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> "I'm so glad this model has a touchbar" I'm so glad this model has a Touch Bar. I have seen numerous people who have a MBP 2016 or later which just can't us

> "I'm so glad this model has a touchbar" I'm so glad this model has a Touch Bar. I have seen numerous people who have a MBP 2016 or later which just can't use computers without the Touch Bar experience. If somebody doesn't find it useful, that's OK, but please, there are a lot of people (who doesn't loudly complain at HN) that finds the Touch Bar useful & incorporates it in one's workflow. I for myself uses my Touch Bar extensively, from when I'm using Emacs (with a bit of scripting & BTT), Terminal.app, Safari, MS Office Suite, and on and on and on. I really won't care if Apple would release a MBP without one, but I'm worried Apple will remove the (IMO very useful) concept altogether just because of the loud complainers on the net (like the butterfly mechanism).

jeromegv 7y ago
Well they can actually measure the repair rate of the butterfly mechanism, this is a different thing. That's why they also extended warranty on those keyboards. The defect is measurable, this isn't about complainers on the net.
- hosh 7y ago
  Or rather, it isn't just about complainers on the net. The design seemed to have incorporated a lot of other feedback from pro users. Something that seems to satisfy users _and_ is less costly seems to be a no-brainer business decision.
ggtt 7y ago
Can you say slightly more about how you use it in Emacs? I've wondered if something like this is possible (although I'm not sure what would be useful to have it do).
- pcr910303 7y ago
  It's a hacked-in-a-afternoon solution, but the gist is that I run a server in Emacs based on the emacs-web-server package[0], and I wrote some scripts that request to them. I used Better Touch Tool[1] to add the buttons that execute the scripts. [0] https://github.com/eschulte/emacs-web-server https://github.com/eschulte/emacs-web-server [1] https://folivora.ai https://folivora.ai
fortran77 7y ago
I agree. The touchbar is a good feature. It's a shame that app developers haven't exploited it to its full potential.
- pcr910303 7y ago
  > How on earth do you use Emacs without an ESC key? Hmm, I think I've never used my ESC key when using Emacs, I bind Ctrl to Caps-Lock and call it a day. BTW, I also frequently (~3-4 times a day) use vim, and I never found it hard to edit with the Touch Bar Esc key. I can find the Esc location without looking, I'm pretty sure anyone can do that. It's just simple: just press the most left part. The non-display part left on the esc button display also works as the esc key, so no problem with that. (Yes, and that's why I believe that people who hate the Touch Bar b.c. of the no Esc key have never used the MBP. It's really a non-issue.)
  - JshWright 7y ago
    Well, speaking as a daily vim user, you must be much more talented than I am at using a keyboard. I could never get the hang of touch-typing the virtual ESC (especially since in certain workflows I want to be able to rest my finger on the key without pressing it). It was the thing that finally got me to rebind my mode switch to `jj`. Which works great, until the keyboard decides that "j" is the key it's going to double that day, then it's very frustrating... Fortunately today the keys it has decided to double are "bb" and "88"
  - sc4les 7y ago
    Evil escape and binding esc to fd or jk is a game changer
  - foobiekr 7y ago
    Ive been using one since the touchbar 15” came out and I loathe it. There’s no physical feedback for the escape touchbar area even after you learn to strike it without looking. It sucks.
    - pcr910303 7y ago
scalatronn 7y ago
yeah, i got one with touchbar, it's very bad and useless. about butterfly switches... garbage
ses1984 7y ago
Wouldn't normal function keys work pretty much just as well?
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  Especially for visually-impaired users.
computerex 7y ago
The thing is, you are bound to come across someone who finds a feature useful even if the feature is not useful for the vast majority of the people. I like Apple laptops and own a MBP myself, but I definitely think that the butterfly keyboard and touchbar hurt Apple's reputation. The butterfly keyboard has had a lot of technical problems which is frustrating for the users and hurts Apple's bottom line due to the repair costs. The typing experience on the butterfly keyboard is also not the best due to lack of travel. The touchbar is a flawed design concept imho. The entire reason I touch type is so that I don't have to look down from my screen. My eyes remain on the screen for 99% of the time I am working. It's jarring and discontinuous for me to have to look down to use the touchbar. That's why I personally never liked it. I think the tactile feedback of a real physical button is essential. I think Apple realizes this already to some extent because they went and added a physical escape key.
- CJKinni 7y ago
  > The thing is, you are bound to come across someone who finds a feature useful even if the feature is not useful for the vast majority of the people. I think this sentiment holds true for function keys in general. I the vast majority of people never used them.
- pcr910303 7y ago
  > The thing is, you are bound to come across someone who finds a feature useful even if the feature is not useful for the vast majority of the people. Yeah, and I believe that the fn-keys are the exact symptom. I haven't encountered anyone that uses fn-keys to it's full potential (or at least, more than the Touch Bar can provide). > The touchbar is a flawed design concept imho. The entire reason I touch type is so that I don't have to look down from my screen. For simple actions, gaining muscle-memory on Touch Bar virtual buttons are possible. (I myself don't look the Touch Bar when performing simple & repetitive actions like open new Tab, or when pressing the escape key.) > It's jarring and discontinuous for me to have to look down to use the touchbar. Well, isn't it something like saying that it's discontinuous to move my hands from the keyboard to the trackpad to operate some GUI app? It's a glance away, and mostly the Touch Bar's actions are predictable & you know when you use it (for example, editing the formatting of some text in the MS Office Suite, or opening the emoji selector, or selecting autocomplete, etc...). > That's why I personally never liked it. Yeah, the feature has a variety of tastes. I think I can understand why some people just don't like it, but... > I think the tactile feedback of a real physical button is essential. I personally use HapticKey[0] for that. [0] https://github.com/niw/HapticKey https://github.com/niw/HapticKey
deleted 7y ago
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hosh 7y ago
Can you give examples of the touchbar with the scripting? Wait, that might not work for me -- I use emacs in a terminal.
jzb 7y ago
It shouldn't be impossible for Apple to offer models with and without. Let the market actually decide. Something tells me that if Apple produced exactly the same model of MBP, one with and one without, you'd see a huge preference away from the Touchbar. I could be wrong! But it would be good if users had the choice.
- kkarakk 7y ago
  Apple isn't in the business of giving user's choice. I think their argument always has been against the inertia of familiarity and in the case of the butterfly switches and touchbar it's bitten them in the ass but they can't undo the choice for whatever reason

jeromegv 7y ago

Well they can actually measure the repair rate of the butterfly mechanism, this is a different thing. That's why they also extended warranty on those keyboards. The defect is measurable, this isn't about complainers on the net.

hosh 7y ago
Or rather, it isn't just about complainers on the net. The design seemed to have incorporated a lot of other feedback from pro users. Something that seems to satisfy users _and_ is less costly seems to be a no-brainer business decision.

ggtt 7y ago

Can you say slightly more about how you use it in Emacs? I've wondered if something like this is possible (although I'm not sure what would be useful to have it do).

pcr910303 7y ago
It's a hacked-in-a-afternoon solution, but the gist is that I run a server in Emacs based on the emacs-web-server package[0], and I wrote some scripts that request to them. I used Better Touch Tool[1] to add the buttons that execute the scripts. [0] https://github.com/eschulte/emacs-web-server https://github.com/eschulte/emacs-web-server [1] https://folivora.ai https://folivora.ai

fortran77 7y ago

I agree. The touchbar is a good feature. It's a shame that app developers haven't exploited it to its full potential.

pcr910303 7y ago
> How on earth do you use Emacs without an ESC key? Hmm, I think I've never used my ESC key when using Emacs, I bind Ctrl to Caps-Lock and call it a day. BTW, I also frequently (~3-4 times a day) use vim, and I never found it hard to edit with the Touch Bar Esc key. I can find the Esc location without looking, I'm pretty sure anyone can do that. It's just simple: just press the most left part. The non-display part left on the esc button display also works as the esc key, so no problem with that. (Yes, and that's why I believe that people who hate the Touch Bar b.c. of the no Esc key have never used the MBP. It's really a non-issue.)
- JshWright 7y ago
  Well, speaking as a daily vim user, you must be much more talented than I am at using a keyboard. I could never get the hang of touch-typing the virtual ESC (especially since in certain workflows I want to be able to rest my finger on the key without pressing it). It was the thing that finally got me to rebind my mode switch to `jj`. Which works great, until the keyboard decides that "j" is the key it's going to double that day, then it's very frustrating... Fortunately today the keys it has decided to double are "bb" and "88"
- sc4les 7y ago
  Evil escape and binding esc to fd or jk is a game changer
- foobiekr 7y ago
  Ive been using one since the touchbar 15” came out and I loathe it. There’s no physical feedback for the escape touchbar area even after you learn to strike it without looking. It sucks.
  - pcr910303 7y ago

scalatronn 7y ago

yeah, i got one with touchbar, it's very bad and useless. about butterfly switches... garbage

ses1984 7y ago

Wouldn't normal function keys work pretty much just as well?

dillonmckay 7y ago
Especially for visually-impaired users.

computerex 7y ago

The thing is, you are bound to come across someone who finds a feature useful even if the feature is not useful for the vast majority of the people. I like Apple laptops and own a MBP myself, but I definitely think that the butterfly keyboard and touchbar hurt Apple's reputation. The butterfly keyboard has had a lot of technical problems which is frustrating for the users and hurts Apple's bottom line due to the repair costs. The typing experience on the butterfly keyboard is also not the best due to lack of travel. The touchbar is a flawed design concept imho. The entire reason I touch type is so that I don't have to look down from my screen. My eyes remain on the screen for 99% of the time I am working. It's jarring and discontinuous for me to have to look down to use the touchbar. That's why I personally never liked it. I think the tactile feedback of a real physical button is essential. I think Apple realizes this already to some extent because they went and added a physical escape key.

CJKinni 7y ago
> The thing is, you are bound to come across someone who finds a feature useful even if the feature is not useful for the vast majority of the people. I think this sentiment holds true for function keys in general. I the vast majority of people never used them.
pcr910303 7y ago
> The thing is, you are bound to come across someone who finds a feature useful even if the feature is not useful for the vast majority of the people. Yeah, and I believe that the fn-keys are the exact symptom. I haven't encountered anyone that uses fn-keys to it's full potential (or at least, more than the Touch Bar can provide). > The touchbar is a flawed design concept imho. The entire reason I touch type is so that I don't have to look down from my screen. For simple actions, gaining muscle-memory on Touch Bar virtual buttons are possible. (I myself don't look the Touch Bar when performing simple & repetitive actions like open new Tab, or when pressing the escape key.) > It's jarring and discontinuous for me to have to look down to use the touchbar. Well, isn't it something like saying that it's discontinuous to move my hands from the keyboard to the trackpad to operate some GUI app? It's a glance away, and mostly the Touch Bar's actions are predictable & you know when you use it (for example, editing the formatting of some text in the MS Office Suite, or opening the emoji selector, or selecting autocomplete, etc...). > That's why I personally never liked it. Yeah, the feature has a variety of tastes. I think I can understand why some people just don't like it, but... > I think the tactile feedback of a real physical button is essential. I personally use HapticKey[0] for that. [0] https://github.com/niw/HapticKey https://github.com/niw/HapticKey

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

hosh 7y ago

Can you give examples of the touchbar with the scripting? Wait, that might not work for me -- I use emacs in a terminal.

jzb 7y ago

It shouldn't be impossible for Apple to offer models with and without. Let the market actually decide. Something tells me that if Apple produced exactly the same model of MBP, one with and one without, you'd see a huge preference away from the Touchbar. I could be wrong! But it would be good if users had the choice.

kkarakk 7y ago
Apple isn't in the business of giving user's choice. I think their argument always has been against the inertia of familiarity and in the case of the butterfly switches and touchbar it's bitten them in the ass but they can't undo the choice for whatever reason