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Comment by eridius | Hacker News Reader

> Strongly disagree, and I can not conceive of how it could be viewed as "better" than hardware keys.

I hope this is hyperbole, because it shouldn't be hard to understand. The TouchBar is absolutely an improvement. I can't remember the last time I actually used a laptop keyboard's F-keys for anything, but the TouchBar makes that space useful.

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> I can't remember the last time I actually used a laptop keyboard's F-keys for anything

Not even F5 in a web browser?

That's Windows. F5 doesn't do anything in Mac browsers.

What? Fn+F5 works fine in chrome.

so does cmd + r which is easier to hit I suppose

Funny, I actually tested Chrome before commenting just to make sure it wasn't doing something weird, and F5 definitely doesn't reload Chrome on my computer.

You never use the ESCAPE key? Apple roped that into the fn keys and removed it

My touch bar computer still has an Esc key. It's part of the touchscreen now instead of a physical button, but it still works the same way and I've never had any problem hitting it without looking.

> I can't remember the last time I actually used a laptop keyboard's F-keys for anything

I use them regularly to switch consoles. MacOS supports multiple consoles, right?

By consoles do you mean terminals? Terminal.app uses ⌘⌥1–9 to switch windows and ⌘1–9 to switch tabs. The F-keys aren't used by Terminal.app at all (well, they're sent to the terminal as an escape sequence).

No, I mean complete GUI heads: completely separate GUI login sessions which use the same screen and can be switched between. Also called 'virtual framebuffers,' I think.

Very awesome. I'm sure that Macs support something similar.

macOS has something called Fast User Switching, which is completely separate login sessions, but you access it through a menu on the right side of the menubar, not with keys.

macOS also has Spaces, which is just virtual desktops, but again, it doesn't use the F-keys to switch between them.

I'm strongly reading GP comments as trolling, given indirect context, but I respect your approach of taking the high road by assuming simple ignorance.

I really wasn't trolling. I've not used macOS for almost twenty years now, so I genuinely didn't know if it supported multiple graphics consoles. I'm not surprised that it does, but I wouldn't have been terribly surprised if it didn't, either.

My (un-trolling) point still stands, though: I use the Function keys on a daily basis, to switch between consoles.

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