Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away – the Escape key | Hacker News Reader

Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away – the Escape key

jeffgeerling.com

68 pointsgeerlingguy120 comments

Wait! No! Caps lock is for control!

I like my mac, but i guess this is my last one. My hands are cold and sweaty, so they aren't perfectly reliable with touch devices. No escape key makes me sad. It might make Apple sad, but they'll probably just cry themselves to sleep on their giant piles of money.

You can make caps lock both escape and control

http://www.economyofeffort.com/2014/08/11/beyond-ctrl-remap-...

That, that is very clever. Ctrl when pressing chords and esc when used alone.

Beware that one of the tools mentioned in that link, Karabiner, does not work on macOS Sierra.

Wow, thank you thank you.

Unless you trigger on control alone (e.g ctrl + ctrl).

This is super frustrating.

Is that pressing just control, or pressing the real control with the caps lock key mapped to control?

Just use kj for escape. It makes me so happy not to take my fingers off the home row where they belong.

:inoremap kj <ESC>

It's liberating. Also add this one temporarily to get yourself into the habit:

:inoremap <ESC> esc

Some people like jk instead of kj. On rare occasions I actually type the string "jk", especially when programming with quaternions or other three and four dimensional imaginary numbers. Feel free to experiment.

The only problem I've found with that is when using other vi like programs that don't allow insert mode mappings.

I've found it easier to stick to C-[ simply because it's universally available in the terminal.

Ok old school vi user here...I'm going to admit that I no idea about ctrl-[ until your comment.

I wish Apple would taketh away one of the modifier keys instead.

They have Function, Control, Alt, Option, Command and Shift.

Regularly I forget which one is which so I just start spamming them all.

And I can never remember what ⌥ is supposed to mean.

Yeah and I hit fn instead of ctrl on macs because I grew up using PC keyboards.

It's worse when you alternate between Apple's larger USB keyboard with numeric keypad (which has wider Control, Option, and Command keys) and the laptop keyboard (which jams in a fn key before those three), and your pinky gets some form of PTSD from hitting the wrong button!

> They have Function, Control, Alt, Option, Command and Shift.

And modifier chords (option-cmd, shift-cmd, option-shift-cmd). If you used all combinations you'd have 64 different modifier combinations. Insanity!

Aren't alt and option the same thing, or have I been missing some nuance for several decades?

BTW, I think ⌥ is supposed to look like scales, representing "option." That's how I've always remembered it, anyway.

That's interesting. I always assumed it was a single pole double throw switch.

the option key is supposed to resemble a path and when you press it you are taking the alternate path(also called the alt key)

Actually, now that I look at it afresh doesn't it remind you of a railroad switch. Can't believe I never noticed that before.

It's the electricity symbol for a switch.

Gotcha, thanks. Seems to be a near variant of a SPDT toggle switch, Single Pole Double Throw. Can't tell if it is technically an electrical symbol or an electronic symbol.

http://www.rapidtables.com/electric/electrical_symbols.htm (fifth symbol down)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_symbol#Switches (second symbol along)

Interesting, I always thought ⌥ was a 3 dimensional T laying flat (and the black is the shadow).

Apple might have made some missteps lately, but they're not stupid.

The point of the "magic" toolbar is to help desktop users finally leverage the useful things you can do with contextually aware keys/controls, which is more in line with how humans approach things, and a massively under-recognized part of the reason that iPads are so much easier for non-computer people to use than PCs or desktops.

See that 'cancel' button in the screenshot? That will be the escape key, under basically all circumstances that you would want an escape key. Here it says "cancel" which is more descriptive and is exactly in line with the language used on all the buttons and dialogues the user will see on the screen. "Cancel" is what it actually does. "Esc" isn't.

Especially if the user is currently in a terminal, or VIM, I would expect the key to show the 'Esc' label and continue as normal. Under bootcamp, or under older macOS applications that don't attempt to interact with the Magic Toolbar API, I would also expect that area to show the 'Esc' key.

I'm looking down while typing this on a Microsoft keyboard and I see 5 giant "My favourites" buttons and some weird "star" button, and a calculator button, all of which I have never used, and which sit above the mouldering function row which again is used fairly infrequently by me, and basically never by my family members. That is not how to design an interface.

I just gave up on Apple ever shipping you are MacBooks and received my custom order HP two days before they announced the October 27th event. My (magnesium unibody) ZBook is as slim as my retina MBP, has a higher-PPI display, also comes with a glass trackpad, has user-replaceable battery, 2x M.2 PCIe SSDs, and upgradeable ram. I was able to pay a bit extra and get it with a mobile Xeon CPU (E3-1545m with Intel's top-of-the-line Iris Pro integrated GPU) which is the equivalent of the i7 6920HQ only with more cache and better graphics, meaning I was able to buy 32 GB of ECC RAM for only $200. It has a 4GB nVidia Quadro and still manages to weigh less than my rMBP.

The only thing that sucks is the noise. It's quite even with the fan running at its highest RPM, but the frequency of the resulting noise is very distinguishable and it has a tendency to rev up and down quite suddenly (and often). It doesn't help that there are two fans, one on each side, which turn on and off independently - meaning you can suddenly feel like you've lost hearing in one of your ears until you realize the noise level is imbalanced. I don't know if Apple will introduce Xeon workstations, but even if they did, I'm not sure I'm ready to give up my three USB 3.1 (non-C), three thunderbolt 3 (/USB-C), power, gigabit Ethernet, and 3.5mm ports in exchange for a more-pleasant audio profile.

Did I mention I've been a faithful Mac user for over a decade?

Won't you miss macOS? It is not just about the hardware, it is the combination of the macbook with the OS.

Hackintoshs are a thing.

hackintoshs are a giant, giant pain in the ass. I've been building hackintoshs since the close to the beginning of that scene (2009 or so) and have built around 5-6 hackintoshs, as recently as 3 months ago. It always has been and always will be a sucky experience that is a pain even for people who know what they are doing, ESPECIALLY for laptops. Most people who are technically inclined are better off just going to *nix

For laptops I agree, lots of pain, but for desktops I've never had any major issues with the last 3 Intel+Nvidia PCs I've had over the years, always worked really well.

For me the only downside really is the extra reboot after an OS update every 2 months to update nvidia driver and repatch sound kext.

The question then must be … why do you do it?

I stopped. I kept going back to it because I love hacking on things and I love mac os and hate apple's markup on hardware, but I've learned my lesson at this point and will not attempt another hackintosh build.

Having used Windows 10 + the Ubuntu Linux subsystem for a while now I think it's safe to say that the only reason I'll ever use a Mac again is if I am developing for iOS.

Macs are still shipping with 10-year-old GNU utilities. LOL

Having used the "linux" subsystem under Windows 10 with all of its problems, issues and limitations it is now clear that there is never going to be decent/smooth and reliable UNIX-dev experience under windows. No matter how much the Microsoft marketing guys try to feed us that BS.

Maybe if one day Windows goes 100% UNIX.

I used Mac because it gave me a great UX with access to all my favorite command line tools and a posix API I could build against. With Windows 10 finally shipping a real, supported posix target (Ubuntu for Windows - what an unfortunate name) vs the years of Interix (R) which was discontinued and replaced by "Linux subsystem for Windows" which was discontinued without a replacement until Nadella's "Ubuntu/Bash for Windows", I now no longer have need for OS X.

Plus, Apple doesn't care about macOS. HFS has bitrotted away, the OS itself has taken backseat to mobile, and Apple doesn't know if it cares enough about its enterprise and power users to even release "point releases" of their products - how much engineering tech does it take to replace a Haswell CPU with a Broadwell with no fanfare or ado? Just do it and make it available?

> Plus, Apple doesn't care about macOS. HFS has bitrotted away

HFS is already being replaced with APFS which is excellent feature-wise, and is available in Sierra for testing purposes. I expect at this time next year we'll be seeing them use it by default on new macOS and iOS devices.

The magic word "ECC" got me very interested. Do you have the model number to check the specs? Is 32GB the max? (That's what I already have on a thinkpad)

Thinkpads are interesting: 4 years ago they CPU slightly faster than yours: i7 3940XM.

There must be more to Xeons than being an i7 w/ ECC surely.

In practice? I don't know. i7 means IOMMU. That I care about. But it may be useless to most - like ECC.

We have niche interests, and a few things that matter (IOMMU, ECC)

Most people care about TDP or prices.

Sure, SGX, bigger L3, some virtualization features thrown in. But ECC is the only one that matters (the 6920HQ doesn't have virtualization support which I live and die by, but other i7 chips do). There are servers running i3 chipsets because for some bizarre reason, Intel has allowed using ECC RAM on i3 machines but not on i5 or i7.

HP charges an arm and a leg for customizations; I bought it with a 120 GB M.2 SSD and 16GB of ECC then swapped those out for a Samsung PCIe NVMe M.2 950 Pro and 2x16GB ECC RAM. It has 2x SODIMM slots and each can take up to 32GB, so you could do 64GB if you wanted to.

That upgrade would have cost me around $1000 preconfigured from HP, but since these are real machines that let me actually do what I want to them, I was able to swap them out for myself for $350 - and that's before recuperating the costs by selling the parts it came with.

btw, I think the 3940XM is only faster on paper. The E3-1545m has 8GT/s vs the 3940XM's 5GT/s, ~33% more memory bandwidth, and an L4 memory cache.

I've been looking for a similar machine. Wish there were more available with the E3-1545m which is an awesome CPU. In the past I've shied away from HP due to quality concerns. Have the addressed that issue?

So you had to self-upgrade and sell the original parts? That's sad that that is necessary. Did you try contacting HP to see about purchasing a bare-bones machine to avoid getting parts you don't want?

Are both M.2 slots gen3 x4? I was looking at the Dell workstation and was dismayed to find out that only one of slots can work at that speed.

how is the trackpad?

It's OK. It tracks as well as my rMBP's did/does, but does not recognize multiple simultaneous touches (hard to explain, but best example is holding down the keypad (yes, the whole thing clicks like the real MBP trackpads before this force touch garbage used to) with one finger than dragging with another to click-and-drag - this would work on an MBP but does not on the ZBook Studio).

It's an alps trackpad, which is unfortunate because their drivers suck. I have basically two or three configurations possible for the gestures. Synaptic would be way better, but I can't find any glass synaptic trackpads (the Dell Precision 5510 - a beefed up XPS 15 - had an even crappier Elantech).

that gesture does work on the glass surface book trackpad

What is the battery life like? What are the thermals like?

I couldn't honestly say because I haven't properly tested the battery life when I'm not stressing the device. But I can tell you that Windows 10 has a new "battery saver" mode akin to iOS 9's, and that I'm not worried about Apple telling my battery which holds less than 50% of its capacity a couple of years later despite half their guaranteed charge cycles will tell me "too bad" because - their guarantee aside - I didn't experience this behavior in the first year of owning the device. Even HP's 3 year "no questions asked" battery warranty aside, I can just buy a battery off of NewEgg and stick it in myself when this one kicks the bucket.

It runs much cooler than my MBP ever did (no more burning my fingertips typing) - but note the caveat about fan noise in my initial post.

Sounds good! This might be my next machine. My T440 is now beginning to show its age after years of faithful service.

You running Windows or Linux? How much did it set you back? I was looking at the Lenovo P50/P70 in order to get an ECC RAM laptop, nice to know that HP is an option as well. Manufacturers might start making workstation-level linux laptops for devs which would be sweet. It's interesting that laptops run all the way from €300 to, what, €4000(?) nowadays. There's a huge amount of variety. Definitely would like to go Xeon + ECC + 32 gigs for my next purchase.

Windows, though I spend more time in Windows 10's well-implemented Linux subsystem than in Windows itself. See my other reply about getting this device much cheaper than its specs would normally go for.

Apple, stop removing things we need and replacing them with BS! Esc is an important key, and I don't need less modifiers on my keyboard (I actually need more - i3 takes up a good bit of S, and Emacs uses CMS: I could do with a Hyper and an Fn to make things less cramped), and while Esc is important, it doesn't deserve the same kind of prime placement as Ctrl does unless your a vim user. I guess swapping it to Ctrl and swapping control to Capslk could work, but Esc really should be bound by default.

I was looking forward to buying the new MacBook Pro, but now I'm not so sure. Lenovo replaced the top row on their Carbon X1 laptop with digital keys a couple of years ago, and the results weren't that good. They were hard to use and unpractical. Hopefully Apple's implementation will work better.

Honestly bough how often do you hit escape on a mac? So having it as a digital key won't be the end of the world.

1/ Cancelling a dialogue box 2/ vi 3/ Force Quit

> So having it as a digital key won't be the end of the world.

That's quite an assumption. What makes you think that'll be an option?

>50x a day, probably. I practically live in Vim.

maybe you mean 50k (not x) because in Vim it's used every 10 seconds, which makes it several thousands times a day

yes

Dozens if not hundreds of times every day. And that’s just in the GUI. I’m not even a Vim user or anything.

You also need drivers for those touch keys which makes installing any OS more difficult

That was in gen 2. They reverted to normal keys in gen 3, 4. So I guess they learned their lesson.

Lenovo didn't have enough influence over their platform to shove software keys down the market's throat and get any 3rd party software adopt them in a useful manner. If you're developing software for Windows, that particular version of the Thinkpad is a vanishingly small portion of your target market. With Mac software and the MBP, it's a substantial one.

Apple's positioning here is fairly unique. They can add this feature and expect a significant number of developers to actually implement it.

Software keys on their own to just control the computer's built-in functions don't strike me as particularly useful. The strength in this is like Steve Jobs' original pitch with the iPhone's touchscreen versus a fixed hardware keyboard. It can adapt to new uses and functionality as needed.

That is if the API is open to all applications and not restricted to App Store ones.

"We have no escape", said one of my Mac-wielding colleagues.

So true now.

(Full disclosure: I've been writing at taoofmac.com for over 14 years now, and even though I get why Apple is doing this, still find it dumb because I live inside a UNIX terminal most of my time. I'm now considering switching to Linux as soon as I can find a decent mail client, because, like Jamie Zawinsky, I refuse to read my email in a browser, like an animal.)

Just curious, what mac-only terminal email client do you use now? I imagine that most terminal email clients work fine on Linux. Or maybe I am reading something incorrectly from your comment?

I think he means that Linux email clients are not that good, and Apple Mail is pretty decent.

That makes much more sense.

Yes

Have you considered Thunderbird?

Fleetingly, under the influence of a Martini. I have little love for it, and find Mail.app much more pleasant and efficient (not performance-wise, usability-wise).

Geary looks the part, but doesn't act anywhere as close.

Honestly Mail.app has been going downhill the past few years, much like the rest of the OS. 10.6 was stellar, 10.8 was meh, after that it went down the drain.

I recently switched to Linux Mint (Cinnamon) and there is not a thing I miss. Thunderbird is pretty good too.

I'm a bit more concerned that their isn't a dedicated power button. My Mac has froze a dozen times in the last year, and I'm pretty sure a soft button isn't going to be working.

Maybe for a hard reset there will be a new key combination. Like Ctrl+Alt+Del

Or a tiny inset reset button you need a paper clip for, like on some tablets/smartphones.

I've ruined a laptop microphone that way once, thinking it was a reset button... :P

Sure, there already is one: It's Command-Shift- .... Escape. Oh.

Apple has created a revolutionary new UI paradigm for that: you can now beautifully reset your Macbook by letting its battery die instead of being forced to memorize some terrible keyboard trick. The power button is clearly an outdated technology, this new innovation is the future and we have to embrace it.

Courageous. Revolutionary and courageous.

http://techcrunch.com/2016/09/07/courage/

it'll probably be apple+ctrl+shift+tab+alt

could be similar to the Xbox One's button?

Its a touch button, so not necessarily "soft", but even if the console is completely locked, holding your finger on it for about 5-10 seconds will reboot. I'm sure they can do something similar (the far right side, if held down, will always be power, etc... and it can work as a touch power button only when the machine is asleep/off)

If you zoom in on the image, you can see a beveled square on the right end of the strip where the TouchID sensor is. I'm hoping* that the sensor also acts as a power button.

*Well, actually I'm buying another ThinkPad.

Lenovo released an X1 Carbon in 2014 with a similar touch strip and backtracked a year later. Personally I'm glad they did.

This is enough of an example to make one wonder why they would go down this path. It makes me sad as I really do enjoy my MBP, but as a developer, these changes are making the hardware unusable.

The hardware was reasonably okay, but Lenovo's problem was getting software to actually use it.

Which none did, because what Windows software developer cares about special hardware only found in a single high-end laptop almost nobody buys?

Apple won't face this particular problem, due to their tighter control on the Macbook software landscape.

The touch strip is rumored to only be in the MacBook Pros so it could be a while before anyone really cares about it, like Force Touch.

If it wasn't for the touch bar all we'd be getting is a slightly thinner shell and a slightly faster previous-generation CPU, just as the PC industry starts getting backpack desktops, desktop GPUs in laptops, OLED screens, touch screens, removable screens that become tablets, VR headsets, external GPUs, backlit keyboards you can adjust individual key colors on etc.

PC industry is definitely missing out.

> backlit keyboards you can adjust individual key colors on

Just out of interest but what, other than novalty, is the purpose of this?

I've seen it on a Razer gaming laptop. Is it just an entertainment thing or is there some UX using this?

[edit] this is a genuine question BTW and not a weak attempt at snark.

A current generation processor, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD would be sufficient for me. The current form factor is great. If you want to reduce the bezel and therefore the size of the laptop, that would be fine, too. All else is distraction.

Well, on the other hand this sort of software change really needs decent software support and I'm not sure that Lenovo can be held up as a good example of software dev / UX excellence. However this works out for Apple, their software support for the feature will likely be miles ahead of whatever Lenovo can muster.

I wonder if the reason there is no corresponding Xcode for the iOS 10.1+macOS 10.12.1 release is that they want to hold the official reveal of the magic toolbar. Surely the latest Xcode macOS SDK will have some sort of APIs for configuring the display/graphics/icons on the magic toolbar. Sucks if you're developing for iOS, because unless you want to side-load beta versions of Xcode, you will need to choose between being able to debug on the device or being safe from the remote code execution bug in the JPEG decoder on anything less than iOS 10.1...

Not to mention it seems they're withholding a release of the Network Link Conditioner[1] that works with Sierra along with Xcode. There's currently no reliable method for limiting the entire Mac's upload or download bandwidth under Sierra :(

[1] http://nshipster.com/network-link-conditioner/

The original Macintosh keyboard didn't have an escape key.[1] Or function keys. Or cursor keys. Or a numeric pad, though you could buy one as an accessory. You're supposed to use the mouse.

[1] http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/128k2.jpg

Yes, but in this enlightened era, we run Unix and recognize the importance of the CLI. Maybe not the best, but it's sure as heck better than the original MacOS.

I used (and refurbished) a bunch of those. But I switched to the Mac full time because of UNIX, not when it ran cooperative multitasking hacks atop a 680x0 CPU.

For Excel users, a shortcut that I think few people are aware of. When editing a formula, select part of the formula, and press CAPS LOCK+F9, it will evaluate the value of the selection.

...the CAPS LOCK is not that useless!

I just realized that there are still four keys on the bottom left side (next to space).

Until now this used to be: Fn, Ctrl, Option/Alt, Cmd

Since Fn is obsolete now, due to the lack of F-keys, it makes me wonder what the most bottom left key is.

Maybe (hopefully) they moved the Esc there.

Fn+backspace is Del, so maybe they kept it for that reason

maybe the function keys accessible with fn+number, thinking about it it makes sense.

I have the CAPS LOCK mapped to the escape key, which is great for Vim, etc. However, there's one weird edge case problem. In After Effects the CAPS LOCK is the one quick way to speed up rending of animations, by disabling the render to screen option. It's oddly hard coded to that key specifically and seems difficult to remap to anything else. I know I probably represent 1 of 10 people world-wide who have this problem, but I'm sure there are other odd things hard mapped to the sad ol' CAPS LOCK key.

Crazy Vim user here: caps lock is ctrl. jk or kj or fd or something like that is esc.

And to add a little more background/detail for those interested in that kind of remapping—from the Vim wiki: http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key

Or you can have a crazy hybrid. A tap of caps lock alone is esc, caps lock held down with another key is control.

Ctrl-[, otherwise you get Vi Finger from reaching all the way up to Escape all the time. I don't even use they Escape key anymore except to cancel things like GUIs.

I like having Escape in the upper left because I can just blindly whack at that corner of the keyboard. Hitting '[' with my pinky is much less reliable.

That key combo only works on US keyboards. Portuguese, for instance, doesn't have dedicated square brackets keys.

I feel like I'm the only person who uses Caps Lock. When I learned to touch type, I was taught to use the shift key on the side opposite the letter being typed. When typing more than two capital letters in a row, I'd rather hit Caps Lock than paddle my pinkies back and forth. It's a hard habit to break.

I use an external keyboard with my mbp mostly, but I use my escape key more regularly than all my F-keys and the fn/command buttons. I really don't think I'd buy a laptop that was missing what I consider to be a key component like that. I'm sure there's a contextual variant, but there's a pretty big difference between a tactile button and whatever haptic OLED nonsense that Apple put up there.

This might be good for their consumer target audience, but I don't think it's good at all for their main proponents - techies and techie students. I'm very surprised that this issue didn't pop up internally. I wonder about their internal culture if this kind of a design went this far.

This stuff always brings me back to "there's nothing more simple than one giant button" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA

Remapping Caps Lock to ESC at the OS level is not a viable proposition for international users.

Source: am French with an AZERTY keyboard, we need Caps Lock to make capitalised accented letters, such as in "À bientôt !"

I'm really in need of a new Macbook and don't use Esc that much... but Karabiner/Seil don't support Sierra yet so I can't do Caps Lock -> Esc + Ctrl (please someone correct me if I'm wrong). That said, I have my own mechanical keyboard I use anyway so it's not that bad. I'll be the guinea pig for this new kind of model.

Here in HN we can all say "I use X for Esc!" but this is going to be a problem to the myriads of developers and regular people that don't know about these tricks.

"Apple giveth"

Did Apple really invent the escape key?

They didn't have it on the original Apple keyboard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Keyboard#/media/File:App...

I believe that's a Mac keyboard. The original Apple I and II keyboards had an Esc key.

http://www.hp9845.net/9845/history/comparison/images/closeup...

The modern Mac owes as much to NeXT as it does to the classic Mac. NeXT also had an escape key ...and the ctrl key in the right place! :)

http://xahlee.info/kbd/i/NeXT_Computer_keyboard_66682.jpg

Of course not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esc_key

You can also see it on original VT100 terminal keyboard.

The position of the shift-lock key is terrible for something as powerful as Escape, for most users, especially those with bear paws like mine. An accidental press can have grave consequences. There's a reason it's at the corner of the keyboard. And it's the one key everybody can find automatically.

I'm very dubious of this bar being added to Macbooks. What % of apps are really going to make use of it?

The 10.12.1 update would seem to disagree with you. http://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/25/images-of-new-macbook-pr...

I didn't mean dubious as to whether it exists, just that I'm dubious as to whether it should.

I get the feeling that many of us will wish an Apple designer had been dubious as to whether it should.

99.99%

This will be touted as the #1 reason to spend a few dollars to "upgrade" your apps.

This business about the caps lock key being "useless" has been very puzzling to me. As someone who learned how to property type, I utilize the key quite a bit -- especially when programming.

Man. As a emacs user who doesn't use meta key, this is sad!

Why wouldn't the bar have a software escape key when showing function keys?

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