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I am a vim user for many years who loves the Touch Bar now that I have my escape key back. I like adjusting brightness and volume with a slider. You can tap an

I am a vim user for many years who loves the Touch Bar now that I have my escape key back. I like adjusting brightness and volume with a slider. You can tap and hold the brightness or volume icon on the touch bar and slide it to where you want. Repeatedly tapping physical buttons feels vulgar by comparison. I like seeing the progress and having transport controls of my full screen videos. I like having the little animation draw my attention when I can use touchid for something. In general it feels futuristic, fun, and like a way better use of the space than physical keys that I would almost never use. If you’re someone who uses the function keys (JetBrains users maybe?) I can see feeling the same way I did about esc. To me, using function keys is un-apple-ish. I have command, control, and option keys that allow me to be quite expressive without moving my hands away from the home area of the board. Perhaps those with larger hands can reach the function keys without disrupting their positioning. For me it is not possible. At that point I may as well reach for a mouse or a touchpad.

haswell 6y ago
This response is fascinating to me, primarily because my personal preference is almost completely the opposite. One thing that strikes me though: of the things you mentioned that you like about the touchbar, many of them don't necessarily need to live in that area of the keyboard. I should also clarify one thing: I do like that the touchbar can visualize things in context (and I find the things you mentioned cool), but I wouldn't choose that over the physical keys. For me, the perfect middle ground would be a bar above the function row that doesn't try to be both things. Or perhaps somewhere else entirely (to the right or left of the trackpad?) > Perhaps those with larger hands can reach the function keys without disrupting their positioning. For me it is not possible. This could be part of the issue as well. I can reach without issue, but I can understand why this doesn't work for everyone.
- canthonytucci 6y ago
  Both would be nice, or an option (heaven forbid!) I am surprised Apple even tried to get us all to like the Touch Bar after how much people disliked the "Adaptive keyboard"* on 2nd gen x1 carbons. I definitely resented mine. * https://arstechnica.com/staff/2014/01/stop-trying-to-innovate-keyboards-youre-just-making-them-worse/ https://arstechnica.com/staff/2014/01/stop-trying-to-innovat...
newscracker 6y ago
> To me, using function keys is un-apple-ish. To add to this point, I don’t recall using the function keys for anything other than adjusting brightness or volume or similar functions that aren’t associated with application specific features. > I have command, control, and option keys that allow me to be quite expressive without moving my hands away from the home area of the board. This is true, with the Command and Option keys providing many choices of keyboard actions if one learns about them. But in general, macOS is not as keyboard friendly as Windows (or Linux), where many things have keyboard access by default across applications. But this is digressing from the function keys and Touch Bar points.

haswell 6y ago

This response is fascinating to me, primarily because my personal preference is almost completely the opposite. One thing that strikes me though: of the things you mentioned that you like about the touchbar, many of them don't necessarily need to live in that area of the keyboard. I should also clarify one thing: I do like that the touchbar can visualize things in context (and I find the things you mentioned cool), but I wouldn't choose that over the physical keys. For me, the perfect middle ground would be a bar above the function row that doesn't try to be both things. Or perhaps somewhere else entirely (to the right or left of the trackpad?) > Perhaps those with larger hands can reach the function keys without disrupting their positioning. For me it is not possible. This could be part of the issue as well. I can reach without issue, but I can understand why this doesn't work for everyone.

canthonytucci 6y ago
Both would be nice, or an option (heaven forbid!) I am surprised Apple even tried to get us all to like the Touch Bar after how much people disliked the "Adaptive keyboard"* on 2nd gen x1 carbons. I definitely resented mine. * https://arstechnica.com/staff/2014/01/stop-trying-to-innovate-keyboards-youre-just-making-them-worse/ https://arstechnica.com/staff/2014/01/stop-trying-to-innovat...

newscracker 6y ago

> To me, using function keys is un-apple-ish. To add to this point, I don’t recall using the function keys for anything other than adjusting brightness or volume or similar functions that aren’t associated with application specific features. > I have command, control, and option keys that allow me to be quite expressive without moving my hands away from the home area of the board. This is true, with the Command and Option keys providing many choices of keyboard actions if one learns about them. But in general, macOS is not as keyboard friendly as Windows (or Linux), where many things have keyboard access by default across applications. But this is digressing from the function keys and Touch Bar points.