MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future

While that's probably true, there used to be a time when the MacBook Pro was specifically aimed at power users. Which is likely why these features are being viewed from that perspective.

Though I never use the function keys for setting shortcuts. Beside volume/brightness it is a largely ignored row of keys.

Apple has historically avoided worst of both worlds solutions.

> The touch bar is the type of gimmick

Sorry if this comes off as rude, but what's the difference on HN between a gimmick and a feature? In dictionaries, it says that a gimmick is a feature that exists to get attention. However, doesn't that describe most new features in technology?

I would certainly guess that the OS gets pre-emptive access to it in much the same way as it can trap system key interrupts before they go to applications, but I'm still wary until there's a lot more information available on this. Another case is what if the app decides to replace the ESC key altogether? If that's prohibited somehow then what's the advantage of removing the physical key?

TBH, a separate OS sounds like one more thing to go wrong, which is also worse, not reassuring. I'm also not keen on the idea of someone remotely rooting my touch bar - also not a problem I currently have to worry about.

Sure, but there is a whole separate piece of newish software (watchOS? touchBarOS?) that Apple will no doubt develop, enhance and update regularly. It is perfectly capable of having its own crashes and issues.

Yes, the inverted T arrangement makes it a lot easier to rest your fingers, or quickly find the correct key without looking when moving between the cursors and the other keys/touchpad.

The keys are already big enough, so it's not a strict improvement and even if bigger keys are better, why are the up/down ones less important than left/right? If anything I use up/down more, because I use them for both reading and writing, whereas left/right are almost exclusively for writing (would be more so were it not for the lack of consistent PgUp/PgDn shortcuts on OSX: these are sometimes bound to left/right and sometimes to up/down depending on the application).

Having used both types of key arrangement (and others) on various cheapy Windows laptops, I know that for me at least, the inverted-T (without extra keys crammed into the spaces) is absolutely essential to being maximally productive at the text-related tasks I spend 95% my time doing. I can adapt to a 3/4 size keyboard more effectively than I can adapt to a full-size one without the inverted-T.

Since the non-touchbar model has the MacBook Air class CPU and your 2015 MPB has the higher voltage pro class CPU I'd say that's quite an improvement.

This years "MacBook Air" like model is as powerful as last years MacBook Pro? Money should be flying out of our wallets.

Yes. If nothing else, wider SIMD lanes and more expressive SIMD instructions matter a lot.

Again, I am not trying to compare the two. Just to provide some history, something tech journalists are seemingly very bad at.

If only these were actions I took more often than using the F keys for various other applications, it wouldn't bother me as much as it does currently.

Honestly, I'll get over it; I'll set up other key chords to take the place of the various F keys I use today. It still bothers me that I'm the one who has to make these adjustments to support something that I have no need for. It's a short term productivity hit, combined with a long tail of annoyance as my hands use their muscle memory and will incur some random state change on my computer.

So, I guess you lose iTunes control keys while another app has control of the Touch Bar? Or maybe some controls can be global? This is a big issue in media apps

> The one exception to this is ESC, and I use it gratuitously.

macOS has a built-in option to remap caps-lock to escape. I haven't used it yet (I'm not a VIM user, so I mostly just use it to cancel dialogs), but I've ordered the new MBP and it's the first thing I'll do. Should take care of that issue and even improve ergonomics.

I should have remapped caps-lock ages ago, I never use it, but haven't had the incentive until now.

I'm not old enough (and certainly wasn't in a household wealthy enough to afford it at the time) to know what's going on with the Lisa, but there was nothing with the Apple Tv, or Magic Mouse. For those products, we're simply not the audience. I know plenty of casual mac users who were doing fine with those things. People in tech circles love to go on about Apple's mouse deficiencies but from my experience around casual computer users, PC users too, is that most people barely know about the second mouse button and the very concept of a "context menu" is alien to them. I keep having to remind my stepfather how to do things like copy and pasting in some apps because he always forgets about the context menu and even remembering something as simple as Ctrl+C + Ctrl+V is something he's not willing to do for a reason I can't even fathom myself, it literally makes no sense to me, it's just how it is.

So, from my point of view, Apple insistence on mostly forgetting about secondary functions on mouses is the right thing. The Magic mouse doesn't have a middle click? Most people don't even know how to right click. The only thing a mouse for casual users needs to do right, is left click and scrolling and the magic mouse has perfect touch scrolling. For the same reason Apple has hidden functionality like Cut&Paste from the finder. You need to hold the option key to activate the "move item". Apple wants you to drag&drop instead. The "default" in Apple land has always been to serve the need of the common, not the expert. So there's no traditional CTRL+X CTRL+V. Instead you need to do CMD+C as if you were copying, then CMD+OPT+V to "move". Everything advanced tends to be hidden into OPT key. It also changes the behavior of various menus to show things Apple doesn't want to show to the commons.

The touchbar is actually a very, very clever thing, we're just not the audience once again. I firmly believe it will never have much use among professionals who have nothing against learning many keyboard shortcut combinations or who even do things like customizing them (Karabiner to the rescue!). The touchbar is for people who didn't even use the mouse right click, and who don't understand concepts like context menu that change based on, gasp, context. It's actually going to be a boon for these people. Even exposing basic functionality like copy paste is going to help average users be slightly more productive with their devices.

The only issue is the MBP audience having a lot of techies and audio/visual professionals. The touchbar would be more sensible on something like the iMac and Macbook.

Another one on the iPhone was the lack of 3G in the first release. Most phones of a similar price point had it at that time.

>> It frustrates me that almost every Windows laptop with a nice screen is now touch.

As someone who's just started researching to buy my next laptop, I don't find that to be very true at all unless you're only looking at ultrabooks.

One of my almost-gotta-haves is a touch screen, and for any models with an HQ/HK level processor plus a discrete GPU, there only seem to be a handful of models with touch screens (and when they are there they are usually optional) at the highest end configurations.

I was a bit afraid of smudges too, but it's really not an issue. Under normal conditions, they're not visible while the screen is on. And when it gets too dirty, a touchscreen is much easier and safer to clean than a standard one.

As a power user, you probably use the keyboard most of the time and occasionaly a single mouse operation (like moving focus somewhere). For that, it's quite intuitive to tap.

> Think it's more a case that a Surface-like MacBook Pro would completely cannibalise the iPad Pro and Cook is more fond of the iPad Pro than the Mac line.

I think it's more that retrofitting touch to a desktop OS - any desktop OS - is painful. Microsoft started it with Windows 8 and it's nearly - but not completely - done years later with Windows 10.

I suspect Apple has probably started retrofitting OS X privately, but released the touch bar as an interim solution.

As far as I can tell, Apple has never been afraid of cannibalization within their product lines - I've always admired them for that.

I've used my iPad as a remote display into OS X (now macOS) and it's painful.

The OS would need an interaction overhaul to make it work with touch - the hit targets are all the wrong size and a lot of behaviour relies on hovering over something. Couple that with the fact that the screen is at the wrong angle (I find it makes my arm ache just using an iPad with a keyboard and having to reach over to touch the screen) and I think Apple aren't too far wrong.

However, as someone who likes drawing, the way the Surface Studio folds down to an angle that is better for touch and pen does look pretty good to me.