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Comment by dom0 | Hacker News Reader

I'm somewhat surprised by the whole touch bar thing, other manufacturers (e.g. Lenovo on the X1) tried it before and use acceptance was miserable.

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Other manufacturers launched it on a single product that accounts for what, 0.1% of the Windows laptop market? Wide usage with customized support from practically every Mac app is what will make it useful, and Lenovo wasn't in a position to make that happen with theirs.

Lenovo did name it "Adaptive Keyboard" and obviously wanted it to change depending on context, but without 3rd party software support it's not going to offer much. You get layouts for F-keys, home, web browsing, and Skype:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/w/images/4/47/LAdapKey-001.png

And as far as I can tell, it's just "buttons that move around," without any more flexible UIs like the sliders/scrubbers that Apple is pitching. You're making the "no tactile feedback" compromise that everyone hates, and not actually getting much for it.

Use acceptance was miserable because it wasn't actually useful.

I picked up a new MBP and I have to say I do like the Touch Bar. It's certainly not a must-have, but Apple's implementation is pretty polished. My favorite use is music/volume control. I can control music from both iTunes and a buried YouTube Safari tab at the same time through the Touch Bar.

How is that different from pressing Fn + F keys before?

I'm not sure which key combinations specifically you're referring to. How would I use the old function keys to switch music playing from iTunes to a paused YouTube tab in a Safari window on another desktop? And how would I use the function keys to scrub through a song to find a specific part all without giving focus to the music playing app?

Maybe all this was possible before but I never knew about any of it. If that's the case that's another strength of the touch bar -- I had no issue discovering this functionality this time.

Not sure why you were downvoted. Actually it works with Fn + F, too.

Can you control two separate volume dials with the normal function keys?

same as touch bar, if you switch the window they have the functionality of the new window. (actually depends if the software supports it, else it will use the old window)

It's actually a nice to have feature, but at least not yet, not a must have. Just having Touch ID makes it worth it to me.

Lenovo's attempt was pure crap, though. And other manufacturers had attempted things like fingerprint sensors on smartphones before that had flopped, but then worked well when Apple did it.

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