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Touch Bar should have been ADDED, not REPLACED
- Thread starter Joe's kitchen
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then it would be too far away, making it even less practical. Thats the issue, keeping it within fingers reach from a normal typing position as the function keys, which even then are a stretch.
the main problem is there's no haptic feedback making touch typing impossible which made it worse than physical buttons. The only way a touch bar could make a return is with haptics that would allow touch typing, but non such haptics exist. Like it would have to physically tell your fingers what kind of button or slider it is that you could learn from memory.
what might be cool is if each button had its own screen, so the buttons could change languages or show hotkeys in real time while still being actual tactile buttons, but thats too expensive.
No, the MAIN problem is that the freaking thing is TOUCH - sensitive to the lightest nudge.
F9 to F12 on my keyboard are used to switch between desktops, which I do hundres of times/day.
F3 thru F8 are used very often in my IDEs.
I have worn function keys. They are invaluable in Excel if you don't want to be hunting icons in the toolbar all day via the mouse.
You are the one making the astounding claim that 99% of people don't use function keys 99.99999% of the time
it's up to you to convince us, not the other way around
regardless, let's suppose a keyboard with some keys that are worn but the function keys are not. That would merely show that the person using that keyboard didn't use the function keys as much as some other keys, not that they didn't use them at all.
using this sort of logic, upon inspecting a bunch of worn keyboards apple should probably also remove the letter J, among others
once again, you seem to have fallen in to a belief that because you don't use something that noone else does. Pretty silly really.
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That's some random guy's blog, hardly a statistically significant sample size, let alone representative of the userbase as a whole. In the age of the function keys often having dual functionality in both Mac OS and Windows, they are being used more often than that random guy's blog would imply. There's a reason both Mac and Windows laptops often have a function (fn) key on the keyboard to trigger the alternate functionality for those function keys.
Personally, I use them regularly when editing videos, using Photoshop, or while using IDEs such as VS Code. Naturally I don't use them as often as the letter keys, because function keys are not used to type sentences such as this one. This latter reason is why your "worn down keys" argument is irrelevant. Even if a video editor uses the function keys 40 times in a typical editing session, that's roughly equivalent to the number of Es I typed in this one paragraph.
This means that the letter keys will be more worn down over an extended period of time simply because letters are used more than function keys.
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The touchbar sucked. I'm glad it's gone. The worst thing ever right behind the old keyboard design
Funny I was just thinking this morning how Phil Schiller f*'d up the Mac so much:
• Butterfly keyboard
• Removing MagSafe
• Removing ports like HDMI (remember all the dongle jokes?)
• Removing SD-CARD slot
• Trash Can Mac Pro
• And YES! the Touch Bar.
I mean I like the guy but and I don't even know if it was all his fault but he stood up for these decisions.
Glad that Apple's made a couple U-Turn and the Mac is now awesome again!
• Butterfly keyboard
• Removing MagSafe
• Removing ports like HDMI (remember all the dongle jokes?)
• Removing SD-CARD slot
• Trash Can Mac Pro
• And YES! the Touch Bar.
I mean I like the guy but and I don't even know if it was all his fault but he stood up for these decisions.
Glad that Apple's made a couple U-Turn and the Mac is now awesome again!
I liked it for the volume control, and switching guitar effects on and off in GarageBand.
Then I started to learn python and the lack of a physical f5 key was annoying, and helped sway my decision (mainly based on lack of ram) to go from M1 MBP 13" to 14" M4 Pro MBP.
Overall I think I prefer the physical keys, but I can live with either.
Then I started to learn python and the lack of a physical f5 key was annoying, and helped sway my decision (mainly based on lack of ram) to go from M1 MBP 13" to 14" M4 Pro MBP.
Overall I think I prefer the physical keys, but I can live with either.
If I have a problem with my Mac, I use Chatgtp.
I hope Apple's version will allow it to actually take the user to for instance the settings window and then have arrows and text or voice run you through the change you wanted. Somehow I doubt Apple are that smart ...
All Apple had to do was have an instruction to convert the touch pad to permanent function keys and if you touch the fn key then the touch bar would be displayed in all its glory. Or perhaps we could always do that and just did not know how to ...
It's interesting though the mention about Excel and using the function keys. Of course M$ has never properly ported Excel for the Mac (despite it originating on Mac OS well before Windows worked and M$ DOS users were enthralled with the power of Lotus 123 - which even drew graphs for your dot matrix and later mono ink jet printers). Microsoft has many touch screen notebook users out there ... but they have never had a pop up touch bar window down the bottom of the screen designed for Office functionality, in particular Excel. I can imagine on a notebook in Excel reach the screen and touch it and a touch bar pops up with lots of Excel fast keys.
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I bought a MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar because I thought the idea of having faders for sound recording was a perfect use-case. Try as I might, however, and perhaps out of habit, I always found myself continuing to use on-screen faders instead.
The idea of the Touch Bar was inspired; the reality was somewhat different and whilst I mourn its passing in a way, I can’t argue with the business case.
You could set it to permanent Function keys/buttons/areas to hit but it was also bit weird as there's no key travel
Well I guess a force feedback touchpad is a sensor strip too. Fairly useful one too.
I wonder what a mac would be like with a haptic feedback hi resolution touch pad ... now it could do a better job than the Touch Bar ever did.
I liked very much the touch pad's feed back too. For install installing software, in the middle of the bar would come up "install". Instead of entering passwords and such you just hit that install on the centre of the touch bar, it would be brightly lit in blue, and off you would go.
I can envisage a slightly larger high resolution touch pad/screen surrounded by haptic function keys that changed depending on one's app and what one was doing in the app. On video conferencing monitor/touch pad could also provide your own face view while allowing one's notebook a full screen for the others on the video.
I wonder what a mac would be like with a haptic feedback hi resolution touch pad ... now it could do a better job than the Touch Bar ever did.
I liked very much the touch pad's feed back too. For install installing software, in the middle of the bar would come up "install". Instead of entering passwords and such you just hit that install on the centre of the touch bar, it would be brightly lit in blue, and off you would go.
I can envisage a slightly larger high resolution touch pad/screen surrounded by haptic function keys that changed depending on one's app and what one was doing in the app. On video conferencing monitor/touch pad could also provide your own face view while allowing one's notebook a full screen for the others on the video.
In video editing hotkeys are life and the function row contains a bunch (Avid, FCP, and all Adobe apps). I’m gonna have to agree with everyone else here, you showed one link for one guy and keep saying “show me a worn function keys row”. Yet this is YOUR claim and that’s YOUR responsibility to prove. So either pony up or shut up. Want a worn row of function keys? Go to any production house, any serious graphic designer. I’m not talking about your keyboard it’s clear you don’t use them and your opinion is set. However don’t forget we type alphanumeric keys constantly. Never mind the fact that anyone worth their salt is gonna replace their keyboards and computers way more often than the average person (you). So when it comes down to it, you’re just wrong and resorting to being rude is just proof you don’t have any real point to make. At the end of the day the function keys are helpful to pro users even if you choose to not use them. There’s a reason they’re around to this day.
Personally I use them semi often and I don’t even consider myself a video editor, graphic designer, or coder anymore. Yet I can hit them just like any alphanumeric key on my keyboard and I assign functions to them in every creative app I use. While I still use Premier Pro, Photoshop, Pixelmator Pro, and Blender I don’t use them as much as I did when I worked for a production studio.
You’re best bet here is to just admit when you’re wrong and save face. It’s obvious more of us here use them than the ridiculously unprovable stat you pulled out of thin air. As I recall 99.99999% of stats are made up, and yes I can also make up stats.
You can skip providing your margin of error btw. It’s probably around 30% anyway.
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100% agree. with Pock it was pretty great. but, one gripe was that its lowest brightness was higher than the screen brightness. quickshade couldnt be applied to it so it wasnt great in the dark.
overall, I'm indifferent though. it was useful with pock, but still easier & quicker to just drag the mouse to the dock and click the app.
I think i had the dock on pock, which was pretty cool, but yeah, it not being a part of the normal usage of a computer or another keyboard (laptop or desktop) around the home or office meant it was something you'd have to specifically remember to use.
3D touch...hmm. how has it changed now that they removed it? i mean, isn't it mostly the same with haptic touch? I swear I thought it was still there lol.
what might that 10% be? basically separating the long hold and the hard touch - and thus not triggering it unless it's strictly intended?
Agreed. I love the touchbar and use it daily on my OG 2020 M1 MBP. Just like most users I guess, I set it to some basic things that I know I will be using very often in my work, so that I don't have to double-click or use keyboard shortcuts, it's easier and faster to just press an icon on the touchbar.
Part of the problem was that for most people the touchbar needed a third-party app to really be useful, as I didn't much care for Apple's implementation out of the box. I use BetterTouchTool, but that's just it - you have to buy third-party software and tinker around for a while until you get it just right for your needs. It's something that requires a bit of time and effort to make your usage of the device more enjoyable long-term, and I guess a majority of people weren't going to go through all of that.
