4 ms·

It seems I fall in the minority but I've become quite fond of the touchbar. Its a dynamic user input, if my phone rings I can touch answer on my touchbar to pic

It seems I fall in the minority but I've become quite fond of the touchbar. Its a dynamic user input, if my phone rings I can touch answer on my touchbar to pick it up, if I want to seek or scroll on a spotify song I can do that with a touch and slide. I don't see the dislike for it.

sgt 5y ago
That's the only thing I use the touch bar for (I have a 2018 MBP); to hit the red button after a FaceTime call.
elboru 5y ago
Touch feedback is important for a lot of us. Specially when I’m concentrated while debugging something, I don’t want to have to look at my keyboard. But I see value for other use cases, maybe having both the touchbar plus the F keys would have worked fine?
TeMPOraL 5y ago
IIRC the dislike was mostly driven by the touchbar substituting for physical F keys. If they somehow managed to have both, I suspect people would be happy.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  They would have been happy and probably continued to never use the touch bar. I find it pretty cool and interesting to look at but I have basically never used it because everything it does can be done via the mouse which I am already using for other task so I never felt it was useful to switch to pressing the touch bar.
mostlysimilar 5y ago
I already have a dynamic interface to control: the one on the display. Having the "keyboard" change throws off my intuition on where to place my fingers and how to interact. Looking down at the touchbar each time to assess what the current interface is adds a tiny amount of additional overhead to my interactions that I dislike. It's not _terrible_, but it's not my preference. I also really dislike the lack of tactile feedback.
papito 5y ago
Once you start using it for autocomplete in a text field, the touch bar is pretty cool. You also can glance at it during a zoom meeting to see if you are muted. RIP.
handrous 5y ago
> I don't see the dislike for it. 1) You can't really make it part of your muscle-memory workflow if you use an external keyboard more than a very small percentage of the time, rendering it nearly useless for lots of people, right out of the gate. 2) Some of us discovered we barely brush the Touch Bar (F-key) area while typing certain keys (numbers, for me, which means also all the symbols that are on the number keys). This meant we had to all-but disable the damn thing to keep it from opening iTunes and doing other crap, apparently "at random" but actually because our fingers were straying 0.01mm onto the Touch Bar without our realizing it. Result, a fair percentage of users had to force like 3/4 of the bar to be empty all the time, or else face constant irritation when using the built-in keyboard.
- ziml77 5y ago
  I'm able to tolerate #1, but #2 definitely makes it suck for me. Haptics and requiring some pressure would have made the touchbar much easier to not hate.
  - handrous 5y ago
    Right, I'm not necessarily anti-touchbar as an idea (though I also wouldn't pay any amount of money to gain even some hypothetical good version of it) and wasn't that bothered by losing the F-keys, but as implemented it was harmful for me, not even neutral, so I lost my F-keys and all I gained in return was an extra step to set up a new MacBook (set Touch Bar to one static mode rather than context-sensitive, then replace most of it with "spacer" elements).
- christkv 5y ago
  This of this. Made me strip the touchbar of all the icons I could on the left side.
- timeon 5y ago
  1) we are talking about MBP - it is just under the screen you will always see them. 2) I get it but comparing to desktop keyboard F-keys are dead without Fn-key so unlike Touch Bar mbp f-keys are not on par with desktop keyboard.
wintermutestwin 5y ago
I love my touchbar. Until it freezes. Then I am whining that I want F keys back.
matwood 5y ago
I was indifferent to the Touch Bar, but Apple needed to release an external keyboard with it if they really wanted it to catch on. I just never took the time to figure out good use cases since I could only use them when using the laptop keyboard.
- fouc 5y ago
  That makes total sense actually, I'm surprised they never released an external keyboard with a Touch Bar
  - Tsiklon 5y ago
    I think an external keyboard with the Touch Bar would have been incredibly expensive. The one that ships on the laptops was wired into the T1/T2 chips and ran a custom version of iOS. Effectively an interface to a second built in computer
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  I can dream. Mechanical keyboard with carefully implemented Touch Bar and Touch ID. Sign me up and take my money. But Apple seems to only want to make external keyboards that use laptop keys.
dang 5y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29015869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29015869 (there's nothing wrong with it, I'm just pruning the thread, which got too top-heavy on the page.)

sgt 5y ago

That's the only thing I use the touch bar for (I have a 2018 MBP); to hit the red button after a FaceTime call.

elboru 5y ago

Touch feedback is important for a lot of us. Specially when I’m concentrated while debugging something, I don’t want to have to look at my keyboard. But I see value for other use cases, maybe having both the touchbar plus the F keys would have worked fine?

TeMPOraL 5y ago

IIRC the dislike was mostly driven by the touchbar substituting for physical F keys. If they somehow managed to have both, I suspect people would be happy.

Gigachad 5y ago
They would have been happy and probably continued to never use the touch bar. I find it pretty cool and interesting to look at but I have basically never used it because everything it does can be done via the mouse which I am already using for other task so I never felt it was useful to switch to pressing the touch bar.

mostlysimilar 5y ago

I already have a dynamic interface to control: the one on the display. Having the "keyboard" change throws off my intuition on where to place my fingers and how to interact. Looking down at the touchbar each time to assess what the current interface is adds a tiny amount of additional overhead to my interactions that I dislike. It's not _terrible_, but it's not my preference. I also really dislike the lack of tactile feedback.

papito 5y ago

Once you start using it for autocomplete in a text field, the touch bar is pretty cool. You also can glance at it during a zoom meeting to see if you are muted. RIP.

handrous 5y ago

> I don't see the dislike for it. 1) You can't really make it part of your muscle-memory workflow if you use an external keyboard more than a very small percentage of the time, rendering it nearly useless for lots of people, right out of the gate. 2) Some of us discovered we barely brush the Touch Bar (F-key) area while typing certain keys (numbers, for me, which means also all the symbols that are on the number keys). This meant we had to all-but disable the damn thing to keep it from opening iTunes and doing other crap, apparently "at random" but actually because our fingers were straying 0.01mm onto the Touch Bar without our realizing it. Result, a fair percentage of users had to force like 3/4 of the bar to be empty all the time, or else face constant irritation when using the built-in keyboard.

ziml77 5y ago
I'm able to tolerate #1, but #2 definitely makes it suck for me. Haptics and requiring some pressure would have made the touchbar much easier to not hate.
- handrous 5y ago
  Right, I'm not necessarily anti-touchbar as an idea (though I also wouldn't pay any amount of money to gain even some hypothetical good version of it) and wasn't that bothered by losing the F-keys, but as implemented it was harmful for me, not even neutral, so I lost my F-keys and all I gained in return was an extra step to set up a new MacBook (set Touch Bar to one static mode rather than context-sensitive, then replace most of it with "spacer" elements).
christkv 5y ago
This of this. Made me strip the touchbar of all the icons I could on the left side.
timeon 5y ago
1) we are talking about MBP - it is just under the screen you will always see them. 2) I get it but comparing to desktop keyboard F-keys are dead without Fn-key so unlike Touch Bar mbp f-keys are not on par with desktop keyboard.

wintermutestwin 5y ago

I love my touchbar. Until it freezes. Then I am whining that I want F keys back.

matwood 5y ago

I was indifferent to the Touch Bar, but Apple needed to release an external keyboard with it if they really wanted it to catch on. I just never took the time to figure out good use cases since I could only use them when using the laptop keyboard.

fouc 5y ago
That makes total sense actually, I'm surprised they never released an external keyboard with a Touch Bar
- Tsiklon 5y ago
  I think an external keyboard with the Touch Bar would have been incredibly expensive. The one that ships on the laptops was wired into the T1/T2 chips and ran a custom version of iOS. Effectively an interface to a second built in computer
rootusrootus 5y ago
I can dream. Mechanical keyboard with carefully implemented Touch Bar and Touch ID. Sign me up and take my money. But Apple seems to only want to make external keyboards that use laptop keys.

dang 5y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29015869 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29015869 (there's nothing wrong with it, I'm just pruning the thread, which got too top-heavy on the page.)