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Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

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.

^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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Show desktop.

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.

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 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.

>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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/

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.

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

how about Escape?

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.

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.

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'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.

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

not even F5 to refresh?

Cmd-r

Cmd-Shift-r for me.

To hell with caching!

Just R in Vimperator.

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?

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