4 ms·

How do you mean? More than the usual start stop step-in step-over? With physical keys you can “home” your finger and press without drifting or looking down at t

How do you mean? More than the usual start stop step-in step-over? With physical keys you can “home” your finger and press without drifting or looking down at the bar, and I find that much easier. About the only thing I’ve found useful is when plugging in a projector and getting the “mirror or extend” buttons directly rather than having to remember which symbol it is. Every other case it’s felt inferior and gotten in the way (like display/sound/volume access in an app that uses it)

saagarjha 6y ago
I've found it really useful to be able to stop an app without doing anything that would require it loosing focus. Without this I need to do run something like sleep 10; kill -STOP `pgrep app` in the terminal and then scramble to get the app in the state I want.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Do you know about Cmd+Alt+Esc?
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    I mean, I know that you can force quit apps from it…
  - rswail 6y ago
    No but thank you, I do know :) I know UXs are supposed to be discoverable these days, but FFS, do I just press random combinations of meta keys to find out what they do?
    - jeffhuys 6y ago
      If you click on the apple logo top-left, you'll see "Force quit apps" with the relevant shortcut next to it.
pcr910303 6y ago
> With physical keys you can “home” your finger and press without drifting or looking down at the bar, and I find that much easier. You can also develop muscle memory with the Touch Bar as I've mentioned in my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786774
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  Can you consistently activate things on it without looking and also know for sure whether or not you activated it? Is there some kind of force feedback?
  - pcr910303 6y ago
    Well, I do use an app called HapticKey which provides haptic feedback, but yes I was able to consistently activate things on it without looking even before I started using the app. Most actions I used provided direct feedback on the screen (e.g. deleting, opening a tab, opening an info window, etc...) so feedback was less an issue.

saagarjha 6y ago

I've found it really useful to be able to stop an app without doing anything that would require it loosing focus. Without this I need to do run something like sleep 10; kill -STOP `pgrep app` in the terminal and then scramble to get the app in the state I want.

forgotmypw17 6y ago
Do you know about Cmd+Alt+Esc?
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I mean, I know that you can force quit apps from it…
- rswail 6y ago
  No but thank you, I do know :) I know UXs are supposed to be discoverable these days, but FFS, do I just press random combinations of meta keys to find out what they do?
  - jeffhuys 6y ago
    If you click on the apple logo top-left, you'll see "Force quit apps" with the relevant shortcut next to it.

pcr910303 6y ago

> With physical keys you can “home” your finger and press without drifting or looking down at the bar, and I find that much easier. You can also develop muscle memory with the Touch Bar as I've mentioned in my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786774

forgotmypw17 6y ago
Can you consistently activate things on it without looking and also know for sure whether or not you activated it? Is there some kind of force feedback?
- pcr910303 6y ago
  Well, I do use an app called HapticKey which provides haptic feedback, but yes I was able to consistently activate things on it without looking even before I started using the app. Most actions I used provided direct feedback on the screen (e.g. deleting, opening a tab, opening an info window, etc...) so feedback was less an issue.