Apple should have learned their lesson with the original Apple ][ RESET key.
The earliest model of the Apple ][ had a normal RESET key in the upper right corner of the keyboard, with only a slightly stiffer spring than every other key on the keyboard. When you pressed it, it went BEEP and dumped you in the monitor.
Later versions of the Apple ][+ increased the spring stiffness a bit, but not enough that it wasn't still way too easy to accidentally press.
And eventually Applesoft came along and it dumped you in BASIC instead of the monitor. But it also disconnected you from DOS and made it almost impossible to continue what you were doing.
There was a whole third party ecosystem of physical and electronic devices to make the RESET key harder to press.
One common one was a square plastic tube that fit over the button, that you had to stick your finger into to press. They came in various styles and colors and designs, and made great branded swag to hand out at trade shows.
Another popular electronic one was a little board that you wired up to make it necessary to press the control key at the same time as the RESET button.
The Apple //e finally adopted built-in control-key RESET protection. (Putting many little third party companies out of business -- not the first or the last time Apple did that!)
They eventually put a stronger spring under it so it was harder to press, but it was still terrible. There was actually a thriving after-market for $3.25 "RESET KEY PROTECTORS": square plastic tube shields that fit over the reset key so you had to stick your finger down inside of it to press reset.
RESET KEY PROTECTOR, which prevented accidental RESET on the earliest models of the Apple II, was available for only $3.25 from Special Systems Design. This was necessary because the RESET key, on the upper right of the keyboard, was easy to press because it had the same spring action as the other keys on the keyboard. Various methods (like this product) were used to stiffen that key, and make it harder to press.
Yeah I would pop entire keys off keyboards to avoid things like this. There was a Sun Microsystems keyboard with a huge Help button in the top-left corner too, which I had to pop off for my own sanity (otherwise every other time I tried to Escape my desktop would pause for a moment and then pop up the Help application window).
The 2015 MBP was definitely the peak. Normal USB ports, an HDMI port, the non-terrible keyboard, and no touch pad. I basically just want this with modern hardware (not just GPU/CPU/RAM etc, but webcam/mic/speakers have improved significantly, and I'd want a couple of USB-C ports).
I remember back in 2016 that some coworkers said that the new keyboard had ruined their life. I've not heard anything that strong about the touchbar but I don't know a single person who likes it and everyone seems to dislike it to some extent. Perhaps them ditching it will be the thing that gets me to check out silicon.
I have two maxed-out-spec mid-2015 MacBook Pros (one in mint condition, including the paper keyboard cover. Got it as a gift, when I already had one - so only lightly used it).
I believe they were among the best MacBooks ever built. I remember Paul Graham also chiming the same in a tweet.
Would love for a thicker lid with batteries & better webcam HW or complete battery on the lower half & a raised display like the iMac with the lower section housing the chips
That's only a constraint and challenge. A removable "backpack battery" on the lid could work. "MacBackPack".
Heck, make it a place to dock an iPad and pull power from it. Something like a better surfacebook
> In a new report published this week, DSCC (Display Supply Chain Consultants) explains that the Touch Bar is the third largest use of OLED displays currently but that its sources indicate that Apple will “cancel the Touch Bar” with a future MacBook Pro.
So, it's still rumors. There's nothing "corroborated" and apple "will" not, but "might" ditch it.
I'm glad! It's really bad to be honest. Nothing wrong exploring new ideas, but it's not good.
I find the Siri thing that comes by default in the top right corner or the right side of the touch bar super annoying (don't waste your time explaining how to disable).
Every single time I touch it by mistake I say "f!ck" or something worse...
If true that Apple computes the input data that goes into Siri from the Touch bar, if I am representative of a group of users, there might be a lot of swearing there...
You can customize the touchbar to have a blank space there instead. It's dumb and stupid that you need to do that though. The Touch bar wouldn't have been so stupid if it was a 7th row of keys basically instead of a 6th row replacement. Remember when laptops had a dedicated row of keys for stuff like volume? That was nice.
Yup, I remember. You had volume and brightness, mute buttons for the mic and speakers, with LED indicators...saved me some embarrassment a few times in conference calls! Sliders to power down the wireless and save battery. You could even use a remappable button if you did want to customize it for something non-stupid, like launching a terminal. And the keys had comfortable travel and tactile feedback! We didn't need dongles and hubs, we had ports all over, and user-replaceable parts, upgradeable RAM, decent thermals. You could swap in a DVD drive, or an SSD, or a battery expansion. The standard batteries were hot-swappable with a thumb slide, rather than glued in...
*looks down at Thinkpad T420*
Oh, yeah, and the print screen/break/insert buttons like on a full-size keyboard; my fingers have muscle memory of them but my conscious mind forgot they were there. Yeah, those were the days!
My sole use of the touchbar is adjusting sound volume. Sometimes adjusting brightness. That's it.
I like the idea of a dynamic input system. But in my opinion the execution is just terrible. Sometimes when I'm typing something in the terminal I accidentally press the touchbar and the man page pops up, which is mildly infuriating.
These little things is what stops me from buying a Mac. I am sure the touchbar would drive me crazy and removed any joy from using the machine. I have not looked lately, but remember also the keyboard had some important keys missing that would be useful for me.
It's a pity because holding and sliding the Touchbar to change the volume and brightness using the touch bar is much faster and more accurate than pressing buttons N times.
There's a lot of good customisation options for the Touchbar if you use a third party tool like BetterTouchTool. It's Apple's loss to not give the user full control of it in the first place.
It really wasn’t, though; you could always hold down modifier keys like Option for really precise volume adjustments, for example. And since these keys can be found by feeling for them, it was a lot easier to just memorize how to tweak settings. I for one will never miss the Touch Bar.
Adjusting the volume on the touchbar for me is very stressful. I have to look down and aim very carefully to find the button. The buttons still don’t make sense to me, I know there’s a visual indication when I’m muted, but there’s also a button to mute, and I’m not sure what I’m looking at. Then I have to tap and wait until I have visual confirmation that I have the grabber. Then I can adjust and hope I don’t confuse the trackpad by moving my finger at slightly the wrong angle. Then I have to pray that it doesn’t crash the touchbar, which seems to happen ~50% of the time.
Adjusting volume on my new MBP has been a nightmare compared to my old MBA.
I actually added the volume control to the menu bar because, while slower to operate, that seems less likely to crash.
You don't have to tap the touchbar, you can just hold and slide it. It's easier to make both large and precise movements with your fingers.
I just like it. Maybe it's because I can find the button in the touchbar without looking, but I don't really understand why increasing the volume in their laptop so very stressful for some people.
The delay is awful though. I slide my finger, and then the slider takes a full second to animate over to the right position. If I try to slide it back, the thing jumps around like a crazed monkey. All the while the volume goes up to ear melting levels and back down again while I’m frantically trying to control it.
It’s like riding a mechanical bull.
If the latency were something under a second it might be reasonable, but it’s not.
I don’t mind the touch bar and it’s actually really nice for Japanese input, volume adjustment and video scrubbing. But I forget it exists because I often use an external keyboard so I won’t miss it.
Yes, also change between kana and alphabet, half and full width, autocomplete of addresses when you type a postal code.
This is so useful when filling in forms that require one or the other. Everyone in my office, Japanese or not, struggles sometimes to enter full width Roman characters and the correct “-“ character in addresses when required by web forms.
The touch bar could have seen use as a true "SAK", providing a direct, trusted I/O path between the user and the secure enclave. I was always hoping we would see interesting security features out of that capability.
But the killer use cases never seemed to materialise and touch bar does not seem loved enough to justify extra BOM cost.
I do wonder what % of this move is UX and what % is cost optimisation.
It always seems like Apple was half-hearted about this feature. Lots of Mac users use an external keyboard and monitor, even with their Macbooks. iMac and Mac Pro users had no Touchbar access at all.
Why didn't Apple sell an external keyboard that included Touchbar? That would have given developers a much larger user base, and would get more of their users hooked on it.
No surprise there really, always felt like the designers were given a project of incorporating "touch magic" without resorting to a touch screen but really the idea just doesn't work.
Fully expect the M2 MBP to have a touch screen and possibly a convertible format.
Screens that don't accept finger input feel broken to anyone under 20.
> Screens that don't accept finger input feel broken to anyone under 20.
These same people have clearly never tried using a laptop long-term with just the touchscreen. It's painful, not just in the figurative sense that desktop operating systems were not designed for touchscreens (even Windows which attempted a hybrid model, is still crap), but in the literal sense that holding your arm up all day to use it gets really tiring, really fast. Even convertible formats suffer the same problems, they often end up bulky and are never really a good replacement for either a tablet or a proper laptop.
> Fully expect the M2 MBP to have a touch screen and possibly a convertible format.
Arguably, Apple's already got that market covered with the iPad and Magic Keyboard. I think we would sooner see an iPad SKU running macOS than any MacBook going to a convertible style.
But Ctrl+Cmd+Space already brings up the emoji picker no matter what application you’re in. The analogue for Windows is Win+. or Win+;. The touch bar isn’t so unique for its emoji capabilities.
I actually found the Touch Bar to be useful for IntelliJ shortcuts compared to unwieldy keyboard shortcuts. I liked the volume control as well. But these conveniences were not so important that I missed them when switching to a linux laptop. It was just nice to have without any downsides.
I seem to be the only person who loves customizing and utilizing the Touch Bar for all kinds of nifty things… shame. To be fair, I agree it’s customizability is far too limited without 3rd party software which is pretty sad.
The only thing I use the Touch Bar for is adjusting sound and brightness, but I like its mechanics for that way better than the old “tap F10 three times” method.
I don’t miss anything else from the old row of little buttons.
I think if you use BetterTouchTools and modify your Touch Bar for custom needs (I use the GoldenChaos presets) - it can prove to be somewhat useful, and save screen real estate on certain things too. So I'm not 100% against it, but I understand the appeal of having physical keys.
It's not quite as bad as it looks, I've only accidentally opened man pages and siri a couple of times but I've also never once used it and thought "wow this is so much better than having a row of function keys" so it's been all negatives.
My personal keyboard doesn't have an escape key either, you can just use the alt key or c-[ most of the time so that wasn't as big a deal as everyone made it out to be.
62 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] thread2021 MacBook Pro ransom leak shows no Touch Bar, details on I/O layout
https://9to5mac.com/2021/04/21/2021-macbook-pro-ports-leak/
'Touch Bar' Trending on Twitter Following Rumors It'll Be Removed on 2021 MacBook Pro
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/01/15/apple-removing-touch-ba...
Microsoft mocks Apple’s doomed Touch Bar in new Surface ad
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/25/22248238/microsoft-apple-...
This Microsoft Ad Compares Surface Pro To Apple MacBook
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYWxxtvIacc&ab_channel=Benja...
The TouchBar was a useless gimmick and a waste of space on the laptop anyway. Glad its removed.
Looks like it was a very good idea to skip the M1 MacBook Pro and wait for the upgraded version.
It came in iterations, better keyboard then ESC key. Now touch bar. Funny how things come full circle.
Apple should have learned their lesson with the original Apple ][ RESET key.
The earliest model of the Apple ][ had a normal RESET key in the upper right corner of the keyboard, with only a slightly stiffer spring than every other key on the keyboard. When you pressed it, it went BEEP and dumped you in the monitor.
Later versions of the Apple ][+ increased the spring stiffness a bit, but not enough that it wasn't still way too easy to accidentally press.
And eventually Applesoft came along and it dumped you in BASIC instead of the monitor. But it also disconnected you from DOS and made it almost impossible to continue what you were doing.
There was a whole third party ecosystem of physical and electronic devices to make the RESET key harder to press.
One common one was a square plastic tube that fit over the button, that you had to stick your finger into to press. They came in various styles and colors and designs, and made great branded swag to hand out at trade shows.
Another popular electronic one was a little board that you wired up to make it necessary to press the control key at the same time as the RESET button.
The Apple //e finally adopted built-in control-key RESET protection. (Putting many little third party companies out of business -- not the first or the last time Apple did that!)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23068829
The original Apple ][ had a reset key in the upper right corner of the keyboard that was WAAAAAY too easy to press.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e3/1b/53/e31b53767fad646fc635...
They eventually put a stronger spring under it so it was harder to press, but it was still terrible. There was actually a thriving after-market for $3.25 "RESET KEY PROTECTORS": square plastic tube shields that fit over the reset key so you had to stick your finger down inside of it to press reset.
https://apple2history.org/history/ah13/
RESET KEY PROTECTOR, which prevented accidental RESET on the earliest models of the Apple II, was available for only $3.25 from Special Systems Design. This was necessary because the RESET key, on the upper right of the keyboard, was easy to press because it had the same spring action as the other keys on the keyboard. Various methods (like this product) were used to stiffen that key, and make it harder to press.
https://imgur.com/a/jGpcT4Z
Special Systems Design ad for Apple ][ Reset Key Protector, from Apple Orchard v1n1 1980 Mar Apr, page 107.
https://archive.org/details/Apple-Orchard-v1n1-1980-Mar-Apr/...
Videx Enhancer ][ Reset Key Protection:
https://archive.org/details/Videx_Enhancer_II_Installation_a...
I remember back in 2016 that some coworkers said that the new keyboard had ruined their life. I've not heard anything that strong about the touchbar but I don't know a single person who likes it and everyone seems to dislike it to some extent. Perhaps them ditching it will be the thing that gets me to check out silicon.
Shame their palm sizes would remain the same when next smallest iPhone grows even bigger.
I believe they were among the best MacBooks ever built. I remember Paul Graham also chiming the same in a tweet.
> In a new report published this week, DSCC (Display Supply Chain Consultants) explains that the Touch Bar is the third largest use of OLED displays currently but that its sources indicate that Apple will “cancel the Touch Bar” with a future MacBook Pro.
So, it's still rumors. There's nothing "corroborated" and apple "will" not, but "might" ditch it.
I find the Siri thing that comes by default in the top right corner or the right side of the touch bar super annoying (don't waste your time explaining how to disable).
Every single time I touch it by mistake I say "f!ck" or something worse...
If true that Apple computes the input data that goes into Siri from the Touch bar, if I am representative of a group of users, there might be a lot of swearing there...
*looks down at Thinkpad T420*
Oh, yeah, and the print screen/break/insert buttons like on a full-size keyboard; my fingers have muscle memory of them but my conscious mind forgot they were there. Yeah, those were the days!
I like the idea of a dynamic input system. But in my opinion the execution is just terrible. Sometimes when I'm typing something in the terminal I accidentally press the touchbar and the man page pops up, which is mildly infuriating.
There's a lot of good customisation options for the Touchbar if you use a third party tool like BetterTouchTool. It's Apple's loss to not give the user full control of it in the first place.
We moved from a brightness and sound ui that can be operated by touch and feel alone to one that required a context switch.
Adjusting volume on my new MBP has been a nightmare compared to my old MBA.
I actually added the volume control to the menu bar because, while slower to operate, that seems less likely to crash.
I just like it. Maybe it's because I can find the button in the touchbar without looking, but I don't really understand why increasing the volume in their laptop so very stressful for some people.
It’s like riding a mechanical bull.
If the latency were something under a second it might be reasonable, but it’s not.
This is so useful when filling in forms that require one or the other. Everyone in my office, Japanese or not, struggles sometimes to enter full width Roman characters and the correct “-“ character in addresses when required by web forms.
But the killer use cases never seemed to materialise and touch bar does not seem loved enough to justify extra BOM cost.
I do wonder what % of this move is UX and what % is cost optimisation.
Why didn't Apple sell an external keyboard that included Touchbar? That would have given developers a much larger user base, and would get more of their users hooked on it.
Fully expect the M2 MBP to have a touch screen and possibly a convertible format.
Screens that don't accept finger input feel broken to anyone under 20.
These same people have clearly never tried using a laptop long-term with just the touchscreen. It's painful, not just in the figurative sense that desktop operating systems were not designed for touchscreens (even Windows which attempted a hybrid model, is still crap), but in the literal sense that holding your arm up all day to use it gets really tiring, really fast. Even convertible formats suffer the same problems, they often end up bulky and are never really a good replacement for either a tablet or a proper laptop.
> Fully expect the M2 MBP to have a touch screen and possibly a convertible format.
Arguably, Apple's already got that market covered with the iPad and Magic Keyboard. I think we would sooner see an iPad SKU running macOS than any MacBook going to a convertible style.
And for emojis, although the FN-+type ahead works better tbh
I don’t miss anything else from the old row of little buttons.
It's not quite as bad as it looks, I've only accidentally opened man pages and siri a couple of times but I've also never once used it and thought "wow this is so much better than having a row of function keys" so it's been all negatives.
My personal keyboard doesn't have an escape key either, you can just use the alt key or c-[ most of the time so that wasn't as big a deal as everyone made it out to be.