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Bringing back the escape key is such a admission of their original screw up. I'm glad they admitted it and reversed the design decision. But I'm still on a 2012

Bringing back the escape key is such a admission of their original screw up. I'm glad they admitted it and reversed the design decision. But I'm still on a 2012 15" MacBook that's running strong. I normally would have updated but using my work 15" has been horrific between the dongles, the keyboard randomly dropping keys (last week "G" would not work, now it's back. The most infuriating thing about the touch bar, out of many things, is the fact that the Escape Key doesn't line up with the upper left, it's offset. So decades of muscle memory has to change by s quarter inch. What a pain in the ass. Yes I'm a vi user.

dkonofalski 6y ago
I'm still surprised that so many people are stuck on the Escape key but it's probably no surprise that the ones that are stuck are all developers using vi or emacs. I love the Touch Bar and had no problem adjusting/remapping and find the utility of the Touch Bar for video and audio editing to be invaluable now. I wasn't sold on it before but, over the last year or so, I'll be really disappointed if they remove it. Adding the escape key back seems like a good compromise for both parties, imho.
- TheRealPomax 6y ago
  Or, you know, literally any app where `esc` is the "cancel and exit this dialog" key. Which is every Adobe application, all DAWs, etc. etc.
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    I don't see how that's a negative. The Touch Bar still has an ESC segment that works exactly the same as the button and literally no one in any of the companies that I've worked with that's not a developer has ever had an issue with it while simultaneously finding the Touch Bar far more useful than unlabelled function keys.
    - samatman 6y ago
      I'm glad Apple disagrees with you and is no longer making computers which lack a physical escape key. I got used to it pretty quickly, and I've had press-Alt mapped to Esc for many years. It was always annoying, and the 16" with a physical Esc is much nicer. Now all Apple has to do is add some haptic feedback to the damnable thing and I'll actually like it.
      - dkonofalski 6y ago
        I don't think they do disagree with me. I'm not suggesting that the physical escape key isn't a better option for people. I'm just responding to the person that said the Touch Bar was broken because it didn't include a physical escape key. It's not broken. It works exactly the same, functionally, as the physical key so there's nothing you can do with the physical key that you can't do with the virtual key on the Touch Bar. The physical key is just better because it's tactile and now usable for all the devs that rely on it.
        samatman 6y ago
        I think Apple putting the physical escape key back indicates that they agree it was broken, relative to a virtual escape key. The only advantage to a virtual Esc is getting that piece of real estate if you don't happen to want one, and as has been pointed out elsewhere, Escape is an important affordance in macOS-land, even if you aren't a Vim user. The important report here is a process freezing both the UI and the touch bar, and therefore option-command-escape being unavailable to bring up force quit. That's obviously bad, and I would call it broken. Edge case but an important one! This is just a quibble about whether it's worse enough to deserve the moniker "broken", though. I'm not personally attached to that, just want to point out that it does in fact break an important action in the core vocabulary.
        dkonofalski 6y ago
        >I think Apple putting the physical escape key back indicates that they agree it was broken, relative to a virtual escape key. No it doesn't. All that it indicates is that there was a preference for it by part of their demographic. Again, developers are in the minority here. Most Macbook users don't care and it was an easy concession to make from Apple.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Actually, that behavior is baked into the OS.
    - TheRealPomax 6y ago
      That doesn't bear any relevance to application UI frameworks that don't build on top of the OS's UI framework.
- rozab 6y ago
  On the contrary, I'd say the ESC key is even more important to normal consumers than programmers compared to, say, the backtick key. I mostly use it for coming out of fullscreen for youtube, netflix etc and I'm sure most consumers don't even know what a backtick is.
  - dreamcompiler 6y ago
    You're probably right about the unpopularity of the backtick key, and it's too bad. I use cmd-` probably 1000 times every day. For me cmd-` and cmd-Tab completely obviate any need for Mission Control or any of the other 14 different mechanisms in MacOS that show you all your windows and let you click one with the mouse.
    - pier25 6y ago
      Same. CMD+Tab tells me everything I need to know. My dock auto hides and I only use it to open the downloads folder. Very rarely I can't find a window and I use a hot corner to show all windows of the space but it happens once a week at the most.
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    The physical key isn't what's important to consumers. The ability to back out and use the ESC function is and that's still there for everyone who has a Touch Bar machine.
- rooam-dev 6y ago
  I am still surprised that Apple doesn't give the option of non-touchbar. Why is that? A good compromise would be to have both options, imho.
  - milkytron 6y ago
    By limiting the customization, it reduces the complexity of supply chains and thus reduces cost.
    - mirkules 6y ago
      So where are the savings? Certainly not passed down to the customer. Plus, Apple is not known for hardware cost-savings as being a primary factor in their key decisions.
      - milkytron 6y ago
        > So where are the savings? Apple is a business and prices its products based on demand. If people are willing to pay a high price, you bet they're going to charge a high price. The savings from not having many hardware variations on a single model are simply accumulated into their bank account. And they might not cut costs when it comes to the hardware itself, but they are known for having a limited number of options and customizations when it comes to hardware.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    I suspect nobody uses that entire row, so if you're not going to do anything with it besides an escape key, you may as well throw in something interesting.
    - rooam-dev 6y ago
      If that's the case where are the external magic keyboards with touchbars?
      - deleted 6y ago
- arcticbull 6y ago
  I've used the touch bar for years, and frankly, it's provided me zero value whatsoever. The only thing I use it for is occasionally adjusting volume or brightness but of course I can no longer do that without looking down at what I'm manipulating. Third party apps have totally ignored it. The physical escape key is the second useful thing in the entire function row, but hey at least it's got two useful things now (an escape key and a touch ID/power button), so that's a 100% increase! I went so far as to build a physical escape key -- #couragekey -- a few years back (just as a joke, but it does work) https://twitter.com/martinmroz/status/995003391314083840 https://twitter.com/martinmroz/status/995003391314083840 I just put in my order! [edit] also the #couragekey was a really fun project to put together, I think I'll write it up to commemorate a real escape key coming back.
  - aweb 6y ago
    I was of the same opinion as you until I discovered Pock: it's a small tool that puts the dock (and optional controls) in the touchbar. This means I can get more screen real estate while keeping my dock accessible. Frankly I'm now pretty much onboard with the touchbar, except for the probably huge battery consumption.
    - gowld 6y ago
      Auto-Hide dock is easier to reach than touchbar.
      - pfranz 6y ago
        I realize a lot of people are big fans of hiding their dock. I find it annoying because there are too many moves instead of darting your eyes. When walking up to a random computer it's worse because I often find those people have moved the dock and I have to check each corner one at a time.
        melq 6y ago
        I've had the dock hidden for so long I've almost forgot it existed. I do all my app launching and switching with spotlight and keyboard shortcuts. But just recently I was having a hell of a time locating the trash folder in the filesystem or in a finder window, and thought they might have gotten rid of it or something. Then I remembered the good ol' dock icon. I wouldn't mind the dock being visible when I'm using my large external monitor, but it just takes up too much space on a 13/15inch screen imo.
- outworlder 6y ago
  > and find the utility of the Touch Bar for video and audio editing to be invaluable now. See, the problem is that I rarely use the laptop's own keyboard. Only in cases where I'm actually on the go. If I'm at the office or at home, I'll have an external keyboard (and monitor). While the laptop's own display remains useful, the keyboard becomes awkward to reach. The touchbar, even more so. Now, if Apple's external keyboard had a touch bar, now that would be useful.
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    At this point, I would definitely use an external keyboard or even just an external Touch Bar (unless Apple releases mechanical keyboards with a Touch Bar). I kinda rely on it for media editing/scrubbing.
- Hippocrates 6y ago
  I personally use Vi and so do others I hear from (as in HN) but other than that it would probably never come up as an issue. For the record, you can remap Caps lock to Esc which is as good, if not better than escape. I use this on my iPad and other keyboards as well (even with the esc key)
  - cpcallen 6y ago
    A bit tricky when I have Caps Lock remapped to Control, like any self-respecting emacs user!
    - kekumu 6y ago
      Do both! You can use karabiner elements to remap CAPS LOCK so that it’s ESCAPE when tapped and CONTROL when held.
    - blymphony 6y ago
      I also map my Caps Lock to Control, but don't forget that Ctrl + [ is the equivalent of Escape in vi/vim. It's a chord, but it ends up being much more convenient for me since the keys are both comfortably around the home row keys.
  - kentosi 6y ago
    I think one of the main points is that you shouldn't have to.
  - dkonofalski 6y ago
    I agree but, as I said initially, I only see this in the developer crowd. I just don't hear that type of criticism from any other segment in any of the companies I work with.
- anbop 6y ago
  The problem is most heavy computer users set themselves up with a proper ergonomic setup, i.e. external keyboard. And by not building the touch bar into external keyboards, they killed the entire concept of the Touch Bar, because any "pro" application has to assume that you may or may not have a touch bar and can't put essential functionality there. Which limits the Touch Bar to proper first-class support primarily in Apple first-party apps.
  - mamon 6y ago
    Touch bar is stupid idea because it is so narrow,and located in such place that it is hard to see it clearly due to the angle. If they really wanted to add touch capabilities to MacBook they should have put touch display in place of TouchPad, like Asus did: https://www.engadget.com/2018-06-05-asus-zenbook-pro-15-screenpad.html https://www.engadget.com/2018-06-05-asus-zenbook-pro-15-scre...
  - dividedbyzero 6y ago
    I guess the actual, underlying problem is, the Touchbar is bad UX for a bunch of software engineers, but pretty great for most everyone else. Think about it – you lose some keys you never really had a use for anyway except as media keys, and you get almost analogue-ish volume and brightness controls, apps can give you context-dependent options that are really discoverable (which F-keys totally aren't) and can adapt to your feature use patterns and be a lot richer than static bindings on 12 keys. As a musician, you get a neat little slider – no replacement for a proper external controller, but it's always there when needed, and it can change its behavior dependent on the context. As a photographer, you get a multi-function slider in post that feels (to me) a lot more precise than any touchpad acrobatics I'm capable of. Plus, and most importantly by a long way, it makes emoji really usable on MacOS, and emoji are super, super important stuff, it's hard to overstate their value. Text-based communication loses a lot of emotional cues, that's really hard to get used to if you're used to mostly in-person communication or at least voice, and in my experience keeps causing small (or not-so-small) misunderstandings and microdose vitriol even among people who have been doing this for ages and ages, been socialized in it, aren't too keen on lots of face-to-face, and detest emoji with a passion. Those are things that make the Touchbar a pretty neat feature for lots and lots of people, even given its many "legitimate" issues (it tends to micro-freeze for some people, it isn't as precise as it could be, lots of apps use it in not-well-thought-out ways, it's very hard to use blindly, ...) But not having F-keys is so disruptive to a lot of deeply-ingrained software development muscle memory and UI conventions transplanted from other OSes and other decades that I guess it just wouldn't fly with this crowd in pretty much any shape and form factor.
- danso 6y ago
  I haven't had an issue with the Touch Bar, but only because 95% of my usage is through a connected mechanical keyboard; the 5% of time that I do use my laptop's keyboard + Touch Bar, I definitely do not enjoy it. I can sort of understand the potential appeal of it, especially in terms of customization. But even though the Touch Bar is 3 years old, am I the only one who is reluctant to invest time in learning it (this includes learning how to fully customize and optimize it) because it seems like the kind of feature that may soon disappear into obsolescence? It doesn't help that it's the sort of hardware feature that is literally only applicable to 1 of 3 computers I currently use. But unlike other Apple-pioneered hardware features (multitouch trackpad, built-in Touch ID), Touch Bar seems very unlikely to eventually become a popular cross-platform feature.
- pfranz 6y ago
  I do use vi, but I think it's more important that ESC is used to non-destructively dismiss a dialog. Like exiting fullscreen mode, backing out, or dismissing a warning--but not exiting without saving.
- nl 6y ago
  I too love the touch bar. For example I love that apps written to use (eg VS.Code) now have labelled buttons rather than imposing on me to remember strange function buttons.
LASR 6y ago
In macOS Keyboard Settings Remap CapsLock -> Esc Changed my life.
- defilan 6y ago
  As a VIM guy myself, this was huge. I never felt like I was missing out having done this.
  - H1Supreme 6y ago
    I've only been using vim (well, neovim) for a few months, but I just assumed everyone mapped ESC to the caps lock key. Nearly every beginner tutorial recommended it, for good reason.
- Jonovono 6y ago
  Even better, hyper key: https://brettterpstra.com/2017/06/15/a-hyper-key-with-karabiner-elements-full-instructions/ https://brettterpstra.com/2017/06/15/a-hyper-key-with-karabi... (Functions as ESC if pressed alone, otherwise acts as hyper key which is great to use for keyboard shortcuts)
Jonovono 6y ago
I could care less about the ESC key being gone (remapped that to caps lock) but I hate the touchbar so much. Half the time i'm listening music and go to pause it the bar doesn't work, or tells me it's already paused even though music is playing.
- kevinmchugh 6y ago
  A year or two back chrome implemented media controls for tabs that have media on them. Before I realized (and disabled) that, I thought the media keys weren't working on my 2014 MBP. That could be happening to you?
- bitwize 6y ago
  The fact that you remapped Esc to Caps Lock and don't miss the latter just indicates the non-essentiality of Caps Lock. Guess which key Apple will remove next :)
  - skummetmaelk 6y ago
    They will put a tiny screen there to display ads for top selling apps.
narak 6y ago
Just breathed new life into my 2013 15" by replacing the thermal paste. Runs much cooler/quieter now.
tardo99 6y ago
I switched to using caps lock for esc and actually prefer it now.
- bad_user 6y ago
  So what do you do if you already had Caps Lock assigned to Ctrl?
  - Veen 6y ago
    CMD+. does the same as escape in most situations. Works on MacOS and iOS.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      The first thing I tried to do with it, pull a window out of fullscreen, did not work :/
gowld 6y ago
Apple just launched a $300 keyboard for iPad Pro, with no Esc key.
- obrajesse 6y ago
  ...which is perfectly reasonable for a device with an operating system with no legacy of needing one for day to day operations.
- shmoogy 6y ago
  I mapped it to caps lock, but my Blink already allowed that.
rock_artist 6y ago
As I’m working from home I’ve got back on using my MBA 2013. I’ve replaced its internal 256gb with 2TB. While I like the MBP 13” 2018 of me and it’s faster in compiling... I really enjoy it. It’s working well and most importantly when I connect usb devices I don’t need extra dongles.
120photo 6y ago
They tried something, failed, now they are changing course. That is a plus in my book. I have a 2016 15" MBP and I hate the keyboard. One of the worst laptops ever made by Apple. I hope next they bring back letting user upgrade components (like let me install my own RAM and SSD upgrades.)
- starbugs 6y ago
  Next press release may read as follows: "The new magic keyboard, not only with the new inverted T arrangement of arrow keys, but also with absolutely brand new physical function keys featuring all new haptic feedback experience."
  - bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
    More like their past press release; here's some text from their newish 16" MacBook Pro page (https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-16/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-16/): The 16-inch MacBook Pro takes workflow efficiency to a new level. The new Magic Keyboard features a refined scissor mechanism with 1 mm travel for a responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience. The Touch Bar puts powerful shortcuts front and center, and Touch ID provides fast authentication. A dedicated Escape key allows quick switching between modes and views. And the inverted-T arrow keys enable fluid navigation whether you’re flying through lines of code, navigating spreadsheets, or gaming.
  - TMWNN 6y ago
    If Apple had released computers with the touch bar above the existing physical function keys, everyone would love it and other companies would provide a similar feature, the same way that they have all converged on the same industrial design as what Apple pioneered 20 years ago. Instead, Jony Ive insisted on the touch bar replacing the function keys, and here we are. At least the butterfly switches are finally dead.
swang 6y ago
Everyone keeps talking about vi/emacs stuff. While that was annoying, the more annoying aspect was when macOS softlocked and I was unable to hit the chord (cmd+opt+esc) to get the kill task window because the touchbar froze as well. Having a virtual ESC key in software that can be frozen, where part of your keyboard chord to kill apps includes the ESC key is really, really, stupid and caused me lots of wasted time that could have been saved had there just been a hard ESC key.
- geoelectric 6y ago
  Mapping the Caps Lock key to Esc in the modifier remap interface is how I handled this situation (and others with essential ESC). Figured that probably wasn't coincidence that they added Esc to it when the new keyboard was introduced--was as much of a nod to mitigating a bad idea as we got. But yeah, it was stupid, especially given that software developers are a very visible market for them in the Bay Area. As soon as the 16" came out with an Esc, I ordered one at work and bought one at home so I guess they won, but it's another step towards getting me on a Linux or Windows PC a generation or two down the line.
  - bashinator 6y ago
    This didn't work for those of us who map Caps Lock to Control, like god intended. IIRC, it wasn't possible to map the left Control key to ESC for some reason.
    - geoelectric 6y ago
      I actually use Karabiner now to do Ctrl if held, Esc if tapped. It’s a little tougher to walk people through though: 1) install karabiner elements 2) select complex modifications 3) add rule 4) import more from internet 5) import change caps lock key v4 6) add rule change caps_lock to control if pressed with other keys, to escape if pressed alone ...is my actual current setup, along with a bunch of other key mapping. But I started with what I posted above, which everyone with Mojave+ on a MBP has available already.
dreamcompiler 6y ago
The "real" Escape key is essential. I'm using a new 16" MBP at work and it's quite nice, but without the real Escape key I'd probably be cursing the computer every day. I thought I'd hate the touchbar, but I actually thought it was cute -- for about an hour. Then I realized it was just a useless gimmick and reset it to "Expanded Control Strip" which is Apple's euphemism for "Make the touchbar look and act just like the old Mac function keys." I did add the "Do Not Disturb" key to the touchbar; it's nice to have one-button access to that function when I need to get work done without distractions.
- faizshah 6y ago
  The touchbar is for sure a gimmick, but I found some use for it in PyCharm. There’s a lot of commands you can run from the menubar in pycharm so its kinda useful to skip a complicated hotkey and just add it to the touchbar. Maybe in video editing programs theres some use?
  - torgian 6y ago
    I imagine it might be more useful for content creation than others. Then again, maybe not. I was forced to remove several buttons from the touch bar, because when I go to type numbers I will occasionally brush the bar with my fingertips, interrupting my workflow as something random suddenly pops up. I hate the Touch Bar.
    - kmonsen 6y ago
      I got my first touchbar enabled MacBook this month after holding out as long as I could and I find I accidentally hit it all the time when browsing the web.
- samatman 6y ago
  The last time this came up on HN (that I read) someone recommended Pock, so I'll pass on that recommendation. https://pock.dev https://pock.dev This takes the touchbar from 'annoying' to 'ok this is kind of useful actually', for me at least. I spend a lot of time on a keyboard + trackball combo, but keep my laptop propped a bit for TouchID, zooming, and one or two other useful idioms. I've been hiding the Dock for a solid decade, and it's a more useful default than, say, the illegible window snapshots Safari insists on offering over the obvious choice of favicon + a few letters of the title. It's baffling to me that none of Chrome, Firefox, nor Safari, offer that interface for the touchbar on Mac.
godelski 6y ago
As a fellow vim user, I don't get the esc key problem. <C-[> is the same thing and a lot less movement. Esc is too far away where as <C-[> is already where my hands naturally lie and similar to other patterns I use (<C-x><C-p>, <C-x><C-l>, etc). I seriously do not understand the whole obsession with the esc key. If you have to lift your wrists you're doing it wrong.
- jlg23 6y ago
  One might be using a keyboard layout in which some special characters are cumbersome to type. I am switching between 3 layouts regularly and "[" and "|" are only fun on QWERTY, on AZERTY or QWERTZ they are painful.
  - godelski 6y ago
    That would be painful. But I hear these comments from a lot of Americans. QWERTY is also pretty common in Europe in general, so I don't think the frequency of the comments (aligned with the quality of English) lines up.
theturtletalks 6y ago
I have the same laptop. It was the first Retina model Apple released in 2012 and it held up great for a long time. Last year, it started to have random kernel panics. Seems that was a factory defect and Apple used to fix it for free, but now it's "vintage" so they won't do it anymore. I can't believe it has a HDMI port and a SD card slot. Don't think those are ever coming back to Macbooks.
mekster 6y ago
Why would you use Esc that puts your fingers away from your home position? Use CTRL-C or map something like "jj".
rzwitserloot 6y ago
Built into MacOS itself is the ability to do something many vi and emacs users do regardless of the presence of a touchbar: Remap caps lock (a useless key anyway) to escape. This is in System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys > pick 'Escape' from the dropdown next to 'Caps lock key'. If you wanna get fancy you can rewire right-ctrl or whatnot to esc too if you like that. There are also 3rd party utilities like [Karabiner](https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/ https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/) which is undoubtedly the front runner for mac remappers (And public domain to boot). It's very scriptable; for example, if you want, you can set it up such that a longer press on caps lock really is caps lock (making use of the led for visual feedback that you engaged caps lock), but a short tap is escape. This does mean the ESC cannot register until you release. If only there was some software to make this keyboard not sound like a slap fight between 2 otters...
ravedave5 6y ago
MY 6 month old mac is loosing the ink off the letters, at this point I can barely read "A". My 2015 model they keyboard is still in perfect shape. ALSO one of the things I hate about this new keyboard is its SUPER noisy on voice calls.
h0l0cube 6y ago
> Yes I'm a vi user. Have you tried using crtl-[? As a side benefit, it's less of a stretch on the little finger, and it ought to work across most vi setups.
dirkt 6y ago
I remapped the key on the upper left, where ESC should be, to ESC. Well, it's now to the left of the number row, but I've used keyboards where it was in that place. So muscle memory works fine for that. The keys that are there (caret and circle) get some other place, which works fine for me, because I am used to having those somewhere else in the first place.
geniium 6y ago
As soon as the escape key has been removed, I had to do a big switch. Use the caps lock key as escape key. Happy since then! The only hassle is to go set it up in the keyboard prefs.
grungydan 6y ago
I was initially waiting for this new 13", because I was finally needing a MacBook. I got tired of waiting and, as these things usually happened, bought an upgraded and battery-replaced 2015 13" MBP a week ago with 16GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD for a grand. Do you know what that RAM and storage space costs on the new 13" model? More than double that. I'm pretty okay with my decision.
- manigandham 6y ago
  The 2015 13' MBP's are still the best balance of form and function. You made a great choice.

dkonofalski 6y ago

I'm still surprised that so many people are stuck on the Escape key but it's probably no surprise that the ones that are stuck are all developers using vi or emacs. I love the Touch Bar and had no problem adjusting/remapping and find the utility of the Touch Bar for video and audio editing to be invaluable now. I wasn't sold on it before but, over the last year or so, I'll be really disappointed if they remove it. Adding the escape key back seems like a good compromise for both parties, imho.

TheRealPomax 6y ago
Or, you know, literally any app where `esc` is the "cancel and exit this dialog" key. Which is every Adobe application, all DAWs, etc. etc.
- dkonofalski 6y ago
  I don't see how that's a negative. The Touch Bar still has an ESC segment that works exactly the same as the button and literally no one in any of the companies that I've worked with that's not a developer has ever had an issue with it while simultaneously finding the Touch Bar far more useful than unlabelled function keys.
  - samatman 6y ago
    I'm glad Apple disagrees with you and is no longer making computers which lack a physical escape key. I got used to it pretty quickly, and I've had press-Alt mapped to Esc for many years. It was always annoying, and the 16" with a physical Esc is much nicer. Now all Apple has to do is add some haptic feedback to the damnable thing and I'll actually like it.
    - dkonofalski 6y ago
      I don't think they do disagree with me. I'm not suggesting that the physical escape key isn't a better option for people. I'm just responding to the person that said the Touch Bar was broken because it didn't include a physical escape key. It's not broken. It works exactly the same, functionally, as the physical key so there's nothing you can do with the physical key that you can't do with the virtual key on the Touch Bar. The physical key is just better because it's tactile and now usable for all the devs that rely on it.
      - samatman 6y ago
        I think Apple putting the physical escape key back indicates that they agree it was broken, relative to a virtual escape key. The only advantage to a virtual Esc is getting that piece of real estate if you don't happen to want one, and as has been pointed out elsewhere, Escape is an important affordance in macOS-land, even if you aren't a Vim user. The important report here is a process freezing both the UI and the touch bar, and therefore option-command-escape being unavailable to bring up force quit. That's obviously bad, and I would call it broken. Edge case but an important one! This is just a quibble about whether it's worse enough to deserve the moniker "broken", though. I'm not personally attached to that, just want to point out that it does in fact break an important action in the core vocabulary.
        dkonofalski 6y ago
        >I think Apple putting the physical escape key back indicates that they agree it was broken, relative to a virtual escape key. No it doesn't. All that it indicates is that there was a preference for it by part of their demographic. Again, developers are in the minority here. Most Macbook users don't care and it was an easy concession to make from Apple.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Actually, that behavior is baked into the OS.
  - TheRealPomax 6y ago
    That doesn't bear any relevance to application UI frameworks that don't build on top of the OS's UI framework.
rozab 6y ago
On the contrary, I'd say the ESC key is even more important to normal consumers than programmers compared to, say, the backtick key. I mostly use it for coming out of fullscreen for youtube, netflix etc and I'm sure most consumers don't even know what a backtick is.
- dreamcompiler 6y ago
  You're probably right about the unpopularity of the backtick key, and it's too bad. I use cmd-` probably 1000 times every day. For me cmd-` and cmd-Tab completely obviate any need for Mission Control or any of the other 14 different mechanisms in MacOS that show you all your windows and let you click one with the mouse.
  - pier25 6y ago
    Same. CMD+Tab tells me everything I need to know. My dock auto hides and I only use it to open the downloads folder. Very rarely I can't find a window and I use a hot corner to show all windows of the space but it happens once a week at the most.
- dkonofalski 6y ago
  The physical key isn't what's important to consumers. The ability to back out and use the ESC function is and that's still there for everyone who has a Touch Bar machine.
rooam-dev 6y ago
I am still surprised that Apple doesn't give the option of non-touchbar. Why is that? A good compromise would be to have both options, imho.
- milkytron 6y ago
  By limiting the customization, it reduces the complexity of supply chains and thus reduces cost.
  - mirkules 6y ago
    So where are the savings? Certainly not passed down to the customer. Plus, Apple is not known for hardware cost-savings as being a primary factor in their key decisions.
    - milkytron 6y ago
      > So where are the savings? Apple is a business and prices its products based on demand. If people are willing to pay a high price, you bet they're going to charge a high price. The savings from not having many hardware variations on a single model are simply accumulated into their bank account. And they might not cut costs when it comes to the hardware itself, but they are known for having a limited number of options and customizations when it comes to hardware.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  I suspect nobody uses that entire row, so if you're not going to do anything with it besides an escape key, you may as well throw in something interesting.
  - rooam-dev 6y ago
    If that's the case where are the external magic keyboards with touchbars?
    - deleted 6y ago
arcticbull 6y ago
I've used the touch bar for years, and frankly, it's provided me zero value whatsoever. The only thing I use it for is occasionally adjusting volume or brightness but of course I can no longer do that without looking down at what I'm manipulating. Third party apps have totally ignored it. The physical escape key is the second useful thing in the entire function row, but hey at least it's got two useful things now (an escape key and a touch ID/power button), so that's a 100% increase! I went so far as to build a physical escape key -- #couragekey -- a few years back (just as a joke, but it does work) https://twitter.com/martinmroz/status/995003391314083840 https://twitter.com/martinmroz/status/995003391314083840 I just put in my order! [edit] also the #couragekey was a really fun project to put together, I think I'll write it up to commemorate a real escape key coming back.
- aweb 6y ago
  I was of the same opinion as you until I discovered Pock: it's a small tool that puts the dock (and optional controls) in the touchbar. This means I can get more screen real estate while keeping my dock accessible. Frankly I'm now pretty much onboard with the touchbar, except for the probably huge battery consumption.
  - gowld 6y ago
    Auto-Hide dock is easier to reach than touchbar.
    - pfranz 6y ago
      I realize a lot of people are big fans of hiding their dock. I find it annoying because there are too many moves instead of darting your eyes. When walking up to a random computer it's worse because I often find those people have moved the dock and I have to check each corner one at a time.
      - melq 6y ago
        I've had the dock hidden for so long I've almost forgot it existed. I do all my app launching and switching with spotlight and keyboard shortcuts. But just recently I was having a hell of a time locating the trash folder in the filesystem or in a finder window, and thought they might have gotten rid of it or something. Then I remembered the good ol' dock icon. I wouldn't mind the dock being visible when I'm using my large external monitor, but it just takes up too much space on a 13/15inch screen imo.
outworlder 6y ago
> and find the utility of the Touch Bar for video and audio editing to be invaluable now. See, the problem is that I rarely use the laptop's own keyboard. Only in cases where I'm actually on the go. If I'm at the office or at home, I'll have an external keyboard (and monitor). While the laptop's own display remains useful, the keyboard becomes awkward to reach. The touchbar, even more so. Now, if Apple's external keyboard had a touch bar, now that would be useful.
- dkonofalski 6y ago
  At this point, I would definitely use an external keyboard or even just an external Touch Bar (unless Apple releases mechanical keyboards with a Touch Bar). I kinda rely on it for media editing/scrubbing.
Hippocrates 6y ago
I personally use Vi and so do others I hear from (as in HN) but other than that it would probably never come up as an issue. For the record, you can remap Caps lock to Esc which is as good, if not better than escape. I use this on my iPad and other keyboards as well (even with the esc key)
- cpcallen 6y ago
  A bit tricky when I have Caps Lock remapped to Control, like any self-respecting emacs user!
  - kekumu 6y ago
    Do both! You can use karabiner elements to remap CAPS LOCK so that it’s ESCAPE when tapped and CONTROL when held.
  - blymphony 6y ago
    I also map my Caps Lock to Control, but don't forget that Ctrl + [ is the equivalent of Escape in vi/vim. It's a chord, but it ends up being much more convenient for me since the keys are both comfortably around the home row keys.
- kentosi 6y ago
  I think one of the main points is that you shouldn't have to.
- dkonofalski 6y ago
  I agree but, as I said initially, I only see this in the developer crowd. I just don't hear that type of criticism from any other segment in any of the companies I work with.
anbop 6y ago
The problem is most heavy computer users set themselves up with a proper ergonomic setup, i.e. external keyboard. And by not building the touch bar into external keyboards, they killed the entire concept of the Touch Bar, because any "pro" application has to assume that you may or may not have a touch bar and can't put essential functionality there. Which limits the Touch Bar to proper first-class support primarily in Apple first-party apps.
- mamon 6y ago
  Touch bar is stupid idea because it is so narrow,and located in such place that it is hard to see it clearly due to the angle. If they really wanted to add touch capabilities to MacBook they should have put touch display in place of TouchPad, like Asus did: https://www.engadget.com/2018-06-05-asus-zenbook-pro-15-screenpad.html https://www.engadget.com/2018-06-05-asus-zenbook-pro-15-scre...
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  I guess the actual, underlying problem is, the Touchbar is bad UX for a bunch of software engineers, but pretty great for most everyone else. Think about it – you lose some keys you never really had a use for anyway except as media keys, and you get almost analogue-ish volume and brightness controls, apps can give you context-dependent options that are really discoverable (which F-keys totally aren't) and can adapt to your feature use patterns and be a lot richer than static bindings on 12 keys. As a musician, you get a neat little slider – no replacement for a proper external controller, but it's always there when needed, and it can change its behavior dependent on the context. As a photographer, you get a multi-function slider in post that feels (to me) a lot more precise than any touchpad acrobatics I'm capable of. Plus, and most importantly by a long way, it makes emoji really usable on MacOS, and emoji are super, super important stuff, it's hard to overstate their value. Text-based communication loses a lot of emotional cues, that's really hard to get used to if you're used to mostly in-person communication or at least voice, and in my experience keeps causing small (or not-so-small) misunderstandings and microdose vitriol even among people who have been doing this for ages and ages, been socialized in it, aren't too keen on lots of face-to-face, and detest emoji with a passion. Those are things that make the Touchbar a pretty neat feature for lots and lots of people, even given its many "legitimate" issues (it tends to micro-freeze for some people, it isn't as precise as it could be, lots of apps use it in not-well-thought-out ways, it's very hard to use blindly, ...) But not having F-keys is so disruptive to a lot of deeply-ingrained software development muscle memory and UI conventions transplanted from other OSes and other decades that I guess it just wouldn't fly with this crowd in pretty much any shape and form factor.
danso 6y ago
I haven't had an issue with the Touch Bar, but only because 95% of my usage is through a connected mechanical keyboard; the 5% of time that I do use my laptop's keyboard + Touch Bar, I definitely do not enjoy it. I can sort of understand the potential appeal of it, especially in terms of customization. But even though the Touch Bar is 3 years old, am I the only one who is reluctant to invest time in learning it (this includes learning how to fully customize and optimize it) because it seems like the kind of feature that may soon disappear into obsolescence? It doesn't help that it's the sort of hardware feature that is literally only applicable to 1 of 3 computers I currently use. But unlike other Apple-pioneered hardware features (multitouch trackpad, built-in Touch ID), Touch Bar seems very unlikely to eventually become a popular cross-platform feature.
pfranz 6y ago
I do use vi, but I think it's more important that ESC is used to non-destructively dismiss a dialog. Like exiting fullscreen mode, backing out, or dismissing a warning--but not exiting without saving.
nl 6y ago
I too love the touch bar. For example I love that apps written to use (eg VS.Code) now have labelled buttons rather than imposing on me to remember strange function buttons.

LASR 6y ago

In macOS Keyboard Settings Remap CapsLock -> Esc Changed my life.

defilan 6y ago
As a VIM guy myself, this was huge. I never felt like I was missing out having done this.
- H1Supreme 6y ago
  I've only been using vim (well, neovim) for a few months, but I just assumed everyone mapped ESC to the caps lock key. Nearly every beginner tutorial recommended it, for good reason.
Jonovono 6y ago
Even better, hyper key: https://brettterpstra.com/2017/06/15/a-hyper-key-with-karabiner-elements-full-instructions/ https://brettterpstra.com/2017/06/15/a-hyper-key-with-karabi... (Functions as ESC if pressed alone, otherwise acts as hyper key which is great to use for keyboard shortcuts)

Jonovono 6y ago

I could care less about the ESC key being gone (remapped that to caps lock) but I hate the touchbar so much. Half the time i'm listening music and go to pause it the bar doesn't work, or tells me it's already paused even though music is playing.

kevinmchugh 6y ago
A year or two back chrome implemented media controls for tabs that have media on them. Before I realized (and disabled) that, I thought the media keys weren't working on my 2014 MBP. That could be happening to you?
bitwize 6y ago
The fact that you remapped Esc to Caps Lock and don't miss the latter just indicates the non-essentiality of Caps Lock. Guess which key Apple will remove next :)
- skummetmaelk 6y ago
  They will put a tiny screen there to display ads for top selling apps.

narak 6y ago

Just breathed new life into my 2013 15" by replacing the thermal paste. Runs much cooler/quieter now.

tardo99 6y ago

I switched to using caps lock for esc and actually prefer it now.

bad_user 6y ago
So what do you do if you already had Caps Lock assigned to Ctrl?
- Veen 6y ago
  CMD+. does the same as escape in most situations. Works on MacOS and iOS.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    The first thing I tried to do with it, pull a window out of fullscreen, did not work :/

gowld 6y ago

Apple just launched a $300 keyboard for iPad Pro, with no Esc key.

obrajesse 6y ago
...which is perfectly reasonable for a device with an operating system with no legacy of needing one for day to day operations.
shmoogy 6y ago
I mapped it to caps lock, but my Blink already allowed that.

rock_artist 6y ago

As I’m working from home I’ve got back on using my MBA 2013. I’ve replaced its internal 256gb with 2TB. While I like the MBP 13” 2018 of me and it’s faster in compiling... I really enjoy it. It’s working well and most importantly when I connect usb devices I don’t need extra dongles.

120photo 6y ago

They tried something, failed, now they are changing course. That is a plus in my book. I have a 2016 15" MBP and I hate the keyboard. One of the worst laptops ever made by Apple. I hope next they bring back letting user upgrade components (like let me install my own RAM and SSD upgrades.)

starbugs 6y ago
Next press release may read as follows: "The new magic keyboard, not only with the new inverted T arrangement of arrow keys, but also with absolutely brand new physical function keys featuring all new haptic feedback experience."
- bobbylarrybobby 6y ago
  More like their past press release; here's some text from their newish 16" MacBook Pro page (https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-16/ https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-16/): The 16-inch MacBook Pro takes workflow efficiency to a new level. The new Magic Keyboard features a refined scissor mechanism with 1 mm travel for a responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience. The Touch Bar puts powerful shortcuts front and center, and Touch ID provides fast authentication. A dedicated Escape key allows quick switching between modes and views. And the inverted-T arrow keys enable fluid navigation whether you’re flying through lines of code, navigating spreadsheets, or gaming.
- TMWNN 6y ago
  If Apple had released computers with the touch bar above the existing physical function keys, everyone would love it and other companies would provide a similar feature, the same way that they have all converged on the same industrial design as what Apple pioneered 20 years ago. Instead, Jony Ive insisted on the touch bar replacing the function keys, and here we are. At least the butterfly switches are finally dead.

swang 6y ago

Everyone keeps talking about vi/emacs stuff. While that was annoying, the more annoying aspect was when macOS softlocked and I was unable to hit the chord (cmd+opt+esc) to get the kill task window because the touchbar froze as well. Having a virtual ESC key in software that can be frozen, where part of your keyboard chord to kill apps includes the ESC key is really, really, stupid and caused me lots of wasted time that could have been saved had there just been a hard ESC key.

geoelectric 6y ago
Mapping the Caps Lock key to Esc in the modifier remap interface is how I handled this situation (and others with essential ESC). Figured that probably wasn't coincidence that they added Esc to it when the new keyboard was introduced--was as much of a nod to mitigating a bad idea as we got. But yeah, it was stupid, especially given that software developers are a very visible market for them in the Bay Area. As soon as the 16" came out with an Esc, I ordered one at work and bought one at home so I guess they won, but it's another step towards getting me on a Linux or Windows PC a generation or two down the line.
- bashinator 6y ago
  This didn't work for those of us who map Caps Lock to Control, like god intended. IIRC, it wasn't possible to map the left Control key to ESC for some reason.
  - geoelectric 6y ago
    I actually use Karabiner now to do Ctrl if held, Esc if tapped. It’s a little tougher to walk people through though: 1) install karabiner elements 2) select complex modifications 3) add rule 4) import more from internet 5) import change caps lock key v4 6) add rule change caps_lock to control if pressed with other keys, to escape if pressed alone ...is my actual current setup, along with a bunch of other key mapping. But I started with what I posted above, which everyone with Mojave+ on a MBP has available already.

dreamcompiler 6y ago

The "real" Escape key is essential. I'm using a new 16" MBP at work and it's quite nice, but without the real Escape key I'd probably be cursing the computer every day. I thought I'd hate the touchbar, but I actually thought it was cute -- for about an hour. Then I realized it was just a useless gimmick and reset it to "Expanded Control Strip" which is Apple's euphemism for "Make the touchbar look and act just like the old Mac function keys." I did add the "Do Not Disturb" key to the touchbar; it's nice to have one-button access to that function when I need to get work done without distractions.

faizshah 6y ago
The touchbar is for sure a gimmick, but I found some use for it in PyCharm. There’s a lot of commands you can run from the menubar in pycharm so its kinda useful to skip a complicated hotkey and just add it to the touchbar. Maybe in video editing programs theres some use?
- torgian 6y ago
  I imagine it might be more useful for content creation than others. Then again, maybe not. I was forced to remove several buttons from the touch bar, because when I go to type numbers I will occasionally brush the bar with my fingertips, interrupting my workflow as something random suddenly pops up. I hate the Touch Bar.
  - kmonsen 6y ago
    I got my first touchbar enabled MacBook this month after holding out as long as I could and I find I accidentally hit it all the time when browsing the web.
samatman 6y ago
The last time this came up on HN (that I read) someone recommended Pock, so I'll pass on that recommendation. https://pock.dev https://pock.dev This takes the touchbar from 'annoying' to 'ok this is kind of useful actually', for me at least. I spend a lot of time on a keyboard + trackball combo, but keep my laptop propped a bit for TouchID, zooming, and one or two other useful idioms. I've been hiding the Dock for a solid decade, and it's a more useful default than, say, the illegible window snapshots Safari insists on offering over the obvious choice of favicon + a few letters of the title. It's baffling to me that none of Chrome, Firefox, nor Safari, offer that interface for the touchbar on Mac.

godelski 6y ago

As a fellow vim user, I don't get the esc key problem. <C-[> is the same thing and a lot less movement. Esc is too far away where as <C-[> is already where my hands naturally lie and similar to other patterns I use (<C-x><C-p>, <C-x><C-l>, etc). I seriously do not understand the whole obsession with the esc key. If you have to lift your wrists you're doing it wrong.

jlg23 6y ago
One might be using a keyboard layout in which some special characters are cumbersome to type. I am switching between 3 layouts regularly and "[" and "|" are only fun on QWERTY, on AZERTY or QWERTZ they are painful.
- godelski 6y ago
  That would be painful. But I hear these comments from a lot of Americans. QWERTY is also pretty common in Europe in general, so I don't think the frequency of the comments (aligned with the quality of English) lines up.

theturtletalks 6y ago

I have the same laptop. It was the first Retina model Apple released in 2012 and it held up great for a long time. Last year, it started to have random kernel panics. Seems that was a factory defect and Apple used to fix it for free, but now it's "vintage" so they won't do it anymore. I can't believe it has a HDMI port and a SD card slot. Don't think those are ever coming back to Macbooks.

mekster 6y ago

Why would you use Esc that puts your fingers away from your home position? Use CTRL-C or map something like "jj".

rzwitserloot 6y ago

Built into MacOS itself is the ability to do something many vi and emacs users do regardless of the presence of a touchbar: Remap caps lock (a useless key anyway) to escape. This is in System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys > pick 'Escape' from the dropdown next to 'Caps lock key'. If you wanna get fancy you can rewire right-ctrl or whatnot to esc too if you like that. There are also 3rd party utilities like [Karabiner](https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/ https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/) which is undoubtedly the front runner for mac remappers (And public domain to boot). It's very scriptable; for example, if you want, you can set it up such that a longer press on caps lock really is caps lock (making use of the led for visual feedback that you engaged caps lock), but a short tap is escape. This does mean the ESC cannot register until you release. If only there was some software to make this keyboard not sound like a slap fight between 2 otters...

ravedave5 6y ago

MY 6 month old mac is loosing the ink off the letters, at this point I can barely read "A". My 2015 model they keyboard is still in perfect shape. ALSO one of the things I hate about this new keyboard is its SUPER noisy on voice calls.

h0l0cube 6y ago

> Yes I'm a vi user. Have you tried using crtl-[? As a side benefit, it's less of a stretch on the little finger, and it ought to work across most vi setups.

dirkt 6y ago

I remapped the key on the upper left, where ESC should be, to ESC. Well, it's now to the left of the number row, but I've used keyboards where it was in that place. So muscle memory works fine for that. The keys that are there (caret and circle) get some other place, which works fine for me, because I am used to having those somewhere else in the first place.

geniium 6y ago

As soon as the escape key has been removed, I had to do a big switch. Use the caps lock key as escape key. Happy since then! The only hassle is to go set it up in the keyboard prefs.

grungydan 6y ago

I was initially waiting for this new 13", because I was finally needing a MacBook. I got tired of waiting and, as these things usually happened, bought an upgraded and battery-replaced 2015 13" MBP a week ago with 16GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD for a grand. Do you know what that RAM and storage space costs on the new 13" model? More than double that. I'm pretty okay with my decision.

manigandham 6y ago
The 2015 13' MBP's are still the best balance of form and function. You made a great choice.