"I would buy a dell xps but only if it had a touchbar"
things no one ever said.
A couple of years later and I'm a convert. If I had to buy a new MBP today I would definitely make sure it has a touchbar. It turns out app makers have found some nifty uses for it, like the ability to quickly mute/unmute when in conference calls, quickly changing volume/brightness, stepping through code while debugging etc etc. These are seemingly insignificant quality of life improvements, but I definitely miss them when on a machine without a touchbar. Conversely I haven't missed the Fn-keys, not even once.
That hardware esc key looks tasty though, I hope they bring that to the 13" model.
I think what the touchbar brings is always active tutorial/reminder as to what's possible with the touchbar. Due to it's very nature you don't have to be taught what's on there, you can see, you then don't have to remember/rely on building up muscle memory.
I imagine it sucks for accessibility. I'd still want one before my faculties faulter, I imagine I'd get some use out of it with my IDE.
It does also provide some useful feedback as it can display things, too.
Making scrubbers for audio/video (more) physical is nice, since scrubbing video with a mouse usually requires that you first move the mouse to wherever the video player puts its scrubber, and scrubbing with the keyboard usually requires multi-key combos and always has the “wrong” granularity. (It’s also helpful in that you can now combine this scrubbing in a gesture with mouse movement, e.g. picking up a clip from your library in iMovie, scrubbing through the timeline to scroll it to the right position, and then moving the mouse over to the timeline and dropping it. That’s basically an impossible gesture with mouse-movements alone; you’re left to hover the clip over the scroll-edge of the timeline and wait for it to accelerate its scrolling [and then usually overshoot].)
Come to think of it, Sublime Text and other IDEs with a minimap could display it (rotated to horizontal) on the touch-bar, and let you scrub on it, too. Do they?
Essentially a partial fusion of the two things would be physical keys with screens on top for dynamical renaming. but that would have its own problems.
So for me, the Touch Bar makes these contextual commands discoverable, and that’s worth more than the tactility of physical keys. Doesn’t matter if I can touch without looking, if I don’t know what the keys do. Besides, after a couple of years with the Touch Bar I feel like muscle memory seems to work about the same anyway, I never have to look for the mute button in Zoom for instance, I know where it is.
Thanks for challenging my comment, prompting me to (hopefully) clarify!
If the external keyboard had a TouchBar and I would start incorporating it into my workflow I can see it's use-fullness.
Which is honestly interesting; it seems almost like they’re suggesting that this could grow into a larger feature, where Sidecar is really a kind of “Remote Touch Bar.app”, and you could add larger Touch Bar controls to your app that are only visible through Sidecar. (So you could have OS-level support for e.g. DAWs to display their VSTs onto your iPad for direct manipulation, without needing their own iPad OS app.)
———
I should note, as an aside, that Sidecar lets you keyboard on the Mac host through an iPad’s attached keyboard-case, but doesn’t really treat finger-gestures done on the iPad screen in the Sidecar app as being equivalent to mouse touchpad gestures on the host.
I’m wondering if that’s a conscious design choice, and whether someone at Apple is thinking that the “new HCI paradigm” for desktops will involve still having an external Bluetooth trackpad, but no external Bluetooth keyboard, with that role instead being served by an iPad with a keyboard-case attached to it.
That’d kind of fit—it enables all five(!) interaction methodologies Apple currently has: mouse gestures, keyboard commands, touch inputs, pencil inputs, and touch-bar controls.
But, importantly, it does so while entirely avoiding “gorilla arm” (unlike the huge Microsoft Surface Studio), because your touch surface is small and on the table in front of you, rather than “being” the display. (For most Sidecar iPad gestures, even with a full-sized iPad Pro, you never really have to lift your arm off the table.)
In Apple’s envisioned desktop paradigm, touch is seemingly an input method that you get from a separate input device—one that happens to have a screen—rather than touch being just a “way to do” mousing.
I usually put my laptop in front of me with an external screen above it. That way I get used to the laptop keyboard and can feel right at home in a conference room or wherever.
Maybe I've just had a limited, poor experience with it, but from the apps I've used these functions are only available on the touchbar when the app is focused... which has the controls anyway.
I was using Skype for Business and it had the audio controls in the touch bar, and also on the screen about 1.5" inches above the touchbar. I wanted to mute and unmute when I had the app in the background, but I couldn't. Useless.
Most apps don't use it very well though - I actually quite dislike Safari's overcomplicated tab buttons - I can't make out anything so it's basically useless, and I use cmd left arrow to go back not the touchbar button.
I would love to have a hardware escape key. But despite the shitty butterfly keyboard issues I'm currently going through I want to keep this Macbook as long as possible.
Well, these have physical buttons pre-touchbar, so the touchbar is definitely slower since it requires two clicks (one to summon the slider) and you have to look at it instead of just feeling it.
Learn keyboard shortcuts, and no one needs a touch bar.
I can find out, sure, but my experience tells me I won’t, so for me the Touch bar is a win, simply from a discoverability standpoint.
But in all fairness, the F-keys on a mac never really worked like function keys, they've always been more of a row of OSX-keys. I can understand why Apple felt a need to innovate that space, but I am not impressed.
It's a solution looking for a problem. It's garbage.
i never type with capslock on, and find using it for escape helps my vim workflow
(Edit: In case anyone else is wondering the same things, the main answers seem to be (1) on manual typewriters, both the shift and capslock needed to physically lift the entire carriage, and so required more force and was for some users a two-finger operation; and (2) all the buttons on the sides of the letters simply fill space to the edges, if we shorten the capslock, we'd need to put something else there or we'd move the A.)
It is not working well: the very limited travel on the keys is not giving my fingers the feedback that I actually hit the "esc" key (capslock). It introduces errors.
I'd probably have to live with this laptop for a while though. I don't think the startup I work for is going to buy a new MBP for me anytime soon.
Being able to go to 32 GB will be nice though. Up until this 2019 MBP, I had seriously looked into switching back to a Linux laptop.
I'm so glad this model has a Touch Bar.
I have seen numerous people who have a MBP 2016 or later which just can't use computers without the Touch Bar experience.
If somebody doesn't find it useful, that's OK, but please, there are a lot of people (who doesn't loudly complain at HN) that finds the Touch Bar useful & incorporates it in one's workflow.
I for myself uses my Touch Bar extensively, from when I'm using Emacs (with a bit of scripting & BTT), Terminal.app, Safari, MS Office Suite, and on and on and on.
I really won't care if Apple would release a MBP without one, but I'm worried Apple will remove the (IMO very useful) concept altogether just because of the loud complainers on the net (like the butterfly mechanism).
Something that seems to satisfy users _and_ is less costly seems to be a no-brainer business decision.
The touchbar is a flawed design concept imho. The entire reason I touch type is so that I don't have to look down from my screen. My eyes remain on the screen for 99% of the time I am working. It's jarring and discontinuous for me to have to look down to use the touchbar. That's why I personally never liked it. I think the tactile feedback of a real physical button is essential.
I think Apple realizes this already to some extent because they went and added a physical escape key.
I think this sentiment holds true for function keys in general. I the vast majority of people never used them.
Absolutely, and Apple put function keys in that category. Yeah, maybe you touch-type those keys way up there at the top, but I'd bet a paycheck that the vast majority of MacBook users will look down before hitting a function key. I've touched typed since I learned on manual typewriters, and I still can't reliably hit the one I want blindly.
Doesn't matter anyway, as soon as I Cmd-Tab to annother app, the key functions all change anyway. But those handy "Fx" labels stay exactly the same despite the function change. But since it's always been this way, it is therefore a superior design and should not be changed.
Yeah, and I believe that the fn-keys are the exact symptom. I haven't encountered anyone that uses fn-keys to it's full potential (or at least, more than the Touch Bar can provide).
> The touchbar is a flawed design concept imho. The entire reason I touch type is so that I don't have to look down from my screen.
For simple actions, gaining muscle-memory on Touch Bar virtual buttons are possible. (I myself don't look the Touch Bar when performing simple & repetitive actions like open new Tab, or when pressing the escape key.)
> It's jarring and discontinuous for me to have to look down to use the touchbar.
Well, isn't it something like saying that it's discontinuous to move my hands from the keyboard to the trackpad to operate some GUI app? It's a glance away, and mostly the Touch Bar's actions are predictable & you know when you use it (for example, editing the formatting of some text in the MS Office Suite, or opening the emoji selector, or selecting autocomplete, etc...).
> That's why I personally never liked it.
Yeah, the feature has a variety of tastes. I think I can understand why some people just don't like it, but...
> I think the tactile feedback of a real physical button is essential.
I personally use HapticKey[0] for that.
I used Better Touch Tool[1] to add the buttons that execute the scripts.
Wait, that might not work for me -- I use emacs in a terminal.
about butterfly switches... garbage
Hmm, I think I've never used my ESC key when using Emacs, I bind Ctrl to Caps-Lock and call it a day.
BTW, I also frequently (~3-4 times a day) use vim, and I never found it hard to edit with the Touch Bar Esc key. I can find the Esc location without looking, I'm pretty sure anyone can do that. It's just simple: just press the most left part. The non-display part left on the esc button display also works as the esc key, so no problem with that.
(Yes, and that's why I believe that people who hate the Touch Bar b.c. of the no Esc key have never used the MBP. It's really a non-issue.)
Slightly confused emacs user.
The first got a full replacement of mainboard, keyboard and battery after short circuiting.
The second came with a broken hinge cover out of the box and there still seems to be a driver problem I haven't figured out (random lags up to 5 seconds or so but usually less multiple times a week if not multiple times a day).
Just my experience though. Have good experience with Latitude though, so this is not to say you should avoid Dell entirely.
I have heard the XPS 15s tend to have more "issues."
I don't know about the battery but the hinge was certainly a problem with the line in general, since it was a flimsy plastic thing unable to hold the weight of the 4k screen it came with...I'd be a bit surprised if that hasn't been fixed in the around 2.5 years since I bought it though.
I saw companies repeating the same mistake times and times again. I'd call it a "Mercedes disease." Mercedes 600 series used to be a supercar of the time, but the moment Mercedes management saw that Americans are OK with it being a regular consumer level car, they made Mercedes the reputation it has in US now "expensive and disposable."
S classe is still a luxury car, but under the skin there is nothing really special about it, and it could've easily sold for half the price if not for Mercedes logo on it. Most of clientele for S600 are the people who are just fine with paying extra $50k for the badge, and there are a whack a lot of them in the US.
I'd say the overoptimisation and product management are the issue. Quoting myself:
> See, a first reduction from ~64Wh to 62Wh might've not been even visible and been a valid "product management" decision, and not impacted the sales.
> A second cut from 62 to 56 might've only deterred few power users, and could also be validated from the same standpoint, if evaluated without knowledge of the context.
> But the third cut from 56 to 52 will blow up, despite the rest of the product getting the biggest year on year improvement ever.
A decision to cut the battery a tiny little bit to save some pennies might've made sense business-wise every single time, but it did cut deep into the positive image of the product.
Lack of touchbar is not one of those good reasons.
Intellij, Outlook and Apple's own programs integrate it very well.
Phyisical keys are great but 12 buttons labelled F1 to F12 with different functions depending on the program also isn't he pinnacle of UX.
>Phyisical keys are great but 12 buttons labelled F1 to F12 with different functions depending on the program also isn't he pinnacle of UX
x1000. Function keys have almost always been useless to me. Once in a while I will remember what one is mapped to and use it, but for the most part they go unused.
Pretty much everyone I know and every workplace I've seen has proper monitors and keyboards for everyone (developers included). A laptop has terrible ergonomics. That makes the touchbar a bit pointless, except when working on a train or plane, or at a meeting or conference.
(For what it's worth, I have one external monitor at work and run my MBP closed, with an external keyboard -- up until last week a Matias "Laptop Pro" mechanical, but ironically, the Matias developed a seriously malfunctioning key before the butterfly keyboard did. Currently I'm using a "full-sized" Magic keyboard there.)
I have a computer room / office as well that's a really nice setup, but I prefer sitting in the recliner.
On previous MBPs you still had to touch the fn key to use F1 etc... I do the same on my newer Mac. Press FN and you get what you need back.
Personally I don’t see why they get all the hate. It’s a little gimmicky but I don’t dislike it. The keyboard was my biggest gripe but Apple replaced it for free in a couple days.
It's just a showstopper for a lot of us that it's another screen you have to look at. I don't want my eyes to leave the main screen. It's like if they tried to turn the trackpad into a screen: no matter how much functionality it might have, it's still somewhere I don't want to have to look when I'm using a computer.
I also was amazed at how unused it was. You probably named the only apps that use the touchbar because nothing on her computer did. And if they did, it was just cloned UI of UI that the main screen already had. I think the only useful usecase I've noticed is that the touchbar will show the url of the current video when you fullscreen it, if I want to damn it with faint praise.
For personal use I use it on my lap in a chair or on the couch. The extra time it takes to look down is not a show stopper. Switching tabs is nice in Safari because you get a slight preview and it’s also great for media controls.
Do you work on your MPB and do you use external monitors? What apps do you use the function keys for?
If you think it’s unused then take a look at these 3rd party apps.[1] Pock looks pretty cool.
[1] https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/best-touch-bar-apps-...
If I wanted a super-sexy fn experience, I'd have function keys with leds for changeable icons, and a bigger touchbar above it for app-specific bling.
And I'd drop the size of the touchpad. That thing is too big, the retina one was more than adequate.
And there's no option to get legacy ports, but it's Apple, ports are a religious jihad not a customer convenience.\.
things every pro user said, since the invention of laptops, for every brand.
Yes it's a little gimmicky, main feature being that you can swap between customized buttons and ad-hoc sliders when adjusting things. But still nice that they didn't throw everything aboard and manage to compromise between reintroducing ESC and keeping innovation.
Rather then getting hung up on hating, learn to like it. Pretty useful if you give it a chance.
