Nyancat on the touchbar
github.com
github.com
Here I am with an iPhone 6s, and on the average site I see less content than I did on WAP - many sites are 80/20 or worse on mobile.
How long until hardware manufacturers include dedicated advertising displays in exchange for cheaper up-front hardware?
Browsing with no-JS/JS browsers indeed is laborious nowadays. I use this approach out of habit on my desktop machine, but on my new laptop I just couldn't bring myself to copy this solution and installed an adblocker instead.
I read a lot of non-fiction. One nice feature that it has on WiFi is the ability to highlight a word or phrase and it will display a definition or a Wikipedia article/snippet right there on the device. Its an easy and fast way to get more information out of your readings, especially when I'm at the pub with only my Kindle.
Another strong reason why you probably need WiFi on a Kindle at least some of the time is because WiFi is the primary way it gets content. You can get a USB cable to load stuff on it, but chances are if you've bought a Kindle you bought it to use the Kindle store.
Also, I'm pretty sure it downloads a bunch of ads at once when it syncs, and then shows them over time. I've had it disconnected from WiFi for a few weeks before, and it still showed ads. So even if you only connected it for a few minutes to sync everything and then you disconnected until you wanted a new book from the Kindle store, you would still see ads.
1999: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/30/business/no-more-giveaway-...
The touchbar is on the keyboard, almost perpendicularly (and many times at an obtuse angle) opposite to the screen. So I have to move my head up and down all the time. This is not an issue with the regular keyboard because it has physical buttons which don't change their meaning, so I have memorized the layout and I can use my muscle memory.
To avoid moving human head up and down, maybe they should have put it adjacent below or above the screen, you know. And while they were at it, maybe they should have just merged it into the screen seamlessly... Oh, and while they were at that, they could make the entire screen a touch-screen instead of just a small bar. Just imagine... a touchscreen laptop. Now that would be amazing, right?
Even if your premise is true, is it better to move your head up and down or to move your hands forward and backward to reach the touch screen?
Considering zero part of my keyboard is in my field of vision I'd say yes I'd have to move my head up and down. I haven't had a chance to play with the new MacBook Pro yet but it seems like a reasonable assumption.
> Even if your premise is true, is it better to move your head up and down or to move your hands forward and backward to reach the touch screen?
It's actually two different use cases here. A touch screen helps with touch type of controls. So precision zooming and scrolling is kinda awesome on one (though scrolling is weak with the nice touchpad). The touchbar is meant to be more utility like a row of function keys.
I don't think it's entirely fair to directly compare the two. For instance moving it to the bottom of the screen instead of the top of the keyboard turns it from easy to access touch keys to more informational. At least in my opinion.
One thing to consider is that things like editing video are already mouse centric, and the keyboard shortcuts augment the interface. You don't leave your hands in home position.
If you're working on the laptop, using the trackpad, you're already in the mode where you are going back and forth, and your hands need to move around.
When using a mouse, trackball, etc, you can get into workflows based on having one hand operating the mouse, while the other does the keyboard shortcuts. So there could be very interesting uses with two hands.
What makes it not so compelling to me, is that I do serious work with my laptop closed, and a big monitor (I'm music producer/audio engineer).
The amount of information you need to get on the screen at once, if possible, for media authoring applications, requires a relatively rigid focus on the screen. Having my head hunched over a little laptop display is not going to work for extended sessions.
The problem of creating physical interfaces that work well with the screen relates to the abstraction that is involved in GUIs. You have to keep steady focus on the screen, keeping track of the mouse, and what you are doing. You enter kind of a trance, pretty quickly, where you have accepted a two dimensional representation of a complex structure, and are operating within its framework.
This divorces the metaphorical actions of the user in the GUI, which is what we care about, from the physical actions of the body.
For a new user interface to work, it will have to be incorporated into this metaphorical framework the user operates in.
If it deviates to much from the abstractions of the interface, it breaks the trance required to get into the flow, and will simply not be used.
I suspect one of the issues will be if users can actually quickly look down to see what they are touching, or perceive enough with peripheral vision, without losing track of where they are on the screen. It's a reasonable location for the touch bar. As the user gets used to where controls on the touch bar are located, the visual cues might be enough to consistently target the virtual control.
It could also be really helpful for keyboard commands that have a lot of modifiers, and which you don't use much. They can be real handy at times, but the trouble of looking up the key binding in the heat of the moment prevents the habit from getting built up.
Zero? Is that even possible?
When using a laptop, it's impossible to look at the display without being able to also look at the keyboard (and touchbar) by just moving your _eyes_. You don't have to move your head.
I think your assumption is not reasonable at all.
I don't look at my keyboard when typing so other than the slight realization that it is there on a laptop I never look at it (but yes it would technically be in my field of vision in this case but that misses the point). However on a desktop setup / docked laptop the keyboard isn't anywhere near where I could see it without significantly moving my head down.
Regardless discussing field of vision is more of a red herring in this debate; it's really about the eye movement and context switching. I should have chosen different wording.
> When using a laptop, it's impossible to look at the display without being able to also look at the keyboard (and touchbar) by just moving your _eyes_. You don't have to move your head.
I think you confuse the physical act of moving ones head to be more disruptive than moving one's eyes. It's actually about the same when you're talking UX assuming the head is moving to change the field of vision. This is something you keep track of and many times head movement will be removed or ignored from testing data when you're tracking where the user is looking because you can move your head and still keep your eyes in one place.
I hope you understand that you move your eyes when you look at different things on your display. The touchbar is just another display that is only slightly lower than the lowest part of your display. You don't need to move your head to see that, only your eyes. The same eyes you move when you look at different things on the main display.
But of course. That was a huge part of my point. Moving your eyes off the display is a _big move_. It's not a typical UX pattern. These things are very well tracked in user testing with eye tracking. The idea is to incrementally move their eyes and never require large movements else you end up having UX issues.
Judging from the downvotes I'm guessing many haven't looked into or used eye tracking during user testing. It's quite interesting, you should check it out!
I believe that for the use-case of Touch Bar as slider, it has similar behavioral characteristics as a trackpad. Do you use a trackpad? Or a mouse? Do you find yourself moving your eyes back and forth between the screen and the trackpad or mouse? Honest questions. I'm not trying to be snarky :)
As for custom keys, I think this has more in common with chording/key commands. There is the distinction that there aren't physical keys, but in the case of key commands, I know I'm not thinking, say, ⌘-Z when I undo. I'm just thinking Undo. And many key commands are application dependent. As I get used to whatever custom keys I've got programmed or are made available by an application, there'll be some period of acclimation, and then it'll just become habit. Perhaps to offset the lack of physical gaps between keys there will be larger target areas on the Touch Bar.
What do you think? Are these comparisons useful? If not, what are their limitations?
I do think the Touch Bar would benefit from some kind of haptic response, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is the direction it goes.
I also wouldn't be surprised if at some time in the future there is a touch screen for Macs. That doesn't mean that Apple is ready to release such a MacBook yet (for whatever reason), or that the Touch Bar isn't a valid feature. And while it's generating a lot of heat at this point, until there are a lot more hands-on (cough) reports, I think it's prudent to remember a lot of this is speculation, both for and against.
Edit to add: If you choose to down vote, please take the time to reply with a comment as well in the interest of communication. Thanks!
Learning key commands can be a chore, requiring use of the manual or discovery through menus. Do you remember cards provided with some applications that included lists of command key commands? The Touch Bar makes things like that instantly available. And once you learn where they are, you don't need to be looking at them.
There are probably going to be some interesting interaction possibilities where we're going to want use the Touch Bar in a more visual way.
One I can think of is the autocomplete demo during the Hello Again event. I personally think autocomplete would be better served keyboard alone in a manner similar to how the spelling and grammar suggestions work, rather than through the Touch Bar, but again, that's not having used it.
I completely agree that it is a new input device. Just not completely new. Some things are going to carry over from the keyboard, the trackpad, and the touch screen. And I agree the lack of physical response may take some getting used to. As I mentioned, I think we'll see improvements on this in the future.
> I completely agree that it is a new input device. Just not completely new
Yep. Lenovo introduced one a couple of years ago in their X1 Carbons. It was hated so much that it was stripped out of the next gen.
Ultimately, the only benefit of the touchbar is the ability to be used as a slider, but you lose discrete keys to get that. How many things would such a slider be useful for? People aren't changing their volume all that often, and what real difference is there between a slider and a pair of volume buttons (media keys) anyway?
That said, I think they can have the same "fixed" location for a given use case. Just like you can remap a keyboard so Caps Lock can mean Control, once you do that, Control will be at the same location (the Caps Lock key). Once you're used to that location, things work fine.
If any manufacturer would _really_ want to improve usability, they would give us back the volume knob.
From the reading I've done this morning on the 2014 X1 Carbon (the only model that had the Adaptive Keyboard replacing the function row), there was a lot of dissatisfaction with the keyboard and trackpad as a whole, not only the strip. Among others, they removed the physical keys from the trackpad, moved the Home and End keys to the Caps Lock location, and removed other keys entirely. I read a lot of complaints about all of these, and all of these were reverted in the 2015 version.
Yeah, people are discussing the removal of the ESC key on the MacBook Pro as well. I'm personally going to miss the dedicated volume and brightness keys, and I use the ESC key in conjunction with Command to trigger LaunchBar, which I use heavily. I also think I'll be able to get used to it. There was a time in my life when I didn't use LaunchBar, and before I had dedicated volume and brightness keys. I don't remember it being all that bad. I'll see, when I get around to getting a new machine. I'm sure there are those who use the function row much more heavily than I. In the absence of aggregate data, I really can't comment on much more than my own experience and read about others.
Lenovo's decision to revert everything could be seen as them deciding it wasn't in their best interest to determine which changes were worth keeping. This is all speculation, of course. And they could very well have determined that all of the changes were ruinous to some degree. It's really pretty impressive that Lenovo was willing to make so many changes to their keyboard, when, AIUI, the keyboard is one of the features that keeps people coming back to Lenovo in general.
In the MacBook Pro, they're only replacing the function row with the Touch Bar. From an experimental point of view, it's a much more focussed experiment. It'll be interesting to see what happens when it's actually had more use.
I think the difference is that the feedback you get on the trackpad/mouse is on the screen. It doesn't need you to look down. The same thing could not probably be said of the touchbar.
> I believe that for the use-case of Touch Bar as slider
In the case of the slider, you could absolutely see the feedback (e.g. brightness in a photo or something) on the screen.
Also, looking at my keyboard, the angle difference between looking at the function row to about 1 inch above the bottom of the screen (which I estimate to be the roughly the same as where a scrubber would be), is about ¼ to ⅓ of the angular distance from the bottom of the screen to the top of the screen. I think it's useful to consider how the location of the Touch Bar and its display will affect our UX. In this case, I think the concern might be overrated, given how much we're currently accustomed to moving our eyes with our existing screens.
Please note that I'm not saying you'll never look at the Touch Bar. I do think there will many cases when muscle memory will be as effective as what we're used to with a trackpad or keyboard.
What if you touch the wrong part of the bar and accidentally do something else? I personally have trouble believing that I'd be able to consistently touch the right part of the bar without looking every time without there being an actual physical divide between the sections even if I did consistently remember the layout and functionality for every app I used. I think peripheral vision would help here, although that goes out the window if you're hooked up to a monitor and still using the built-in keyboard.
> Avoid using the Touch Bar for tasks associated with well-known keyboard shortcuts. In general, the Touch Bar shouldn’t include controls for tasks such as find, select all, deselect, copy, cut, paste, undo, redo, new, save, close, print, and quit. It also shouldn’t include controls that replicate key-based navigation, such as page up and page down.
(https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Us...)
Besides providing the reference, was there something you intended to convey with the quote?
Only that Touchbar seems intended to be very dynamic and have constantly changing mappings. So there will not be much consistency across apps, especially since common shortcuts shouldn't be put there.
This is very different from a keyboard.
Making a screen that people are supposed to touch would be an unthinkable crime.
Running Windows 7.
(twitch)
I just gave up and now always keep a microfiber wipe or rag next to my screen.
What's particularly weird are involuntary touchers who are physically incapable of gesturing at something on the laptop screen without touching it. Watching them lock up as they attempt to control their arms while talking is amazing, it's like they're learning to ride a bike for the first time.
They should learn pretty quickly.
I have grown to love the touch screen on my Chromebook pixel. Felt awkward to reach at first, but a non touch screen now feels really awkward. Not that the touch screen replaces all interaction, there are some things that are faster on the keyboard, touch pad, or touch screen.
That said, touching other people's screens is not polite.
With regards to the touch bar, seems like you could use software in combination with the existing touchpad and screen to do something similar. Reserve the top edge of the touch pad, on touch a menu pops up, slide to select or something...
Look at the image[1] on the Apple website showing off the Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pro. Nobody I know uses their laptop oriented perpendicular to their desk.
One good vantage point to view the Touch Bar is standing behind the user looking over the their shoulder.
I assure you that very few people touch type the function keys; they will not be missed. The escape key I will miss, but how much I don't know.
Only if you're touching it constantly, without interruption, which is a very unusual use-case. Most instances are a quick tap on a dialogue button and then back to the resting / typing position.
Anyhow, extending my arm to touch the screen feels little different to reaching for my Dell 'media keys' ( in the same location as Apple's Touch Bar ); just a slightly different vector. In either case I have to break my home-row poise, but when touching the screen at least I don't have to break my eyes-on-screen-focus whilst my finger comes into view.
I like the idea up-thread of an alternative position for the Touch Bar below the screen, usually reserved for a logo which loiters uselessly but subliminally in my peripheral vision.
Steve Jobs, in 2010, on why touchscreen laptops are bad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeNsqqKadQ4
Jonny Ive, last week, on why touchscreen laptops are bad https://www.cnet.com/special-reports/jony-ive-talks-about-pu...
Apple stood by this conviction until they started selling iPads. It's likely that they will maintain their position against touchscreen laptops only until they can make a reasonable profit selling them. I speculate that the reason for Apple not currently producing them, more than anything else, has to do with the fact that touchscreen laptops would cut into iPad sales.
http://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/experience/
Word and Excel running on the 9.7" iPad with a keyboard is pretty much the opposite of what I'd ever buy an iPad for.
No you don't have to. You can simply move your eyes. Also humans have this ability called "peripheral vision". Not to mention using the touchbar is optional. If you want to memorise all the key combinations, you're fine.
I think we should stop guessing about a new UI method before we actually try it.
So they didn’t remove an entire row of function keys that were used for exactly that purpose?
Compare http://store.storeimages.cdn-apple.com/8748/as-images.apple.... with https://camo.githubusercontent.com/60a3261655b2aca41e04bb32f...
Oh wait, nope, there’s not.
I suspect most people are the same way, especially as keyboards have miniaturized and removed the 4-clustering.
>and while they were at that, they could make the entire screen a touch-screen instead of just a small bar. Just imagine... a touchscreen laptop. Now that would be amazing, right?
No, not without a made-for-touch-from-the-ground-up OS, which neither macOS nor Windows is.
- Touch UI for scrubbing/scrolling contents faster.
- Dynamic shortcuts for most used commands that previously only accessible by using the keyboard.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Us...
Also, dynamic shortcuts! Like the kind you get with BetterTouchTool[1]?
O' how I despise the new trackpads that aren't merely trackpad pointing devices, but also buttons, scrollbars and other bullshit I never wanted too.
Christ. I need to move the fucking mouse cursor. And, shit on me, I did not intend on fucking clicking or swiping anything, or an other absurdly tangential but obliquely imaginable bullshit, God damn it.
The worst is when you have to press the trackpad to click the button, and as your fleshy fingers flatten out against the trackpad, it registers the pressure center moving slightly, and so the pointer moves, and you click the wrong God damned thing because the trackpad IS the button.
It was better when the buttons were separate plastic divisions disconnected from the motion tracking area.
JUST MOVE THE CURSOR PLEASE.
In my experience, the fact that the trackpad no longer physically moves when you press down on it to click makes really cuts down on the problem of the cursor moving during the click, as does the greatly improved uniformity of the force required. Being able to adjust the force required to click is also quite nice.
I was never quite satisfied with Apple's hinged trackpads (or the standalone bluetooth trackpad with the click mechanism in the rubber feet) as a replacement for the physical button despite the trackpad size increase it enabled, but the latest generation strikes me as almost perfect.
- Touch Bar is probably better on scrubbing/scrolling because you can actually see the zoomed out content, like the entire timeline of the movie on FCP.
- I haven't tried Boastr. I am sure it's useful and faster for pro. But on first look it's pretty complicated. It's not built in to the Mac and not easily accessible, especially for new user.
I don't do video editing or anything like that. My experience with a slider is pretty much limited to Netflix and such on my tablet :) Seems to work pretty well there. I can see how it might not work as well for fine-grained work. But that's an argument for touch screens in general, isn't it? Or do you think there's a distinction between Touch Bar and touch screen?
Caveat: On some video sliders, you can move vertically as well to increase/dilate the resolution of the horizontal movement. You won't have the same room with the touch screen. A couple options I can think of: use the track pad or a key press to modify the Touch Bar tracking; or perhaps track the speed of movement on the Touch Bar to modify the resolution, e.g., slower movement, higher resolution.
IMHO, as far as I understand it, Touch Bar is a bridge that connects the static nature of the keyboard with the dynamic nature of the screen. It is not intended to replace keyboard nor the screen. It is there to augment and extend them.
Touch bar is perfect for this job, considering:
- You can't beat the fast input from fixed keyboard + muscle memory.
- Touch screen on a laptop is really not ergonomic, your arm will get tired fast.
And all of the gestures were what the excellent touchpad was built to do anyway. Scrubbing? Gestures will do that.
It's like they put two giant touch interfaces on the device so that they could fight for attention, and the poor developer has to write two handlers for the two event sources, whilst it does the same thing at the end of it.
- The trackpad
- The bottom 1" of the laptop screen
If the space bar area was converted to the track pad. Tapping it would be a space, while dragging it would give you the touch bar like features. So for example, when using Word, you have formatting options on the space touch bar like they demonstrated on the touch bar. If you tap it, it's a space, but start sliding from the left, and the formatting options appear on the screen itself, and you stop sliding when you reach the option you want to select it. Basically, tap to touch, and slide to scrub between options (or between a timeline).
This way you also wouldn't have to take your eyes off the screen to know what options are available.
They don't "lag behind current hardware for better margins". The CPU class they use in the MBPr line is still unavailable from Intel. Early "Kaby Lake" PC laptops use other, more power hungry, Kaby Lake models, and even those in limited runs.
If they wanted to achieve better margins in any way, they could use way worse construction and materials, not insist on high quality trackpads, not add the touch strip, add cheapo USB 2.1 and even Ethernet ports to keep everybody happy, and just put some early, 6-hour battery life Kaby Lake machine out there.
It's not about licensing fees.
Skylake processors were announced last year and the new laptop uses them. In fact, I believe the 15" BTO edition uses the fastest Skylake processor Intel makes.
No, I'm referring to the equivalent to the i7-6700HQ Kaby Lake CPU, that Intel still hasn't delivered...
(Note: android, and computer users can use this righht away, but iOS users will need to add this page to their homescreen before Apple is fully convinced that the users DOES want to hear sounds generated via the web audio API. Seems silly, but Apple doesnt trust that users know what they want)
Are the users of Safari and Mobile Safari so different that on the desktop its totally fine (as in any browser) but Mobile Safari users need it blocked unless they take action to hear it? I cant think of any reason to single out the users of Mobile Safari with such a feature.
edit: the player actually loses in all cases but one, with a random score
edit: I say this as someone who loves nyancat, and would love to have a nyan-mode on/off toggle somewhere, if I had a TouchBar.