8 ms·

The touch bar was fingers on glass. It's not appropriate for a professional device since it requires you to look down and doesn't lend itself to the "mechanical

The touch bar was fingers on glass. It's not appropriate for a professional device since it requires you to look down and doesn't lend itself to the "mechanical" use of devices that high-paced work requires. Also, you can actually add the analog inputs yourself. The DIY keyboard community -- which is flourishing with options and new vendors -- has lots of options available. I myself have two analog knobs and one trackpoint on my keyboard. It's absolutely amazing.

wyre 5y ago
What keyboard do you have with a trackball?
- Oddskar 5y ago
  Oops. Should have been "trackpoint" and not trackball. It's a pimoroni trackpoint breakout board.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  G80-11800 of course
- evan_ 5y ago
  The Ultimate Hacking Keyboard has trackball options: https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/ https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/
- twalla 5y ago
  https://tex.com.tw/collections/keyboard https://tex.com.tw/collections/keyboard
setr 5y ago
> It's not appropriate for a professional device since it requires you to look down and doesn't lend itself to the "mechanical" use of devices that high-paced work requires. Sure it could; it just has to beat the cost of the lookup. If you could have done some complex operation trivially with it, that couldn’t really be done with some keyboard shortcut, being a dynamic visual field would be fine. Of course, volume sliders don’t fit that bill, and I don’t think anyone really found something that did… but it’s not some fundamental guarantee that it would be useless.
compiler-guy 5y ago
If the analog add ons are DIY or even extra money, then software developers cannot rely on them being present and won't develop good software and use cases for it. At least not most of them. The best you can hope for is niche software support. So adding stuff yourself is nice (I do it myself!) but not a way to move the industry or even the Apple ecosystem forward.
- pdpi 5y ago
  Analogue input is pretty much a solved problem. Not only do we have standards for game controllers, but also MIDI control surfaces give you a wide variety of analogue physical controls. MIDI even comes with incredibly rich input automation. Sadly, the only company I'm aware of producing that sort of hardware for use outside the music industry seems to be Loupedeck.
  - compiler-guy 5y ago
    And yet a developer still can’t assume that the customer will have such analog input tools available.
- Oddskar 5y ago
  Niche software support? My keyboard and the analog addons works on Mac, Windows and Linux with excellent support since it runs QMK firmware.
  - compiler-guy 5y ago
    How well does this analog input work with, say, Photoshop?
karmelapple 5y ago
I was really hoping Apple had a big leap forward in fingers-on-glass interaction planned. Imagine if the glass could kind of raise or move down so you could “feel” where the buttons were. Heck, even providing a few notches in the chassis, above the Touch Bar, for a finger to “feel” relatives where it was, and require a harder “press” to activate the Touch Bar, would have been likely a game changer. But they didn’t. And I was always confused that the Touch Bar never got more love from the hardware developers. That definitely makes me wonder if it was pushed by Ive or someone at Apple as a pet project, but abandoned once the initial development was done. Seemed very Un-Apple to do something like that these days though. It also wasn’t easy to build software for the Touch Bar from what I could gather. I had lots of ideas for little tools (think iStat-like gauges, but perhaps for things like the mic input level), but it wasn’t very easy to build one when I tried. RIP Touch Bar. You might not be missed too much, but I bet something like you will come up again in a decade or two.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  > That definitely makes me wonder if it was pushed by Ive or someone at Apple as a pet project, but abandoned once the initial development was done. Seemed very Un-Apple to do something like that these days though. I think it was more like they decided to add the equivalent of an Apple Watch to Macs to support TouchID and then asked "what else can we do with it?".
- diskzero 5y ago
  > That definitely makes me wonder if it was pushed by Ive or someone at Apple as a pet project, but abandoned once the initial development was done. Seemed very Un-Apple to do something like that these days though. Yes. It wasn't Jony. It came from the software side. I won't name who to protect the guilty.
- JohnBooty 5y ago
  I was really hoping Apple had a big leap forward in fingers-on-glass interaction planned. Me too, but even if they solved that challenge -- I think there's an even bigger and insurmountable challenge there: a sizable percentage of users, particularly "power users", frequently use their Macbooks "docked" and hooked up to an external monitor and keyboard. While many people happily type on their laptops all day long with no external monitor or keyboard, there are also many people (me included) who think that's an absolute ergonomic disaster and greatly value the extra screen real estate of an external monitor. So, honestly, there's no way the Touch Bar could have been good enough for me to use it. The whole idea was just misguided. What Apple should have done IMO was allow an iPad or iPhone to fill that role. I still do not understand why my iPad can't be an amazing accessory to my Mac. With the right software magic and integration, it could be everything the Touch Bar was while simultaneously doing a lot more, and is of course extremely compatible with external keyboard use. Well, I can guess why, actually -- it would require a lot of coordination between the Mac and iDevice teams and that is challenging. (However I'm encouraged -- Sidecar is a good first step. Let's see more...)
threeseed 5y ago
> It's not appropriate for a professional device since it requires you to look down Apart from developers many professionals do look down all the time because they typically have other devices connected e.g. synths, photo/video editing rigs. And Touchbar was designed much more for that audience.
- diskzero 5y ago
  I can see how you might make that assumption based on how the Touchbar has exposed functionality, but this was not the goal of the Touchbar as it was sold internally. It was sold as one of the next great UI affordances. It came from some of the same people that brought us Mission Control, the Dock, Exposé, etc. I worked on a lot of these features and I never use them. Shame on me.
epistasis 5y ago
On a laptop, that "look down" means looking at the bottom pixels of the screen. The looking was never the problem, IMHO, the problem was execution and utility. It was actually distracting when there was adaptive completion results continually flashing. And the rest of the buttons were never great. If every single dialog box flashed the buttons, that would be a win as it is easier and faster to tap the touchbar than it is to navigate the cursor and then click. But this obvious use case never really materialized. And if, like most "professional" users, the laptop is operated via an external keyboard, the muscle memory never develops.
nsxwolf 5y ago
My touch bar almost always has "Display Connected: [Mirror Displays] [Extend Desktop]" on it. I can fiddle around and get it to show app-specific things, or hold Fn to see the F keys, but most of the time I'm using it it shows those useless multi-monitor buttons. I'm sure there's some setting somewhere that defaults to showing whatever the layout for the in-focus app is, but it's failed to make me care enough about it to try to figure it out.

wyre 5y ago

What keyboard do you have with a trackball?

Oddskar 5y ago
Oops. Should have been "trackpoint" and not trackball. It's a pimoroni trackpoint breakout board.
formerly_proven 5y ago
G80-11800 of course
evan_ 5y ago
The Ultimate Hacking Keyboard has trackball options: https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/ https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/
twalla 5y ago
https://tex.com.tw/collections/keyboard https://tex.com.tw/collections/keyboard

setr 5y ago

> It's not appropriate for a professional device since it requires you to look down and doesn't lend itself to the "mechanical" use of devices that high-paced work requires. Sure it could; it just has to beat the cost of the lookup. If you could have done some complex operation trivially with it, that couldn’t really be done with some keyboard shortcut, being a dynamic visual field would be fine. Of course, volume sliders don’t fit that bill, and I don’t think anyone really found something that did… but it’s not some fundamental guarantee that it would be useless.

compiler-guy 5y ago

If the analog add ons are DIY or even extra money, then software developers cannot rely on them being present and won't develop good software and use cases for it. At least not most of them. The best you can hope for is niche software support. So adding stuff yourself is nice (I do it myself!) but not a way to move the industry or even the Apple ecosystem forward.

pdpi 5y ago
Analogue input is pretty much a solved problem. Not only do we have standards for game controllers, but also MIDI control surfaces give you a wide variety of analogue physical controls. MIDI even comes with incredibly rich input automation. Sadly, the only company I'm aware of producing that sort of hardware for use outside the music industry seems to be Loupedeck.
- compiler-guy 5y ago
  And yet a developer still can’t assume that the customer will have such analog input tools available.
Oddskar 5y ago
Niche software support? My keyboard and the analog addons works on Mac, Windows and Linux with excellent support since it runs QMK firmware.
- compiler-guy 5y ago
  How well does this analog input work with, say, Photoshop?

karmelapple 5y ago

I was really hoping Apple had a big leap forward in fingers-on-glass interaction planned. Imagine if the glass could kind of raise or move down so you could “feel” where the buttons were. Heck, even providing a few notches in the chassis, above the Touch Bar, for a finger to “feel” relatives where it was, and require a harder “press” to activate the Touch Bar, would have been likely a game changer. But they didn’t. And I was always confused that the Touch Bar never got more love from the hardware developers. That definitely makes me wonder if it was pushed by Ive or someone at Apple as a pet project, but abandoned once the initial development was done. Seemed very Un-Apple to do something like that these days though. It also wasn’t easy to build software for the Touch Bar from what I could gather. I had lots of ideas for little tools (think iStat-like gauges, but perhaps for things like the mic input level), but it wasn’t very easy to build one when I tried. RIP Touch Bar. You might not be missed too much, but I bet something like you will come up again in a decade or two.

giantrobot 5y ago
> That definitely makes me wonder if it was pushed by Ive or someone at Apple as a pet project, but abandoned once the initial development was done. Seemed very Un-Apple to do something like that these days though. I think it was more like they decided to add the equivalent of an Apple Watch to Macs to support TouchID and then asked "what else can we do with it?".
diskzero 5y ago
> That definitely makes me wonder if it was pushed by Ive or someone at Apple as a pet project, but abandoned once the initial development was done. Seemed very Un-Apple to do something like that these days though. Yes. It wasn't Jony. It came from the software side. I won't name who to protect the guilty.
JohnBooty 5y ago
I was really hoping Apple had a big leap forward in fingers-on-glass interaction planned. Me too, but even if they solved that challenge -- I think there's an even bigger and insurmountable challenge there: a sizable percentage of users, particularly "power users", frequently use their Macbooks "docked" and hooked up to an external monitor and keyboard. While many people happily type on their laptops all day long with no external monitor or keyboard, there are also many people (me included) who think that's an absolute ergonomic disaster and greatly value the extra screen real estate of an external monitor. So, honestly, there's no way the Touch Bar could have been good enough for me to use it. The whole idea was just misguided. What Apple should have done IMO was allow an iPad or iPhone to fill that role. I still do not understand why my iPad can't be an amazing accessory to my Mac. With the right software magic and integration, it could be everything the Touch Bar was while simultaneously doing a lot more, and is of course extremely compatible with external keyboard use. Well, I can guess why, actually -- it would require a lot of coordination between the Mac and iDevice teams and that is challenging. (However I'm encouraged -- Sidecar is a good first step. Let's see more...)

threeseed 5y ago

> It's not appropriate for a professional device since it requires you to look down Apart from developers many professionals do look down all the time because they typically have other devices connected e.g. synths, photo/video editing rigs. And Touchbar was designed much more for that audience.

diskzero 5y ago
I can see how you might make that assumption based on how the Touchbar has exposed functionality, but this was not the goal of the Touchbar as it was sold internally. It was sold as one of the next great UI affordances. It came from some of the same people that brought us Mission Control, the Dock, Exposé, etc. I worked on a lot of these features and I never use them. Shame on me.

epistasis 5y ago

On a laptop, that "look down" means looking at the bottom pixels of the screen. The looking was never the problem, IMHO, the problem was execution and utility. It was actually distracting when there was adaptive completion results continually flashing. And the rest of the buttons were never great. If every single dialog box flashed the buttons, that would be a win as it is easier and faster to tap the touchbar than it is to navigate the cursor and then click. But this obvious use case never really materialized. And if, like most "professional" users, the laptop is operated via an external keyboard, the muscle memory never develops.

nsxwolf 5y ago

My touch bar almost always has "Display Connected: [Mirror Displays] [Extend Desktop]" on it. I can fiddle around and get it to show app-specific things, or hold Fn to see the F keys, but most of the time I'm using it it shows those useless multi-monitor buttons. I'm sure there's some setting somewhere that defaults to showing whatever the layout for the in-focus app is, but it's failed to make me care enough about it to try to figure it out.