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Comment by dpkonofa | Hacker News Reader

I'll never understand this. The pattern is the same every year. They announce a product, "journalists" say it's a failure, they sell more units and make more money than ever before, and the cycle repeats. Apple will definitely drop the ball someday but I think people are a little too quick to make that call. I realize most of that is in the never-ending quest for clickbait but still...

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Well, I do think that Touchbar is an absolutely awful gimmicky product. The design is baffling : you lose tactile feedback on the function keys and even the nice additions have had zero thoughts put into them (for example the lock key sounds like a good idea but in practice is extremely annoying since I hit up accidentaly 2/3 of the time .. it would have been easy to make it a slide to activate button).

The thing is : unlike what the pro monicker suggests, I am not at all the target of this product. So while it is objectively worse in all the criterias that matter to me, it does not matter to apple sales.

What's the lock key? That seems like something you need to either explicitly turn on or press.

I’m not sure what gp was talking about. The TouchID sensor also doubles as a physical power button(or a sleep if pressed briefly). It is a physical button too, not like the iPhone ⅞ buttons.

Yeah... I'm aware of that which is what made OP confusing. They're either talking about the Power/TouchID button (which is still physical as it has been on every other MacBook prior) or they purposely added a "Lock" button to the TouchBar and are complaining about something they added that isn't there by default.

>complaining about something they added that isn't there by default

it is part of the OS, not a third party app. So I think that complaining that it is badly designed is fair.

I can complain about the default configuration too if you want. It takes away the function keys I actually need and replaces them with a screen. The lack of tactile feedback is really annoying. Even after configuring the touchbar to display the function keys by default in my IDE, it still bugs me and make me 'mistype' more than ever on this strip.

It's not badly designed, though. It's a button on the TouchBar just like any other. If OP is accidentally hitting it all the time then they added it in a poor location. I have a completely customized TouchBar (thanks to Better Touch Tool) and I have never accidentally hit a button. He's blaming the hardware for user error.

'you are holding it wrong'

it is a 'lock your session' key : you have to enter your password or fingerprint in order to continue using the mac.

So then you purposely added that to the TouchBar or you're unintentionally hitting the power button that is in the exact same place as it was on all previous MacBooks and that's somehow an issue with the TouchBar?

I added it to the touchbar : my laptop is connected to a larger screen, so if I close the lid, it just switch to 'external display only mode'. With this button, I can close my seesion in one tap. however I hit it accidentally way too often. I myst hit it accidentally at least as much as purposefully.

Ctrl+Cmd+Q in High Sierra

oh nice !

I used to have very hacky scripts in order to enable this feature, and this awful touchbar button is even worse.

Good that it is finally implemented ! Weird that it took so long but it is finally here.

Thanks for the tip !

Oh absolutely (and not just journalists, but all the Apple-haters). Every year since at least 1984, "Apple hasn't come out with a new product in _weeks_! They're doooomed!"

Every single year. For at least 30 years. "Dooooooomed!"

In their defense, it was very nearly doomed for 10-15 of those years :-P

But I agree, anyone who has said this since 2007 clearly isn't paying attention. Almost all the people with iPhones are going to keep buying a new iPhone every 2 years for a long long time.

They won't be doing that forever....

Perhaps not forever, but even a couple more iterations of this buys them a LOT of time and cash reserves

Kondo?

If NeXT had not bought Apple, because that was what actually happened, Apple would be gone by now.

it is the other way round apple~next

I guess he means NeXT == Jobs

Not at all.

Apple did buy out NeXT, but then Steve Jobs and his team took ownership over Apple key positions from inside.

A situation that happens quite often where the bought company, manages to own the buyer.

So on the paperwork and bank transactions, Apple bought NeXT, on management level, NeXT bought Apple.

b-but someday, the doom-sayers will be right! SOMEDAY!

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