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I initially found the touchbar to mostly be a gimmick, new for the sake of being new and not really bringing anything useful to the table. A couple of years la
by mstade 7y ago
I initially found the touchbar to mostly be a gimmick, new for the sake of being new and not really bringing anything useful to the table.
A couple of years later and I'm a convert. If I had to buy a new MBP today I would definitely make sure it has a touchbar. It turns out app makers have found some nifty uses for it, like the ability to quickly mute/unmute when in conference calls, quickly changing volume/brightness, stepping through code while debugging etc etc. These are seemingly insignificant quality of life improvements, but I definitely miss them when on a machine without a touchbar. Conversely I haven't missed the Fn-keys, not even once.
That hardware esc key looks tasty though, I hope they bring that to the 13" model.
- dewey 7y agoMy problem with the TouchBar is that I'm using my laptop with an external screen 90% of the time so I'm never really getting used to it. If the external keyboard had a TouchBar and I would start incorporating it into my workflow I can see it's use-fullness.
- iNate2000 7y agoMaybe now that it's called a "Magic Keyboard" they will sell it as a stand-alone product. I usually put my laptop in front of me with an external screen above it. That way I get used to the laptop keyboard and can feel right at home in a conference room or wherever.
- geerlingguy 7y agoThey already sell the Magic Keyboard, and I have one on my desk: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MLA22LL/A/magic-keyboard-us-english https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MLA22LL/A/magic-keyboard-...
- invalidusernam3 7y agoIt's very unlikely, but I would like Apple to release the touchbar as a standalone piece of hardware (not attached to a keyboard at all). That way we could have the best of both worlds: physical function keys and a nifty touch device. Would be really useful for music/video editing
- derefr 7y agoIt seems like Apple associates the TouchBar more with “touching” than with keyboarding. As in, when you connect an iPad to a Mac using the Sidecar feature, the iPad will display a Touch Bar emulation, because that’s the accessory they think of a Touch Bar as belonging on: an external touch surface, not an external keyboard. Which is honestly interesting; it seems almost like they’re suggesting that this could grow into a larger feature, where Sidecar is really a kind of “Remote Touch Bar.app”, and you could add larger Touch Bar controls to your app that are only visible through Sidecar. (So you could have OS-level support for e.g. DAWs to display their VSTs onto your iPad for direct manipulation, without needing their own iPad OS app.) ——— I should note, as an aside, that Sidecar lets you keyboard on the Mac host through an iPad’s attached keyboard-case, but doesn’t really treat finger-gestures done on the iPad screen in the Sidecar app as being equivalent to mouse touchpad gestures on the host. I’m wondering if that’s a conscious design choice, and whether someone at Apple is thinking that the “new HCI paradigm” for desktops will involve still having an external Bluetooth trackpad, but no external Bluetooth keyboard, with that role instead being served by an iPad with a keyboard-case attached to it. That’d kind of fit—it enables all five(!) interaction methodologies Apple currently has: mouse gestures, keyboard commands, touch inputs, pencil inputs, and touch-bar controls. But, importantly, it does so while entirely avoiding “gorilla arm” (unlike the huge Microsoft Surface Studio), because your touch surface is small and on the table in front of you, rather than “being” the display. (For most Sidecar iPad gestures, even with a full-sized iPad Pro, you never really have to lift your arm off the table.) In Apple’s envisioned desktop paradigm, touch is seemingly an input method that you get from a separate input device—one that happens to have a screen—rather than touch being just a “way to do” mousing.
- Aperocky 7y agoIt's ridiculous, touching imo is a vastly less efficient information exchange than typing.
- davedx 7y agoYeah... it's really contextual (of course). I work with MSSQL a lot these days and really like that Azure Data Studio has a decent sized "Run query" button in the touch bar, and I use the brightness/volume sliders all the time. Most apps don't use it very well though - I actually quite dislike Safari's overcomplicated tab buttons - I can't make out anything so it's basically useless, and I use cmd left arrow to go back not the touchbar button. I would love to have a hardware escape key. But despite the shitty butterfly keyboard issues I'm currently going through I want to keep this Macbook as long as possible.
- bluedino 7y agoThere were already keys for all those functions...
- hombre_fatal 7y ago> like the ability to quickly change volume/brightness Well, these have physical buttons pre-touchbar, so the touchbar is definitely slower since it requires two clicks (one to summon the slider) and you have to look at it instead of just feeling it.
- bot1 7y agoYou can click on it and immediately swipe left or right, without lifting the finger. Imho it's faster.
- computerex 7y agoDo you find that you can use the touchbar without having to look at it? For me I can press the volume up/volume down buttons without having to take my eyes off the screen. Plus the volume increases and decreases with a constant interval. At this point it's pure muscle memory for me to adjust volume and requires no thought. With the touchbar slider I have to physically look down and put the slider to where I want. For me pressing keys is easier than moving a slider and it's faster.
- jlokier 7y agoI'm the same - I tend to use the mute, volume, brightness keys instinctively without looking at the keyboard.
- jcranberry 7y agoTo be fair, I doubt most people, even developers, use the function keys enough to touch type with them.
- delecti 7y agoOn keyboards that divide them into groups of 4 (Esc, F1-4, F5-8) I absolutely do. My work laptop has that.
- 7y ago
- debaserab2 7y agoLiterally everything you've cited as a QoL improvement exist on most (if not all) laptops with physical F-keys.
- jagged-chisel 7y agoPhysical keys, period. People seem to not know that keyboard shortcuts have existed "forever" because they're faster than mousing about-- no need to look where you're pointing, or where to target on a touchscreen that lacks tactile feedback. They come with "muscle memory" and they don't change position based on context. Learn keyboard shortcuts, and no one needs a touch bar.
- efaref 7y agoConversely, have a touch bar, and no one needs to learn keyboard shortcuts. The touch bar works best for things accessed sufficiently infrequently that muscle memory won't be a thing.
- computerex 7y agoIf the touchbar works best for infrequently used actions then is it worth it to use so much of valuable keyboard real estate and sacrifice tactile feedback for infrequently used actions? I think the touchbar is a cool idea and I loved that Apple explored it innovated. But I also think that ultimately it's not a good idea and good design. Particularly for the power users.
- theklr 7y agoThose who use FCP, Logic X would beg to differ. It depends on use case, but not every power user is the same. Watch the video, look at their marketing, they're showing you who they think their pros are.
- kkarakk 7y agoAre these industry pros just not talking about it? coz every review by any kind of pro i see on youtube talks about how worthless teh touch bar is as a con against a macbook
- stedaniels 7y agoI respect your opinion, but all of the examples you gave are already possible with Fn-keys. I think what the touchbar brings is always active tutorial/reminder as to what's possible with the touchbar. Due to it's very nature you don't have to be taught what's on there, you can see, you then don't have to remember/rely on building up muscle memory. I imagine it sucks for accessibility. I'd still want one before my faculties faulter, I imagine I'd get some use out of it with my IDE.
- mstolpm 7y agoMost computer users aren’t hardcore users. Of course not scientific, but I know a lot of users that are intimidated by strange FN keys and are glad the touchbar clearly labels the current function of the virtual keys. We as HN crowd and hardcore freaks need to accept that no major hardware company can survive by delevoping for us niche users.
- xiphias2 7y agoYou're right, but it's not just hardware. I was part of the spell correction team at Google, and we made sure that we aren't overly aggressive even though lots of people mistype their web query. Nowdays I find it much harder to research rare things on Google, and I have to undo the automatic correction that the spell corrector does all the time (which is OK as long as it's easy to undo).
- beerandt 7y agoI've always preferred the results page corrections for spelling. I'm more ok with the extra step, if it's my fault for misspelling. Less so if I have to take an extra step to correct Google's inaccurate "correction."
- sethammons 7y agoA question for you, given your expertise: why do most (all?) spell checking/correcting not take into account key locality (is, neighboring key accidentally pressed). A big one for me is hitting n or b instead of space. I think it has gotten better recently, but has a loooong way to go. Just curious on your thoughts. Cheers!
- crtlaltdel 7y agoi remap capslock to escape regardless of the make/model of laptop i use, so the lack of a physical escape key didn’t really effect me. i never type with capslock on, and find using it for escape helps my vim workflow
- vijaybritto 7y agoThis is clever! Thanks for the tip
- SamBam 7y agoThat does make me wonder: why the hell is the capslock button so big? Seems like a huge waste of space. (Edit: In case anyone else is wondering the same things, the main answers seem to be (1) on manual typewriters, both the shift and capslock needed to physically lift the entire carriage, and so required more force and was for some users a two-finger operation; and (2) all the buttons on the sides of the letters simply fill space to the edges, if we shorten the capslock, we'd need to put something else there or we'd move the A.)
- low_key 7y agoI started doing this because of the touchbar. Now I like this key mapping better, but I still hate the touchbar.
- hosh 7y agoI tried that too. I am getting mixed results. I have to change the way my hands and fingers move, being so used to moving the whole hand as a signal to say, "esc". I am a very tactile/kinosthetic learning, so changing the sequence my body has to move in space can really mess things up for me, It is not working well: the very limited travel on the keys is not giving my fingers the feedback that I actually hit the "esc" key (capslock). It introduces errors. I'd probably have to live with this laptop for a while though. I don't think the startup I work for is going to buy a new MBP for me anytime soon. Being able to go to 32 GB will be nice though. Up until this 2019 MBP, I had seriously looked into switching back to a Linux laptop.
- 7y ago
- JackFr 7y agoNo haptic feedback. I am a hunt-and-peck typist, and there is nothing more frustrating than 1) opening a web page to the user manual; 2) starting a build; 3) closing a dialog box; 4) mistakenly completing a word I am typing; all because my ring or middle finger brushed the touch bar. It's a solution looking for a problem. It's garbage.
- eppsilon 7y agoFWIW HapticKey adds feedback when you press touch bar keys: https://github.com/niw/HapticKey https://github.com/niw/HapticKey
- nkrisc 7y ago> It turns out app makers have found some nifty uses for it, like the ability to quickly mute/unmute when in conference calls, quickly changing volume/brightness, stepping through code while debugging etc etc. Maybe I've just had a limited, poor experience with it, but from the apps I've used these functions are only available on the touchbar when the app is focused... which has the controls anyway. I was using Skype for Business and it had the audio controls in the touch bar, and also on the screen about 1.5" inches above the touchbar. I wanted to mute and unmute when I had the app in the background, but I couldn't. Useless.
- theklr 7y ago...but you cant do that with a regular keyboard, nor phone, nor other OS. How would it know if the app is non focused which app you're commanding without taking more processing power for independent 'quick keys',and from all the new electron apps we already know how efficient they are with memory usage.
- nkrisc 7y agoPrecisely. So what does the touch bar add, if not new capability? So now I have a touchbar that I can't do anything with that I couldn't already do before it.
- sixbrx 7y agoWell having shortcuts to stuff that you don't want to have to trackpad up to and click every time, or remember keyboard chords for. Same purpose as function keys, but without the memorization necessary to use them.
- nkrisc 7y agoSo it's a minor ergonomic improvement, at best. Hardly anything to write home about. When it launched it was marketed as something revolutionary.
- wodenokoto 7y agoEach to their own, but I've set mine to always and only display the brightness and volume knobs, and I still find it significantly slower to adjust those, than on my old mbp. But in all fairness, the F-keys on a mac never really worked like function keys, they've always been more of a row of OSX-keys. I can understand why Apple felt a need to innovate that space, but I am not impressed.
- dublin 7y agoYou know, if you buy a Surface Pro or Surface Book (or most any other Windows portable), THE WHOLE SCREEN IS TOUCHABLE! The touchbar is the biggest UI/UX screwup since the one button mouse and Jobs' insistence that there be only one menubar - a decision we still suffer from today that was driven by the original Mac's laughable 9-inch 512x342 pixel screen! BTW - You people are seriously acting like an Esc key is an innovation? I'm still waiting for a real delete key... and Home/End, PgUp/PgDn, etc....
- 333c 7y agoI'm interested in why you think only one menu bar is a bad thing. In my experience it makes it easy to use. On Windows, a menu bar is maybe 20-50 pixels high, and you have to hit that small target to use the menu bar. On Mac, because the menu bar is at the top of the screen, it has effectively infinite height, and I can get my mouse into it with a quick and imprecise motion, which is ideal.
- bogomipz 7y agoI'd be curious what IDEs support the touch bar for debugging or is that something you configured yourself?
- gowld 7y agoI might have to eat crow on this, but I can't imagine Apple holding out the Esc as a 16" power upgrade. It doesn't require extra motherboard or fan space.
- deadmik3 7y agoIt wasn't until I got a touchbar that I realized the only function key I ever consistently used was F5 for refreshing pages. Even the few I needed in my IDE for 3-4 button hotkeys are replaced with a single button that does what I want. The touch bar is great, and I really don't understand why people cling to function keys so much