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> My personal feeling is that the people who dislike the Touch Bar heard the bad things about it, tried it for a time and two, decided that it's not something g

> My personal feeling is that the people who dislike the Touch Bar heard the bad things about it, tried it for a time and two, decided that it's not something good, and spreading the word. Well then your personal feeling is really an untested assumption masquerading as a feeling. I'm a long-time developer, and more recently, a designer of interfaces and graphics. Aside from my 20 years of muscle memory with vim, the primary reason I hate the Touch Bar is the same reason I hate touch screens in cars: if I have to look away from where I'm supposed to be looking because my controls provide no physical feedback, then that's a design failure. If you're going to provide this as an unobtrusive addition to the current features, then super... but they replaced standard functionality with something that was worse in many ways, and kinda neat in other, much less important ways. Much like when they suddenly replaced Google Maps on iPhones with Apple Maps before Google had their iOS app ready. Apple Maps had a much-touted gimmicky 3d flyover feature, but the users lost street view, transit, and bicycle directions and the directions themselves were significantly worse. Sure, it looked cool and the flyover feature was really neat... but who gives a damn if you're losing core functionality. Within months of having my first MacBook Pro, I could turn the volume up and down and mute the audio without looking. Same with the screen brightness... I can't do that anymore. Not only that, but the interface for changing the volume— a core system function— changes depending on the current application's context, making me have to hunt for it. Maybe you don't run up against that, but it's inexcusably poor design. In addition, the Touch Bar isn't big enough to be useful for any serious professional use in media editing apps, which seems to be what it was originally designed for. I can't use it to easily scrub through video clips with any precision, or large amounts of pictures, or anything like that. Sure, it might be a nice-to-have for a less intensive user, but it's certainly not a PROfessional tool for my MacBook PRO. On top of that, it's totally useless for accessibility, it's easy to accidentally touch and do something unintended, and makes simple tap-n-times motions into awkward tap, wait, drag motions. All set. Throw it away. Give me my buttons back.

pcr910303 6y ago
> Well then your personal feeling is really an untested assumption masquerading as a feeling. I felt this 'tried it for a time and too, decided that it's not something good, and spreading the word' from your comment. Maybe it's not, but the content doesn't really suggest you've used the Touch Bar more than a few times. > Within months of having my first MacBook Pro, I could turn the volume up and down and mute the audio without looking. Same with the screen brightness... I can't do that anymore. Not only that, but the interface for changing the volume— a core system function— changes depending on the current application's context, making me have to hunt for it. Maybe you don't run up against that, but it's inexcusably poor design. I can, my friends that use the MBP can, and even friends that don't have an MBP but occasionally use mine also don't need to look to control the volumes or brightness. I can't buy that argument. Also, in it's default state the buttons are always displayed in the same place - I can't understand about your argument about context-sensitive core system functions, as that's the reason why the control strip is there in the right. (And usually apps that use the Touch Bar strikes the right balance on context sensitivity - you can expect the same functionality on the same place if you're using the same app, or doing the same action, like text editing.) > In addition, the Touch Bar isn't big enough to be useful for any serious professional use in media editing apps, which seems to be what it was originally designed for. > it's certainly not a PROfessional tool for my MacBook PRO. It's big enough to provide shortcuts that allow professionals to be more productive in apps that the user thoroughly knows in-and-out. That's it's purpose, and media professionals as well as programmers can use it very usefully. > it's totally useless for accessibility, Why? > it's easy to accidentally touch and do something unintended, I've personally found that's not the case, but well I'm seeing others that also feel like this so... > and makes simple tap-n-times motions into awkward tap, wait, drag motions. I can't find any example where that's the case - I've never seen an Touch Bar action that need a tap-wait-drag. It's usually drag on the button or just a tap, or two successive taps if you're doing something relatively complex like setting the color of selected text or something.

pcr910303 6y ago

> Well then your personal feeling is really an untested assumption masquerading as a feeling. I felt this 'tried it for a time and too, decided that it's not something good, and spreading the word' from your comment. Maybe it's not, but the content doesn't really suggest you've used the Touch Bar more than a few times. > Within months of having my first MacBook Pro, I could turn the volume up and down and mute the audio without looking. Same with the screen brightness... I can't do that anymore. Not only that, but the interface for changing the volume— a core system function— changes depending on the current application's context, making me have to hunt for it. Maybe you don't run up against that, but it's inexcusably poor design. I can, my friends that use the MBP can, and even friends that don't have an MBP but occasionally use mine also don't need to look to control the volumes or brightness. I can't buy that argument. Also, in it's default state the buttons are always displayed in the same place - I can't understand about your argument about context-sensitive core system functions, as that's the reason why the control strip is there in the right. (And usually apps that use the Touch Bar strikes the right balance on context sensitivity - you can expect the same functionality on the same place if you're using the same app, or doing the same action, like text editing.) > In addition, the Touch Bar isn't big enough to be useful for any serious professional use in media editing apps, which seems to be what it was originally designed for. > it's certainly not a PROfessional tool for my MacBook PRO. It's big enough to provide shortcuts that allow professionals to be more productive in apps that the user thoroughly knows in-and-out. That's it's purpose, and media professionals as well as programmers can use it very usefully. > it's totally useless for accessibility, Why? > it's easy to accidentally touch and do something unintended, I've personally found that's not the case, but well I'm seeing others that also feel like this so... > and makes simple tap-n-times motions into awkward tap, wait, drag motions. I can't find any example where that's the case - I've never seen an Touch Bar action that need a tap-wait-drag. It's usually drag on the button or just a tap, or two successive taps if you're doing something relatively complex like setting the color of selected text or something.