Former Apple Employee: Touch Bar Shouldn't Be Forced on High End Users | Hacker News Reader

Former Apple Employee: Touch Bar Shouldn't Be Forced on High End Users

macrumors.com

26 pointsdoener14 comments

I'm not a power user or anything, but the touch bar feels like a downgrade to me. The context-sensitive display has sat there unused for months, while important buttons I use multiple times daily, like those for brightness and volume adjustments, now require the use of two-step touch-and-slide actions instead of my preferred key-mashing. I guess it's a matter of personal preference, but given the cost of the product it'd be great to be able to opt out.

Not only that, up till 2016 all the 'peripheral' parts (screen, battery, ports etc.) on MacBook Pros had been equal. Wether you sprung for the €1300 or €2200 13" MacBook Pro, externally you'd get the more-or-less the same experience, with the performance delta usually within 15%. The 'gimp'book changed that. Now, if you spring for the base model you get two Thunderbolt ports less, a worse battery, and a ULV instead of a full-blown processor.

> Now, if you spring for the base model you get a worse battery

Except you don't get a worse battery, that's the crazy part. The base/cheaper model gets the better battery than the expensive model.

The lower-end 13-inch base MacBook Pro gets a 54.5w/hr battery, and only drives one screen. The higher-end 13-inch touchbar MacBook Pro only gets a 49.2w/hr battery, and has to drive two screens. - https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/ Presumably the TouchBar takes up enough space that they had to reduce the battery size to compensate.

So, not only do you have a touch bar you (probably) don't want, wasting battery life you'd rather keep, you also have smaller total battery capacity too. The lineup goes out of it's way to double-punish the more expensive product.

The MacBook Pro with function keys has fewer than two Thunderbolt ports. There is no separate power.

Just so you know you can directly touch and slide both volume and brightness buttons (Without lifting your finger to tap again), so still just one touch. On the other features, I agree, but I really think they can still be solved by software. Basically it needs a ground up rework like they did with Apple Watch.

Keep the ability for apps to take over the bar, but also give the ability to install as a new "system" action that is always visible. Currently there is only one "app" system slot on the bar and it gets taken by iTunes or Xcode.

> important buttons I use multiple times daily, like those for brightness and volume adjustments, now require the use of two-step touch-and-slide actions instead of my preferred key-mashing.

This is configurable. Just go to System Preferences > Keyboard, and on the first tab you can choose whether the touch bar shows (a) app specific controls plus an expandable control strip (the default), (b) the expanded control strip (the old default behavior), (c) function keys, or (d) app specific controls w/o expandable control strip.

Options (b) & (c) match the keyboard options without touchbars, and as before you toggle between them with the Fn key. The upside with the touchbar is you can see whether you’re in function or control mode. In any case, sounds like (b) is what you want.

Disclaimer: I’m running High Sierra so not sure if this is available on Sierra, but assume it is.

Thanks! I learned something new and useful today! (I think I still like mashing keys better though.)

I've not used one, but it seems poorly thought out as you have to take your eyes off the screen to use it.

Also, if it is useful, surely there should be a discrete keyboard that has it... I use my MBP mostly with a full sized keyboard, mouse, and additional monitors.

I think I'd rather have a MBP with a conventional keyboard, and add the touchbar with a discrete keyboard if I decide I need it.

The TouchBar would have much better potential if they integrated a Taptic engine, and better again if it was a taptic engine which gave you feedback when you were over a button you could press (which is quite possible, some of the initial taptic research could make you feel sensations - from memory something like waves or water?)

And then required force to execute the button - "force touch" / "3d touch" - not an accidental tap.

I really hope they iterate to have at that, at which point it would be much better.

That would be an ideal implementation, though I wonder if part of the reason it hasn't happened is similar to the reason that the Taptic Engine hasn't been implemented on iPads, which if I understand correctly is the difficulty associated with scaling to larger screen sizes.

The lack of a substantial spec bump (all I really wanted was more memory and CPU) made me ditch my work Macbook Pro for a linux laptop.

It's not being forced on anybody. You can buy the model with the function keys. You can also buy another laptop from another manufacturer.

While true, if you need OS X for your work, you're stuck.

I don't need OS X, but I prefer it for work for two reasons:

1) Developing on *nix like OSes is far more ergonomic to me than on Windows

2) OS X, in my opinion, hits a sweet spot of polish / "just works" and letting me do my power user things. It's not flawless by any metric, but it mostly stays out of my way.

I run Fedora on another laptop and Ubuntu on my older MBP, so technically the majority of my OSes are NOT OS X, while the majority of my hardware is.

I'll take the trackpad on my 2009 MBP over the trackpads I've felt on brand new Lenovos and Dells, and I can't recall a laptop keyboard as useful as the pre2016 MBP.

That being said, if my option is to be limited to half the memory of competitors and to change my entire world to USB-C, having to replace my Cinema Display, etc. when I upgrade my laptop in a year or two, it might be the excuse to go find a different manufacturer.

My biggest hesitation is finding very new models that work very well with my preferred distros.

Apple should sell non-TouchBar versions of everything for Touchbar prices. Users can get what they like and Apple can make more money off Fn keys.

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