I'm happy to see the escape button is still there,and you can bring back the function buttons by pressing the "function" button on the physical keyboard.
The entire function row still exists including the Escape Key. The Touch Bar is customizable, and I would imagine we will see a "global ESC" application pretty quick.
It's because they wanted to keep the same distance from the touchid on the right side. So in order to keep it nicely aligned they put it there (only assuming here).
I would guess the margin on the left is still in the touch area for esc. If you've used the split keyboard on an iPad, they went as far as to include invisible key duplicates for the keys at the edges. The ones on the border are actually usable on either the left or right half.
An app to display it in vim would be enough. But add another $9.99 app for the delete (forward) key, after all those years (it's fn backspace now). An example of market creation by the removal of features.
Even my Samsung tablet has a default keyboard with both backspace and delete.
The fact that the function keys aren't "customizable" is a feature, not a bug. The contextualization being touted as a selling point of the Touch Bar means that instead of relying on muscle memory to push a key that is always going to be in the same place, I will now have to look away from the screen to make sure I'm doing the right thing.
Do you frequently use applications which, on the fly, change what their keyboard shortcuts are? Like, copy is Cmd+C right now, but five minutes from now, in the same application, it will suddenly be Option-P instead? And Fn-Q ten minutes after that?
If not, why do you assume that an application won't consistently present its contextual touch buttons in the same locations each time it presents them? Because the only case in which you couldn't develop muscle memory for those buttons is one in which they are not in the same location each time the application presents them.
(and if your retort will be that you use different applications which will make different choices for their contextual buttons, well, they probably already used different keyboard shortcuts for application-specific tasks, and you developed muscle memory for those, so...)
In typical Apple fashion, there's a dongle for that.
Sarcasm aside, I wonder how well this will work if you use Boot Camp. Does the TouchBar revert to a normal function bar when OS isn't in control of it? Let's say I don't use VMware, and I want to boot into Linux or Windows, what happens to the TouchBar? Installing Linux or non-OS X operating system could be made more difficult without function keys. And yes, VIM and other modal editors are going to be less fun with the loss of tactile ESC.
I'm hoping the TouchBar will have some failsafe firmware mode that allows normal use of Func keys when OS doesn't have control over it.
The worst possible case in my mind is buying a small, tiny external keyboard (dongle) with just the Func keys if Boot Camp doesn't have a good solution.
On a german keyboard layout that's somewhere between hardly typeable (requires 3 keys) on Mac and impossible on other OSes (Ctrl+AltGr == AltGr == No Ctrl)
You can remap the capslock key to escape. Or do what I do, have capslock be ctrl when combined with a non modifier key, and escape otherwise. I enter normal mode with my pinky.
On my laptop, I already use Karabiner to make Caps Lock function as Control if used as a modifier key, and ESC if just tapped. Much easier to reach, works for both Emacs and Vim keybindings, only issue is that sometimes you hit ESC by accident if you start doing a chord but then decide against it. I personally think this is a better solution than a soft key for escape, but it may not be to everyone's taste.
Ah, that's disappointing. Another reason to be glad I haven't upgraded yet, I guess.
Also, wow, I'm glad I don't maintain any popular open source projects on GitHub: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner/issues/660. I can't believe the number of people who think "+1", "me too", and "donated" messages are at all helpful.
Also, looks like Karabiner Elements exists as a rewrite for Sierra. https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements Haven't yet checked if it supports the same dual behavior, though.
I think the touch bar is gimmicky, but I have to give Apple credit for bucking the trend of hiding UI and making functionality more rather than less visible to users. The trend in the mobile OSs has been to hide more and more functions being hamburger menus (Android), toolbars that only pop up when you tap them (Apple Maps), cryptic flat icons, etc. It's totally undiscoverable. This is the opposite: context-sensitive commands that show up and let the user know what he or she can do.
Don't forget the 2014 X1 Carbon had a similar touch strip design that they reverted due to user backlash.
It appears that the new MBP has a similar keyboard to the MacBook, if you're an Emacs user, you deserve a better keyboard.
I'm typing on a 2014 X1 Carbon now. Its touch-sensitive function row really is a disappointment. The inherent flaws in the design concept have all been elaborated in these discussions, but the X1C also had a poor implementation that Apple could easily improve on. For example, it takes almost a whole second to change modes, there's often a delay when tapping an icon, and sometimes taps just don't register.
It is surprising to see that they would add something like the touch bar. It's not like they're freeing up the UI space, since all of that same functionality will still need to be there for all of their other macbooks, or any pro user using an external keyboard / trackpad.
Sigh. Looks like there is a typo in the article - "According to the company, it’s the thinnest and lightest version of the Pro to date, with the 17-inch version of the laptop measuring in at 14.9mm thick. The 15-inch version of the notebook weighs in at four pounds and the smallest 13-inch version comes in at three pounds." . That is a cruel error to make since it made me hope for one.
(Posted in another thread, that probably will not make it as high as this)
I think conceptually this is really neat, but it could potentially suffer from one major flaw: I hardly ever look down at my keyboard. A flat, digital screen containing changing buttons does not cater well to touch typists, of which you can reasonably assume most are who use a macbook pro.
Touch ID is sweet though.
Yeah, I thought the same thing (specially since 95% of the time I'm using my laptop, I actually have it closed, hooked up to a screen and with external keyboard and mouse). But I guess this will be useful for most casual users, since they often look down to their keyboards (and to be honest, the keyboard and the screen aren't that far apart in a laptop) and who don't usually use/know hotkeys for common actions they perform, and which now they'll have access to through the touch bar. But for most developers, yeah this seems like a gimmick. And yes, Touch ID is sweet. That 3 second payment demo was great.
You seem to have conflated sophistication with fear of change. The history of technology shows this fear is misplaced. If the interface provided is compelling, most people will adapt. Some will long for the old ways to be the only ways, but that's never been a segment of desire that gets much attention for what I assume are obvious reasons.
You seem to have conflated fear of change with desire not to have useful functionality removed and replaced with functionality that might prove useful.
The touch strip is cool, but it suddenly means looking down at the keyboard to use it, and the loss of the tactile sensation of the keys. Maybe it's a net gain for some people. For me, it's at best 2 steps forward, 1 step back. It's a mixed blessing.
It doesn't really rebut me to twist up a bunch of semantics to make it seem like something is being taken away from you by the fact that Apple is making a product you don't like.
I'm just saying that it's a change that I dislike on an emotional level, and that I believe that needing to look at my computers controls to use them will lead to a permanent net decrease in comfort using the machine.
They're making a product that I don't like, and that's not a new phenomenon. Categorically, I dislike things that seem like change for the sake of change, and I dislike things that feel like a company herding my behavior in the direction they want me to go.
On the other hand, I like progress. In my opinion, features like this are certainly change, but I doubt that they're progress. That is, I think that it both adds and removes features. Fear of change isn't a bad thing, in and of itself. I think the point that we disagree on the strongest is whether Apple's new hardware represents actual progress, or merely change.
Sure it does. People don't want to change their habits because of a hypothesized productive decline that is, by the necessity of not having tried the change, based solely on emotion. Call the emotion whatever you want if "fear" makes you feel too silly.
> You seem to have conflated sophistication with fear of change. The history of technology shows this fear is misplaced. If the interface provided is compelling, most people will adapt.
You're typing this on a keyboard layout designed to avoid jams on typewriters.
Not only does apple not care about sophisticated, or "power" users, it's becoming more and more clear that there are not many sophisticated users within apple itself.
Let's take multiple monitor support as an example - something that vacillates between barely working and a dumpster fire, depending on the release of OSX. Aren't there people within apple that need three screens ? Aren't there power users within apple that demand this functionality ? We are left to conclude that zero, or almost zero, people inside of apple are using this kind of configuration[1] - otherwise there is no way it would be allowed this kind of dysfunction.
Some other things that we are forced to conclude nobody at apple does:
- use USB cellular modems/dongles
- tile windows to hide unnecessary desktop
- primarily mouse-free usage
- move files in the finder with 'cut'
- use the god damned escape key, for the love of christ
We all knew this was coming - the day that Apple "mac pro'd" the rest of the lineup. We got a sneak peak with the 12" macbook. Now the other shoe drops.
[1] For instance, this relatively boring use-case: three primary screens on a desktop and a large flat panel connected as a secondary display. Kind of sort of works in snow leopard. Various, random dysfunction in each release of OSX thereafter.
What's wrong with Apple's multi-monitor support? At least mixed-DPI configurations have worked fine on Mac for years, unlike with Windows.
Also: (1) USB tethering to an iPhone is just about the easiest cellular solution there is; (2) Google "Divvy"; (3) a big draw of the touchpad is that mousing doesn't take your hands that far off the keyboard; (4) real men and women use Terminal for file management.
"What's wrong with Apple's multi-monitor support?"
One thing immediately comes to mind: configure a multiple (3 or 4) monitor setup (again, not exactly exotic) and then full screen a video in one of the monitors ... now change focus to a different window in a different physical screen. Fun ensues. Different fun, depending on OSX release.
USB or bluetooth tethering is great - I'd prefer to use that always - but some use-cases demand a physical thing stuck into the laptop and the plain old USB A-type is flexibility I don't like to see deprecated. I'll gladly take 1mm additional laptop thickness in order to retain those and I think the 11" macbook air, with one type-A on each side, is a pretty powerful swiss army knife.
Is this including the mac itself (so 2 external screens)? Because I have that setup at work with a mid-2014 Macbook Pro and with the last 3 versions of OS X and everything works fine - video fullscreen while browsing on another screen is not a problem.
I'm not sure why you indicate 3-4 monitors is not exactly exotic. Pretty sure its the 1% or less. Wouldn't that be the definition of exotic?
Wait'll you see what happens when you rotate them!
We are living in a bubble, our use case is not even remotely close to the average or above average use case. Looking at the data broadly, this barely registers as a 'thing'.
1 external monitor: for me, it hard locks 10.10 regularly -- no core, nothing in console, just hard lock. This was on completely stock brand new macbook pros.
2 external monitors: even worse. I quit trying.
btw, I love divvy [1] (best $13 I've spent in years). For those who don't know, it allows keyboard chords to move windows. Unfortunately, it doesn't have good multi-monitor support -- it moves windows only within they monitor they are on. That said, it's crucial for good typists. A typical use case: code in one window, docs in another. Use the keyboard to increase the size of the docs window so you can read it better, then shrink it back and put it back into the lower right corner of your monitor. It's awesome.
For the hard lock issue, check to see if the cpu is grinding to 200%+ utilization, especially spending most of the cpu on the kernel_task process. If it is, see if [1] will help. The tl;dr of that page is when the Mac laptops sense a high temperature, the quick and dirty fix Apple has in place is push kernel_task to eat up as much cpu as possible to slow down everything else enough to cool down the laptop.
I pointed my room air conditioner's vent directly against the bottom of my Mac laptop, and it happily drives my external monitors. Enclosure Bottomside temperature reads 18-20 degrees C, and CPU A Temperature Diode reads 60 degrees C while I'm cooling my laptop like this.
I agree with the great-grandparent's sentiment that the product polish for high-end Apple laptop products is definitely gone. It isn't that no one within Apple is unaware of these issues, it is too few are in a position to take actionable measures about these issues. The margin between picking a MacBook Pro and a high-end Dell/HP/Lenovo/System76 is as slim to me as back during the latter stages of the PowerBook days, the last time I switched back to non-Apple laptops for a few years.
Product marketing-wise, Cook is in a tough position that I don't envy. Apple is so big right now that every product revision has to support that "big", "successful" narrative, and he's getting painted into a corner to not jeopardize that story. This pushes severe compromises into product design decisions to go after the bulk of that bigness, and niches like influencer demographics get squashed in the process.
You know what's better for 'move a file' than 'normal shortcut for copying something + brand new unique shortcut for paste-and-delete-original'? Cut and Paste. Using the same shortcuts as every other piece of software. Why, on earth, can't we just have that?
"Cut" and "paste" is a bad abstraction for moving a file. When you "cut" text and then don't "paste" it's the same as deleting the text. You don't want that for files (it would be too easy to accidentally delete the file). In fact, Windows doesn't work that way--if you fail to paste, the original file will remain in its original location.
Apple's abstraction is more honest to what is actually happening.
Why is accidentally deleting a file worse than accidentally deleting text? Some files, sure, but there should be safeguards about deleting those files anyway. Plus backups, always backups.
In truth, I don't think many people are accidentally hitting that shortcut that often. And, if they are, so long as there's an action analogous to undo'ing a textual cut/copy/paste, it shouldn't be a problem.
That's purity getting in the way of practicality. Non-destructive cut with text isn't unfamiliar to anyone who has used a spreadsheet, so use that abstraction with files(like windows does).
I agree. For the first time in many years I'm going to be going back to Microsoft for my computers. The surface book seemed to expensive but then I realized that 1 surface book takes the role of a macbook pro + ipad pro.
vim users (and I am one!) ^[ strictly dominates escape: it doesn't force you to move your left hand up or rotate at the wrist. Does emacs use escape? What else does?
I really hate using esc in its default position so I always map caps lock to esc. Mapping caps lock to ctrl seems so much more useful; I had no idea ^[ is the same thing.
> multiple monitor support vacillates between barely working and a dumpster fire
This. Earlier this month, I tweeted that "I threw out my hardware RNG, since #macOS's window placement behavior turned out to produce better randomness."
>You are making the assumption that they care about sophisticated users
You are making the assumption that your workloads are what define "sophisticated users".
I don't think a professional videographer or a photographer (both of which I do, and am very excited about extra on-demand functionality that the strip brings, for which many fork $300 and $1000 for dedicated external control strips and surfaces) is less "sophisticated" than some code churner that has a typing-heavy workload and doesn't have a use for taking his hands off the home row.
That said, I wont be using it much when programming either. But for Photoshop, Cubase and such? Shut up and take my money!
I live in terminal about a third of my day. I seldom use the function keys for anything other than adjusting the volume and brightness. I can't remember the last time I needed to use a pure Function key in any app.
I am a keyboard junky. I have long used LaunchBar (since OS X Beta), Keyboard Maestro and other utilities to do almost everything on my computer and while keeping my hands on the home keys. And I mapped the CAPS LOCK to ESC many years ago.
For me the current Function Keys are mostly wasted space. I am not sure how useful the Touch Bar will be for me, but I feel it will be more useful than the current setup.
You got me there. htop is probably the one terminal app that I regularly use that has important FN keys. Still I bet only one out of 5 times do I actually use the FN keys in htop. I suspect that of the amount that I use them, Apple's access to old function keys via the Touch Bar will be fine for me.
(And I can always pull out my Happy Hacker Keyboard)
You don't remap the function keys to do stuff? I use F1 and F2 to switch between tabs in tmux for example. In the past I have also have mapped the function keys on the right side to run common scripts, like deploying an app staging/production.
I guess that it comes down to I have never liked the function keys because they pull my hands off of the home keys, and I never could accurately hit the F keys without looking for them.
Long ago, when I was using apps that made heavy use of the function keys, I mapped ctrl-alt plus a number for to the function keys. I use to love the Happy Hacker Keyboards for have this built in.
As others have mentioned. I just remapped my function keys for common tasks or launching applications (e.g. f1 = Xcode, f2 = Slack, f3 = Terminal). Using something like Keyboard Maestro (which you use), you can also contextualize the functionality based on certain applications.
Thanks for directing me to LaunchBar and Keyboard Maestro.
I'm a touch typist, so for me the new touch bar is a no go.
Regarding function keys, they are configurable. I'm a programmer: debugging using function keys is been part of my coding live since I can remember. I guess this MBP is not for me.
Regarding the waste of space, I don't see that: there's plenty of space. The screen size mandates the amount of space available in the base of the laptop.
I understand Apple's rationale: touch bar = dynamic function keys but, why not keep the physical function and esc keys and add the touch bar on top of that?
I touch type, I hardly ever look down at my keyboard ... except for stuff like switching the volume off, brightness, or the rare key combo that uses a function key.
So there is gradient even in non-casual users. I would have cried with you if my OS was Windows.
>A flat, digital screen containing changing buttons does not cater well to touch typists
Well, it's obviously NOT meant for touch typing workloads! This is not something to compete with Ctr-A-Alt-J-K-B of Emacs, or ^{"4j of Vim, or for writers to use.
It's for professional apps with lots of special dials, sliders, etc -- stuff useful from the creative industry (DAWs, NLEs, etc) to use cases such as medical equipment controls, etc (another industry that uses some special control surfaces and stuff).
Not to mention I work a lot of the time with my macbook closed connected to external display. What good is touchbar then? Oh wait, my external display is Thunderbolt display, now a $1k paperweight because I bought into the Apple closed ecosystem.
I was thinking the same - If i need extra controls for my app then the app provides them and use my trackpad with my eyes fixed on my screen, like this isn't hard. Seems gadgetry for gadgets sake, disappointing.
If I'm paying hundreds of dollars extra for this to, which seems to be the case, then I think I'll pass unfortunately.
What is an iPhone headset? How does it differ from other headsets?
Edit: thank you. Does that mean the female lightning connector would only be used for headphones? Yeah, talk about vendor lockin and connector deprecation.
HN is full of people who touch-type F9, I know. But I'm pretty excited about the toolbar. In anything but my primary editor, it will dramatically increase my ability to get by keyboard-only. For 99% of people, the increased discoverability will dramatically increase their ability to use shortcuts.
And even the other 1% don't spend all their time within a set of applications small enough to memorize all shortcuts.
Sure, so long as you're OK looking down at your keyboard to find the right function on the touchbar every time you want to use it. Better, IMO, to use a mapped key chord.
This is interesting. I don't really have an opinion about the feature either way, but the touch-type issue didn't even cross my mind while reading about it. I never learned to do it and can't think of anyone I know who does. Although I'm sure more than enough people here have very different experiences. I wonder what percentages of computer users actually do touch-type regularly...
I can't think of any argument except the missing tactile feedback, considering it is strictly equal or better in any other regard (as you can apparently customize it to revert back to just static keys).
And I'm pretty sure 90%+ of people here touch type when within the 0-9a-Z range. I just doubt that many people press, without looking, F5 to `continue` in the chrome developer tools. Because (a) you don't remember shortcuts for any app you use less than an hour a day and (b) f5 is a bt too far out of reach (at least for me) to get their using the usual landmarks.
In non-english keyboards [ is often behind some key combination (e.g. altgr - 8). Compared to just clicking esc (or remapped caps lock) it is difficult for me to see how people with these keyboards would be willing to go for ctrl-[.
Replacing hardware keys with a touchscreen on a laptop made for power users is a sign that Apple has lost touch with what made the MacBook Pro popular in the first place. I think they could have just upgraded to the newest CPU and put a new battery in and made everyone happy.
I think the thing that is being missed here is that Apple doesn't make much money off of "power users". They make money off people buying movies on itunes and subscribing to icloud for their photos. Everything Apple is building is aimed toward that market, emojis and all.
If you feel that Apple isn't designing with you in mind it's probably because you've outgrown them. Time to look at alternatives.
Apple catered to power users for years with the MBP. That was the entire point of the device and why many programmers said it was the best laptop on the market. I'm not saying it was necessarily a good market decision (though you'll see no shortage of MBPs in the bay area) but that was the strategy. Now that's clearly changing.
You are missing the real statistics. Only 11% of all apple revenues come from services (app store, Icloud, itunes).
apple makes money from selling phones and computers. If you want to sell a $1,799 notebook (or even $2,399 for the 15 inch version), they need to think on power users.
TBH the touch bar seems like a half-arsed response to everyone else getting touch screens. Swiping photos, swiping timelines ... would be more natural on your actual screen, and almost as natural just using the trackpad or mouse.
Microsoft Ribbon on the HUD to Apple Touchbar on the Keyboard. I think this was a natural transition since it is more customizable and baked into more applications. The mobile/social UIs have created an opportunity for Apple to make a more modular interface that goes beyond the screen, or at least extends the screen onto the keyboard.
This also allows Apple to avoid making the primary screen a touchscreen since they ergonomics don't make sense with the current form factors. Also, by not making the entire keyboard surface touch it ensures the primary typing experience with haptic feedback stays intact.
The touch bar examples shown are a usability disaster. You're going to hide UI from the screen and make me keep looking at the keyboard to find functionality?
I stopped looking at the keyboard every 10 seconds when I learned how to touch type.
The presenter spent most of his time looking at the keyboard and not the screen.
This gimmick will disappear when Apple decides a touch screen is needed to complete the slow merge with iOS.
Alas it's probably true. Albeit, maybe with time space memory kicks in if the app uses the bar in order to promote really important "instructions". I didn't see any mention of tactile feedback, which is sad. The idea of a more generic dynamic keyboard will have to wait for a v2, or maybe longer.
Exactly, I want to look at the screen continuously with my fingers feeling the keyboard. Too much eye movement and distraction from the main task. Personally, this will just slow me down.
This is not for when you are in "get stuff down quickly" mode. They might have predictive text, but I don't think anyone will use it. For me it's when I'm editing images in Lightroom I wish I could do more stuff full screen so that I don't have the visual clutter in the way.
This. Lightroom currently doesn't make it possible to view a photo fullscreen while at the same time having editing controls. A touch screen is also not ideal, because then your hand covers the image. The touch bar seems to make using adjustment controls in full-screen really easy.
When Schiller showed how MS Office worked with the touch bar, I thought it was pretty hilarious.
All of the toolbar buttons and more were already on the main screen. If they had offered a touch screen instead, the user wouldn't have to take his/her eyes off the screen to perform the same functions. And that feature is already available on Windows machines with touch screens.
>If they had offered a touch screen instead, the user wouldn't have to take his/her eyes off the screen to perform the same functions.
If they had "offered a touch screen instead", the users would have to hold their hand horizontally which would get tiring in about 5 minutes and unbearable after 10.
Not to mention that the on-screen tools were and will still be there anyway if one wants to use them with the traditional, and not challenging to the muscles, mouse and touchpad technology...
>> If they had "offered a touch screen instead", the users would have to hold their hand horizontally which would get tiring in about 5 minutes and unbearable after 10.
Why do so many Mac users think the presence of a touch screen all of a sudden means using it full time?
I got a Surface Pro when I was still a predominantly Mac user and I only used the touch screen when appropriate, which was for a fraction of a second every now and then. And it worked great.
Using a touchscreen is definitely better than a touchpad in a lot of scenarios because of the ability to directly manipulate content instead of having to navigate to it.
>Why do so many Mac users think the presence of a touch screen all of a sudden means using it full time?
Who said full time? Full time it would be unbearable in 1 minute. I said unbearable in 10 minutes with casual use in mind: raising your hand now and then to click this or that button.
I don't get how it can be unbearable in 10 minutes on a laptop. It's not going to be much further away from you than a tablet would be, and people love them their iPads. If the experience was -that- bad, nobody would be buying iPad Pros.
And it's not as though you can't continue to use the keyboard, touchpad and/or mouse.
I'll admit, when the Surface Pro first came out, I mocked the touchscreen too. I thought it would create Gorilla Arm. Then I actually got one and used it for an extended period of time. You don't even notice that you're touching the screen.
>I don't get how it can be unbearable in 10 minutes on a laptop. It's not going to be much further away from you than a tablet would be, and people love them their iPads. If the experience was -that- bad, nobody would be buying iPad Pros.
It's about the orientation, not the touch screen itself. A tablet you normally hold horizontally or at an angle when you use it.
Now, if it was a detachable screen, like the Surface, that could work, but a laptop screen you have vertical to the keyboard.
>> It's about the orientation, not the touch screen itself. A tablet you normally hold horizontally or at an angle when you use it.
I get that it might not be for everyone, but a LOT of keyboard cases have been sold to iPad and iPad Pro users (and many of these cases prop up the iPad screen vertically). And keep in mind that iOS pretty much necessitates use of the touch screen more than Windows 8/10 does. So there must be a LOT of people who would be OK with that mode of use.
With respect to the Surface, I use it with the keyboard attached 99% of the time so it's pretty much vertical all the time. It's not even remotely uncomfortable or tiring in normal use.
>I get that it might not be for everyone, but a LOT of keyboard cases have been sold to iPad and iPad Pro users (and many of these cases prop up the iPad screen vertically).
Yes, but those are for writing -- ie. using the iPad laptop style. Not for doing work e.g. graphics, etc with the iPad vertically held.
>You aren't really suggesting that writing is not work, are you?
No, I wrote "E.g. graphics" as a parenthetical expression to give an example of the kind of work they dont use those cases for. That is, what I wrote amounts to:
"Yes, but those [cases] are for writing -- ie. using the iPad laptop style. [They are not using the cases] for doing work [like graphics] with the iPad vertically held".
>And why would Schiller make a point of mentioning the touch bar integration with Office and iWork?
Because Schiller made this point about a laptop, and even more so a laptop with a flat horizontal strip.
Whereas what I said is that it's tedious for people to do that (touch interaction) on a vertical screen. In Schiller's example there's Office and iWork but no vertical touch screen -- just the strip, and the regular screen you handle with the mouse/trackpad (that is, without having your hands in the air to touch the screen).
Different strokes for different folks, I guess, but in my use of touch on a vertically oriented screen, it hasn't been negative at all.
There's something to be said about being able to use two fingers to directly manipulate a window's contents to zoom an image or vector diagram in an app to get to the precise size versus futzing around with control + or control - using the app's preset increments.
Yeah, I feel as if people try to hate touch screens because Apple doesn't think its right. Even though iPad users with keyboards use the interface. It requires a transition period but it becomes second nature after a while.
One of the important things for me with something like the surface is when you finally dock it to use a full setup you don't lose any capability. What happens when you do this with the new mbp? Is a new apple keyboard in the works?
I was considering getting the new mbp this time around thinking this was going to be an enhanced media button bar. But now I'm definitely back on the sidelines
>Just like the bigger screen iPhone, which was supposedly a usability disaster because you couldn't reach the whole screen with a single finger.
There's this idea that people will buy everything Apple does, or that people put down things until Apple does them.
First, Apple started from nearly bankrupt in 1997 and so. People clearly didn't just buy what Apple put out. What build Apple's fortune was not some hundreds of millions of "sheep" who magically bought everything Apple put out, but a steady stream of products that increasingly more people bought.
People didn't just buy everything Apple put out. People had to be convinced, from the first post-jobs stuff (Cube, iMac) to start buying them -- increasingly over time. The iPod took years to really take off, for example.
Along with this idea, there's this other idea that Apple 'fans' will put down a feature until Apple releases something that has it.
Those saying that seem to forget that the internet is full of people, and the people who said "the iPhone doesn't need a bigger screen" are not necessarily the ones who bought one after Apple released it.
Apple still sells tens of millions of non-plus iPhones, to people who don't really like the large screen, and even put out the old 4" model again (iPhone SE).
I got a Plus and it's still a usability disaster on that regard. One hand use (which is what I mostly used to do on the smaller models) is pretty much out. But I coped mostly because I appreciate the extra ~50mm camera lens, and for reading stuff while commuting etc (with two hands).
>> There's this idea that people will buy everything Apple does, or that people put down things until Apple does them.
Part of the problem is that Apple / Steve Jobs sometimes helped perpetuate this idea.
Some examples:
* Steve Jobs saying video on an iPod type of device was pointless
* Steve Jobs saying that apps were pointless on the iPhone and that the web apps were good enough
* Apple putting out a TV ad emphasizing that the iPhone had the perfect screen size because your finger could go from end to end
Apple dislikers predictably misinterpret this as Apple taking an ideological position when all Apple is really doing is just trying to control the marketing message on what they think really matters with the current release of a particular product.
Maybe it's because I've gone for the biggest phones as daily drivers for a while now (Note series => Nexus 6 => Plus), but 1 hand is a total non-issue for me.
I just shift the phone around in my palm. Even with an oversized Otterbox like case I put it in from time to time I'm able to reach 80% of the screen with my thumb, and I reach around with my other 4 fingers to reach the rest of it.
Pretty similar to how I use/used my Nexus 6 one handed, and it was a little bigger than the Plus
This isn't how you use a touch screen on a laptop. I don't know why you're so insistent on this narrative but it's false. Adding a touch screen doesn't turn it into a tablet, it turns it into a laptop with a touch screen. That's a very important distinction.
You would do well to try one out for a few minutes with a typical workflow of...well, whatever you do on a computer. I thought it was stupid at first and now I miss it when I use my MacBook.
After getting a Surface Pro, I would constantly start swiping up and down on my Macbook Pro's screen thinking I could scroll. I still do that on other non-touch laptop screens too.
>Adding a touch screen doesn't turn it into a tablet, it turns it into a laptop with a touch screen. That's a very important distinction.
That's my point exactly. A laptop with a touch screen is not convenient, unless it can be somehow turned into a tabled (Surface does it IIRC).
>You would do well to try one out for a few minutes with a typical workflow of...well, whatever you do on a computer.
Tried a few times to get a sense of how it would be during this thread. It doesn't work for me at all (at least when sitting on the desk with the laptop). I don't want to raise my heads and hold them to the screen, and I'm not that hot into touching the screen with my fingers either.
>> Tried a few times to get a sense of how it would be during this thread.
On a real touchscreen laptop or simulating on a non-touchscreen laptop?
I think it makes a real difference to sit down with an open mind and go through some real use cases on a laptop with a working touchscreen (and the software you'd actually use). You'll realize that you're only using when it is appropriate for only a few seconds at a time, if that. And there will probably be huge time gaps (hours, days even) where you might not use it. But in the odd time when you need it, you're often glad that it's there.
> If they had "offered a touch screen instead", the users would have to hold their hand horizontally which would get tiring in about 5 minutes and unbearable after 10.
This is complete nonsense. I used to think this when I used a MacBook full time. I still do but buying a touchscreen PC has worked wonderfully and I never hover my hand long enough to do anything tiring. It's great for doing quick touches or scrolling / zooming in with precision. You wouldn't want to use it for everything because that's not its use case (this isn't a dedicated tablet this is a computer with a touch screen).
>This is complete nonsense. I used to think this when I used a MacBook full time. I still do but buying a touchscreen PC has worked wonderfully and I never hover my hand long enough to do anything tiring.
I never hover my hand period, so that's one better. Not that hot about touching the screen either...
>It's great for doing quick touches or scrolling / zooming in with precision.
With my hands on the keyboard and my thumbs close to the touchpad, I don't see the appeal of suddenly raising my hands to the screen, especially for general things like zooming, scrolling. It could make sense to manipulate something like an object directly, but to raise hands just for zooming or scrolling?
>> With my hands on the keyboard and my thumbs close to the touchpad, I don't see the appeal of suddenly raising my hands to the screen, especially for general things like zooming, scrolling. It could make sense to manipulate something like an object directly, but to raise hands just for zooming or scrolling?
I think I figured it out. You're spoiled by the quality of the Apple touchpads. A few minutes with a crappy Windows touchpad and you'll be wishing you could touch the screen.
FWIW, I hate all touchpads. I just hate Apple touchpads the least.
>I think I figured it out. You're spoiled by the quality of the Apple touchpads. A few minutes with a crappy Windows touchpad and you'll be wishing you could touch the screen.
Hmm, you might be on to something here. I'm so used to the Mac trackpads, than I almost never use a mouse with them (except for heavy illustrator/photoshop stuff), whereas with my Windows laptops I always use a mouse.
>FWIW, I hate all touchpads. I just hate Apple touchpads the least.
I hate the IBM's/Lenovo's red-nipple thing with the same passion!
>If they had "offered a touch screen instead", the users would have to hold their hand horizontally which would get tiring in about 5 minutes and unbearable after 10.
Lifting my arm up to the screen every time I want to use something from the toolbar? No thank you. I already hate lifting my hands from the keyboard to use a trackpad.
Except all of those which use an F-key are broken now. (You might interject that Mac OS itself does not use F-keys in shortcuts, but Linux and Windows apps in VMs do.)
Agreed, but what if something else actually happened. Apple wants to broaden its Apple Pay integration. They decide to add touch id, and adding a black glossy button on the side throws of the aesthetic. So instead, they replace the entire bar.
I think it has the potential to be an interesting alternative to a touch screen. Some of the examples did look modestly useful. I will, however, miss the volume and music forward/back keys which I actively use. Like anything else, I'll have to wait and see how it works in practice.
I've been holding off on updating my macbook pro, but I think I'm going to skip this generation and buy used. The lack of an nvidia gpu is a giant pita. You never get good cuda performance on a laptop, but it's nice to be able to test code on one.
If they expand up to 32g ram though I'm buying one the second they go live on the site.
I waited until the new pages were up specifically to see that they are still using LPDDR3. They left this important info out of their keynote, only mentioning "2133Mhz".
>The touch bar examples shown are a usability disaster. You're going to hide UI from the screen and make me keep looking at the keyboard to find functionality?
That's the wrong way to think of it.
It's not a keyboard, it's an adaptive toolbar. And it's close to what professionals in several industries pay handsomely for -- control surfaces, only this one is also adaptive.
>I stopped looking at the keyboard every 10 seconds when I learned how to touch type.
It's obviously NOT meant for typing heavy workloads. Secretaries and programmers coding will not use it when doing their thing.
To add to this, I didn't interpret it as "hiding UI" either. I don't think anything will be exclusively available for use on the TouchBar. The way I understood it was the TouchBar will behave like shortcuts to existing functionality.
The thing about the Surface Dial is that you don't have to look at it. If you want to press a button on the TouchBar, you have to look at the keyboard.
+1 To me it was more about saving mouse movements than hiding UI. Don't mouse all the way to the top of the screen to click that. Press this dynamic, context aware, button on your toolbar instead. If you'd still rather use hot keys, go for it!
Doesn't seem like an improvement. F9, F10 and F11 have done this quite well for the last 20 years for me. I can use those blindly while looking at the code and using the mouse to hover variables that I want to inspect...
Well obviously it's not for coding, but I understand the one you're replying to perfectly. And I think there are hordes of developpers out there coding daily on their MBP. Which are now sort of left alone. Anecdote, though I doubt I'll be the only one for which the lack of F keys is a showstopper - also see other HN comments: after about 5 years on a Dell I was thingking maybe this year to go back to a MBP (even though my last one lasted only 3 years) but seeing I spend a lot of time debugging, which translates to repeatedly hitting F-keys which is burnt into muscle memory, it's just not going to happen. Even if I'd learn to do it with that bar thingie, it's a bit of a waste of time since going back to any other machine the bar isn't there.
Coders don't just write code (no, you don't need F keys for that and yes your hands kan stay on the home row) they also debug it (for which the environments I, and seemingly others, use, assigned the F keys many many years ago)
Every single shortcut shown in the cringe-worthy demos today is already mapped to a well-known keyboard shortcut in the app. And pro users can use those shortcuts without ever having to look down at the keyboard.
Final Cut demo claimed that "some of these shortcuts are hard to find in the menus of an advanced app" whereas:
1. the touchbar was displaying the simplest of shortcuts, many of which are already mapped to keyboard shortcuts that professionals use
2. menus in MacOS have a built in search which touchbar lacks, obviously
3. the very next demo of Photoshop showed touchbar shortcuts nested two layers deep and are basically undiscoverable.
What the hell is touchbar if not a totally useless gimmick for actual pro users of pro apps?
>Every single shortcut shown in the cringe-worthy demos today is already mapped to a well-known keyboard shortcut in the app. And pro users can use those shortcuts without ever having to look down at the keyboard.
I'm a pro user (of NLEs) and I don't "use those shortcuts without having to look down at the keyboard". Only a few of them.
And it's not because I don't do shortcuts in general (I've used Vim for over 20 years in all its glory).
Profesionals use external interfaces all the time, e.g. for color correction, editing etc. While this doesn't fully replace this, it's more than adequate for a lot of what those do, and perfect for editing on the field.
It's also not about those "keyboard shortcuts". Flipping through movie frames with variable speed is not a shortcut. Applying filter resonance on a DAW is not done with a shortcut. Heck, this can even change several items together at the same time (e.g. 2 virtual sliders etc). There are literally tons of other things we now use sliders, dials, etc for in Pro programs, and which arbitrary speed and "jump to place" (not just "one click at a time" as shortcuts offer) will be great.
>What the hell is touchbar if not a totally useless gimmick for actual pro users of pro apps?
It also has no wifi and less space than a Nomad from what I heard. Lame.
Anyway, let's give it a year and we'll see how many pro's swear by it.
> Profesionals use external interfaces all the time
Hence the need for the touchbar is further greatly reduced
> It's also not about those "keyboard shortcuts"... There are literally tons of other things we now use sliders, dials, etc for in Pro programs, and which arbitrary speed and "jump to place"
Which are delegated to a tiny strip in an awkward location (notice how carefully everyone is holding their fingers at ~90 degrees to the keyboard) controlled by very imprecise finger movements
> Anyway, let's give it a year and we'll see how many pro's swear by it.
I can agree on that :) We need more actual field experience
> Which are delegated to a tiny strip in an awkward location
Yeah, it seems like it might have been more useful to put it on the side of the keyboard. And they wouldn't have even needed to get rid of escape and the F-keys then.
I always forget which is which. Now looking at the chrome debugger F8 is used for Pause/Resume. Step Over F10, Step into F11, Step out Shift F11. Hence I use the mouse.
As an occasional debugging user it would be a great addition to have this on the keyboard.
I wonder if it would have been better to just allow different images to be displayed on the existing hardware keys. That way, you have physical keys, and can use them without looking, but when you're in an app that you're unfamiliar with, you can look and see what the keys are for.
I always use those keys on a physical keyboard while looking at the display, but with a touchscreen, I always have to look where I'm pressing keys, and even then my fingers are sometimes slightly wrong.
I have something like a touch bar on my Windows laptop. The main problem I have with it is that I touch it without knowing I have. Many a time I've gone down a rabbit hole of WIFI network issues to only discover that I've accidentally toggled WIFI off by brushing the bar.
This is one feature on my Windows laptop I don't like and not excited for a new Mac with one.
If they use haptic feedback it might not be so bad. Plus, apple controls the OS and hardware together, so they can ensure notifications must be shown for behavior like turning off WIFI or something similar.
These professionals in several industries paid handsomely for the Adaptive keys on the 2nd generation Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon. So much so that Lenovo had to remove adaptive keys for the next iterations.
Eh. In the days when the animals talked, there were keyboards with generic function keys in a top row, with enough space around them for a plastic template sheet labeling the keys with functions for specific software.
Some templates came pre-printed for specific packages, some were blanks for pencil-your-own. Rarely used, but at least those thingies were cheap and did not remove real keys.
Such things were even part of marketing features, lots of old calculators had them. HP calculators even had dedicated modules paired with custom .... stickers (or overlays) to adapt "like" the touchbar.
>These professionals in several industries paid handsomely for the Adaptive keys on the 2nd generation Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon. So much so that Lenovo had to remove adaptive keys for the next iterations.
Things are not the same just because they are instances of the same concept.
Lenovo's implementation was black and white, did not have controls such as slide, sweep, multitouch gestures, etc, and was just a novelty from a single Wintel vendor with not much third-party app support or OS support.
Apple's implementation adds deep OS support, will have software vendors onboard (judging from the adoption of older features Apple puts into its hardware/OS, it wont be more than a year when most apps people use will support this, from Photoshop which does already, to the Apple Pro/iLife apps (of course), to Pixelmator, Premiere, and tons of others. It also has color, multitouch/gestures, etc, which increase the utility much more, along with higher definition (for thumbnails and such which it also does).
Also Lenovo's other than that didn't sell much to the creatives market, where such a feature would be appreciated more (if it was done properly of course). Macbook Pro's already sell very well to creatives.
It's the same old story really: more thought out, more integrated, and more supported implementation beats "first to market this general idea" every time.
Everybody wants 'this' yet nothing nailed it. Keyboard are strange beasts, and designers rarely have the right context or experience. A virtual bar is awesome in theory; but the fixed and tactile qualities that seem idiotic today are actually part of the value. Imagine a piano without keys. Even non weighted keys are despised by any musician. Your mind and body have lots of subtle cue sensors to perceive and react accordingly. Anything that contradicts this will fail for refined/industry use.
>Even non weighted keys are despised by any musician.
Not exactly. Jazz and classically trained musicians, yes. Rock, pop, electronica, etc gigging keyboardists play non-weighted keyboards all the time.
>Even non weighted keys are despised by any musician. Your mind and body have lots of subtle cue sensors to perceive and react accordingly. Anything that contradicts this will fail for refined/industry use.
We have already been over this when the smartphones came out without actual keys.
All the keys will be virtual, and they will have haptic feedback. The shallow key travel now is to prepare people, similar to the coke <> new coke conspiracy.
Then they will make the keyboard half of the laptop an ipad. Then they will release two ipads that hinge together. Then they will figure out that ios/macos dichotomy is causing problems and finally go through with some hybridization.
Looks like they are using crappy dual core Ultrabook processors and calling it a pro notebook. As per the frequency of processor its looks like i5-6267U for 13inch touch bar and i5-6360u for non-touch bar. I would instead buy this laptop with i7-6820HQ for much cheaper.
That's absurd. There's no way they're using those processors and getting the performance improvements they described. It's not unheard of for Apple to get custom parts, or over/underclock the cpu.
Wouldn't count on that. I'm pretty sure for using the touchbar you have to look down and aim while you press the thing which takes some time. Compared to that you most likely already blindly can grab your mouse or find the touchpad and move the cursor in the fraction of a second.
I wonder how long until the cables bundled with new iPhones/iPads have USB-C instead of USB-A. I suspect they'll start doing this with the next generation of devices, maybe with a bundled USB A to C adapter.
They really screwed over iOS devs here. I have multiple cables as backups and in different bags etc - all need replacing now...except that I can't use the USB-C variant in the power brick :( I also do Android dev...need to get a USB-C to Micro-USB too just for that! Just one big mess.
Exactly! I don't understand how Apple, known for being a pioneer in accessibility, does something like this. They might kill their keyboard altogether already.
how do blind people use current macbook pro laptops? (serious question).
Edit: at least there is an option to get actual function keys in the 13" model if they are required to use Voice Over and they cannot be reliable found on the touch bar... and the user won't really care about the screen size (I'm joking, I can think of many reasons why a blind person might want/need to use the 15" model).
I think in a few years, we're going to be looking back at this as a half-assed hack before we were ready for a macbook with a full touch screen. Touch typists (which I'd imagine are an increasing proportion of computer users) don't look at the keyboard. Touch cues (ridges on the F and J keys, placement and size of keys) guide typing and control without the need to look.
Even if you just used the touchbar to allow for context-sensitive buttons, I'd lose the real tactical feedback of a keyboard and need to build new muscle memory for each application.
Worse is when you start putting GUIs on the touch bar—now I'm really expected to look down and scroll through a library of photos or find my favorite website on this tiny strip which isn't on my screen? Why?
Or maybe a full-sized touch 'interface' where the entire keyboard used to be. Imagine if the entire bottom half of the laptop was one of those touch-pads with some kind of haptic feedback. You could dynamically have mouse, keyboard, contextually customized input the entire mirror of the screen itself. Input below, output above. A curious concept. If this little touch panel merged with the trackpad (a better placement for it in my mind), you'd have a pretty powerful input system.
If done properly, I fully expect that kind of input idea to be inevitable. If done poorly, it's a total failure and prevents any work from being done. In order to bridge that gap it seems Apple is starting small.
So in other words it's using Skylake, not Kaby Lake (7th-generation).
No mention of display resolution either, which leads me to believe the 15" model won't feature a 4K display. It's using an unspecified AMD Polaris GPU.
There's also a 13" MBP sans Touch Bar, featuring normal function keys.
Unbelievably unimpressive compared to Microsoft's announcement yesterday, and 45 minutes into the keynote I still have no idea what the specs are.
I don't need some stupid touch strip on my Mac, I need a touch screen.
I haven't been this let down by product announcements ever as I have been this year with everything Apple's done.
Now we get all our standard USB ports removed, very little by way of actual hardware improvements, are we even going to get an upgraded Mac Pro that might meet the minimum 4GB gfx card requirement for Oculus, etc?
I've sworn by Apple products for a decade and a half. I'm done.
I wasn't a fan of it about 3 years ago before I had to work with them daily at my job. Now when a user brings in a laptop that doesn't have a touchscreen I tend to smudge the display because touchscreens are so damn useful.
As a touch typist, I'm not sure this'd be an issue for me.
The distance between this Touch Bar and the monitor is minimal. With a bit of experience with a particular app, I imagine I'd be able to use my peripheral vision and muscle memory more often than not to achieve any particular function.
It's not like the distance between my desktop monitor and keyboard. That would be incredibly annoying as I'd actually have to take my eyes completely off the monitor to see the Touch Bar in that situation.
Admittedly not my phone, but I can touch type on my iPad. Not quickly (is there a way to switch it to dvorak? haven't checked), but it's doable. Probably 50-60 wpm with decent accuracy thanks to autoincorrect.
It feels weird as hell, though. Not getting any sort of finger travel as I press the keys.
EDIT: As well, on my phone (switched to a Nexus, not as familiar with it yet so still feeling it out), I can type pretty quickly without looking directly at the onscreen keyboard. My eyes see it, but my focus is on the text area itself. I imagine this touch bar will be like that for me, it's not so far out of my focal point that it'll totally disappear for me, and glancing at it won't require significant head or eye movement.
I mostly touch type without any serious errors at a pretty rapid clip on my phone. But that's with a pretty firm reliance on autocorrect. Which frequently makes stupid choices. But I wouldn't want to ever work like that.
What you are seeing is pure change resistance. It has no useful predictive power when evaluating whether the change will be good or bad overall, especially since the set of touch-bar use cases and the set of touch-type-heavy workloads does not seem to overlap much.
You would not be telling people "Oh we don't yet know if it's a good or bad change yet, we only know that it's a change" if Microsoft or any other company was introducing some strange feature no one asked for in order to avoid adding a feature a lot of people were asking for.
Telling people not to think about a skill they have probably used every day since they were near anything with a keyboard is a weird piece of advice
On the other hand, people wouldn't be complaining so much if it weren't Apple -- Apple is the company they associate with "change for change's sake", which isn't entirely deserved as a reputation.
But at any rate, yes, I would be telling people this if it weren't Apple, and had some fun with it:
Don't plug your twitter here to try and look smug... people are questioning the necessity of a piece of hardware, don't conflate that with not wanting to learn something new
Especially considering what they're charging for it.
I bought and still heavily use the most recent MBP model. I don't think I'll be upgrading for a long time. Retina + Force Touch + pretty good specs is more than enough for me.
so it's more a toy than a work computer. They boosted the "entertainment" factor - nothing else really.
Lenovo ruinning the thinkpad, Apple turning pros into toys. it's been a harsh few years. - i think there's slowly a good hole to fill in terms of proper workstation laptops that are modular and robust.
are people still hanging on to their 2012 pros? last i checked they still are.
Yeah, one of those and one a bit newer. Have been waiting for one with 32G RAM since forever, but feared they would have time to bodge the entire line before getting around to it. Sometimes I hate being even _partially_ right.
I might grab one if apple doesn't bring something out next year that has proper builtin hardware. A Z book can take 64Gb Ecc ram and has a xeon inside I think and it's very modular. Sadly not very compact tho.
I for one like the new MacBook pro. Good idea to bring touch id, touch bar etc. Think programmable bar. I m sure it can be locked to standard mode. HNers are a tough crowd to please.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 392 ms ] threadI need to experience it in order to make a final decision but even though it's "there" the position looks awkward.
Since I use a real keyboard 85% of the time, the 15% I use on the mac is bound to be painful.
Even my Samsung tablet has a default keyboard with both backspace and delete.
If not, why do you assume that an application won't consistently present its contextual touch buttons in the same locations each time it presents them? Because the only case in which you couldn't develop muscle memory for those buttons is one in which they are not in the same location each time the application presents them.
(and if your retort will be that you use different applications which will make different choices for their contextual buttons, well, they probably already used different keyboard shortcuts for application-specific tasks, and you developed muscle memory for those, so...)
Sarcasm aside, I wonder how well this will work if you use Boot Camp. Does the TouchBar revert to a normal function bar when OS isn't in control of it? Let's say I don't use VMware, and I want to boot into Linux or Windows, what happens to the TouchBar? Installing Linux or non-OS X operating system could be made more difficult without function keys. And yes, VIM and other modal editors are going to be less fun with the loss of tactile ESC.
I'm hoping the TouchBar will have some failsafe firmware mode that allows normal use of Func keys when OS doesn't have control over it.
The worst possible case in my mind is buying a small, tiny external keyboard (dongle) with just the Func keys if Boot Camp doesn't have a good solution.
b.t.w on Happy Hacking keyboard that button is CONTROL by default.
Re-read your comment, how do you do this at OS level? I can imagine doing this in Vim or Tmux, but OS level for any application?
Also, wow, I'm glad I don't maintain any popular open source projects on GitHub: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner/issues/660. I can't believe the number of people who think "+1", "me too", and "donated" messages are at all helpful.
Also, looks like Karabiner Elements exists as a rewrite for Sierra. https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements Haven't yet checked if it supports the same dual behavior, though.
EDIT: This is how I feel about the "ESC" key thing as an Emacs user: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/59dp9u/apple_f....
I think conceptually this is really neat, but it could potentially suffer from one major flaw: I hardly ever look down at my keyboard. A flat, digital screen containing changing buttons does not cater well to touch typists, of which you can reasonably assume most are who use a macbook pro. Touch ID is sweet though.
Which is weird it's a feature exclusively on their "Pro" line of laptops.
Designers, photographers or people working with audio/video production don't really need touch-typing.
And those are arguably the kind of "Pro" users Apple is targeting, not coders.
I can't believe they put a radio in my car since 95% of the time I just leave it in my driveway and take the bus.
The touch strip is cool, but it suddenly means looking down at the keyboard to use it, and the loss of the tactile sensation of the keys. Maybe it's a net gain for some people. For me, it's at best 2 steps forward, 1 step back. It's a mixed blessing.
They're making a product that I don't like, and that's not a new phenomenon. Categorically, I dislike things that seem like change for the sake of change, and I dislike things that feel like a company herding my behavior in the direction they want me to go.
On the other hand, I like progress. In my opinion, features like this are certainly change, but I doubt that they're progress. That is, I think that it both adds and removes features. Fear of change isn't a bad thing, in and of itself. I think the point that we disagree on the strongest is whether Apple's new hardware represents actual progress, or merely change.
I don't know a single person who can actually type on a smart phone without looking and nearly zero mistakes.
You're typing this on a keyboard layout designed to avoid jams on typewriters.
Let's take multiple monitor support as an example - something that vacillates between barely working and a dumpster fire, depending on the release of OSX. Aren't there people within apple that need three screens ? Aren't there power users within apple that demand this functionality ? We are left to conclude that zero, or almost zero, people inside of apple are using this kind of configuration[1] - otherwise there is no way it would be allowed this kind of dysfunction.
Some other things that we are forced to conclude nobody at apple does:
- use USB cellular modems/dongles
- tile windows to hide unnecessary desktop
- primarily mouse-free usage
- move files in the finder with 'cut'
- use the god damned escape key, for the love of christ
We all knew this was coming - the day that Apple "mac pro'd" the rest of the lineup. We got a sneak peak with the 12" macbook. Now the other shoe drops.
[1] For instance, this relatively boring use-case: three primary screens on a desktop and a large flat panel connected as a secondary display. Kind of sort of works in snow leopard. Various, random dysfunction in each release of OSX thereafter.
Also: (1) USB tethering to an iPhone is just about the easiest cellular solution there is; (2) Google "Divvy"; (3) a big draw of the touchpad is that mousing doesn't take your hands that far off the keyboard; (4) real men and women use Terminal for file management.
One thing immediately comes to mind: configure a multiple (3 or 4) monitor setup (again, not exactly exotic) and then full screen a video in one of the monitors ... now change focus to a different window in a different physical screen. Fun ensues. Different fun, depending on OSX release.
USB or bluetooth tethering is great - I'd prefer to use that always - but some use-cases demand a physical thing stuck into the laptop and the plain old USB A-type is flexibility I don't like to see deprecated. I'll gladly take 1mm additional laptop thickness in order to retain those and I think the 11" macbook air, with one type-A on each side, is a pretty powerful swiss army knife.
Wait'll you see what happens when you rotate them!
We are living in a bubble, our use case is not even remotely close to the average or above average use case. Looking at the data broadly, this barely registers as a 'thing'.
Spoken as a multi monitor user too.
2 external monitors: even worse. I quit trying.
btw, I love divvy [1] (best $13 I've spent in years). For those who don't know, it allows keyboard chords to move windows. Unfortunately, it doesn't have good multi-monitor support -- it moves windows only within they monitor they are on. That said, it's crucial for good typists. A typical use case: code in one window, docs in another. Use the keyboard to increase the size of the docs window so you can read it better, then shrink it back and put it back into the lower right corner of your monitor. It's awesome.
[1] http://mizage.com/divvy/
I pointed my room air conditioner's vent directly against the bottom of my Mac laptop, and it happily drives my external monitors. Enclosure Bottomside temperature reads 18-20 degrees C, and CPU A Temperature Diode reads 60 degrees C while I'm cooling my laptop like this.
I agree with the great-grandparent's sentiment that the product polish for high-end Apple laptop products is definitely gone. It isn't that no one within Apple is unaware of these issues, it is too few are in a position to take actionable measures about these issues. The margin between picking a MacBook Pro and a high-end Dell/HP/Lenovo/System76 is as slim to me as back during the latter stages of the PowerBook days, the last time I switched back to non-Apple laptops for a few years.
Product marketing-wise, Cook is in a tough position that I don't envy. Apple is so big right now that every product revision has to support that "big", "successful" narrative, and he's getting painted into a corner to not jeopardize that story. This pushes severe compromises into product design decisions to go after the bulk of that bigness, and niches like influencer demographics get squashed in the process.
[1] http://www.rdoxenham.com/?p=259&cpage=2
You can actually do this. Cmd + C to copy the file, then Cmd + Option + V to paste it and delete the original.
Apple's abstraction is more honest to what is actually happening.
In truth, I don't think many people are accidentally hitting that shortcut that often. And, if they are, so long as there's an action analogous to undo'ing a textual cut/copy/paste, it shouldn't be a problem.
sent from my macbook
Previous all-aluminum macbook airs have lasted me 6 years, so I have a long ways to go before needing to switch ...
Also, remap that fat caps lock key to control.
For some I suppose. Many of us like using escape :)
This. Earlier this month, I tweeted that "I threw out my hardware RNG, since #macOS's window placement behavior turned out to produce better randomness."
You are making the assumption that your workloads are what define "sophisticated users".
I don't think a professional videographer or a photographer (both of which I do, and am very excited about extra on-demand functionality that the strip brings, for which many fork $300 and $1000 for dedicated external control strips and surfaces) is less "sophisticated" than some code churner that has a typing-heavy workload and doesn't have a use for taking his hands off the home row.
That said, I wont be using it much when programming either. But for Photoshop, Cubase and such? Shut up and take my money!
I am a keyboard junky. I have long used LaunchBar (since OS X Beta), Keyboard Maestro and other utilities to do almost everything on my computer and while keeping my hands on the home keys. And I mapped the CAPS LOCK to ESC many years ago.
For me the current Function Keys are mostly wasted space. I am not sure how useful the Touch Bar will be for me, but I feel it will be more useful than the current setup.
(corrected: keeping hands "on" home)
I have esc remapped to capslock on my laptop, but how easy is it to remap keys in OSX?
My biggest complaint is since macOS Sierra, it is now so hard to create a Hyper-key.
http://brettterpstra.com/2016/09/29/a-better-hyper-key-hack-...
(And I can always pull out my Happy Hacker Keyboard)
Long ago, when I was using apps that made heavy use of the function keys, I mapped ctrl-alt plus a number for to the function keys. I use to love the Happy Hacker Keyboards for have this built in.
I understand Apple's rationale: touch bar = dynamic function keys but, why not keep the physical function and esc keys and add the touch bar on top of that?
So there is gradient even in non-casual users. I would have cried with you if my OS was Windows.
Well, it's obviously NOT meant for touch typing workloads! This is not something to compete with Ctr-A-Alt-J-K-B of Emacs, or ^{"4j of Vim, or for writers to use.
It's for professional apps with lots of special dials, sliders, etc -- stuff useful from the creative industry (DAWs, NLEs, etc) to use cases such as medical equipment controls, etc (another industry that uses some special control surfaces and stuff).
I was thinking the same - If i need extra controls for my app then the app provides them and use my trackpad with my eyes fixed on my screen, like this isn't hard. Seems gadgetry for gadgets sake, disappointing.
If I'm paying hundreds of dollars extra for this to, which seems to be the case, then I think I'll pass unfortunately.
Edit: thank you. Does that mean the female lightning connector would only be used for headphones? Yeah, talk about vendor lockin and connector deprecation.
And even the other 1% don't spend all their time within a set of applications small enough to memorize all shortcuts.
This is interesting. I don't really have an opinion about the feature either way, but the touch-type issue didn't even cross my mind while reading about it. I never learned to do it and can't think of anyone I know who does. Although I'm sure more than enough people here have very different experiences. I wonder what percentages of computer users actually do touch-type regularly...
And I'm pretty sure 90%+ of people here touch type when within the 0-9a-Z range. I just doubt that many people press, without looking, F5 to `continue` in the chrome developer tools. Because (a) you don't remember shortcuts for any app you use less than an hour a day and (b) f5 is a bt too far out of reach (at least for me) to get their using the usual landmarks.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3566079
(no, not just kidding.. jk is my ESC shortcut)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1b/Norton_Comman...
"They finally mac pro'd the macbook pros."
If you feel that Apple isn't designing with you in mind it's probably because you've outgrown them. Time to look at alternatives.
apple makes money from selling phones and computers. If you want to sell a $1,799 notebook (or even $2,399 for the 15 inch version), they need to think on power users.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12807528
This also allows Apple to avoid making the primary screen a touchscreen since they ergonomics don't make sense with the current form factors. Also, by not making the entire keyboard surface touch it ensures the primary typing experience with haptic feedback stays intact.
I stopped looking at the keyboard every 10 seconds when I learned how to touch type.
The presenter spent most of his time looking at the keyboard and not the screen.
This gimmick will disappear when Apple decides a touch screen is needed to complete the slow merge with iOS.
All of the toolbar buttons and more were already on the main screen. If they had offered a touch screen instead, the user wouldn't have to take his/her eyes off the screen to perform the same functions. And that feature is already available on Windows machines with touch screens.
If they had "offered a touch screen instead", the users would have to hold their hand horizontally which would get tiring in about 5 minutes and unbearable after 10.
Not to mention that the on-screen tools were and will still be there anyway if one wants to use them with the traditional, and not challenging to the muscles, mouse and touchpad technology...
Why do so many Mac users think the presence of a touch screen all of a sudden means using it full time?
I got a Surface Pro when I was still a predominantly Mac user and I only used the touch screen when appropriate, which was for a fraction of a second every now and then. And it worked great.
Using a touchscreen is definitely better than a touchpad in a lot of scenarios because of the ability to directly manipulate content instead of having to navigate to it.
Who said full time? Full time it would be unbearable in 1 minute. I said unbearable in 10 minutes with casual use in mind: raising your hand now and then to click this or that button.
And it's not as though you can't continue to use the keyboard, touchpad and/or mouse.
I'll admit, when the Surface Pro first came out, I mocked the touchscreen too. I thought it would create Gorilla Arm. Then I actually got one and used it for an extended period of time. You don't even notice that you're touching the screen.
It's about the orientation, not the touch screen itself. A tablet you normally hold horizontally or at an angle when you use it.
Now, if it was a detachable screen, like the Surface, that could work, but a laptop screen you have vertical to the keyboard.
I get that it might not be for everyone, but a LOT of keyboard cases have been sold to iPad and iPad Pro users (and many of these cases prop up the iPad screen vertically). And keep in mind that iOS pretty much necessitates use of the touch screen more than Windows 8/10 does. So there must be a LOT of people who would be OK with that mode of use.
With respect to the Surface, I use it with the keyboard attached 99% of the time so it's pretty much vertical all the time. It's not even remotely uncomfortable or tiring in normal use.
Yes, but those are for writing -- ie. using the iPad laptop style. Not for doing work e.g. graphics, etc with the iPad vertically held.
You aren't really suggesting that writing is not work, are you?
And why would Schiller make a point of mentioning the touch bar integration with Office and iWork?
No, I wrote "E.g. graphics" as a parenthetical expression to give an example of the kind of work they dont use those cases for. That is, what I wrote amounts to:
"Yes, but those [cases] are for writing -- ie. using the iPad laptop style. [They are not using the cases] for doing work [like graphics] with the iPad vertically held".
>And why would Schiller make a point of mentioning the touch bar integration with Office and iWork?
Because Schiller made this point about a laptop, and even more so a laptop with a flat horizontal strip.
Whereas what I said is that it's tedious for people to do that (touch interaction) on a vertical screen. In Schiller's example there's Office and iWork but no vertical touch screen -- just the strip, and the regular screen you handle with the mouse/trackpad (that is, without having your hands in the air to touch the screen).
There's something to be said about being able to use two fingers to directly manipulate a window's contents to zoom an image or vector diagram in an app to get to the precise size versus futzing around with control + or control - using the app's preset increments.
One of the important things for me with something like the surface is when you finally dock it to use a full setup you don't lose any capability. What happens when you do this with the new mbp? Is a new apple keyboard in the works?
I was considering getting the new mbp this time around thinking this was going to be an enhanced media button bar. But now I'm definitely back on the sidelines
Just like the bigger screen iPhone, which was supposedly a usability disaster because you couldn't reach the whole screen with a single finger.
Some of that is the price, but there's clearly a significant contingent of users who prefer smaller screens.
There's this idea that people will buy everything Apple does, or that people put down things until Apple does them.
First, Apple started from nearly bankrupt in 1997 and so. People clearly didn't just buy what Apple put out. What build Apple's fortune was not some hundreds of millions of "sheep" who magically bought everything Apple put out, but a steady stream of products that increasingly more people bought.
People didn't just buy everything Apple put out. People had to be convinced, from the first post-jobs stuff (Cube, iMac) to start buying them -- increasingly over time. The iPod took years to really take off, for example.
Along with this idea, there's this other idea that Apple 'fans' will put down a feature until Apple releases something that has it.
Those saying that seem to forget that the internet is full of people, and the people who said "the iPhone doesn't need a bigger screen" are not necessarily the ones who bought one after Apple released it.
Apple still sells tens of millions of non-plus iPhones, to people who don't really like the large screen, and even put out the old 4" model again (iPhone SE).
I got a Plus and it's still a usability disaster on that regard. One hand use (which is what I mostly used to do on the smaller models) is pretty much out. But I coped mostly because I appreciate the extra ~50mm camera lens, and for reading stuff while commuting etc (with two hands).
Part of the problem is that Apple / Steve Jobs sometimes helped perpetuate this idea.
Some examples:
* Steve Jobs saying video on an iPod type of device was pointless
* Steve Jobs saying that apps were pointless on the iPhone and that the web apps were good enough
* Apple putting out a TV ad emphasizing that the iPhone had the perfect screen size because your finger could go from end to end
Apple dislikers predictably misinterpret this as Apple taking an ideological position when all Apple is really doing is just trying to control the marketing message on what they think really matters with the current release of a particular product.
I just shift the phone around in my palm. Even with an oversized Otterbox like case I put it in from time to time I'm able to reach 80% of the screen with my thumb, and I reach around with my other 4 fingers to reach the rest of it.
Pretty similar to how I use/used my Nexus 6 one handed, and it was a little bigger than the Plus
You would do well to try one out for a few minutes with a typical workflow of...well, whatever you do on a computer. I thought it was stupid at first and now I miss it when I use my MacBook.
That's my point exactly. A laptop with a touch screen is not convenient, unless it can be somehow turned into a tabled (Surface does it IIRC).
>You would do well to try one out for a few minutes with a typical workflow of...well, whatever you do on a computer.
Tried a few times to get a sense of how it would be during this thread. It doesn't work for me at all (at least when sitting on the desk with the laptop). I don't want to raise my heads and hold them to the screen, and I'm not that hot into touching the screen with my fingers either.
On a real touchscreen laptop or simulating on a non-touchscreen laptop?
I think it makes a real difference to sit down with an open mind and go through some real use cases on a laptop with a working touchscreen (and the software you'd actually use). You'll realize that you're only using when it is appropriate for only a few seconds at a time, if that. And there will probably be huge time gaps (hours, days even) where you might not use it. But in the odd time when you need it, you're often glad that it's there.
This is complete nonsense. I used to think this when I used a MacBook full time. I still do but buying a touchscreen PC has worked wonderfully and I never hover my hand long enough to do anything tiring. It's great for doing quick touches or scrolling / zooming in with precision. You wouldn't want to use it for everything because that's not its use case (this isn't a dedicated tablet this is a computer with a touch screen).
I never hover my hand period, so that's one better. Not that hot about touching the screen either...
>It's great for doing quick touches or scrolling / zooming in with precision.
With my hands on the keyboard and my thumbs close to the touchpad, I don't see the appeal of suddenly raising my hands to the screen, especially for general things like zooming, scrolling. It could make sense to manipulate something like an object directly, but to raise hands just for zooming or scrolling?
I think I figured it out. You're spoiled by the quality of the Apple touchpads. A few minutes with a crappy Windows touchpad and you'll be wishing you could touch the screen.
FWIW, I hate all touchpads. I just hate Apple touchpads the least.
Hmm, you might be on to something here. I'm so used to the Mac trackpads, than I almost never use a mouse with them (except for heavy illustrator/photoshop stuff), whereas with my Windows laptops I always use a mouse.
>FWIW, I hate all touchpads. I just hate Apple touchpads the least.
I hate the IBM's/Lenovo's red-nipple thing with the same passion!
Works fine for iPad users on the sofa.
I've been holding off on updating my macbook pro, but I think I'm going to skip this generation and buy used. The lack of an nvidia gpu is a giant pita. You never get good cuda performance on a laptop, but it's nice to be able to test code on one.
If they expand up to 32g ram though I'm buying one the second they go live on the site.
That's the wrong way to think of it.
It's not a keyboard, it's an adaptive toolbar. And it's close to what professionals in several industries pay handsomely for -- control surfaces, only this one is also adaptive.
>I stopped looking at the keyboard every 10 seconds when I learned how to touch type.
It's obviously NOT meant for typing heavy workloads. Secretaries and programmers coding will not use it when doing their thing.
For what use? Keyboard shortcuts? That's not even half of what this is about.
F9, F10 and F11 can't replace a slider, or a color picker, or dialing in e.g. audio filter resonance, or sliding through frames.
>I can use those blindly while looking at the code
It's NOT for typing/coding. Think pro apps instead (and also lots of non pro, but not text-based apps).
Why? When were coders big on the function keys? Aren't you supposed to not take your hands from the home row, even with Vim/Emacs?
Every single shortcut shown in the cringe-worthy demos today is already mapped to a well-known keyboard shortcut in the app. And pro users can use those shortcuts without ever having to look down at the keyboard.
Final Cut demo claimed that "some of these shortcuts are hard to find in the menus of an advanced app" whereas: 1. the touchbar was displaying the simplest of shortcuts, many of which are already mapped to keyboard shortcuts that professionals use 2. menus in MacOS have a built in search which touchbar lacks, obviously 3. the very next demo of Photoshop showed touchbar shortcuts nested two layers deep and are basically undiscoverable.
What the hell is touchbar if not a totally useless gimmick for actual pro users of pro apps?
I'm a pro user (of NLEs) and I don't "use those shortcuts without having to look down at the keyboard". Only a few of them.
And it's not because I don't do shortcuts in general (I've used Vim for over 20 years in all its glory).
Profesionals use external interfaces all the time, e.g. for color correction, editing etc. While this doesn't fully replace this, it's more than adequate for a lot of what those do, and perfect for editing on the field.
It's also not about those "keyboard shortcuts". Flipping through movie frames with variable speed is not a shortcut. Applying filter resonance on a DAW is not done with a shortcut. Heck, this can even change several items together at the same time (e.g. 2 virtual sliders etc). There are literally tons of other things we now use sliders, dials, etc for in Pro programs, and which arbitrary speed and "jump to place" (not just "one click at a time" as shortcuts offer) will be great.
>What the hell is touchbar if not a totally useless gimmick for actual pro users of pro apps?
It also has no wifi and less space than a Nomad from what I heard. Lame.
Anyway, let's give it a year and we'll see how many pro's swear by it.
Hence the need for the touchbar is further greatly reduced
> It's also not about those "keyboard shortcuts"... There are literally tons of other things we now use sliders, dials, etc for in Pro programs, and which arbitrary speed and "jump to place"
Which are delegated to a tiny strip in an awkward location (notice how carefully everyone is holding their fingers at ~90 degrees to the keyboard) controlled by very imprecise finger movements
> Anyway, let's give it a year and we'll see how many pro's swear by it.
I can agree on that :) We need more actual field experience
Yeah, it seems like it might have been more useful to put it on the side of the keyboard. And they wouldn't have even needed to get rid of escape and the F-keys then.
As an occasional debugging user it would be a great addition to have this on the keyboard.
This is one feature on my Windows laptop I don't like and not excited for a new Mac with one.
[0] https://digg.com/2016/macbook-touch-bar-reviews-apple
Some templates came pre-printed for specific packages, some were blanks for pencil-your-own. Rarely used, but at least those thingies were cheap and did not remove real keys.
Things are not the same just because they are instances of the same concept.
Lenovo's implementation was black and white, did not have controls such as slide, sweep, multitouch gestures, etc, and was just a novelty from a single Wintel vendor with not much third-party app support or OS support.
Apple's implementation adds deep OS support, will have software vendors onboard (judging from the adoption of older features Apple puts into its hardware/OS, it wont be more than a year when most apps people use will support this, from Photoshop which does already, to the Apple Pro/iLife apps (of course), to Pixelmator, Premiere, and tons of others. It also has color, multitouch/gestures, etc, which increase the utility much more, along with higher definition (for thumbnails and such which it also does).
Also Lenovo's other than that didn't sell much to the creatives market, where such a feature would be appreciated more (if it was done properly of course). Macbook Pro's already sell very well to creatives.
It's the same old story really: more thought out, more integrated, and more supported implementation beats "first to market this general idea" every time.
Not exactly. Jazz and classically trained musicians, yes. Rock, pop, electronica, etc gigging keyboardists play non-weighted keyboards all the time.
>Even non weighted keys are despised by any musician. Your mind and body have lots of subtle cue sensors to perceive and react accordingly. Anything that contradicts this will fail for refined/industry use.
We have already been over this when the smartphones came out without actual keys.
True, but every time I've seen linear keys used, it was for "parody" accompaniment.
> We have already been over this when the smartphones came out without actual keys.
And I miss it every day.
Then you can't have been paying much attention.
- That's exactly what I understood as well.
I can see the touch bar being a boon for people who produce music through their macbooks to have a control surface.
All the keys will be virtual, and they will have haptic feedback. The shallow key travel now is to prepare people, similar to the coke <> new coke conspiracy.
Then they will make the keyboard half of the laptop an ipad. Then they will release two ipads that hinge together. Then they will figure out that ios/macos dichotomy is causing problems and finally go through with some hybridization.
You can hit a touch bar item faster than you can position a mouse cursor on a screen toolbar.
That's a joke. Wow.
http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MGRL2B/A/apple-5w-usb-p...
Sorry figure adapter is more accurate word not brick.
Edit: at least there is an option to get actual function keys in the 13" model if they are required to use Voice Over and they cannot be reliable found on the touch bar... and the user won't really care about the screen size (I'm joking, I can think of many reasons why a blind person might want/need to use the 15" model).
Even if you just used the touchbar to allow for context-sensitive buttons, I'd lose the real tactical feedback of a keyboard and need to build new muscle memory for each application.
Worse is when you start putting GUIs on the touch bar—now I'm really expected to look down and scroll through a library of photos or find my favorite website on this tiny strip which isn't on my screen? Why?
Edit: Ah found it, the Lenovo Yoga Book.
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/tablets/lenovo/yoga-book/
So in other words it's using Skylake, not Kaby Lake (7th-generation).
No mention of display resolution either, which leads me to believe the 15" model won't feature a 4K display. It's using an unspecified AMD Polaris GPU.
There's also a 13" MBP sans Touch Bar, featuring normal function keys.
(Audience claps)
Intel Iris Graphics 540 (13" sans Touch Bar)
Intel Iris Graphics 550 (13" with Touch Bar)
Radeon Pro 450 with 2GB memory (15")
Radeon Pro 455 with 2GB memory (15" top-end)
[1] http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MLH42L...
I don't need some stupid touch strip on my Mac, I need a touch screen.
I haven't been this let down by product announcements ever as I have been this year with everything Apple's done.
Now we get all our standard USB ports removed, very little by way of actual hardware improvements, are we even going to get an upgraded Mac Pro that might meet the minimum 4GB gfx card requirement for Oculus, etc?
I've sworn by Apple products for a decade and a half. I'm done.
Furthermore, the lack of a Mac Pro update is just frickin' pathetic.
The distance between this Touch Bar and the monitor is minimal. With a bit of experience with a particular app, I imagine I'd be able to use my peripheral vision and muscle memory more often than not to achieve any particular function.
It's not like the distance between my desktop monitor and keyboard. That would be incredibly annoying as I'd actually have to take my eyes completely off the monitor to see the Touch Bar in that situation.
It feels weird as hell, though. Not getting any sort of finger travel as I press the keys.
EDIT: As well, on my phone (switched to a Nexus, not as familiar with it yet so still feeling it out), I can type pretty quickly without looking directly at the onscreen keyboard. My eyes see it, but my focus is on the text area itself. I imagine this touch bar will be like that for me, it's not so far out of my focal point that it'll totally disappear for me, and glancing at it won't require significant head or eye movement.
What you are seeing is pure change resistance. It has no useful predictive power when evaluating whether the change will be good or bad overall, especially since the set of touch-bar use cases and the set of touch-type-heavy workloads does not seem to overlap much.
Telling people not to think about a skill they have probably used every day since they were near anything with a keyboard is a weird piece of advice
But at any rate, yes, I would be telling people this if it weren't Apple, and had some fun with it:
https://twitter.com/ubernostrum/status/791720257505243136
I bought and still heavily use the most recent MBP model. I don't think I'll be upgrading for a long time. Retina + Force Touch + pretty good specs is more than enough for me.
Lenovo ruinning the thinkpad, Apple turning pros into toys. it's been a harsh few years. - i think there's slowly a good hole to fill in terms of proper workstation laptops that are modular and robust.
are people still hanging on to their 2012 pros? last i checked they still are.
From expensive tool to expensive toy.
I might grab one if apple doesn't bring something out next year that has proper builtin hardware. A Z book can take 64Gb Ecc ram and has a xeon inside I think and it's very modular. Sadly not very compact tho.