Touch Bar discussion [merged]

[ice29]

Try using it repeatedly for your workflow over the space of weeks where you start to develop touchscreen shoulder. Its not that touchscreen can't work (if you can put up with fingerprints on the screen), its the format when added to conventional devices causes physical issues.
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You can force the F keys to show in defined apps if that app needs them rather than pushing Fn

Where can you set this? Do you need a 3rd party app? I could only play with TouchBar in AppStore (haven't received the ordered MBP yet...), and had been looking exactly for this kind setting but could not find it. I only found how to disable it completely so it mimics the classic F/fn keys behavior, but not per app.

 

[Antairez]

Been using it for weeks now, doesn't bother me that much, and it doesn't really make such a "distraction" you speak of. It feels similar to ... Nintendo NDS.

 

[blindpacemaker]

Sorry if this has been posted already, but I just found this and had to share:

Whoever managed to do this deserves a medal.

 

[MartyCan]

Sorry if this has been posted already, but I just found this and had to share:

Whoever managed to do this deserves a medal.

Ummm, what is it?

 

[blindpacemaker]

Ummm, what is it?

Someone playing DOOM on the touchbar.

 

[MartyCan]

Someone playing DOOM on the touchbar.

Obviously an upgrade. But no, I do get that someone managed to redirect the video to the TB and that in itself is cool.

 

[BarracksSi]

Obviously an upgrade. But no, I do get that someone managed to redirect the video to the TB and that in itself is cool.

It's an upgrade in that it allows one to muck around without having to worry if their boss gets a glance at their screen.

 

[jdslow]

Has anyone had issue with their touch bars "ghost" touching buttons? Mine seems to have developed a mind of its own over the last few days. If I put weight on the palm rest area (like during normal use on my lap) the touch bar will register touches, even if my fingers aren't touching the machine--just my wrists on the palm rests. I'm going to make a video of it tomorrow, but I'm afraid it means there is a mechanical issue with the machine.

I'm super annoyed and it will mean returning my second tbMBP for a totally different issue.

 

[thesecretrobot]

Bought a 13" MBP w/ TouchBar before the holiday because i had to travel and was interested mostly in the new keyboard, mouse, and lightweight.

I was hopeful about the touch bar because for the most part Apple has been consistent when introducing new user input devices.

I have to agree with the first post in this thread. I am a power user. I don't look at the keyboard. The touchbar is not in my field of vision - so adaptive input elements (app/context specific) move around too much to be useful for me. It's even worse when my dominant hand is on the mouse and I have to travel to keys on the right of the keyboard because its a "mouse-selection" context. I have also tried the "Expanded Control Strip" mode and it presents its own challenges.

The Laptop keyboard is pretty compact - and when my hands naturally rest on the keyboard, my fingers are stretched out flat. For me, its very natural to not curl my hands up over the keys the whole time I am typing or when I am navigating with the mouse. In these situations, my hand will stretch up over the touch bar and "miss-hit" a control. On a regular keyboard, this is not a problem. But the touch bar is so sensitive, that even slightly hovering over a key will register a hit.

Another thing is the escape key. I didn't think I would miss it so much until I started using a spreadsheet (numbers) and realized that I hit escape all the time when editing functions / cells.

Overall, after 3 weeks, I hate it. It gets in the way more than it provides any reasonable functionality.

0/10 Total Fail

 

[ascender]

Am I missing something? Holding down on the volume and brightness buttons on the control strip no longer brings up the sliders on the touchbar.

Bug or fault?

 

[Wakey87433]

Where can you set this? Do you need a 3rd party app? I could only play with TouchBar in AppStore (haven't received the ordered MBP yet...), and had been looking exactly for this kind setting but could not find it. I only found how to disable it completely so it mimics the classic F/fn keys behavior, but not per app.

If you go into Keyboard preference and click shortcuts there is a Function Key section. You can add programs to there that you wish to force function keys for

 

[davetwo]

Bought a 13" MBP w/ TouchBar before the holiday because i had to travel and was interested mostly in the new keyboard, mouse, and lightweight.

I was hopeful about the touch bar because for the most part Apple has been consistent when introducing new user input devices.

I have to agree with the first post in this thread. I am a power user. I don't look at the keyboard. The touchbar is not in my field of vision - so adaptive input elements (app/context specific) move around too much to be useful for me. It's even worse when my dominant hand is on the mouse and I have to travel to keys on the right of the keyboard because its a "mouse-selection" context. I have also tried the "Expanded Control Strip" mode and it presents its own challenges.

The Laptop keyboard is pretty compact - and when my hands naturally rest on the keyboard, my fingers are stretched out flat. For me, its very natural to not curl my hands up over the keys the whole time I am typing or when I am navigating with the mouse. In these situations, my hand will stretch up over the touch bar and "miss-hit" a control. On a regular keyboard, this is not a problem. But the touch bar is so sensitive, that even slightly hovering over a key will register a hit.

Another thing is the escape key. I didn't think I would miss it so much until I started using a spreadsheet (numbers) and realized that I hit escape all the time when editing functions / cells.

Overall, after 3 weeks, I hate it. It gets in the way more than it provides any reasonable functionality.

0/10 Total Fail

My experience exactly. No time savings - quite the opposite as I have to re-do operations that have been accidentally aborted due to accidental touchbar contact.

 

[Christopher Kim]

Am I missing something? Holding down on the volume and brightness buttons on the control strip no longer brings up the sliders on the touchbar.

Bug or fault?

Yes, this is happening with me now too... I've been looking through these forums to try and see if others are experiencing this, as google searching hasn't shown anything... Wonder if it was introduced during Sierra 10.12.2 update?

To change screen brightness or volume, I basically have to expand the control strip now so I get the individual decrease / increase buttons for brightness and volume...

Also, don't know if anyone else is experiencing this, but every now and then, the control strip on my touchbar disappears (while the app controls in the touchbar remain)... If I touch the position where I know the buttons are, they re-appear, but to get the whole thing back, I need to touch the space where the "<" (expand control strip) is to expand and then re-minimize...

 

[sidewinder]

I don't need to do what you are doing. The Touch Bar brightness and volume controls work as expected.

 

[ascender]

Yes, this is happening with me now too... I've been looking through these forums to try and see if others are experiencing this, as google searching hasn't shown anything... Wonder if it was introduced during Sierra 10.12.2 update?

To change screen brightness or volume, I basically have to expand the control strip now so I get the individual decrease / increase buttons for brightness and volume...

Also, don't know if anyone else is experiencing this, but every now and then, the control strip on my touchbar disappears (while the app controls in the touchbar remain)... If I touch the position where I know the buttons are, they re-appear, but to get the whole thing back, I need to touch the space where the "<" (expand control strip) is to expand and then re-minimize...

It wasn't happening on the 15" MBP I returned last week and that was on 10.12.2. So I guess its a bug that's been introduced - wasn't sure if it was specific to the 13" though...

 

[SamVilde]

Can anyone confirm whether Microsoft office has implemented their plans for the touch bar? Thanks.

 

[kipwheeler]

Can anyone confirm whether Microsoft office has implemented their plans for the touch bar? Thanks.

As of about a week ago, no they have not.

 

[Christopher Kim]

It wasn't happening on the 15" MBP I returned last week and that was on 10.12.2. So I guess its a bug that's been introduced - wasn't sure if it was specific to the 13" though...

Ok, I shutdown last night and turned back on today. The brightness / volume controls in control strip work as normal again... I wonder if it only happens after I either go into clamshell mode (I will often clamshell via USB-C -> DisplayPort and use Magic Trackpad 2 / Keyboard) or maybe it's a particular app. Going to keep track and see if I can re-create the issue.

Does shutting down / turning back on work for you? (May or may not be different than restarting). Do you also use external display / keyboard / trackpad? Given it doesn't seem to be a widespread issue, wonder if there are any commonalities...

 

[Liat]

Is it just me, or does the touchbar seem to make no sense when it comes to actual usability?

Touch Bar is the reason I won’t buy the 2016 Macbook Pro I had been waiting for more than a year. I wanted to buy the fully upgraded version.

It would be already crazy enough to pay for something that I turn off. At the end, I would pay extra money for not having ESC and F keys. This would be already bad enough.

But it can’t be turned off.

I don’t buy computers that have leds (or a single led) on them. The first thing I do with a Macbook is turning off the keyboard lights. The charger cable led annoys my, I put something on it when it’s dark. But that’s a static light source.

The touch bar is animated.

I wonder if there wasn’t a single person in the whole company to figure out there are people who buy computers for work.

Except my servers, I bought only Apple computers in the recent years. As soon as another company creates a laptop that’s made of metal, has no leds, noise and has no antiglare screen, I’ll see little reason to stay.
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Welp this thread failed horribly. I am cackling at the backfire. The problem isn't the touchbar. The problem is clearly the price. touchbar is a great idea.

No, it’s not the thread what failed, it’s Apple.

I guess people like me doesn’t post here often but now are looking for Macbook Pro alternatives. It will be a bit stupid to run FreeBSD inside a virtual machine on a Windows laptop, but I will probably do it as I work with both media and software.

I still hope someone at Apple has enough brain to figure out there are people who don’t buy a $5,000 computer for sending smileys in messenger but for writing text and software (and other things) for real.

All my desktop computers are in non-stop don’t disturb me mode, and my cellphone is on silence 95% of the time. I unmute it for 1 or 2 hours when I call someone but can’t reach them.

The fact that I would be willing to pay for the touch bar that I would turn off (if I could) in the first minute forever, and I would pay for having one less row of keys, only tells about how bad the rest of the computers are.

Yet I haven’t seen the Surface in real.
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Do you look at the keyboard on your iPhone when you type? I don't, muscle memory.

For my iMac, I’m using a keyboard that has blank keys. "Das Keyboard" is the name. I guess I can say I type with muscle memory.

But as soon as something emits light, you’ll see it with your periferic sight. And when it’s animated, you notice it even more.

Such things disturb people on different levels.

 

[Liat]

What is todays "gimmick" could easily be tomorrow's necessity.

It’s not true for everything. I can’t stand anything that emits light and it’s not the display when I’m working. I have beautiful DAC (audio device) on the desk, I’m listening to it right now, and there is paper envelop on the top of it to hide the lights.

People have been working with two or three displays for who knows how many years, yet me and many others never will use more than one.

You’ll find $5 - $10 text editors in the App store that offer much less features than the free (Apple included) text editor. They sell because they offer a single feature. Full screen distraction free writing. You don’t get this simple thing even with the free LibreOffice or OpenOffice either (without xml config file hacking). It’s funny they offer like 300 features for free, but distraction free writing isn’t amongst them, so people pay for editors that offer nothing else but this.

There are those who need peace when they want to focus. This will never change.

 

[MrGuder]

I just got my TB last night and some people have mentioned that the resolution is low. The touch bar looks great if your looking at it right from above but in reality who does that? From an angle, which is how one types on a laptop the TB looses it's clarity and fades out. I was typing last night with it on my lap and at times I could not even see what was on the touch bar. I tilted the laptop towards me and the touch bar keys were much more clear and detectable.

I'm also accidentally hitting the touch bar in error twice I hit the brightness up and keyboard brightness up which threw it to max setting. (I had the TB set to always show expanded keys) Maybe I need to give it some more time.

 

[RandomAppleUsers]

A personal opinion of a guy who is finishing his PhD on User Experience Design and worked at Apple's competitor and researched the ergonomics of finger inputs.
The TB is not only useless to me but is hindering in my work. It interrupts my workflow since I have to perform additional finger inputs and have to move my eyes - yes that's a big deal if you are working on a machine 10+ hours a day pretty much every day. Every eye or finger movement comes with a cost. There are some use cases where touch inputs like swiping bring benefits to that cost (e.g. 'range inputs' are easier to select). But these benefits are moot given that these use cases barely occur in most people's workflow. All other inputs come with a high cost: eye movements (saccade and fixation), change of cognitive attention and often also additional finger inputs that come with increased time-of-completion and error rates.

It interrupts my (work)flow and slows me down.

 

[sidewinder]

Where is the cheese? There has to be cheese.....

 

[MartyCan]

A personal opinion of a guy who is finishing his PhD on User Experience Design and worked at Apple's competitor and researched the usability of finger inputs.
The TB is not only useless to me but is hindering in my work. It interrupts my workflow since I have to move my eyes - yes that's a big deal if you are working on a machine 10+ hours a day pretty much all day. Every eye or finger movement comes with a cost. There are some use cases where touch inputs like swiping bring benefits to that cost (e.g. 'range inputs' are easier to select). But these benefits are mute given that these use cases barely occur in most people's workflow. All other inputs come with a high cost: eye movements (saccade and fixation), change of cognitive attention and often also additional finger inputs that come with increased time-of-completion and error rates.

It interrupts my (work)flow and slows me down.

I guess you should have taken a test drive first before you bought it?

 

[RandomAppleUsers]

I guess you should have taken a test drive first before you bought it?

That was design feedback regarding the TB.
I did 'test drive' the machine and your question seems to imply that I may have not chosen this machine if I knew of these issues beforehand (some of which only emerge through long-term use). There are also other factors that go into (my) purchase decisions. And a purchase decision should not be considered the validation of design. I love the form factor and screen for example and need it maxed out (CPU). But purchase decisions shouldn't render design flaws moot