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Comment by Finbarr | Hacker News Reader

Just got a new MBP with touchbar and am finding it quite annoying for these reasons:

- there seems to be no way to dim it and it's way too bright in the dark.

- the context specific functions appearing and disappearing make it really eye catching and distracting. There also seems to be a slight lag before it updates with the latest context. (I ended up switching it to only show some small subset of default controls).

- I'm hardly using it at all, but sometimes it just stops responding. Hitting the buttons doesn't do anything.

- it's too easy to accidentally tap one of the buttons.

All in all I think it's a gimmick and I'd much rather have a physical escape key.

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That's interesting because I expected to hate mine but am rather ambivalent towards the touch bar.

I've never had the touch bar malfunction, nor do I find it distracting or too bright at night, even on a lakeside dock in cottage country.

I agree, though, that occasionally I will switch the input language to French due accidentally hitting the the bar. It's too sensitive.

The biggest surprise for me, though, was that I don't miss the physical F keys nor Escape, even a little bit.

Do either of you use vim?

I use it, and have a mb with touch bar.

Using solely the laptop keyboard was fine. Transitioning between the laptop keyboard and an external was not.

I ended up adding a binding for "jk" to exit editing mode. Very pleased

Tried caps lock as escape?

Caps lock is already taken for ctrl

With Xcape for Linux or other alternatives you can use it for both with escape on Key up if another key isn't pressed

Is there an issue with ctrl-c that makes jk more convenient?

I use Vim with a MBP Touchbar. A half decade or more ago I swapped caps lock and control, I then started using 'ctrl-[' as escape. This is the actual escape code for the 'esc' key. Super easy to press, just uses both pinkies, and it doesn't require stretching for the escape key.

It turns out that the little space to the left of the virtual [esc] is a "ghost key" that also registers as Escape (just like the hidden t/g/v/y/h/b keys on the split iPad keyboard), so I just put blindly put my finger on the left side of the touch bar and every time it does the right thing.

Only for quick edits when I don't want to spin up an emacs instance. I find modal editing to be silly.

Maybe everybody has stopped using vim, but it's my bread and butter and I cannot imagine using anything else. Even gvim is not good enough. It has to be vim and it has to have my settings in the rc file. Expecting me to pay thousands of dollars and then having to remap ESC is a ridiculous joke.

Touch bar + vim user here. I simply tap the area I usually would and it works. It doesn't bother me. If I was still an IntelliJ user, with default shortcuts using fn keys, it would bother me, but I'm not.

What does annoy me is that there's no way to disable it on the fly. For example I often drag-select the paragraph I'm reading and Preview changes the Touch bar every time I do with highlighting options. It's distracting at the exact moment I'm trying to focus on what I'm reading. I've had to shift reading to a tablet.

Other than that I'm pleased with the Touch bar. I think the sound and brightness controls are easier to use than before. I appreciate the TouchID.

> [I] am rather ambivalent towards the touch bar.

Enough of the hard sell, take my money!

I mean it's a good laptop otherwise. I'm not trying to sell anything.

It's just sad that the most positive reaction among professional users to Apple's new, innovative feature is, "I don't mind it too much."

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