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Comment by grabcocque | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, I kinda like the touch bar. I know, I know, I'm not according the the Hacker News groupthink du jour, and am having my own, entirely unapproved opinion. But there it is, I quite like it.

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I'll add my $0.02 as well. I didn't buy my MBP because of the touch bar and would actually have bought a 15" MBP without it if it had been available, because it seemed gimmicky and unnecessary.

I've had the laptop a few weeks now and I'm starting to like the touch bar more and more, now that I've adapted to using ctrl-[ instead of ESC in Vim. The touch menu's in most applications are still useless, but there are some exceptions that show that the idea has potential. I like the player controls, both the built-in ones and e.g. Spotify, for skipping, pausing, scrubbing and volume. I also like how I can quickly change colors and styles in e.g. numbers without having to use the trackpad/mouse to use the popover menu that may or may not be open. Say what you want but these are improvements compared to the static row of numbered F-keys.

When it comes to the 2016 MBP HN is the same echo-chamber it's always been. There's a lot to complain about the MBP, primarily the price and battery life issues (which I presume are a software fault considering the high variance for similar workloads, and the fact that I regularly get 8+ hours on mine). How people spin this here as if the thing is completely useless is comical though, as if everyone needs more than 16 GB RAM, and carrying a C-to-A USB dongle around kills you.

Pro OS X users that actually need more RAM and better specs are probably much more affected by the pitiable state of the current Mac Pro. If you really need to push a modern computer to its limits these days, chances are that you're much better off with a desktop system anyway. The fact that the Mac Pro is a much less popular topic to complain about on HN suggests that most of the people complaining do not actually need more power than what the MBP offers but just like to get on the current MBP sucks hype train.

> I didn't buy my MBP because of the touch bar and would actually have bought a 15" MBP without it if it had been available, because it seemed gimmicky and unnecessary.

You can still purchase a legacy MBP from Apple. Scroll down past the touchbar MBPs.

I've considered the 2015 MBP but decided against it. The old MBP cannot drive the LG 5K screen I ordered alongside the MBP to replace my ageing iMac 27. I also like the improved screen, and for future-proofing the improved graphics and the 4 USB-C ports, so I went for the 2016 MBP. Apart from the price I see few disadvantages to the 2016 MBP for my use case, the battery life might be slightly lower but I don't travel a lot, so it's not a big deal. Besides, so far battery life has been just fine for me, at 8+ hours at light load and normal brightness.

Does Ctrl-] work as an ESC replacement for everything, or only for vim?

It's only for vim (ctrl-[ by the way, not ctrl-], but you can map almost any key you want). I don't actually use esc that much in any other applications so for me its not a big deal to use the softkey instead.

I like it too. It'll be the same as with anything thought. You'll have the vocal group (which may be a minority) which is usually the dissatisfied group. There's now been a few of these stories on HN that are all the same, and they feed the people who dislike Apple and simply want to see repetitious negative stories.

I've found it quite funny though to see the "The year of Linux desktop". ;) It's also interesting when people link to stories about Apple from previous product releases with very comparable comments. Nothing much changes, it seems.

Well, there is always a tension between interfaces for newcomers, who don't use the interface that much yet, and power users, who do. First group is only learning to use the thing and doesn't really care how productive they are, but cares how discoverable things are, how easy it is to solve problems not knowing anything about the interface and all that. They cannot really be vocal, because they are not using it and invested nothing into it and are unsure themselves about it. Second group cares about productivity and speed and to not relearn things, they already invested a lot of time in the old ways to become productive. You are supposed to never hurt them and always provide options to keep the old ways, as they are your evangelists and the primary audience who's problems the product tried to solve in the first place. I think some people at Apple do understand that pretty well and the purpose of the touch bar is to simply boost sales a bit by making it more attractive to newcomers. Don't know whether they succeeded at that though.

I'm with you. I love the Touch Bar and, for the life of me, can't see how people are fat-fingering it all the time. Where are you people keeping your hands that you're fat fingering the keys while typing? Are you using the number keys as your home row or something?

For me when I hit number keys, I don't hit them with the tips of my fingers, instead I hit them with the pad, which naturally leads to some finger sticking out past the numbers. 3 and 4 are especially problematic since I hit them almost with the first knuckle of my middle finger).

I also sometimes rest my finger up near the delete key, or a thumb near where the power button (Touch ID) is when reading for long bouts... and in those cases, just a light brush against the Touch Bar led to interactions I didn't consciously initiate.

Just one more to add to the other replies. When I'm developing, the Touch Bar is basically useless, but that doesn't bother me because having to use anything up in the FN "row" is an annoying hand stretch for me.

However, for all the other random apps I use (Keynote, Photos, etc) I LOVE the Touch Bar. Finding the particular operation I need up there without having to go to the menu/toolbar/mouse feels awesome.

Yep - me too. I actually quite like the 13" MBP overall. What really gets me is "reviewers" who complain about having to tap extra buttons to change the volume - I mean, maybe learn how the touch bar works before complaining about it on your site? Sheesh. Or even the play/pause complaint - you know, you can replace that always-available Siri button that you're probably not using with play/pause, and you're good to go.

(Note I'm speaking of reviewers in general, not the OP)

I'm fairly interested to see what people develop for it; I think more discrete notifications (to minimise distraction, not for privacy) could be a pretty interesting use case.

But they took away the Esc key...

IMO the touch bar should have purely replaced Fn keys - running between Esc and a power/touchID combi-button. Cheaper model could then fairly seamlessly have stuck with Fn keys still, and all would have a proper Esc key and power/touchID.

I think the missing ESC is probably the majority of the issues the nay-sayers have.

I bet if they had just moved the ESC key to the tilde and had the Fn key turn it back into the tilde key, people (developers) would have received the touch bar a lot better.

> I bet if they had just moved the ESC key to the tilde

No! Tilde/backtick key, are you kidding?

I use those almost as much in a development setting as Esc!

You cut off the rest of my comment, I said the Fn key turns it back into the Backtick/Tilde key.

Other than "Shell" programmers, I don't think the backtick is really that popular. System and embedded programmer would probably be frustrated without simple access to the tilde for bit flipping, but overall, I think having ESC back make the most number of people happy.

Or just put the touch bar above the fn keys in that blank metal area

Me too. I even like the Keyboard more than the old one, which i thought was impossible having tried it in a store before and not being convinced.

Me too, played with it at an airport shop and it was quite nice.

I love it and wouldn't go back.

Do you think it would be a mistake for Apple to take a step back and put a physical escape key at the left end?

I was extremely pessimistic about the removed escape key but it hasn't been as bad as I envisioned. With that said I would probably rather want a physical one.

The only issue I have with it is the alignment.

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