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Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

I'm in the market for the new MacBok Pro and the OLED row makes me excited, but as a Vim user the lack of an physical escape key would be problem for me.

I have Caps Lock mapped to Ctrl and I'm glad that MacOS provides this option out of the box, but Caps Lock as Esc is not an option for me. I hope there will be an out of the box way to map Escape to something sensible. I'd trade ~ for Esc anytime, as long as ~ and ` are accessible via the OLED strip.

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Karabiner (https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner) allows Caps Lock to act as Escape when tapped, but as Ctrl when held down. Unfortunately it doesn't yet work with Sierra.

A benefit of this approach is that it's at the OS level, so it'll work even when in ssh.

I map 'jk' to escape, but if I'm ssh'd into a machine without my config, I can also press ^[ instead (since I too map caps lock to control), that's still easier than hitting the physical escape key.

I used 'jj' for a while but the short delay to display j threw me off. I have Ctrl on Caps Lock so pressing Ctrl-[ is decent but still: I never got used to it.

I met Bram at Vimfest in Berlin recently and asked him if he remaps Esc. He said something along the lines of: "No, I aim for the upper left of my keyboard and hope for the best".

I too stopped using 'jj' because of the short delay. FWIW I've found ';l' to work well as a replacement. (For a trial period I had them both mapped to <esc> in my vimrc file.) ';l' seems a natural, but distinctive, rolling motion for me and I've never had it conflict with real-world text entry.

I'm kind of in the same boat as you. I'm a heavy vim user, and a weird ESC key would really suck. I may be able to get used to ~ as escape, would take some getting used to though.

Have you ever considered mapping 'jk' or 'kj' to Esc? This seems to be a somewhat common mapping from what I've seen looking at others' vimrc.

I mapped <C-c> to <Esc> in all modes. I find that way better actually.

I used 'jj' for a while but the short delay to display j threw me off. I have Ctrl on Caps Lock so pressing Ctrl-[ is decent but still: I never got used to it.

I met Bram at Vimfest in Berlin recently and asked him if he remaps Esc. He said something along the lines of: "No, I aim for the uppI used 'jj' for a while but the short delay to display j threw me off. I have Ctrl on Caps Lock so pressing Ctrl-[ is decent but still: I never got used to it.

> OLED row makes me excited

Can't imagine why. It sounds incredibly dumb.

Probably have to live with it since no one else seems to be able to make a really high quality laptop. sigh.

> Probably have to live with it since no one else seems to be able to make a really high quality laptop. sigh.

My solution to this has grown more and more to be "do everything on a remote box via SSH" and then it doesn't matter what laptop I use.

I am a heavy Vim user, so this is easy!

The MBP is nice b/c of the retina screen. Most laptops have crappy screens. In fact, I would go as far as saying that the MBP has the best screen by a decent margin.

I definitely have to agree, but they're getting serious competition on that front now. The Surface Pro is very close in ppi to the rMBP. Vendors are asking for this to compete with Apple.

PPI isn't everything. The quality of the glass/plastic is also an issue. My DELL 4K monitor certainly has the resolution, but it also looks like I'm staring at a textured surface because they use cheaper acid etched plastic as the anti-glare solution.

It's not raw power, although the responsiveness of the OS is a factor. It's the combination of a nice screen, good keyboard, best touchpad (crazy gap to #2), good battery life, and durability. All in a decently small/light package.

edit: Surface book might be okay.

I tried one of those razor laptops last year, it was okay. Not as good as the macbook, but not bad.

>Rumors also suggest the OLED touch panel may be contextual, with buttons that change based on each app that's in use. [1]

Having the most common functions available is something that sounds great in theory. The idea is not even new [2]. We will see if it works in practice.

Personally I think I would like the OLED strip to show my Dock permanently, so that I could switch apps without reaching to the touch pad.

[1] http://www.macrumors.com/roundup/macbook-pro/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard

The OLED strip will probably used

this is apple, be on the lookout for the new iVimClutch. (for those who dont know what a vim clutch is: https://github.com/alevchuk/vim-clutch)

I thought of this before. Funny that it is a real thing.

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