Images of New MacBook Pro with Magic Toolbar Leaked in MacOS Sierra 10.12.1 | Hacker News Reader

Images of New MacBook Pro with Magic Toolbar Leaked in MacOS Sierra 10.12.1

macrumors.com

250 pointscoloneltcb577 comments

I'm really surprised by the negative reactions to the context bar. Does everyone really have memorized what all 12 function keys do in every app they use? I think this could tremendously help usability for pretty much every application other than my IDE, since I do have those memorized.

Being able to hit a function key without looking? I may be able to to touch type. But I've never trusted myself to hit a function key blindly.

I will say. Stepping through code could be difficult. Where I repeatedly am stepping over lines while looking at the screen. I imagine my finger could drift. Couldn't say without using it, but I imagine I would keep one finger on a number to ground my hand while tapping step over or step in.

Do you never use the Esc key without looking?

What about ctrl + c?

If I understand your suggestion, ctrl+c doesn't work in all the contexts where I use escape (modal dialogs, editor autocomplete popups, etc).

Honestly. Can't really think of when I use escape to give a real answer. I think I could hit it without looking, but I don't think I hit escape that often. Or maybe I use it all the time and won't notice until it's gone.

But yeah. If ^[ or caps lock mapping is not an option, and your workflow requires a lot of escape presses, it could be annoying to have to look down to hit it.

Get out of a dialog quicky. Get out of the OS popup (e.g. File save). Get out of the current context in your editor/IDE (e.g. Search etc) Cancel something. Cmd+esc takes you to the previous up from cmd+tab (instead of cmd+shift+tab). Ever wanted to cancel drag and drop?!

Honestly the Esc key is indispensible.

> Cmd+esc takes you to the previous up from cmd+tab

I've always used cmd+~ for that

exactly -- vim users who haven't transitioned to ^[ hit it all the time

Also, this looks to me like yet another not-particularly-useful tentpole 'feature' when I really wish they would spend some quality time fixing abundant os and finder bugs.

Why transition to a double key combo rather than use CapsLock as Esc? The other quite useful "universal" key is the § key on a European mac keyboard (which is for some insane reason just under Esc where ` normally would be)

Because your fingers stay in the normal location. To hit escape, I have to either lift my left hand or rotate sharply at the wrist.

Yes, but you capslock is more accessible than the ctrl key in my opinion. I quite like the option to remap capslock to both ctrl (when used with another key) and to esc when pressed alone, that was suggested in other comments.

I only use it for escaping from a full screen view on youtube

I hit Esc without looking all the time. It's how I dismiss modals. I foresee a good deal of ` in my future.

I have also learned to find the keyboard backlight brightness keys in pitch darkness.

Why would anyone use Esc over CapsLock?

Because they've mapped CapsLock to CTRL?

They should map both Control and Escape to Caps Lock. Control when combined with other key or held for longer than 250 ms, and Escape when pressed and released within 250 ms.

That's awesome, I had no idea you could do that. MacOS Sierra? Doesn't appear to be present in El Capitan Modifier keys - or is it a third party utility?

Can do it using Karabiner (https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/).

Sadly doesn't support Sierra properly yet.

Check out ControllerMate. It lets you remap anything with complex logic.

The original blog post that introduced me to this setup describes macOS setup: http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/a-modern-space-cadet/#cont...

On X11, https://github.com/alols/xcape just run `xcape -t 350 -e 'Control_L=Escape'`

On Windows, AutoHotkey: https://github.com/myfreeweb/dotfiles/blob/32c9cfd8d5e0a3a2c...

plenty of games use ESC in input options as an exit out of selection. "Press key to bind or ESC to cancel", with your solution I would end up with unwanted CTRL binds

I don’t see how. Do 250 ms pass quicker when you’re in a game?

But ctrl is FIRE! Well, it was until games started to suck.

I hit Esc without looking about 500 times a day. As does nearly every Vim user in existence, I imagine.

s/day/hour

Haha, yeah - 500/day definitely seemed low to me

To be honest, my ratio is probably more like 750/hour, considering that I do 100% of my work in terminal windows, use nvim as my main code editor, use a tiling window manager (whose keybindings include escape for some sequences), use mutt for email, newsbeuter for rss feeds, weechat for irc…

I just didn't want to seem overly hyperbolic in my original post :)

Not a vim user (but I know how to use it-ish). The escape key as the key in vim always struck me as an odd choice, ergonomically.

Of course, I've mapped ctrl to the caps lock key, so...

The original vi was created on a keyboard that had Esc in the place where CapsLock now lives (on a standard US or UK English 104-key keyboard)

The original `vi` was written on an ADM-3A terminal. If you have a look at the keyboard layout

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A#/media/File:KB_Terminal...

You can not only see why Esc was easy to hit, but also the arrow keys (and, in common with other terminals of the time, why "home" is "~")

^[ will change your life -- you don't have to move your left hand up to hit the escape key!

I've considered it, but I've spent the last ~10 years of my life learning and using Vim with esc ingrained into my brain. I've managed to retrain some combinations by sheer force of will and major effort, but I think I might be too far down the rabbit hole for Esc.

I've been trying out jj as escape, but I keep forgetting to use it.

IMO that's a terrible escape sequence.

I agree for the most part. But on the Mac keyboard the Escape key is tiny and way off the home row. C-[ is awkward and there's only a small control key in the left side so I miss it all the time (my pinkies aren't good at hitting the right key for some reason.)

I've remapped Caps Lock to Control and that's working out better.

I'm thinking it'll be rad to map the entire bar to escape for vim use.

I was kind of hoping for a touch screen Mac. Is that ever gonna happen?

I never want this. Why would I mess up my beautiful high resolution screen with fingerprints?

I rarely notice any fingerprints on my beautiful, high-resolution iPhone screen.

And I much prefer using a REAL computer with a REAL file system and REAL USB connectors for loading arbitrary data and organizing it into an arbitrary directory hierarchy and begin able to work on those files with any arbitrary combination of a REAL command line for extra powerful, customizable tools and REAL power GUI apps.

The multiple-degree-of-freedom stylus like the iPencil could give even more power to a real computer. Unfortunately, the thinking at Apple seems to be that if you want the power of a great stylus, you'll have to give up the real computer and use it on the toy OS that Apple seems to want us all to move to eventually.

Counterpoint: I notice fingerprints on my iPhone screen. I'm constantly wiping it on my jeans to get rid of bits of dirt, finger grease and other stuff.

I'm ambivalent about a touch screen Mac. I do know I've got plenty of fingerprints on my screen even without one :)

I was hoping for that too, but after some interactions with touch screens on Windows laptops, I realized there's very little I actually want to touch on a Desktop UI.

Try a touchscreen Chromebook. After a while you stop using the trackpad for a lot of interactions. It's a lot easier in a lot of cases to point-and-press than to have to move your cursor to the opposite corner.

What do you use the touchscreen for on ChromeOS? I basically never used the touch screen on my Chromebook until the beta with Android app support.

Well, touch almost makes complete sense in a web browser but few other places on the desktop.

Scrolling, hitting links etc would be easier.

Funny.

I was just earlier toying with the idea of getting the iPad Pro as my second monitor. I just started using duet with my regular iPad, and was surprised both at how well it works for display and its touch screen!

Display rate is not great at highest resolution but perfect for my slack, dash, or current project displaying with browser sync while I work in my IDE on the main screen.

> duet with my regular iPad

cool. I'm gonna try this out at home. Thanks.

Nice, I had looked at this before and it seems they have a 50% discount right now. Time to pick it up I guess.

I don't think your shoulders are going to like it too much.

Yes, I touch-type function keys. And having used the X1 Carbon 2nd generation, I hated the "touch-strip" function keys, both because they have no boundaries between keys and because they have no tactile feedback when pressing.

The "context bar" seems like a huge win for people who look at the keyboard (who do comprise a huge fraction of the market), and a huge loss for touch-typists.

That said, I also don't use that many function keys, and I've slowly started remapping the keys I care about to other key combinations. In practice, I care about a few sets of function keys, most notably F11/F12 (commonly used for fullscreen, which I've now remapped to Super-F), and F4 (Alt-F4 to close applications, for which I've now trained my fingers to use Ctrl-W or Ctrl-Q and report bugs on the occasional application that doesn't accept those).

"I hated the "touch-strip" function keys, both because they have no boundaries between keys and because they have no tactile feedback when pressing."

I don't know about the boundary between keys thing, but for tactile feedback: Force Touch?

"The "context bar" seems like a huge win for people who look at the keyboard (who do comprise a huge fraction of the market), and a huge loss for touch-typists."

I don't think so. I touch-type, but I hardly ever touch-type the function bar. Doubly so on a Mac, because the function bar is, by default, used for brightness and media controls.

> I don't know about the boundary between keys thing, but for tactile feedback: Force Touch?

I've (briefly) used a device with Force Touch. It doesn't come anywhere close to replacing the depress-and-release of a physical key. It's better than nothing, barely. But I don't want to use a tablet with an on-screen keyboard as my primary productivity device; I want to use a laptop with a physical keyboard.

> I don't think so. I touch-type, but I hardly ever touch-type the function bar. Doubly so on a Mac, because the function bar is, by default, used for brightness and media controls.

That seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I also know many Mac users who don't know why anyone would need a right mouse button, let alone a middle mouse button. If you design your interface to not need it, and you know people will never run third-party applications that do, then sure.

Nobody does need a second or third mouse button. I spend hours a day in Mac, Linux, and Windows desktops and the pointing experience with a trackpad on a Macbook blows away what you get on any of the others, no matter what hardware is plugged in.

Yes, but you have to configure it. You setup your gestures, fix their backwards idiotic "[un]natural-scrolling", and make sure you have your right mouse button setup.

The right mouse button is set up by default.

You'll get my highlight-buffer-paste-on-middle-click only if you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

If you've trained yourself to only need one button, then yes, you only need one button. But look how well that's worked out on the iPhone, with a heavily-overloaded one button, with hard-to-discover functionality.

Running Debian on an old Macbook 4,1 (2008) on my first ever Mac and am not thrilled with the trackpad, or the keyboard layout. The best configuration I've yet mustered is:

  #!/bin/bash
  synclient TapButton1=1
  synclient TapButton2=3
  synclient TapButton3=2

This gives a minimally usable touchpad, with two-finger-tap right-click, side-scroll and tap-select.

I am still scratching my head at the absence of right-click and the key layout. I have no actual Mac OS experience to compare to, but Imagine they've done it all well when it's used as intended. Otherwise, it's working great and the build quality is solid. I am already fantasizing about Linux on a newer model, maybe with a PC mouse or external touchpad though.

Well it's ok because it's a function bar, which is barely used on any Mac at all, aside from (as others have pointed out) odd cases or people who are super dedicated to some sort of function mapping.

The right click thing is astounding to me... Everybody uses right click. Mac or not.

>I also know many Mac users who don't know why anyone would need a right mouse button

Macs have effectively had right mouse buttons for around a decade. Two finger click on the trackpad, or a literal right click on an Apple mouse (there just isn't a physically separate right button).

Just an aside you can change the configuration to default to function keys and require th fn key for the system functions like brightness and volume. It's the first thing I swap. Hate having to debug with one finger on the Fn key.

I'm glad you can do that, but I'm not going to. The only time I really use those keys is for the brightness/media controls.

You can even change this on a key-by-key basis using a neat tool called FunctionFlip. This enables you to have certain F Keys work natively, while other F Keys require you to hold down Fn...

http://kevingessner.com/software/functionflip/

There's a big middle group, people who generally touch-type with the best of them, but couldn't touch-type an Fn key to save Manhattan.

They just aren't that useful for many people, and so the muscle memory never forms. (They are also really far from home row on some keyboards)

> They just aren't that useful for many people, and so the muscle memory never forms.

I'd be surprised if the majority of touch-typists on Windows don't have muscle-memory for Alt-F4, at a minimum.

> They are also really far from home row on some keyboards

Fair enough; helps that I exclusively use and prefer laptop keyboards, to the point of having a USB ThinkPad keyboard/mouse combo on my desk.

But there is no commonly used Mac shortcut that uses the function keys.

escape key being the one exception. That is in my muscle memory.

Esc, play/pause, mute, volume down, volume up, Cmd+option+eject (sleep)

Show desktop.

I pretty much only use ESC, F11 (show desktop) and F5 to reload the browser + the occasional f6 to jump to the browser address bar. I've also reversed the standard mapping so F11 is triggered without the fn-key.

show desktop: I use the trackpad gesture

reload: cmd+r

jump to browser bar: cmd+l

I have no idea what Esc does, I never use it.

Esc: cancel dialog

Function key shortcuts have never been a significant Mac paradigm, and for good reason. Apple certainly would never put something OS-centric like 'close window' on a function key. They use contextually-relevant letter keys for shortcuts, and have been on a decades-long crusade to destroy the F-keys entirely. They haven't shipped a system with function keys that defaulted to function keys in 15 years; it's third-party software and the odd legacy text-based UI where you find them. The controls these are used for by typical users (volume, music, brightness) are not really things you need to be able to hit without looking, and exactly why I can see this succeeding on the Macbook where it was a frustration on the X1.

fwiw, I regularly use the back/forward/play buttons on my mac keyboards, and I can touch type them.

That and option-shift-volume buttons to move volume up/down quarter ticks which is super helpful with earbuds that get way too loud otherwise.

I can touch type F1, F2, F11, F12 because they are brightness and volume up down. At F7-F10 there are music controls, I would assume I hit them with 80% accuracy or less if I try to hit them directly.

Really sad to see them go, as well as the esc button.

I'm still on a 2008 macbook, and it was just kicked off from new OS updates (just updated to El Capitan) and the "next" device I look at and like is like 2013 model or something.

I am using Linux on a white Macbook from 2008 with an SSD. I still get OS updates, and while not a beast, it does a decent job for what I need (code editing, browsing).

Oh yeah, I have almost no qualms about using this old one, well except for the fact that it is officially not receiving new OS versions - which eventually will become an issue.

The small resolution, no battery life, slow processor are only minor annoyances to me. It is fast enough for me, I do iOS development/browsing/movies.

Even though I have a general sense, I always look to check, as I don't want to do something crazy, eg press alt+f4

I used to be pretty good at touch-typing to them back when lots of games used the F keys (Mechwarrior series, Dark Forces II, X-Wing, that sort of thing). These days just mashing in the general area of F4/F5/F6 (quick save in many games) is all I can manage without looking.

I've also gotten worse at the number row now that few games use more than the first 3-4 for quick slots or weapons.

I would be surprised if any developer who regularly used an IDE hadn't memorized the various function keys for debugging etc

Believe it or not, but there are touch typists who aren't developers. Quite a lot, in fact.

Touch vs. Visual is only one spectrum of change here.

I remap function keys for global purposes like window tiling with Divvy. Seems like context-sensitivity will delete what I consider to be key functionality.

presumably you could override a context-sensitivity with global parameters just like you could remap the keys?

I have an X1 Carbon from work. Overall an OK windows laptop, but man does the eink(?) touch strip thing suck. While I think that the Macbook version will be far superior, I hope they manage to solve its glaring shortcomings. Some observations:

1. Questionable utility. Sure, there's an icon for 'copy' and 'paste', but I cannot imagine it being easier for anyone to hunt along a non tactile touch surface located in an awkward position to hit that icon rather than just using Ctrl + C (or the mouse, which you've just made your selection with). That's a shortcut almost everyone knows.

2. Poor/Non-existent third party software support. Basically works for IE and Windows Explorer and that's it.

3. Software that drives the screen is poorly made and crashes occasionally.

4. The strip is a 2 bit/pixel B&W screen that is hard to read and is not backlit.

That X1 touch strip sucked enough that they took it out of the very next model I was holding off buying my X1 until I confirmed it didn't have that strip. Not being able to tell where the keys are without looking is bad for professional users - it splits your attention from the screen where your work is, and the tool you use to do your work.

Function-key shennanigans reminds me of an apple laptop from years and years ago, well before the unibodies came out, where the function keys were hard up against the screen - hit a function key, and you bang your fingers against the screen (well, most of the time).

With Apple's version you're bound to wonder how you ever got by with a mere keyboard and mouse.

Every personal computing device is either a) a rough prototype for some Apple product or b) a shameless knockoff of one. The Carbon touchstrip was the former.

It seems likely that the sort of thing you would put on such a key would be better served by either a spot on a tool bar preferably with an actual textual label not a cute icon or a physical button .

The former is visible without looking down at your hands the latter is easy to press. I believe this combines the worst of both worlds.

I don't know how to address your last sentence it sounds clever but it means virtually nothing. If apple does it first its a knockoff if someone else does it first its a rough prototype of something apple will ultimately do better. Heads I win tails you lose?

I haven't used a function key since WordPerfect 5 for DOS.

not even F5 to refresh?

Cmd-r

Cmd-Shift-r for me.

To hell with caching!

Just R in Vimperator.

how about Escape?

I was really worried about Esc, then I realized, you know, there's gotta be a way to remap the whole touch bar to be Esc.

Remap Caps Lock to Esc?

Where would the ctrl key go?

You can configure caps lock pressed alone to act as escape, but when pressed in combination with other key to work as control. Very useful for both vi and emacs users.

Interesting. How would you configure this on a Mac?

You would install this: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements

I use Karabiner and BetterTouchTool in combination

Control + [

Lets talk European keyboards, [ is alt+8. This has been a long running frustration for apps that don't allow remapping but use the US/UK keyboard as standard.

I'm not sure what "European keyboard" you have but mine doesn't work that way. [ is a key on my keyboard I don't need to press any modifiers for.

It's also a bit odd to generalise this to European keyboards as some layouts vary wildly on the continent based on the lack of or added letters to their alphabet. Also, UK is in Europe so would count as a European layout.

To be more specific, this is true at least on a German QWERTZ layout.

Control + ] or Control + [ is frequently the escape character, although not always. You can usually type it with Control + some key right of P. In the Swedish keyboard, use Control + å, German is Control + ü. But it does vary wildly, French is Control + 6, Hungarian is Control + 5, and so on.

I learned escape as C-[ long ago and never regretted it. Too many keyboards tried to be smart about it.

On, and control next to the a,and caps lock something that requires two people to turn keys at the same time from separate bunkers.

For me:

F2 - rename

F4 - jump to the address bar (explorer, elsewhere)

F5 - refresh in the browser, execute/debug in various places

F9 to F12 - Visual Studio debugging and navigation

F11 - full-screen toggle (browser)

When I was SW Dev...my most used Function keys are... F7 - Single step

F8 - Step into

Shift F8 - Step over

F9 - inspect symbol

F10 - execute to cursor

I have the same keyboard and same problem. I am desperately hoping that Apple is (a) using some taptic magic to make it easy to feel the edges between keys (this is possible from the original haptic/taptic research) and (b) requires a CLICK instead of a TOUCH to reduce accidental touches. A physical escape key wouldn't have gone astray either, as a power terminal user particularly with vim -- different escape keys (no matter how good or bad, simply being different in tactility) also drive me a bit batty.

^C and C-[ is escape in vim too, so it's not /as/ painful if you change your habits.

Actually ^C and ESC aren't exactly equivalent.

  CTRL-C          Quit insert mode, go back to Normal mode.  Do not check for
                  abbreviations.  Does not trigger the |InsertLeave| autocommand
                  event.

^[ however is. Personally, I use ^[ to avoid reaching to actual ESC and ^C to exit any weird states entered by misclicks.

Notably, ctrl-c doesn't apply your changes from ctrl-v mode across all other lines. Minor, but still.

Maybe you move your finger on the bar and see where you are real-time and release to execute? That'd be great - especially if combined with tactile feedback.

You haven't lived until you've used Apptivate[0] to map the function keys to your most commonly used apps (I think with them "inverted" so you don't need to hold "fn"). I have F1 -> Finder, F2 -> Postico, F3 -> Chrome, F4 -> Sublime, F5 -> iTerm2, and can touch type each of them. It feels great to easily flip between those apps as necessary. It's like Cmd+Tab but goes to exactly the correct application each time.

I'll still probably get one of these MacBook Pros eventually, but the lack of F1 buttons is a loss.

[0] http://www.apptivateapp.com/

Was going to check it out, then realized it's too late. Maybe better off not knowing at this point.

I've been doing this (with a different util) as my primary way of navigating for 20 years. It makes screen clutter irrelevant. Without physical function keys, I can't think of a way to maintain this with the same convenience, being able to do it one-handed with either hand, avoid conflicting with stock shortcuts, and not sprain my hand.

Fortunately, I use an external keyboard much of the time, which I selected almost wholly for its proper 4-groupings of function keys, letting me touch-type them.

All my most used apps are just three keypresses away -- I chord my caps-lock (remapped to ctrl) and ';' keys to bring up spotlight, type 'c' for instance for chrome, then enter. Super quick and don't have to leave the home row.

Windows has this feature built in. Win+1, 2, 3 etc maps to the location on the task bar. It's one of the best features most people didn't know existed. Swapping between applications becomes very fast and precise.

I'm really annoyed that more people don't know this one because this is one of the main reasons I don't like using os X.

As always with Windows, though, the UX isn't quite right...

If that spot is occupied by a pinned shortcut, Windows will run that program. But it won't remember that it's done that - so if it takes a while to start, and you press the key again, it will see there's a shortcut to a program that's not yet running, and... run the program again. So while trying this feature out, and wondering why nothing was happening, I managed to open 3 copies of Unity and 7 copies of Visual Studio.

I can safely say I never look at my keyboard.

It would be nice if they added the Taptic feedback on the touch bar as well.

Speaking of hitting a function key blindly, Command-F5 is how you turn on VoiceOver. How will that work if F5 is just an image on a smooth surface?

"Hey Siri, turn on VoiceOver."

But Sierra doesn't have "Hey Siri" enabled out of the box, right? But a solution that works may be not too far off. In earlier versions, pressing the 'fn' key twice enables voice dictation out of the box, if that's the keyboard default for Siri in Sierra, that could do the trick.

I'm sure there are a lot of folks on both sides, though, so I'll reserve judgement on whether removing F keys in favor of context-aware touch keys is a good idea or not.

However, I do use them frequently every day, so I'm skeptical. A pricy laptop without F keys doesn't appear to be a 'Pro' offering to me.

F9 is toggle breakpoint. F10 is step over. F11 is step into. F12 is step out-of. That's all that's important and Apple can blow me if they think I'm going to map those to something else.

I guess my assumption is that those are what would be on the context bar when the ide is running. Whatever used to be function keys are there, but now with labels.

Why wouldn't the equivalent touchstrip keys be mapped to those whenever you're in your IDE?

I like the tactile feedback. I don't want to be taking my eyes off the disassembly and register display.

Yeah I think this is a valid point. I guess we won't know until we try it. But my guess is we will learn where they are in relation to number keys. So index on 5 key to ground your location and then ring finger to tap step over repeatedly. Just guessing. Maybe I'll hate it.

Then again, each of those "buttons" could be 3" wide, making it very easy to hit without looking. Much more so than trying to hit the correct button today.

I don't really understand the brouhaha either, unless my assumption is wrong that an opt-out option will be given for context based remapping on an app-by-app basis if not system wide? Surely, there will be "hacks" to allow things like REALLY BIG F KEYS ALWAYS ON skin, etc.

The bar makes sense for people who look at the keyboard to type, otherwise it makes no sense. Where it might make sense is if it were still physical keys but you could customize the letters etc on them and generally just change how they function. Which is a concept that has been around since 2004ish. To me this is a cheap way for Apple to have a touchscreen without having a touchscreen as the actual screen. Unless they show some crazy functionality, the I don't get it. Even the "touch ID" thing is sort of a "why?" for me when you have Windows Hello using your face as the password.

"other than my IDE, since I do have those memorized". How do you do this ? I use Xcode and Intellij and it's a PITA to remember the function key mappings while switching between the two. That said I'm not sure how this context bar will solve that though.

Ideally, you would standardize keycaps across all editors. I've been meaning to but haven't come around. It'd also be great if there'd be some standardization – not necessarily on the shortcuts themselves, but around a format to specify them. .editorconf, or the vscode language servers are great examples of this sort of anarchic cooperation, but shortcuts don't seem to be in scope for them.

> Does everyone really have memorized what all 12 function keys do in every app they use?

I use IntelliJ Idea, Google Chrome Developer Console, World of Warcraft and those applications make heavy use of F-buttons. At work I usually use large monitor and external keyboard, so I probably could use this notebook anyway, but F-buttons for me are extremely important and using notebook without external keyboard would be a huge headache.

Yeah. I guess my point is they would still be there. Except instead of labeled F8 it's labeled "Step Into" and instead of F2 it's labeled "Target Mob" or whatever wow f keys do.

Way better ux for the average user since I would hazard a large number of people don't actually know what those f keys do.

Honestly I don't see that cross-platform applications will implement it. At least in near future. So probably it'll be those F-keys, but without physical sense. Overall I agree, that icons instead of buttons would be better (I'm always confusing "step over" and "step into" hotkeys).

Anyway it's better to try it before judge. May be those keys are fine or may be I can live with different hotkeys.

When using XCode I would have a piece of duck tape stuck over the F6 key so I could instantly locate Step Over and Step into.

I wonder why the debugging shortcuts never got at least somewhat standardized. I switch semi-regularly between xcode, qtcreator and visual studio and it is driving me nuts. (also I am too lazy to remap them and then hunt all of the conflicts that ensue)

> Being able to hit a function key without looking? I may be able to to touch type. But I've never trusted myself to hit a function key blindly.

Try it. Just in your IDE, since that's the only place you use them anyway. It's easy enough once you get used to it, just like touch typing in general.

Actually, doing things like stepping through code might be made easier. Since the key positions can be remapped, you could split the bar into 3 big "keys" - back / step / forward. Or maybe even do something like pressing harder to step continuously through code.

I think, with a little imagination, this could be a really good thing. I'm a touch typist but generally I have to look at the function keys when I need them. If they could be remapped on the fly for different programs, WiFi networks, etc. then it would make things much easier. How about a "boss" button when playing a game? Or a button to kill all sound output when your in Chrome?

Another example of Apple trying to please the masses but pushing over developers. It's silly to think that the function keys and the ESC keys are used so little that they can be removed altogether. Agree with others in the discussion that such touch sensitive regions are largely useless besides the bling factor.

Also, what about the controls like screen and keyboard brightness or volume controls? Where do those go to?

I use a Macbook Pro 2015 and I don't think I'll be upgrading to the new one, especially if the specs are nearly similar.

Why Apple, Why do you insist on going against the standards on practically EVERYTHING? There has to be some method behind the madness.

Perhaps the `fn` key will remain, and switch the bar into a mode that has screen brightness, keyboard brightness, volume, etc. I think that would work ok, but yeah, it's a shame about Esc.

Looks like that's the case. 'fn' is the lower left key on the Apple keyboard. 4th to the left from the space bar. The images still show a key there (but not enough to see what text is on it), but that's almost certainly still the 'fn' key.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's also used to make fn+` = Esc, fn+1 = F1 etc

That's how my filco Minila & other 60% keyboards implement the F keys, and IMO it's an improvement. [though... I do flip the ` key to be ESC by default]

Some developers. Neither Emacs nor Vim use the function keys to any significant extent. Relatively rarely-used stuff like screen brightness and volume control seem like the obvious things to put on a multi-function OLED bar.

Speak for yourself; I have multiple functions mapped to the F keys in vim. They aren't on the home row, but they can still be useful.

I hardly ever use an IDE but Apple Pages allows you to assign each function key to a distinct style. For example F1 is document heading, F2 section heading, F3 subsection heading, F4 body, F5 blockquote etc. I have a document template with this mapping set and it's my default template in Pages. After using this setup for a few months I found that I can indeed touch type the function keys and it's extremely convenient. I imagine many office workers in the Apple universe (i.e. not MS office or google docs) would feel the same.

Am I the only one who has emacs functions bound to every function key?

Maybe not by default but function keys are an obvious choice for custom key mappings because they are mostly left free by these programs.

> but pushing over developers

I'll wait until Thursday to check they still ship with the Terminal app...

I'm sure they'll ship with macOS Sierra, which includes Terminal.

>> I use a Macbook Pro 2015 and I don't think I'll be upgrading to the new one, especially if the specs are nearly similar.

Seriously? I'm on a 2013, and the specs of the latest machine are already "nearly similar". I have factory SSD flash storage and 16 GB of RAM. The CPU and GPU upgrades haven't been remotely worth upgrading to.

How can you be on a 2015 MacBook, talking about upgrading to a 2016? Nobody cares whether you own the latest gadget; upgrades should wait at least 2, usually 3-4 years. I'm not talking about the severe case of frugality (use the same laptop for at least 8 years until it dies!). Just basic common sense.

I have a macbook pro from .. 2013? The main reason for me would be too get a fanless laptop. That could be a reason to update even from last year's model.

But if it's as silly as the 'new macbook', then I'll probably pass.

The 2015 MacBook Pro still has fans... You'd have to go to a MacBook instead. Two very different laptops.

But the new one might not have fans.

I'm trying not to sound snarky, but: different strokes for different folks. Who are you to tell someone how to spend their money? Just basic common sense. Ok, that was a little snarky.

>How can you be on a 2015 MacBook, talking about upgrading to a 2016?

(Germany) Well, I personally can depreciate computers faster than the usual 3 years. Because I run a software business I was able to argue with the tax authorities that I always need the most recent model as the average life time of a computer in my field of business is 1 year.

But then again I don't make really use of this because as you said: There's not enough differentiation between consecutive Mac models so the trouble of writing off and switching machines isn't really worth it.

TBH, when I talk about this upgrade I'm talking my work laptop, which I have the option of upgrading (for free through the company) every year. Most of my configs and tooling is customized and backed up, so getting up and running on a new system is not too time intensive. And in the case of better specs or better tooling, then why not? It's not about owning the latest gadgets but the performance improvements that come along with them.

My home system is a 2012 rig running BunsenLabs Linux (https://www.bunsenlabs.org/) which I upgraded to from Crunchbang some time back.

"It's silly to think that the function keys and the ESC keys are used so little that they can be removed altogether."

Not on macOS, at least for the Fn keys. Having a context aware row of buttons that will actually give some cue as to what they do, rather than some random, generic name will probably see those buttons get much more use than they currently do.

I imagine that when the product is actually announced tomorrow a lot of your questions will be answered.

I actually think this is excellent for developers as well – they are among the people who most strive to do everything by keyboard, but its really quite hard to remember all useful shortcuts of multiple editors/browsers etc.

I'd love the next generation to have tactile feedback, or maybe at some point to go full-on single-key OLED like that concept that went around a couple of years ago. But depending on the APIs, this may already be quite useful.

Unfortunately, it looks a bit like they're going with the ultra-low key travel keyboards on these new models. Very disappointed to see this. I don't understand why Apple thinks its users want this.

Secure payments? If you hook up a display to the secure enclave, suddenly it's really expensive for malware to steal your money.

(Sorry, replied to the wrong comment and apparently can't delete now?)

I don't understand how key-travel distance has anything to do with secure payments.

Edit: Parent replied to wrong comment it seems.

How does your comment have anything to do with key travel?

While I'm not a fan either, don't confuse "what I want" with "what users want".

That's what I'm saying though. I know that other people might want this, but I have a hard time understanding how that could be true. Did anyone really ask for it?

I want it! The butterfly keyboards are fantastic. If you hit a key on a corner, they don't "roll" like keyboards with more travel do. Also, they're thinner and all else being equal will allow for a bigger battery (or maintaining battery size while making the laptop thinner).

All true I guess. Personally, I never noticed any issues with hitting keys on the corner with the scissor-switches. It's never caused a single problem for me. On the other hand, the butterfly keys seem like they could cause RSI issues.

How?

What's the advantage of a laptop that's 12mm rather than 13mm?

1mm!

That's the thing, there is no advantage. But there certainly is an advantage going from ~24mm (original titanium powerbook) to ~13mm (macbook 12). And we only got here by reducing 1mm at a time.

As far as a clamshell laptops go, going from 13mm to 4mm doesn't sound that useful though. Especially if in order to do it, I have to sacrifice key travel.

I buy clothes that follow fashion trends because when I go to the store there is often literally nothing else to buy, even if I don't particularly like it. I know a lot of people who behave similarly. Yes, I'm choosing to prioritize effort over preference here---the clothes might not be what I want but they're not actually bad enough to make me go to the effort to find better.

Similarly, I will likely buy the new MacBook Pro despite some elements being unnecessary or suboptimal. The laptop is important enough to me that if the keyboard were actually bad enough to outweigh the other benefits I might be incentivized to go to eBay to buy a used one. But realistically, I'll probably survive just fine with the new keyboard. It just makes the experience less "magical" than it could be. And I suspect a lot of people are in the same boat.

I go to the store

There's more than one store.

>There's more than one store.

I mean, this is an Apple thread...

Complaining that there are no nice keyboards when you're determined to buy an Apple laptop is like complaining that there aren't any clothes you like after you've decided to only shop at GAP. You can either shop elsewhere or put up with the limited offering.

Or use an external keyboard (for your laptop, not your clothes).

Probably has to do with thinness. I say this without meaning to imply that thinness should override other design goals... personally I care less about it than Apple seems to.

After trying one of their ultra thin keyboards I can't say I actually mind it. The wide keys feel great to type on, although the shallowness definitely takes some getting used to. I do the majority of my typing on a Das Keyboard Mehcanical Keyboard, so I was quite surprised with how much I enjoyed Apple's thin keys.

That's reassuring I guess. I admit I haven't put in a lot of time on a butterfly keyboard.

I now prefer the low travel keyboard and find it weird to type on an older Mac keyboard...

I still pine for the sculpted aluminium* keys of my old 2007 MacBook Pro. These replacement squares of black plastic have never endeared themselves. For desktop use the DasKeyboard (with the blue 'clicky' keys) is probably still my top recommendation for feedback lovers, albeit in second place behind a late-'90s IBM model that is long out of production.

> second place behind a late-'90s IBM model that is long out of production.

You try http://www.pckeyboard.com/ ?

I have one of those keyboards and love it, but it's too noisy when sharing a room. It can also be used as a highly effective weapon if need be.

I currently use the CODE keyboard. It's ok.

What people do want is very thin, light laptops, though.

Has apple ever really tested this though, because there's enough going on in each iteration that it'd be very hard to scientifically gauge the effects of singular decisions or changes. Maybe they're chasing diminishing returns at this point, maybe there are sacred things that you can't go after. Or maybe none of it really matters and people are buying for reasons unrelated to dropping case size by .1" or .3 lbs

Many airlines let you use a laptop during take off an landing if it is less than 2 pounds.

That's kinda funny if true because I can't imagine that weight is really a reliable indicator of how much radio interference a laptop puts out.

It's not about interference - it's about how bad a projectile the object would be. Below 2 pounds, the idea is that it wouldn't do too much damage.

The 2 pound limit is because that is the amount the FAA has determined is safe to keep in the seat back pocket in addition to the stuff that is already in there. The idea is that if there is turbulence you'd put it in the pocket.

If radio interference actually was a threat, there is no way they would let every passenger take a phone on the plane.

Do they come around with scales to make sure a laptop is 2lbs vs 3?

Light, yes, because every g of space is another g I can carry. But I don't know anyone who's constrained on compressible volume when traveling. (he says with a 3 day trip packed into the Brain Bag beside him)

The feel of the last several generations of Apple keyboards has been all over the place, so it seems like they're continually iterating and testing. That said, I'm not sure optimizing key feel is what they're after.

Of all of them, my favorite (and my business partner's as well) is the last generation of 15" non-Retina Macbook Pro. That keyboard is a rocket ship.

I love the feel of the 15" rMBP (mine is sometime in 2013), though I don't think it's any different than earlier non-retinas, at least in key travel and size. The new low profile MacBook keyboards are almost unbearable to type on compared the nice feel of the current and Apple external keyboards.

I have the same model, totally agree! I think 2013 15" rMBP was the pinnacle of apple laptop design.

The non-retina MBP keys have less sideways "wiggle", require just a touch more initial pressure to actuate, and have a slightly greater travel. Compared to my rMBP, they have a delightful tactile "crispness" and give the device a feeling of precision.

If I were a hardware guy I'd put that keyboard in its own case and use it forever :)

That sounds consistent with my experience with the older Apple Wireless Keyboard (second or third gen). I always wished they'd make one with black key caps and the backlight.

The current Magic Keyboard has excellent tactile feedback. Key travel is short, but not too short, and feedback is clear and crisp. The tiny arrow keys bother me a bit, because I use arrow keys a lot. Overall, I find it to be much better than the 2015 MBP with it's “butterfly” mechanism.

Oh, external keyboards are a very different thing as you can go over board with customizing them (myself am using an Ergo Dox).

But the built-in keyboard you can't switch. And there's situations where you can't be bothered with bringing your external KB around. So it's still important how the built in feels.

How can you not understand that someone would have a different preference than yours?

Personally, I much prefer the butterfly keys. The key strokes feel very crisp and clean. Switching back to my Macbook Pro the keys feel wobbly and isn't as enjoyable.

I hated having to use the new MacBook. It felt like I was using a BlackBerry keyboard.

Lots of people have trouble separating "butterfly keys" from "shallow keys". The 12" MacBook has both (IMHO, horrendously shallow keys), whereas the new standalone keyboards the butterfly keys but with more travel (and isnt as bad)

I don't even really care about butterfly vs scissor keys. It's the key travel distance that really matters to me: having some tactile feedback. The new MacBooks feel like typing against a solid board.

When I first got my MacBook, I agreed with you. However, when it stopped working and I switched back to my 11" air, I found the depth of the key press actually annoyingly too much

What this tells us is that what's upsetting is the change, not that one keyboard is better than the other.

Maybe it's just personal preference. I also had (still have) the 11" Air ~2011 before this rMBP and I still prefer the rMBP keyboard.

Maybe between those two keyboards, but between my MBP's built-in keyboard and my mechs with Cherry reds and browns I've found a simple objective difference: the built-in makes my finger joints sore, and the mechs don't.

Is it possible this might have something to do with style?

I use RK9000s exclusively on my desktops, and I can type all day on my MBP without pain. But I do notice that on the MBP I type differently, because key travel and activation force are so much less than the MX Blue switches I'm used to. If I used that kind of force on an MBP keyboard, with nothing really to backstop it, I'd expect to get sore pretty fast, just as I would if I used the same kind of force on MX Blues that I'd need to activate the switches on one of my old Model M finger-breakers.

Typing comfortably on an MBP I think needs a somewhat different approach. It feels less like typing than like drumming my fingers on a table, which never quite all the way stops being weird. But it works, and as I said, I can do it all day without getting sore. Perhaps you can, too!

Unfortunately, I did try the Magic Keyboard and was really turned off by it compared with my rMBP 15" keyboard.

I get shooting, crippling finger pain when there's too little travel after too much typing. Definitely not just a preference.

If there is at least one person who has a preference different than mine, that doesn't mean I have no right to wonder if there are really enough people asking for thinner laptops/less key travel to justify this design decision.

I want it. Why have travel I don't need slowing down my typing?

I bought a macbook last week and ended up having to return it over that butterfly keyboard. Usually with a new laptop, I can adjust after a couple of days, but this one killed my hands.

I worry that Apple are now pursuing thinness for thinness' sake, past the point where it makes ergonomic sense. The machine was gorgeous, but felt like a child's laptop. It's the first Apple computer I've ever returned.

Been living with the MacBook keyboard for over a year. Still hate hate hate it. Unfortunately it's the only fabless Mac laptop. Sigh

It has an AMD chip? ;)

Ugh. Meant fanless. That was good though

sorry, couldn't resist.

I think the low travel keys will fit much better with the touch function key bar. Hitting flat glass will probably feel less jarring than with the current Macbook keyboards.

Apple doesn't care what its power users want anymore. They've devolved into a company that sells shiny, underpowered, overpriced trinkets to cashed-up fools.

Enjoy your Lenovo.

I'm sure it'll be a much better experience than what Apple's got to offer these days. It's an absolute embarrassment what's happened to that company.

Wow, compared to what manufacture do you think makes the best hardware then? Seems like you've got a personal rage with AAPL.

Seems to me you're being a bit presumptuous. I've been using Apple products since OS 7, and I've owned Apple products since 2006. So that's 10 years of brand loyalty, and thousands upon thousands of dollars in hardware purchases. I'm ready to give it all up and move back to Windows.

Apple has been heading down the wrong path with their PCs for the past few years, with underperforming, overpriced, very buggy hardware and an increasingly annoying-to-use OS X, and this is the last straw for me.

I'd be really curious to hear what specific buggy hardware or annoying features of OS X are an issue for you.

I'll be the first to admit, the innovation in terms of using the latest and greatest hardware and software technologies has not been there for Apple. However, this has been the case for a long time since Apple does something genius. They let other companies test new markets, built first to market products, watch them struggle, refine, and evaluate the market. Then, when the timing is just perfect, and a frenzy has been created they release a new product. Their products are like the Mercedes-Benz of cars. Sure, they aren't as fast and high performance as Ferrari or Lamborghini, but they are quality built, reliable, familiar to owners, and pleasant to drive.

> I'd be really curious to hear what specific buggy hardware or annoying features of OS X are an issue for you.

Okay, here's the biggest of them all: audio applications no longer work reliably on new Apple hardware. Anything using a Haswell (or later) CPU has this issue. Dropouts, stuttering audio, crashes for no reason in Ableton Live and other apps. It's a common complaint, and it's the reason I actually downgraded my Macbook Pro from a late-2013 Haswell to an early-2013 non-Haswell model. The dropouts ceased. I can now record 24 bit audio without issue. I tried all manner of audio interfaces, thinking it must be a driver or third-party hardware issue. But it wasn't.

Not only that, but the USB stack has deteriorated to the point where the keyboard and trackpad of my Haswell Retina MBP routinely stop working. The Wifi chip -- also connected via USB -- drops about 15-20% of all packets sent over it. Even the Thunderbolt port was flaky, oftentimes I'd lose every externally-connected device as well as the trackpad and keyboard. Powering off was the only way to fix it.

It was even worse when I bought it, but a couple of firmware updates made it work just well enough that I didn't return it for a refund.

I don't know whether it's a problem with Apple's drivers, Intel's chipset, or some awful combination of the two. All I know is, I'm not the only one who's had these issues. The Ableton forums are rife with people with these exact issues on any relatively new hardware. People swear up and down that their older Macs perform much better than their newer ones, even with things like AppNap (a pox upon it) disabled.

I want Apple to succeed and I want to keep using their hardware, because I vastly prefer(red) OS X to Windows, but they seem to be working against me here in a big way.

I gave it my best try, I really did. They've let me down recently. It's sad.

I hope they can recover eventually.

Not the OP, but personally affected by all of: 1) rMBP screengate, 2) rMBP video problem, 3) Mavericks "Service Battery", 4) MagSafe fraying, 5) 2008 MBP GPU, 6) 2007 MacBook plastic cracking.

On the software side, I seem to encounter plenty of little frustrating bugs - like not being able to remove AirDrop from the finder sidebar. Or having my windows reposition themselves every time my machine sleeps while connected to an external display. I've filed many an unanswered bug report...

I also feel like Apple's HCI has regressed quite a lot. They tweak Mission Control / Desktops / Spaces every damn release, but there are never any preferences to make it work how you want it to. Around about Mavericks it was near perfect. 10.10 made it glacially slow. 10.11 sped it up, but removed desktop previews. 10.12 has messed with the mouse gesture slowing the animation down, and rubberbanding on repeat gesture instead of closing. Wat.

Then there's stuff like the replacement of iPhoto with Photos.... yikes.

When you pair all the above with the ridiculously anti-consumer attitude Apple have toward their hardware now (it's 2016 and they are still using proprietary SSD blades, and glueing batteries?), it really pisses me off.

Wow that's a lot of bad stuff! The issues I have over here are just rMBP screen burn, MagSafe fraying (probably spent $500 on this), and a ton of Spaces bugs back in like 2011. Apple addressed to my bug reports about Spaces by deleting it and making a dramatically worse but less buggy version, and now I'm using TotalSpaces which is great.

Apple hasn't done anything even close to genius since Steve J died.

Multiple puzzling decisions -

1) The Esc and the Space keys are the two I most often use without looking - now I have to f*ing look down to hit esc?

2)What about a hard boot? Is the power key now a soft key as well? Non-removable battery and a soft reboot key do not make a good mix

3) Key press and travel distance look to be shallow - not a very satisfying experience

4) Please don't make it any thinner at the expense of ports or battery life

5) The charging port is no longer Magsafe

All in all seems a bit more gimmicky and "change for change's sake" rather than a solid upgrade

But it's thinner and lighter.

Jony Ive says thinner and lighter will make it better.

You could map Esc to Caps lock, like most Vim users do.

"Most" vim users do not do this. Control, perhaps.

`inore kj <ESC>` or similar

> 2)What about a hard boot? Is the power key now a soft key as well? Non-removable battery and a soft reboot key do not make a good mix

Are you seriously implying that you think that Apple would make a laptop whereby if it kernel panics and you need to hard reboot, now there is no way to do that because they accidentally made the power key a soft key?

(And I'll add the power key has been a soft key for some years now already)

> Are you seriously implying that you think that Apple would...

I love your tone here. To troll you a bit, nothing lasts forever and sooner or later the time will come that Apple will go downhill and start making obvious UI goofs. Will be fun to watch for sure.

So much complaining about something that we didn't even yet seen in action. Guys from Apple are not that stupid to remove f1-12 keys and put something completely useless and UX unfriendly, give them a chance of showing it first and then complain. And all the other talk about ports, magsafe and other stuff that are just guesses, why do you complain about something that is not even confirmed?

Right, who would put only a single USB port on a device? Haha!

No way they screw this up.

I'm hoping that it'll have contextual function and escape keys that use the taptic engine. I'd be able to live with that.

I am really curious to see how using Vim without a physical Escape key would work.

New in Sierra, they allow for native remapping of caps lock to esc. I had been using a 3rd party solution to do this before the update. Won't make everyone happy but the number of Vim users using the Esc key as opposed to Ctrl+[ (or caps lock) has to be decreasing ..

To save other a search I found out how here: http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/remapping-caps-lock-ke...

I'm told serious vim users tend to not use esc anyways:

http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key

Apparently I'm merely a casual vim user, but I would struggle without an esc key.

Wow thanks for this, didn't know about the alt trick

An apparently serious vim user here.

You shouldn't be using the escape key because it takes your left hand off the home row. I prefer the Caps Lock mapping to the 'jj' variant which might make be more work for my pinky and be slightly slower but it works for me.

Having easy access to your mode switching character is important because training yourself to enter Normal after entering a piece of text is the first step to 'next level' Vim use.

For you GNOME users, making your Caps Lock an escape key is as easy as setting it in the Tweak Tool.

Huh, guess I'm a serious vim user! I've got Caps Lock as the escape key, and shift+escape as Caps Lock.

The biggest downside is that if I'm using someone else's computer, I keep yelling for no good reason.

The classic practice in Vim is to NOT use Escape (or arrow keys for that matter).

That said, what's to say you can't use the strip to provide an Esc when running MacVim or iTerm etc?

Lenovo tried this in the 2nd generation of the carbon X1 and swiftly went back to the traditional F keys in gen 3. I had to use one of those for a short while, it was highly unpleasant.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-ca...

Apple's motto is : do smart thing that others did but smarter.

It's easier when you control the OS and the hardware.

But it's harder to control the OS and the hardware.

But it's much harder to write your own OS in 2016, there's a reason nobody else does it.

Think about the "enhancing" crapware most vendors deploy on their Windows machines, then scale it up to the entire OS. Yeah, it would be that bad. We have to give it to Apple for still crafting their OS themselves like it was 1985, and doing a very good job at it.

Agreed. I was not criticising Apple, by the way.

It only looks easier because all the hard work went into creating a desirable combination of os-hardware that they could control.

To be fair, leaks have suggested this is more context aware while lenovo required you to tap through modes. This also has a finger print sensor for some added functionality.

If they included haptic feedback (which is in their bag of tricks) it could even feel a bit better.

As others have said, Apple's MO seems to be to only step in when an effective (and desirable) solution can be offered, and before that just stick with what works.

Lenovo's version was context-sensitive, at least on Windows as they shipped it; for instance, it would switch to media mode when you opened a media player. (You had to tap through modes on Linux.)

But would it also not require developers to build support into their programs for it? At least on that front, Apple would have a far easier time getting support and buy in from developers than a random Windows OEM.

I've been a long time user of IBM/Lenovo laptops and I have to say that their implementations of new features (especially when no one has done this before) is often _very_ lacking.

I can only imagine what kind of horrible software they shipped with this thing to control it.

With Apples implementation I at least expect the OS and software implementation to be easy to use even though I'm still not sold on the idea itself.

Different situation.

Mac developers have always been pushed by Apple and consumers courtesy of the App Store e.g. reviews to adopt the latest OS features. And by and large they always have. It is adoption by developers that determines whether or not the feature is useful or not.

Hopefully it will see more adoption than Force Touch on the Macbooks though.

Was just about to say this. Whereas 3D Touch/Force Touch/Taptic (why does Apple have to use 3 names for the same thing...) is used a decent amount on the iPhone and Apple Watch, I've never really used Force Touch beyond quickly looking up what a word means on a Mac.

I think that the Apple Macbook Pro Magic Toolbar is context aware unlike the Lenovo one where they just replaced tactile keys with equivalent touch based keys (mostly a gimmick with no real functional significance). Just my guess though. We'll know for sure only after the launch.

It's almost guaranteed that there will still be a graphical touch layout that is identical to the old one.

If they removed that it would be absolutely crazy because most people who use MacBooks for productive work require the Function keys.

> If they removed that it would be absolutely crazy because most people who use MacBooks for productive work require the Function keys.

Citation needed? I've been developing exclusively on MBPs since 2007ish and I barely ever use the F-row for anything other than volume and brightness adjustment.

I agree, though, that the graphical touch layout is going to duplicate the current functionality of the F-row.

I doubt there are studies about this, but I know you use it in XCode, Android Studio (IntelliJ), Eclipse and the Adobe Suit. That should be a significant enough user base to make the idea of completely removing the function key "crazy".

Probably true, and I bet some third party will make a key outline adhesive strip so you can get at least a little physical feel if you want it.

I wonder if it'll have haptic feedback.

>ABC Corp tried feature XYZ before Apple and it didn't work so this feature is dumb

While Apple is certainly far from infallible and has made blunders before (sometimes from neglect, once in a while from a fundamental blunder in their understanding of proper target market functionality), what you've written seems to come up like clockwork with nearly every change they make. "Oh, but someone else did the idea before!" I really don't understand why so many tech people in particularly seem to have difficulty grasping that ideas are usually of only marginal value, the real key value any given effort brings to the table is the implementation. There is a world of difference between a mediocre implementation of a decent idea and a stellar one, even if they're 100% the exact same concept. In fact sometimes a great implementation of a mediocre concept can even beat out a crappy one of an amazing concept. Even good intentions and hard work are not enough in software or hardware development.

From a fundamentals perspective I'm honestly pretty surprised by the visceral instant rejection, without having seen anything about the actual implementation, by crowds at HN, Ars, etc. I don't really see how this is fundamentally much different from what I've already got in macOS with my MS Natural Ergo 4000 keyboard and the universal generic USB driver "ControllerMate", which allows me to arbitrarily alter key mappings (including full scripts) for any active application. I don't generally change the main layout of course, but I do have dozens of profiles changing the upper function and special keys to suit the program I'm in, which I find particularly valuable for jumping from GUI apps to Vim and other CLI programs with a different history of thinking about UI behind them.

Apple trying to just making this more available for the average user in a more flashy way may or may not be helpful for a pro, but I also don't see how it would be particularly harmful. What's with all stuff about "no more escape" and the like, what difference does it make if you tap the corner to get escape? As long as inputs are there that show up on the USB HCI what's the issue? On the other hand having a good Touch ID implementation (presumably with the HSM included) available built-in could range from great to fantastic depending on how much custom use we're able to make of it.

Apple's current non-AIO desktops (Mac Mini, Mac Pro) are utter junk and that's really depressing, but they've put more effort into their notebooks while maybe this MBP will disappoint too but I don't think the massive doom mongering in this or the other thread seems justified just yet.

> From a fundamentals perspective I'm honestly pretty surprised by the visceral instant rejection, without having seen anything about the actual implementation, by crowds at HN, Ars, etc.

Every time anything changes, there is a rather predicable response of this kind. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth when laptop manufacturers stopped making models with 4:3 screens, when smartphone manufacturers abandoned physical keyboards, when Apple abandoned any type of drive or connector port ever...

It's always enjoyable to come back to such threads and read the dire predictions of the naysayers after a few years, i.e. the one where the naysayers predicted that Apple would be doomed because the iPhone 5 was too small, and the one where the naysayers predicted that Apple would be doomed because the iPhone 6 was too big.

"Apple's current non-AIO desktops (Mac Mini, Mac Pro) are utter junk and that's really depressing, but they've put more effort into their notebooks while maybe this MBP will disappoint too but I don't think the massive doom mongering in this or the other thread seems justified just yet."

It seems justified to me.

In fact, as I look at a picture of a macbook "pro" with no physical escape key, I can't help but think of George Lucas and the re-released, re-edited star wars movies.

Mac pro basically disappeared with nothing to take its place.

Mac mini as a very nice all in one device is neutered by lack of an optical drive.

The super thin macbook 12" (whatever it is) can't have power and a usb device at the same time without some weirdo splitter dongle thing.

Oh, and the headphone jack thing.

Get these people away from the product development room. Give them something else to do. Tell them to take a vacation or something - please!

> Mac pro basically disappeared with nothing to take its place.

It's still there, just hasn't really had a refresh. Have a feeling it is going to get killed due to not enough demand.

Even the original Mac Pro behemoth of a tower didn't really sell all that well.

> Mac mini as a very nice all in one device is neutered by lack of an optical drive.

Wat?

I have owned a Mac Mini since 2012 and not once have I said "Damn, I wish I had an optical drive".

I haven't touched optical media in years. I still have some DVD's and whatnot but they are all in boxes in storage (thanks for the reminder, need to drop em off at Goodwill).

What do you need an optical drive for?

> The super thin macbook 12" (whatever it is) can't have power and a usb device at the same time without some weirdo splitter dongle thing.

Yes, and for 99% of the target population this isn't a problem. I've had a couple of friends and family buy them, they charge the device overnight and use it during the day. Depending on how often they use it it gets charged maybe once or twice a week.

They don't use headphones with it, the device is used to check email, browse the web (facebook mostly) and that is about where it ends. Which is what the device is perfect for. No moving parts, nothing. Most of my friends also pair their bluetooth headphones to it if they are using it to watch movies. I blew one of my friends minds when I told him that it was USB so he could plug in his camera, instead he had been transferring pictures using Wifi (took a little longer, but he didn't mind).

> Oh, and the headphone jack thing.

Not a big fan of that one myself... kinda like my 3.5mm, but only because my preferred Bose headphones (QC20's) don't come in a bluetooth/lightning version yet. If they made a bluetooth version I'd be all over that asap.

QC35?

I know for me personally I prefer the QC20's because they are in-ear rather than over the ear.

>Mac mini as a very nice all in one device is neutered by lack of an optical drive.

In 2016? Seriously? If anything, I'd like more frequent updates, who the fuck uses an optical drive anymore?

"In 2016? Seriously? If anything, I'd like more frequent updates, who the fuck uses an optical drive anymore?"

Parents.

If you have kids, you have DVDs. I don't know why. They just appear. There is no avoiding them - even in 2016.

>If you have kids, you have DVDs. I don't know why. They just appear. There is no avoiding them - even in 2016.

I'm not sure how that plays into account. Where would the DVDs come from? It's not like schools hand those out.

Even school plays and such nowadays people video with their smartphones or cameras, and have on hard disks or USB drives.

"I'm not sure how that plays into account. Where would the DVDs come from? It's not like schools hand those out."

Like I said, I have no idea where they come from. We just have them and we keep getting more.

It kind of makes sense, too - if you have a 4yo it's very easy to show them the physical act of inserting a DVD and having it autoplay (at 6am on a sunday) whereas browsing netflix and choosing (possibly inappropriate) content is not so easy for them.

You're just saying the same things that are always said about Apple products

>In fact, as I look at a picture of a macbook "pro" with no physical escape key, I can't help but think of George Lucas and the re-released, re-edited star wars movies.

Is exactly what everyone said about a phone with no physical keys

Mac mini as a very nice all in one device is neutered by lack of an optical drive.

Is exactly what everyone said about an iMac without a floppy drive, or serial port, or all the other old things Apple have moved away from.

It's also fascinating you criticize their whole product line for not having all the features. Yes, the mini is "mini". It does not have optical, but happily they build a different computer that does! And yes, the MacBook has a limited number of ports - but happily they have a model with a ton of powerful ports, and as a nice hint of who might need it, they even put the word "Pro" in the name!

It's like you want them to only build one computer that fits exactly your needs. Heaven forbid they build and sell a computer that is targeted at a different set of needs than yours!

Next you'll complain that the Ford Focus sucks because it doesn't have a pickup bed, when you could easily go and buy an F150 for that....

If you don't like it, there is an extremely simple solution for you. Don't buy their stuff.

"It's also fascinating you criticize their whole product line for not having all the features. Yes, the mini is "mini". It does not have optical, but happily they build a different computer that does!"

The interesting use-case for a mac mini is as an HTPC. It's the best HTPC that has ever been made and the models with an optical drive allowed you to cover every use-case including edge cases with one nicely designed box ... no cable or peripherals.

An all-in-one mac isn't a candidate for an HTPC.

"If you don't like it, there is an extremely simple solution for you. Don't buy their stuff."

Agreed. I bought the very fastest, maxed out mac mini that still had the optical drive and have not purchased anything since (after having refreshed my HTPC mini every two years prior).

I still run my 2009 mac pro and would love to throw money at apple to make a new, refreshed tower for power users ... but alas.

And now I will buy a maxed out 11" macbook air (which is what I am typing on right now) as a spare laptop so I can continue with the form factor I prefer, even if this one dies.

>I had to use one of those for a short while, it was highly unpleasant.

That's how it usually is with companies that "did X first". Usually Apple does it in the actually usable way.

I once owned a Dell laptop that used a strip of touch-sensitive regions for volume and media control. In practice they were completely useless, because without looking, it just felt like one continuous bar with nothing differentiating the buttons, so the lack of any tactile feedback made it impossible to use those "buttons" without looking at them. In my 4 years of owning that laptop, I was never able to build any muscle memory for hitting those buttons. I'm worried that the same will be true of this magic toolbar.

I guess it was Dell Studio.

I believe it was an XPS 13.

As someone who spends most my workday in Visual Studio, I can relate. I would have a real tough time breaking that muscle memory.

Something tells me Apple knows a bit more about how to build a touch interface than Dell does.

If the core issues are that there's no tactile feedback and that button locations can shift depending on context, then Apple made the same mistakes that Dell did. The problem is that no matter how well-designed it is, a keyboard used for touch-typing is the wrong place for a smooth, capacitive sensor.

Both haptic feedback and pressure sensitivity are within Apple's capabilities. This could actually be an improvement (imagine feeling a virtual volume slider scroll with dampened resistance).

I agree that an actual volume slider would be useful, but I still doubt that there's a good way to present a row of buttons on a smooth flat surface in such a way that they can be touch-typed. Haptic feedback doesn't let you manipulate a typical phone app UI without looking at it.

I'm not a fan of haptics when physical keys are an option. I believe that Apple can make a nice demo with vibrating indications of when the user's on a key, then detection of when they push down on it. What I don't believe is that it will be a better experience than feeling the edges of the keys and the actual descent and tap when depressing the key.

This seems like increased complication without any real gain. It's more sleek than usable, kind of like the touchpads with virtual buttons, rather than physical separate ones.

Just wanted to point out that that's exactly what people said about software keyboards on phones vs hardware keys (and some still do, but most phones are now all software). It turns out that a big innovation in the first iphone was dynamically adjusting the touch boundaries of the keys + smarter autocorrect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-9UggQV9BM

Or as Steve put it once "Your thumbs will learn"

I can't type on my phone as accurately or as quickly as my keyboard. I also have to look at it or accuracy drops precipitously.

I don't think anyone would argue that a touch screen is better to type on than a physical keyboard though. It's just a sensible compromise given the size and weight limitations of an iPhone. Harder to justify on a (relatively big and heavy) laptop, but we'll see.

A phone's soft keyboard is a compromise for size. Compared to a hardware keyboard, it sucks to type on. If you want to type anything but gibberish, you stare at the keyboard the whole time you're typing.

A laptop with a hardware keyboard is large enough not to benefit from that compromise. I mean, a little touchscreen's not without its uses, but don't get rid of the keys that I expect to be there.

I'm with you on this one.

Everybody complained about the lack of haptic feel on the original iPhone keyboard, and look at what kind of interface we are all typing on today.

You touch type on an iPhone?

In practice they were completely useless, because without looking, it just felt like one continuous bar with nothing differentiating the buttons

With Escape at the extreme left top, it should be possible to differentiate that stop by feel. I'll have to try it when it gets into the store. In the meantime, I'm still very happy with my 2012 MBP.

Well, that covers one of the 14 keys on that row, 2 if you also count the other end. I don't see any possible solution for the other 12.

? There is no escape key?

They probably mean the virtual one, which, if Apple is smart, will always be in the top left, so you'll know where it is in relation to tilde/backquote f.e.

I took the GP comment to mean "the physical Esc key will help you get your bearings without looking at the KB" but I might have mis-interpreted the comment.

I haven't seen anyone working on a screen+touch surface that can be be programmed to change physical texture per pixel such that you can for instance raise the pixels forming the border of an onscreen button allowing the user to feel it without having to look at the screen.

It's been done. I recall a company made a screen that could vary the amount of friction a finger experienced.

Tanvas does this. I recently used one of their devices, it was a pretty cool experience. https://tanvas.co/about/

I wonder if the lack of the Escape button will force Vim users to start using Control-[ instead.

Or start remapping caps lock to escape, which is now possible in the keyboard preferences as of MacOS 10.12.1, which the leaked images are from.

Assuming that you've not remapped caps lock already to something else like control.

I've remaped caps lock to control. I use vi and press caps-[ to achieve my escape to command mode.

why not something like jj or jk?

inoremap jj <Esc>

also, mapping the leader to spacebar is great

mapleader=" "

and finally

nnoremap Q @@

map the Q key to replay the last macro you used... much nicer than using @r or @g or whatever every time you want to replay the macro.

I tried mapping jj to esc, but even after a few days I couldn't really get used to it. Always drove me crazy when it would switch modes when I just intended to type 'jj' as a variable name in loops. At least it got me to use more meaningful names!

Your latter suggestions are brilliant, I'm going to steal them right away.

You could map it to both 'jk' and 'kj' and then you don't have to worry about the order of the keypress, just press both 'j' and 'k' together.

I like that suggestion. Thank you!

If you like the space bar leader you might want to try spacevim or something like that. (I switched to spacemacs and I love it... Vim is a great style of editing but the plugins are bad and feel broken and half assed. Spacemacs fixes that by combing the best of vim with the best of Emacs. That feels dirty to type but it's true.)

Try mapping kj instead of jj. I use jj and jk often enough (quaternions, don't you know) but kj is a really obscure sequence.

You can have the best of both worlds with Karabiner. After remapping caps lock to Control, you can add a Karabiner setting to send Escape when you tap Left Control. Holding caps lock in combination with another key will still act as ctrl-<key>

Wait, what? That's amazing! I've been waiting for this feature forever!

It's been available forever.

You need two apps: Seil and Karabiner, both made by the same person. Check out this guide: http://brettterpstra.com/2012/12/08/a-useful-caps-lock-key/

Sadly neither of those work in macOS 10.12: https://github.com/tekezo/Seil/issues/68

It works (kinda) with Karabiner Elements: http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/remapping-caps-lock-ke... -- Edit: but it's very nice to see this supported by default :)

I genuinely don't understand why there is still a caps lock key on most keyboards.

Can someone fill me in on actual use cases of having this key still?

I have been binding caps lock to escape for many many years.

The fact that you haven't had it enabled for years is probably why you can't understand its usefulness. It's just not part of your workflow because its not available. It does in fact provide a lot of value. As an example, entering uppercase alphanumeric codes is annoying without capslock (switching from holding shift for uppercase letters to remembering to let go of shift to enter a number really slows down entry).

That's not really an example of why something in all caps is useful, though.

The only time I've seen anyone using caps lock is in a call center where people think it's the proper way of entering data into a form (my opinion is it's totally not).

It's a political thing: if they replaced Caps Lock by Escape by default then emacs users would scream murder. If they replaced it with Control then vim users would probably start looting nearby stores.

And thus, the status quo is maintained.

But seriously, like with almost everything keyboard layout-related it's just there because people are used to it.

One of my favorite things: map caps to escape on tap, and control when used as a modifier. I've got it set up that way on my linux machine and it's amazing. I'm sure you can do it on OS X with Karabiner or something.

I map it to Control (emacs user vs. vi user probably)

When I mention doing so to non-programmers, people look at my like I'm from another planet.

I map it to delete, it's funny to see people try to use my keyboard, hahaha

I map it to control as well and I'm also a vim user.. (but I also use Tmux, so it's very handy!)

It's to keep first line support busy..

I'm still surprised when I see people using caps lock instead of shift for typing a single uppercase character (This being the keyboard peckers who still use one finger for everything).

I see this sentiment all over the internet but I don't really understand it. Not trying to be snarky but can you explain why you want the caps lock key gone?

I know personally I don't use it too often, but it's nice to have if I want to type in all caps which happens occasionally. Holding down shift with a pinky for a anything more than a few key presses can be a little uncomfortable so I appreciate the caps lock key.

MAKE PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET UNDERSTAND YOU'RE RIGHT AND THEY'RE WRONG

SOME PEOPLE NEED IT TO INTERNET PROPERLY.

But then I'd have to give up mapping caps lock to control.

>which is now possible in the keyboard preferences as of MacOS 10.12.1, which the leaked images are from.

And remapping it to backspace still isn't possible without additional software (Karabiner Elements) :/

One of the screenshots shows function-like buttons. I'm assuming you'll be able to map spaces of the OLED strip's screen to arbitrary keys. Also I'm sure that, given some time, you'll be able to have ESC show up only when macvim/term is in the foreground :)

Seems confirmed: http://live.arstechnica.com/hello-again-apples-october-2016-...

See related: Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away – the Escape key[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12791672

… Apple may be replacing the top row of the MBP keyboards with a a context-aware touchscreen, and y'all assume somehow that this means they're getting rid of ALL of the fn keys?

No, you're still gonna be able to dim your screen and mute your speakers and yes cancel modal dialogs.

Yeah, but I don't fancy a touch button as leader.

Personally, I expect I'll remap caps lock to escape, or an unused meta, and get used to that (it's presently ctrl).

That doesn't work in many keyboard locales. Mine (Portuguese) doesn't have dedicated square brackets keys.

I've heard of this before. Do you have to hit some sort of modifier to get them? Does that not make indexing arrays extremely annoying, or is it really not that big a deal?

To be fair, () are more common than [] in most programming languages, and you need modifier keys to get () for most keyboard locales. Yet not many people complain about ().

In the German Mac keyboard layout, brackets [ ] and curly braces { } need the ALT modifier. “[” is ALT + 5, “]” is ALT + 6. You get used to it. With smart editors, writing “[” automatically creates its counterpart “]”, same for curly braces, so the typing effort is kept within limits.

(I have never used a US keyboard layout. Maybe typing programming symbols could be so much easier and I have never experienced it.)

I don't think it's a huge difference. Both () and {} require shift modifiers on US layouts, and they are both used extensively in most programming languages, far more than [] and nobody seems to complain.

Actually, there is, because indexing elements in arrays is a fairly common operation and when I use a US layout, it's so much easier. In fact, a lot of the contortions we have on EU keyboards are a pain to go back to once you've gotten used to a US layout, because there are decades of lore and history around US-layout TTYs that influenced programming language designs.

I've been touch typing on Programmer Dvorak for more than a decade. If you type programming symbols all day long it's unbeatable: http://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/

On Mac: alt + 5/6 On Windows: CTRL & Alt / Alt GR + 8/9

At least on german keyboards which should be the same as on the portuguese ones

It's not a problem for coding, although I've taken to using a US keyboard of late with my iPad and find it easier to code in C and Python.

It's annoying as hell. {} is even worse though, shift-alt-8/9 iirc (I've moved to a US layout years ago precisely because of this, and haven't looked back)

Or you know, they won't not buy one. I really don't get the appeal of Macbooks for developers, the price tag is quite heavy compared to the specs one gets.

unix and build quality / stability

I get the build quality argument but the lack stability made sense years ago, Linux runs almost perfectly on many cheap laptops these days.

I can't find a great windowing environment still, mind sharing your setup? For me, quartz is still light years ahead in the quality department over things like gnome and kde, though some of the new work on wayland wms looks promising

My experience the last few years has been that Linux works good enough on most laptops but that there are some rough edges. Everything works, but the laptop will only go to sleep 50% of the times you close the lid or the display brightness will automatically drop to 10% when you leave the laptop for 2 minutes and not go back when you start using it again or the wifi will drop for half a minute every 30 minutes.

Nothing dealbreaking really, just annoying. But I don't experience these kind of things when using the OS the laptops was shipped with (OSX/Windows) and would love to see more Linux certified hardware like Dell's XPS.

Running Debian Unstable on a 2008 Macbook 4,1 and it's working quite well. The GPT partition was a bit tricky, but after that all has gone well but the camera, which doesn't work without proprietary firmware from yonder the repos. It's pretty cool to see an 8-9 year-old laptop with good battery life and reasonable performance. First time I ever fussed with a Mac and I'm glad I did. Also, I totally nixed the Mac OS partitions, for single boot.

Decent tradeoff of ease-of-use and "just works" factor with unixy tools. Not as good as Linux for the latter (which in turn may not be as good as BSD, depending on who you ask) but way better for the former.

One gets a hardware-compatibility-guaranteed unix workstation. There really aren't many cheap options for that. If you want to suggest an unsupported linux laptop, I can suggest a hackintosh.

If you want to suggest a hackintosh, I can suggest a Windows machine with Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. ;)

Because macs offer UNIX environment which is great for Devs, but also a full-featured UI with lots of high-end commercial apps (and good audio engineering) which is not as easy to get in a Linux laptop. And, the support and ease of using the system is appealing compared to the more hands-on approach of maintaining a Linux distribution.

Plus they are quite dependable hardware overall, and lots of easy OS updates.

Bash on Windows has made that no longer a Mac-only thing. Its presence really is a game changer for me when I use Windows.

Nowhere near the same. Last I checked, Microsoft kinda put it over in the corner, where it can be it's own little thing, but not a first class citizen of the system like UNIX is on macOS.

First class citizen? Have you seen how old most of the versions are of GNU utilities they ship?

I'm sure it because of licensing, but then it's up to them to either improve them or provide modern replacements.

I can easily install newer versions of those if I so desire.

That isn't what the parent's claim was about though -- the claim was "first-class" citizen.

I'm well aware of homebrew and the like having used it myself; I still think the current situation is now better on Windows than macOS, which is bizarre.

Except that so many platforms just don't work well under Windows, and if you use languages like OCaml with OPAM, or other incredible tools like Elixir or Erlang, you can expect hiccups. You can get them working, but you have to do more heavy lifting [0]. In some cases it took the maintainers of major packages years to get them working properly on Windows because of its strange environment compared to most of the rest of the industry, and these tools are often still unstable. Which is why so many developers who choose to use Windows usually have a duel boot or VM into Linux, which is an extra layer of inconvenience a lot of the time.

I used to work on Windows only and had a VM, for 2 years this was my daily workflow. When I finally just switched to Mac, it was amazing how much more time I felt like I had during the day to spend on my real work, how fewer VM issues I had to deal with, and just enjoy working on the native OS.

[0] https://elixirforum.com/t/current-state-of-elixir-on-windows...

> Except that so many platforms just don't work well under Windows, and if you use languages like OCaml with OPAM, or other incredible tools like Elixir or Erlang, you can expect hiccups.

Which is why we have WSL/Bash on Windows!

WSL is full of compatibility problems with lots of stuff, it cannot be compared to the underlying OSX system for ease of use.

I disagree. I listed several issues with XNU's implementation of POSIX above.

A large portion of the WSL complaints are around the lack of inotify. You know what other system doesn't have inotify either?

Another example is ptrace(): on XNU, it doesn't work; you have to use Mach instead. On the other hand, Microsoft went to the effort of actually making ptrace() work properly. This has actual user-visible ramifications: gdb works great in WSL, while it works not-so-great in current versions of macOS. strace works fine in WSL, while on Darwin you have to use the heavily underdocumented dtruss.

Syscalls are underdocumented in macOS, so Valgrind doesn't work well; it constantly breaks on OS updates. On the other hand, Valgrind works great on WSL as long as you compile from source. A lot of this is because Linux has a stable and documented syscall interface, unlike Darwin.

Well, I don't use Windows any more so I cannot speak from personal experience on the matter. But in my free time I experiment heavily with new platforms and languages, and as I'm working through support forums, freenode, blogs, there is a tremendous amount of noise from fellow experimenters trying to get something going on Windows [0]. Perhaps the really smart folks out there don't have this problem, but for the average joe blow developer who just wants to have some fun exploring technology, it is very obvious that things just go a lot more smoothly when installing and compiling and running various platforms on OSX compared to Windows. There is rarely any difference between the OSX and Linux steps to get all setup, while the Windows steps are often a non-trivial obstacle for the average developer. And many environments carry disclaimers about known issues on Windows that can affect operation. Even WSL often needs to be patched just to support a platform that works fine on OSX. Or we hear, "you can do this better in the next version of WSL..." sigh, that's not what most people want to deal with.

You are perhaps well above average and so these issues don't affect you. But that doesn't help everyone else who struggles in the Windows environment for things that prioritise Linux/OSX.

[0] Heck, even one of the principal Clojurescript developers doesn't even support Windows, he just asks for patches from Windows users who managed to figure out how to get something working. That is not an isolated attitude.

Except we weren't talking about Windows -- we were talking about *NIX stuff, which implies the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

I won't claim it's fully there yet, but given how macOS is these days, it will be more stable very soon.

Ask the Go language team how they feel about all of the little breakages in various syscalls/apis that Apple introduced.

Ask graphics programmers how they feel about the lack of modern OpenGL.

Pretty soon Windows will be a far more compelling development platform than macOS (unless you have to do Apple development of course, but then there's always Visual Studio for remote development for some Mac/iOS things :-P).

I cannot disagree with you enough. Last I saw, you cannot interact with the rest of the system from Windows bash. I can install Sublime Text on my Mac, and launch it from the terminal, for example. I can't do that with the Windows system.

> I can install Sublime Text on my Mac, and launch it from the terminal, for example. I can't do that with the Windows system.

That's coming in the next version of Bash on Windows.

It's actually entirely similar to the way BSD is grafted onto Mach in Darwin.

lxss.sys is a much better implementation of POSIX, honestly. In WSL I've never had to deal with incredibly broken stuff like ptrace(PT_CONTINUE) panicking the kernel from untrusted userspace with "TODO" messages (I wish I were making this up) or having the kernel close file descriptors sent via sendmsg() in flight if the sending end of the Unix socket is closed in blatant violation of POSIX.

I invite you to spend nontrivial time on a Mac doing significant development tasks and then tell me it is the same experience as Windows.

I spend 90% of my work hours developing on a Mac. I have reverse engineered dozens of Cocoa libraries to get my apps working, because of insufficient documentation. I have dug into the XNU source code to find out why things are happening.

Say what you will about Windows, but I don't have to spend hours debugging random out of memory reads causing kernel panics in the OpenGL drivers on that OS. (For example, calling texture2DMS in a vertex shader on anything other than the first row of a texture reads from random memory; still not fixed as far as I am aware.)

If you actually live in the terminal, Bash on Windows is a joke.

I do live in the terminal, and I couldn't be happier with Bash on Windows. I use the XFCE terminal connected to a local X server and it's the same experience I get on Linux.

Can you elaborate?

Basically this.

I have several Thinkpads running *BSD and they are great and all, but at the end of the day I gotta use Skype and the Office suite for communicating with clients so I default to working with macOS most of the time.

UNIX + great desktop support and apps + pkgsrc offers an unmatched experience depending on what you work on.

Great battery life, largely due to MacOS.

Not actually much more expensive than other comparably-high-quality laptops.

That glowing Apple on the back means you won't be personally blamed if something on it fails to work—say, if your wifi decides to cut out every five minutes due to a quirk in a particular hardware pairing, or it doesn't like a certain projector and refuses to work with it, and the meeting at your client's site ends up being more about your broken shit than the client's needs. If your $500 Dell running Arch and covered in penguin stickers does that, you might be personally blamed for it, and/or the quality of your judgment and competence might suddenly be on everyone's mind.

- high quality hardware

- nice extra features if you have an iphone like iMessage

- can develop apps for android and iOS without janketyness

- can develop for Linux/Windows/Mac

- some don't play many games anyway on a dev laptop

I think it's nice to have the development flexibility. i like being able to start coding anything possible because you never know when an idea may need a quick prototype.

If I do need macOS, don't want to jerk around with hackintosh in a VM.

When I bought my first one, 2011, I bought it for:

- clean UI w/ UNIX cli (it just works)

- it allows you to run anything (osx, Windows, nix in VM)

- iOS development

- support for non-Windows apps (Garage Band, Logic [which I never ended up trying], etc)

- easily up-gradable hardware (hard drive(s), ram)

- many ports so you can utilize the pro-ness of it w/o a dock or another extension (my micro-sd card is about as large as my ssd)

So half of the reasons I bought are no longer present or not really applicable because equal or better apps are now on Windows.

I get it, they want to add all these cool features, but based on the rumors I have heard (and their 'updates' since 2011) the 'Pro' Macook is getting less Pro with each release. Thankfully, my laptop has held up quite well and I primarily use it for dev, so I'm hoping it will hold up for sometime so I can continue working on it...but I don't see the advantage of paying $1000s for what amounts to a more powerful 12-in Macbook. Better to buy a mini (specifically for iOS dev) and a laptop that isn't a beefed up consumption device.

Actually, the Apple hardware and specs are usually better than you can get in a comparable Windows laptop for the same price.

The Windows machines are cheaper right now only because Apple has gone two and a half years without updating the Macbooks Pro without lowering the prices. Apple does awful things like that sometimes so you have to be careful about what you buy, but you have to be careful with Dell and HP and Lenovo also, so that's not really different.

But try finding an equivalent 3lb, silent, big glass reliable touchpad, extra long battery life, solid reliable build, color corrected retina screen laptop with similar specs to the new Macs next week and you'll find Apple has the best prices in the market as usual.

---

Plus, as others have mentioned, UNIX is like a smooth creamy dream compared to the droning misery and shocking horrors of Windows.

Even as the owner of a 2015 MBP, hmmm.

Dell 13" XPS, i7-7500U, 16GB, 512GB SSD, 3200x1800 display, Thunderbolt 3, glass trackpad, 2.9lb, $1799.

MBP 13", i7-5557, 16GB, 512GB SSD, 2560x1600 display, Thunderbolt 2, glass trackpad 3.5lb, $2199.

Nearly half the power consumption on the CPU, lighter, $400 cheaper does not make for "Apple has the best prices in the market as usual".

That MBP is a spring 2014 model that you are comparing against a fall 2016 Dell. It's amazing that the Dell doesn't cost US$1000 less.

You might want to tell Apple, they think they released it in April 2015.

Meanwhile as best I can tell, the Dell was out in August of 2016.

I have no horse in the race. I'll be upgrading my Mac with another Mac. But it's not Dell's fault Apple has been neglecting its entire computer range: over a year since the last iMac bump, 18 months for the MBA, 2 years for the Mini and nearly 3 years for the Mac Pro (I love how they're still charging full retail for the Pro components, or worse, $280 for 64GB ECC, but $1200 from Apple).

The 2015 model was just the 2014 model with a cheaper trackpad.

Now you're just being disingenuous.

According to Everymac, the following changes were made:

- CPU went from a i7-4578U to a i7-5557U (Haswell to Broadwell)

- memory was upgraded from 1600 DDR3L to 1866LPDDR3

- SSD was given extra lanes of PCIe

- Iris 5100 went to Iris 6100

- Force Touch - "more advanced", not cheaper

- Battery life improvements

In fact the summary is that "internally, the 13-Inch "Mid-2014" and "Early 2015" MacBook Pro models have little in common except that both have soldered memory, "blade" SSDs, and batteries that are glued in place."

Sources:

- http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/macbook-pr...

- http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macb...

Just for myself. Computers are my trade. I want the best tools I can get. For me, price isn't really the deciding factor at all.

With how long these machines last compared to their rivals, I'm saving money.

I have a setup on my work computer (windows) where capslock is control when pushed in combo with another key, and is escape when pressed and released on it's own.

People replied with some ways to do it on mac, but I haven't tried yet.

This is a per application, contextual bar.

The Terminal/iTerm apps can just show an escape button in the top left corner.

jj, unless out of insert mode!

I've had Macbooks for about a decade, and I'm excited about these changes. The OLED bar is kind of gimmicky, but OS X apps (unlike Windows ones), don't really use the function keys much. The MB keyboard is good--what it lacks in key travel it more than makes up for in key stability. Also, good riddance to Magsafe. The worst part of the Macbook experience is Apple's incredibly fragile and shitty chargers/cables. Being able to use off-the-shelf braided USB-C cables is going to be awesome.

> Also, good riddance to Magsafe.

What's wrong with magsafe? Owner of a mid 2012 MBPr here and I loved it.

I've bought four 85 watt magsafe 2 chargers in the last couple of years (my wife and I both have rMBPs), and all but one has frayed: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/magsafe-cable-frayed-any....

It'll be great to not have to use Apple's chargers/cables anymore.

Not had that happen to me as yet.

Anyway, the register [0] mentions that a magsafe type C adaptor may be introduced either by Apple or 3rd Party.

Personally, I like the magsafe design. It has been useful the past 4 years.

[0] http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2475007/macbook-pro...

Every Macbook that's entered my house over the last ~6 years (4 work, 2 personal) has had its adapter abused horribly, and none of them have frayed. Meanwhile they've saved all of them from multiple rapidly-getting-friendly-with-the-floor events (kids).

One thing I don't do is wrap the Magsafe end around those little prongs when I pack it. I just bunch it up roughly and toss it in the bag. Maybe that's what frays it?

Yeah wrapping around those prongs seems like the worst thing you can do to that tiny cable. And I don't blame the users for this. I just don't understand why they would put those prongs there.

Apple has a guide to show you how to best wrap the cable without straining it...

i.e. Don't pull it tight. I still have power charges from my 2007 MacBook Pro that have not frayed and still look like new and with the adapter from MagSafe 1 to 2 still get used regularly.

Same. I travel extensively with my laptop which means it and the charging cable are in and out of the bag a lot. The adapter is unplugged and plugged in multiple times per day. I go through about two charging cables a year right now. If they don't physically start fraying, the pins in the magsafe start sticking and it no longer makes good contact.

Really odd. I had one of mine for four years through college, which meant constant plugging in/unplugging in classes, at the library, at the dorm/my apartment.

Other than being off-white from dirt/dust and whatever, that charger lasted all that time.

My 2010 MBP did 18 months backpacking (2014/15) and hasn't missed a beat. It's had constant use otherwise.

I can only assume some of got lucky with indestructible chargers.

I've been an Apple-laptop user for 10 years, and a month or two ago my charging cable started fraying. It's less than two years old, and hasn't been used anymore than I have previous ones (if anything it's probably been abused less).

I'd assume it's just Apple reducing quality and raising prices (€85 for a replacement?!?) - Lightning cables are notorious for the same issue.

Yeah, it's breaking my heart that my next laptop probably isn't going to be an Apple.

With specs and quality going downhill and prices going up it just doesn't make sense for me any more.

I have to keep fiddling and moving it around in its socket, or else it either stops charging, or even worse gets into a "false charging" state, where the OS says it's charging, right up until it dies because the battery's drained. The only indication I get that this is happening is that the percentage stops changing.

Good riddance.

Besides cables fraying, adapters dying (two of Apple original adapters died on me in last two years. As opposed to my Dell XPS M1330 7 year old adapter who's still not showing any damage to the cable even though I used it the same way) and it keeps falling out of the laptop as soon as you're on uneven surface.

Agreed. I have a late-2008 aluminum Macbook (non-pro, "collector's edition"). The Magsafe adapter was one of my favorite things about it. There were countless times when it saved that laptop from falling off of a table, or saved me from tripping. I've had the same charger since I bought the thing back in January of 2009, and it still works fine, no fraying or other injuries whatsoever.

but OS X apps (unlike Windows ones), don't really use the function keys much.

What?

> Being able to use off-the-shelf braided USB-C cables is going to be awesome

Sadly there are a shocking number of USB chargers/cables which will physically fit into a USB-C port but are not to spec, therefore prone to damage or destroy the device. A Google engineer has been testing these and listing "approved" ones here http://www.bensonapproved.com/

The hardware 'Esc' key has got the boot. Controversy incoming.

No volume keys either

What will vi users do?

'Hey Siri, emulate pressing escape button on keyboard now, please'.

Siri: "I've searched the web for "emulate pressing escape button on keyboard now" for you":

Continue mapping Escape to Caps Lock like we always do :)

Caps -> Esc

The escape character is ^[ and can always be typed that way.

Have you noticed the correspondence between these alternate terminal incantations and the resultant codes they produce? If an ASCII table is laid out in columns of 32, they are on the same row, e.g.

     (3) ETX <-- C (67)
     (4) EOT <-- D (68)
     (8) BS  <-- H (72)
    (27) ESC <-- [ (91)

I was happy to find some order in what previously seemed arcane stuff.

Remap caps lock -

To be honest, that super-thin row of Esc/F-keys on the 11" Air has been totally useless anyway for real typing, so if I go from there to a new Pro, I wouldn't really miss that stuff.

Using escape in vi is an anti pattern. Use control-[

Why is it an anti-pattern? Surely a single press is more efficient than two?

I usually do C-c or A-j/k/... Esc is not that central to vi.

`imap jj <Esc>` as there are basically no words with two consecutive j's (I use hh for colemak instead)

I'm curious what's going to happen to co-installed operating systems that still rely on those keys.

They don't want co-installed operating systems. Just like they don't want wired headphones.

I was just thinking that earlier today when I was enabling installing apps from "anywhere", which is now a hidden option that can only be enabled from the command line.

You can still install apps from anywhere. The hidden option allows you to bypass gatekeeper, which IMHO is a fantastic security feature that stops people from installing potential malware or unsigned binaries.

Right click the app and choose "Open". No need to turn it on globally.

I think it's a good possibility that for operation systems, and even applications that don't take advantage of the bar that there's a default that behaves like the existing key row.

All Apple hardware has Windows drivers thanks to Boot Camp. So presumably those drivers will display function keys.

Linux and the like will be interesting, though.

courage

Why does Apple still insist on such large bezels when the industry is shifting away from those for displays?

Rather than potentially usable display area we have more large bezels, yet again.

Take the 12" Mac for instance - Apple had no problem shrinking the bottom half of the computer yet retained the large bezels, whereas they could've utilized the area to place a larger display panel in while retaining the same footprint. The resulting incongruence looks odd IMO.

Mockup of what I think the display should look like: https://i.imgur.com/BypLsSl.jpg

You may like that scheme from a functional standpoint, but Apple would never produce something like that. From a design standpoint, it looks bad when you place a sharp corner so close to the screen fillet. The extra breathing room feels much better.

They may reduce the bezel in the future, but IMO that would be done in the midst of a MB redesign.

At the very least, the bezel should be at least as wide as the corner radius.

> Apple would never produce something like that

Famous last words. The titanium powerbook had very small bezels for its time (2001), and I remember Steve Jobs when introducing it claiming that at the edge the cursor was almost gonna fall off. Of course this doesn't mean they'll do it again, but they certainly experimented with the idea before.

Yep and the powerbook has a much... sharper? external corner (https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/OluAXYWRtcY3jVxu.l...) and still a way larger bezel than the above mockup.

because that looks disgusting

I’ve been wondering about this for a long time, too. They could cram a 14" screen into a 13" casing. So much wasted screen space.

The only theory I could come up with: They do not want reduce bezel size because this potentially closes the door for making the laptop lid thinner. As we all know by now, thinness has top priority at Apple. A super thin lid means there cannot be support structure and connectors behind the screen, they must be placed around it. But you cannot place it around it if there is no bezel to hide it beneath.

If the Apple MacBook hardware guys read this: I’d rather have the current laptop lid thickness and no bezels than a paper thin lid with the current large ugly bezels.

Do you want to crack the display the first time you bang the corner against something hard? It takes some space to protect such a big piece of LCD.

"Edge 2 Edge" displays have been common for the last two years, yet I haven't heard of this as some endemic problem.

I don't mind this too much, although I do use the escape key a lot while programming or doing other things, so that will take some getting used to if I end up going with that new form factor (and if they don't release a laptop that has physical keys there as well). In fact, if they do provide tactile sensations ala the keyboard in the MacBook or the TouchID sensor in the iPhone 7, it might be better because the keys can be visually mapped.

I'm unsure if they're removing the other ports, such as MagSafe and the SD card port, but I hope they don't. I wouldn't mind having to buy a dongle for HDMI output since I use it so rarely, but I do use the SD card slot semi occasionally as a photographer, and I don't see the advantage of USB-C over MagSafe. Additionally, using USB-C could open up non-tech savvy users to even more issues than the current fake/non-approved MagSafe power bricks being sold on Amazon etc.

I was having a hard enough time with the AMD graphics rumors in lieu of the awesomeness going on right now with the 1060/1070 in laptops, but damn apple, way to throw in some real crazy with axing the escape key

First the headphone jack, now the escape key.

There's a difference between courage and stupidity.

There was a James Bond villain (make of that what you will) who defined that difference as being measured only by success; i.e., if Apple still sells a bunch of these, then it was a good idea.

> If Apple still sells a bunch of these, then it was a good idea

Nope, it will just prove that Apple has no competitor in the field of quality computers. I would still buy a Macbook if they sold the 2009 (even for the price of today). With or without Force Touch, which is bad UI, just like removing the Esc key.

I wouldn't be surprised if they axe the headphone jack too...

Well it's not as if they're teing to make it ip67 or anywhere near as volume constrained as on the iPhone.

> axing the escape key

vi users, prepare to revolt!

Most vi/vim users I know have it mapped to Caps lock anyway.

Apart from the lack of the Escape and function keys, I'm kinda bothered about the keyboard. It seems the MacBook Pro has the butterfly keys. I really hoped they won't use the butterfly keys on the MBP.

Well, it's just a leaked image, so can't draw too many conclusions out of it I guess.

The image is embedded in the latest release of Sierra, so it's basically confirmed.

I'm more bothered by the butterfly switches than the touchscreen strip. When the 12" MacBook was released, I stopped by a local Apple store to check it out, and left unimpressed. Better than typing on an iPad, but not by much. At the point where I'm carrying a laptop, the extra few mm for decent key travel is going to be unnoticeable.

So I have the unenviable position of having to support a C++ application with Visual Studio as the build tool. I use a Mac and VMware. Does that mean working within Visual Studio is going to be a lot harder given the Func keys are gone?

Presumably, the bar is going to be context aware. So you could set it to display a normal function key setup. You might even be able to customize it yourself, so you could make keys for it.

I would expect the default to be unchanged from normal function keys, unless an app declares its custom context.

So, who's going to be first with an after-market "bumpy" "screensaver" appliqué for this, to simulate at least to some degree a "key texture"?

Alternatively, will/could it (at some point) have localized haptic feedback?

P.S. I'd like to see some "edge-on" photographs that show whether and to what extent the relative exposure/relief of the top row of keys and the bar cause the bar to "hide behind" the higher relief of the keys, making it more difficult to touch without triggering one of those keys, particularly for a touch-typist or someone hitting the bar frequently.

Is it coincidental that the leaked image is of a user buying bluetooth headphones?

Subtle foreshadowing of removing the headphone jack from the Mac lineup.

I'm fine with the USB-C ports and buying a new set of cables but I'm not sure about the Magic Toolbar. I frequently use the F keys for shortcuts in my IDE, might be painful to adjust to this.

Edit: The USB-C ports are actually a great feature for me, I plan to buy a monitor with USB-C that can both act as an USB hub, charge the Macbook and use the USB-C cable to receive the video data. (all by using a single cable)

I'll then have one of these monitors both at home and in the office.

How do you USB-C guys deal with things like mice or pendrives?

I personally will mostly use it as a desktop replacement where I connect only one cable that goes to an UBS hub, monitor and will also charge the MacBook.

Mouse and Keyboard will be Bluetooth which I already use and that works well for me.

Regarding pendrives: I'll need to buy a new one, that sucks obviously, but I also have to say that I almost never used them although I bought an expensive one from Corsair just in case. In most cases I just used Google Drive to make that data available on all of my devices.

Looks like my app PowerKey just got sherlocked...

https://github.com/pkamb/PowerKey

Lenovo did this to ThinkPads. They backed down. Apple will do this. They will be heralded as true innovators, every laptop maker, including Lenovo will copy them and thus we get further from usable laptop keyboard by another step.

Is anybody else impressed with how accurate the artist rendition that has been floating around for almost a year is?

comparison: http://imgur.com/a/KDOGq

That's uncanny.

IIRC that artist rendition is based on the leaked spy shots of the actual milled aluminum case[0].

[0] http://www.cultofmac.com/430982/spy-photos-all-but-confirm-2...

This is correct. The imgur description incorrectly dates the renderings from 2015. They actually came out a little over a week after the leaked body photos.

The picture is stamped with 2015 along with artist and website.

Here's a blog post[0] from the artist on 2016-03-30 depicting a MacBook Pro concept. No OLED bar, and the ports are wrong.

Then the spy shots leaked on 2016-05-31.

After that, the artist released his corrected renderings[1] on 2016-06-09, and backdated it to 2015 for some reason.

[0] http://www.martinhajek.com/new-macbook-pro-concept/

[1] http://www.martinhajek.com/macbook-meets-oled/

Nice investigative work. I stand corrected.

Tomorrow is the day when I run to store.apple.com and buy the maxed out 11" macbook air - even though my current 11" macbook air works perfectly.

I need a decent laptop to do my work. A laptop without a physical escape key is not a decent laptop. Therefore, I will stockpile a second one so as to delay by 3-4 years the need to "switch".

Do you have the caps lock key already mapped to control then? Or do you actually use the caps lock functionality?

I've had caps lock mapped to escape for years on my MacBook Pro for the sake of Vim. It's so much nicer to hit with the pinky than reaching all the way up to the tiny 'esc' button in the function row, it's not even funny.

You can have both with Karabiner (though it doesn't work with Sierra yet).

Caps lock can be control if held down and used as a modifier with another key, but if pressed and released sends Esc instead.

Have you considered whether you also need a laptop with a physical caps lock key to do your work? If you do not, then perhaps you do not need to invest in a brand new old laptop right now, but could instead remap your caps lock key to work as escape.

I wonder how well (or badly) this is going to work when using an external keyboard. I don't mind using the inbuilt keyboard and screen of a laptop for limited time, but in my case, for proper coding and serious usage, nothing beats a mechanical keyboard and a real mouse.

I can only hope the Magic Toolbar allows me to span 'Esc' across the whole thing.

A meter alternating between battery capacity and wifi strength would be a nice touch.

Testing the keyboard on the Macbook, I found the action too stiff for my taste. Not jazzed about the short travel, either.

Here's hoping.

Just imagine playing Pong or Shufflepuck with that input. This will revolutionize paddle-based gaming all over again!

Reminds me of https://www.artlebedev.ru/optimus/ keyboard

Please, not those stupid left/right arrow keys, leave them as they are on current macbook pro, I need spacing between them so I can touch feel them.

Unfortunately, this looks like it's going to increase usability a great deal for ppl who are always running macOS and using the latest GUI apps from AppStore and is therefore going to be in future MBP models as well. Personally, tapping on a flat surface for my ESC and F-keys -- assuming they're even available -- is something I'll refuse to adapt to.

But, I mean, you can have nyan cat going across your keyboard at all times, which makes up for a lot of adaptation problems.

It looks like the Touch ID area/button is physically separate, and I'm guessing it will function similarly to the home button on iOS devices (touch to power on/wake, and it scans your fingerprint at the same time): http://imgur.com/gallery/G8u98

I wonder if they'll consider giving the next iphone a usb-c port too. If they're really going to be consolidating to a single port I could get on board. Changing yet another standard connector but still requiring everyone to keep around 2 types of chargers (now exactly the same size) seems pretty obnoxious even for Apple.

So will it be full of blue light at night? I'm guessing a lot of MacBook Pro users are flux users. I certainly am.

I'd expect the brightness is tied to keyboard brightness. Not that that answers the question about blue light. To that end, I'd wager first version won't be sporting anything like Night Shift / flux.

You can turn keyboard brightness fully off. Guessing that would make the magic bar non functional.

Unless they make the simple decision to prevent it from going 100% off.

Oh, sorry, that was what I meant to imply: the blue light couldn't be turned off

Everyone’s here focusing on usability aspects, but in fact this is a great security feature more than anything[1].

Security research has been calling for something like this for a long time. Any “enterprise” laptop brand should have been shipping this five years ago.

[1] Assuming they don’t let apps just display anything there.

This is actually the thing that I've been kind of missing from computers now that they come with the secure enclave, TPM and other solutions for securely storing encryption keys.

It would be pretty great if there was a way for the security chip to communicate directly with user to for example show a clear text version of the bank transaction I'm about to sign with my secret key.

There’s really no reason to have a separate plain text confirmation here, just an indication that what you’re seeing on screen is not a phishing attempt by a rouge app[1]. A single ‘secure mode’ LED would suffice really. How come no one can even ‘innovate’ this little, other than Apple?

[1] Obviously though this is better, because it can be completely driven by the secure path, as you say.

Also the axed Escape key is a textbook tactic to cause fake controversy to get free marketing.

The rest of them I don't care about, but I use the play/pause and volume keys often.

...and STILL has a caps-lock key.

This is a very valid point. I would never miss a caps-lock key, but I will definitely miss the physical presence of a native Esc.

I've seen many non-technical users, and even a few programmers, who exclusively use the caps lock for typing upper case letters. It's maddening to watch them type, but you can't argue that it's a widely-used key.

Oops, I meant to say "you can't argue that it's not a widely-used key".

Have you ever pointed it out to them? I'd be torn between being rude and being driven mad by the inefficiency of it.

I'm one of the people that does that. While I assume it's less efficient than using shift, once you get really used to it I would argue that there isn't a big difference, and that it's not as inefficient as you think. At least for day to day use and writing code.

Try this one weird trick: rest index fingers on these raised bumps on F and J and other fingers on the keys next to them. Then when you type, hit each key with the closest finger.

Try this for some time and you will see the light ;)

I have pointed it out to a former co-worker. He didn't seem interested in changing it. Every other time he used caps lock (i.e. several times a minute), he would leave it on and forget about it and start typing the next sentence/line of code in all caps, and then have to delete it and start over. (Of course he wasn't using an editor with a "downcase region" command.) I mainly pointed it out because every time I sat down at his computer to demonstrate something, I would get hit by this as well.

It may or may not be a coincidence that he's a "former" coworker and not a current one.

They had a chance of starting a new trend by renaming CapsLock to Escape :/

No wonder the maintainer of Karabiner ( https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/ ), one of the most powerful keyboard customizer on OSX, had to start rewriting it from scratch for macOS. Maybe the underlaying keyboard/accessibility APIs in macOS have changed so much it forced a rewrite.

If that's the case then I'm starting to see the macOS major release policy as being as conservative as possible. I.e. no introduction of unnecessary changes unless it warrants advancements in hardware integration.

HN is the only place where I can read people's comments complaining about how the JavaScript ecosystem needs to move at even faster pace than it is now and just a few submissions away, watch people complain about hardware change.

For me anyway, I don't care as much about software changes because I have lots of choice, and can rewrite something or switct to another software package if I want to. There is literally nothing on the market that matches apple's battery life on their laptops so any changes they make that are deal breakers for me are a big deal.

If battery life is your main criteria, the thinkpad x260 gets 17+ hours of real world usage battery life, and the x250 gets over 22 (from what I remember) if you add the superbay battery.

Are they light and thin and durable and with high-quality chips and well-tested hardware and perfect integration between OS and hardware and calibrated displays and ... you get the idea. There's a reason pro users pay the Apple premium for laptops.

But I wonder if Apple is really making a smart choice. Alienating the tech / UNIX people, as few as we may be in the grand scheme of things, may hurt them in the long run.

That's why I said "If battery life is your main criteria" in hopes of avoiding this kind of predictable response.

People have different preferences/needs. Pro users get plenty of non-mac laptops with "high quality chips" (I didn't know Intel made them worse for everyone but Apple) and hardware.

Also the x2xx Thinkpads are probably far, far more durable than any macbook, but that's unrelated to battery life.

"High quality chips" wasn't about Intel, we all know they are reliable. I'm talking about dodgy wifi, audio, ethernet, etc. chips, that offload their work to the cpu to save on silicon, have crappy drivers, or are otherwise flaky. That's been my experience with non-Apple laptops.

I hope the API to use it isn't restricted to App Store applications.

Alright, I think the touch bar thing is stupid but really I use those keys for volume/brightness almost exclusively. So I can probably live with that.

edit: Aw crud, I do use escape when I'm editing in vim from time to time.

Not having HDMI on the 15" is annoying. Not having SD is annoying. I didn't use the HDMI port a ton, but it was nice to have. SD I really only use for photos.

Losing magsafe is probably the worst thing here.

Oh well, my 2013 is still going strong so it's not like I'm really in the market for a new macbook.

No magsafe and taking out all those other conveniences means I can consider other vendors for the first time in years—but only because the MacBook will have gotten worse, which is kind of a sad reason for it.

I have a venerable 2010 MBP that I'm considering replacing in the near future, but (as you mention) the new hardware is not compelling. The thing I can't figure out is whether or not my gripes are legitimate, or if I'm losing brain plasticity (i.e. getting old).

I hope they don't forego the USB port on the next MacBook pro.

I can see them moving to 60GHz exclusively.. ;)

Rechargeable, wireless USB cables. That will be amazing.

The article mentions that there's no longer an escape key; command-line users, get ready to switch to Ctrl-[ from now on.

Not mentioned in the article: the power button is gone, too.

>Not mentioned in the article: the power button is gone, too.

"It appears Touch ID is built into a nearly-invisible power button located next to the display."

I could've sworn I'd Ctrl-Fed for "power" before posting this comment. Maybe they're editing the article as the news develops.

A thought: would it be possible with some kind of feedback like the touchpad or iPhone 6S uses to simulate the feel not only of pressing keys but also the feeling of your finger sliding over them without actually pressing them?

I mean I can find the ESC key blindly even if it isn't actually there anymore, but the brightness up key is for me goes like "find ESC key, slide two to the right".

I like the builtin fingerprint reader if that means I don't have to type my password to login. Love it on the phone, hope it works on the laptop.

I wonder if the bar will be customizable (both icons and functionality) or if we have to live with what Apple provides for different programs.

Would love to map things I commonly do for bash or some generators etc. For touch typing I could also see just mapping the left, middle and right roughly so I only have to hit one of the buttons in that group for three extra buttons.

I hope they still include a physical power button somewhere on the device, though I don't see it on any leaked keyboard pictures.

http://imgur.com/gallery/G8u98

so if there is an API for applications to modify this magic toolbar, does it mean that while the application with the custom toolbar is running I can't change screen brightness or mute the sound etc? hopefully there is some shortcut that forces the magic toolbar to 'alt-tab' to the 'system defaults' view...

It looks like there's still a function button in the bottom left corner, so maybe that is used to switch the mode of the 'function strip.'

Great with some new ideas on what's in a basic laptop.

I wonder: this would need some kind of software support so that the focused application would write what to display on the keyboard? Meaning it would work only with a small set of applications in the beginning.

Also I wonder if this feature will make it into apple's external keyboards?

Macs are already dead to me. It's become impossible to use them without some new nag notification every time I want to run new software or even just do anything without massaging itunes/icloud/siri continuously.

This is just another nail in the coffin. Adios OSX, hello well-made ubuntu ready macbook clones.

Let's try it in action, but for now I presume it's more like an marketing thing than a practical need (I'm fine with usual fn keys). A thing which is supposed to keep Apple to be named as an innovative company.

Also will this "magic" work on Linux if I put it on a new Macbook?

At that thickness wont this have serious thermal throttling like iMac's do for GPU or CPU?

Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait ... wait.

Where. Where is the escape key.

Where is the escape key ?

I wonder if Apple gathers any statistics on the most pressed keyboard keys. That could be a reason why they decided to go with the OLED touch panel as a replacement for function keys.

Time to make the top row with Esc and function keys as an external keyboard. If didn't Apple already done that, since they're an accessories company lately.

Oh, no physical escape key? That's a show stopper. (Already have ctrl mapped to caps lock so re-mapping esc isn't really feasible for me).

You can have both, so that escape is triggered when you tap caps lock, and ctrl is triggered when you hold caps lock. I followed this article to set it up on my MacBook http://www.economyofeffort.com/2014/08/11/beyond-ctrl-remap-...

What I noticed is what I think is a thinner screen bezel, which I love. It also seems that the body is less wide. Or I'm I the only one noticing this?

It will be interesting to see how well they use their new hardware unspoofable UI. Puts Apple Pay ahead of most other payments in terms of security.

This is the end of Apple. I've been using MAC for over 100 years and this is the final straw. I'll never buy another product from MAC. No function keys on the MACbook, no headphone jack on the Iphone, less space than a nomad. It's bad enough that I need all these dongles for my headphones, SCSI CD drives, and CueCats, and now I need to get even more dongles for my function keys. I knew MAC was going to fail ever since they released the underpowered and un-upgradable toy Imac.

Can't tell if this guy is being sarcastic.

Sarcastic, but yes, this is hard to discern. "CueCat" is the tell.

so the rumors look mostly true. WIN. #takemymoney

If the new MacBook Pros are indeed USB-C only, Apple's just given me a great incentive to ditch the iPhone (with its proprietary Lightning standard) and move over to a USB-C compatible phone (such as Google Pixel). At long last a single charger for all devices could be visible on the horizon... another self-inflicted nail in the coffin for Apple's closed-ecosystem supremacy in mobile.

I'm done with Apple's "Magic" features. I'm sticking to my old 2012 MBP retina till it gives up the ghost, and then picking up a Dell XPS 13", which still has familiar keys.

I'm all for evolution, but change for the sake of change means I've to unlearn years of muscle memory and relearn something that is specific to only Apple's hardware. No thanks!

I didn't realize that the keyboard needed disrupting - nearly all my function keys are mapped in Vim or used in other ways for fast switching, or other types of automation. I can't wait to see how they flog the Magic Toolbar to the visually impaired.

Apple have turned into Big Brother and their hardware upgrades seem inspired by NewSpeak. Doubleplus ungood, Apple.

Am I the only one questioning this "leak" ?

How often does Apple leak things on their own website?

They didn't leak it on their website. They leaked it in the actual OS.

The OS, presumably, includes a "how do I do this new thing" helper, which shows you a picture of the hardware they're about to release (which is going to ship with this OS).

Looking at the post, it looks like it was something leaked on a website not the OS. At least it did to me.

Both the title and the first sentence say that it was leaked in the OS. What made you think "website"?

Yes, you are the only one.

Apple, why are you breaking something that works well. First the headphone jack, now this.

I use function keys a lot for programming, but there's plenty of apps I don't need them for. Having context aware buttons sounds like a nice step, especially if it has the ability to securely store and use my credit card for purchases.

How about going boldly into the future rather than being tied down to something which doesn't get a ton of use in most situations!

*Edit: of course my reply doesn't have anything to do with the headphone jack. For simplicity and space removing the jack made sense, but for ease of use and standards there's good arguments for keeping the it around. I argue this case is different because it's not widely used and it's prior use (fn keys) can be duped by the magic bar.

Streamlining impulse purchases hardly feels like innovation. Feels more like "what's left to keep AAPL stock price up?"

> Streamlining impulse purchases hardly feels like innovation

Tell that to Amazon.

You act like that's the only reason for this.

Excel pretty much requires the function keys too.

Function keys work well. Since when ?

Apart from using them to change volume I have never used them for their intended purpose. Having a per application, contextual bar with actual labels e.g. Launchpead instead of F4 makes a whole lot more sense.

> Having a per application, contextual bar with actual labels

I would agree if they somehow have some way to physically distinguish the keys by touch. It's pretty much useless to me if I have to look away from the screen to find the key I want.

Finally, an excuse for the rest of you vi users to remap Caps Lock to escape.

You won't regret it!

OK, it's time for me to dive back into the land of linux for my development machine.

Recommendations welcome, looking for something with similar specs to current maxed out mac airs 11".

Recommendations welcome!

I'd recommend the current maxed out mac air 11". It's very close in specs to what you're looking for, can run linux natively and has all the function keys you want.

Also: it runs macOS, which is really cool as an OS.

Moves like this are quickly pushing me away from Macbooks for dev. I need a *nix backend though. Does anyone know what the state of the art for Linux laptops is?

Dell XPS laptops have a Developer variant that ships with Ubuntu.

"currently unavailable"

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd

It's not really unavailable: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-9360-laptop/pd

Mine arrived last week. It's been great so far.

Thinkpad W530, i7 3940xm, 32Gb RAM, with a xx20 keyboard.

If that's too big, T430.

I recommend system76 laptops: https://system76.com/laptops

But why are they so UGLY?

Who cares? I love my lemur. No frills, just a simple laptop.

I'd suggest Tuxedo Computers - http://www.tuxedocomputers.com

I bought the TUXEDO Infinity Book - 13" Full HD screen, 16GB RAM, Intel Core i7-6500U, 1.4 kg only. It works ok, I'm using Suse Linux + Cinnamon Desktop Env. There are two things I'd improve on the laptop: the touchpad could be of a better quality, the Intel Dual AC 3160 wlan does not have the best reception (may be a problem with the antenna?).

State-of-the-art is: get comfortable compiling a kernel, because you'll need to if you want to get sound.

Oh, and when you do get sound, the wireless cuts out. You can get wireless and sound at the same time, but only at 1024x786.

Seriously, gif you want to punish Apple by moving to Linux I can understand that. If you actually think it's a gain in productivity, you haven't seen linux on the desktop yet. It's like saying "enough with these kernel exploits! We're moving to macOS on the server!"

I was asking to get other people's experiences to see if it would be a gain in productivity. Not sure why you're so hostile to that.

Yuck.

This seems gimicky and anti-Apple.

Jobs' Apple perhaps. Not this one.

'gimicky' seems to imply that this wouldn't be that useful - while I understand the complaints bout removing the function keys, it seems like there could be a lot of really cool and useful uses for the magic toolbar

No escape key? This company is an absolute joke now. Guess it's back to Windows on a PC for me.

am i the only one who thought: "hey, apple finally implemented the ANY key!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Any_key

No function keys, so the "magic toolbar" will for 99% of the time just be a generic toolbar?

That smacks of the Android decision to do away with physical keys and instead just display them all the time. Wasting valuable screen real estate and power for a bad emulation of buttons.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com