable.
- r00fus 7y agoWhat tool do you prefer to program it?
- goerz 7y agoBetterTouchTool
- PunksATawnyFill 7y agoThen it should have been physical keys, not an idiotic non-palpable strip THAT GOES TO SLEEP.
- benjymo 7y agoI'm a programmer and I like the touch bar. Intellij integrates it quite nicely, I can add terminal commands if I'm in the terminal, switching between email and calendar in Outlook also works well. Sure it also has downsides but generic "F1" to "F12" buttons also isn't the pinnacle of UX.
- Izmaki 7y agoI'm a programmer and I love it too. It looks really nice and the virtual buttons that appear in the different applications that I also use are really convenient (e.g. the settings button for my VMware VMs or the full control I have over Spotify as I work somewhere completely different). The escape key being "hard to hit" is exaggerated to say the least, and the F-keys I only use then I debug and need to step through my code. I do other things when developing than stepping through my code.
- tedivm 7y agoI have my caps-lock key mapped to esc and that solves that issue- a bigger issue for me is not having volume keys available all the time.
- saidajigumi 7y agoOne better: I have my caps-lock key mapped to control, then use the ControlEscape "spoon"[1] for Hammerspoon[2] to allow it to also be an ESC key. The insight is that "control" is held, but "esc" is momentary, allowing these functions to be overlaid. It works great, nary a hiccup. Way beyond "fixing" the Touch Bar's lack of ESC, this is far and away my preferred usage now. [1] https://github.com/jasonrudolph/ControlEscape.spoon https://github.com/jasonrudolph/ControlEscape.spoon – a plugin (aka "spoon") for Hammerspoon. [2] https://www.hammerspoon.org/ https://www.hammerspoon.org/ – a fantastic UI event scripting and customization tool for macOS
- brianpgordon 7y agoYeah, Karabiner-Elements has that option and it's great. There is something satisfying about smashing that ESC button sometimes though in some contexts. :(
- windexh8er 7y agoAnd then you go to use another machine with a full keyboard... Frustration. I agree: mapping keys is a simple and easy fix. But, it's frustrating if you switch between machines. I literally cannot type on my MBP from work after using my fantastic mechanical keyboard all day. Jarring is an understatement. I want a full, physical keyboard. That's it. I won't buy another MacBook if Apple continues to forcefeed that pile of garbage as the only option. I said this in another comment a while ago: people who like Touchbar don't type. They're point and click users. People who type for a living despise it. I realize there are outliers but that's a pretty accurate characterization.
- outside1234 7y agoI love the TouchBar as well - it would be perfect from my perspective if they had kept the Escape key. That is literally my only gripe with it
- bori5 7y agoThere’s tools out there like BetterTouchTool and I imagine several others than allow you to do this and more.
- lonelappde 7y agoBTT cannot add a physical Escape key.
- c256 7y agoSince it seems like we’re already near tongue-in-cheek but still functional: it doesn’t need to; there’s a perfectly good oversized one sitting at the left end of the home row. If you’d like, you can even make it both Escape (by itself) and Control (when used in combination with another key).
- factotvm 7y agoI would like you to be able to buy a laptop with the TouchBar. However, I would like to be able to buy a laptop without one.
- mr_toad 7y agoI wish Apple sold MBPs without a touchbar just so I could stop hearing about it in every single thread.
- factotvm 7y agoYou’re in a thread about Apple keyboards. However, I am confident you could find a thread elsewhere that isn’t discussing TouchBars. This one perhaps: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20531955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20531955
- tobr 7y agoI think it’s here to stay, too, and thankfully the main issue with it is fixable: the lack of tactile feedforward/feedback. If the display had little grooves to separate the controls and used the same 100% convincing fake button travel used in the trackpad, I think it would be an excellent enhanced fn key row. You need to be able to rest your finger lightly on a key without pressing it. (The same needs to happen with smartphones/tablets too, fwiw)
- ProAm 7y agoThey should have both a function key row and a touchbar then. It has value, it doesnt have enough value to remove an entire row of keys that have been of use for decades.
- GhostVII 7y agoI think it is mainly an irritation for "power users". Can't imagine the average person using function keys or caring that they are gone, they just use the GUI to do everything. The touchbar is great for those people because it takes options that they might normally have to use multiple clicks to get to, and puts them on the keyboard.