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Comment by sundvor | Hacker News Reader

Agreed; they've intentionally nerfed the normal keyboard models - if I was an Apple user that'd infuriate me no end. To call the range "Pro" is a lie.

The biggest problem I see with it is Apple's hate of developers who touch type. Surely there's enough room on that unit to include both the function row and a touch bar? If so, it'd be pretty neat to have for presenting misc information. (It looks nice enough!)

Lenovo tried something similar with their 2014 X1 Carbon (I have gen 1, would like to upgrade to latest). Not anywhere as nice looking as the MBP's touch bar, but equal in that they messed up something good. https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/thinkpad-x1-carbon-2014-s...

Fortunately Lenovo saw the errors of their ways and quickly reverted to what I would say is the all-superior layout of the current model (i.e. the one that went before).

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I touch type, and I've never touch typed a function key.

This doesn't mean everyone else follows the same pattern.

I had to (briefly) use a touchbar Mac while running Visual Studio for debugging and the lack of buttons made it an excruciatingly painful process. I never before thought I touch typed function keys, but I actually did.

If you aren't accessing the volume control or screen brightness keys without looking down then you're not really a touch typist :)

You are not a real touch typist, if you don't write with butterflies.

Or if you don't listen to music. Or if you use a desk where you don't ever have to adjust the screen brightness.

I never realized all of the complexity that developers were required to deal with.

You got me on lack of precision - you don't need to be touch typing for physical FN keys to be useful.

I realise that whilst just about everything else I do on the keyboard is proper touch (based from F-J), I have to move my whole hands to use the FN keys. I will nevertheless hit F5, F9 etc for compiling / break points / step debugging without looking down at the keyboard.

To be fair, Apple's F keys aren't even touch-typist friendly because there's no grouping.

I'm listening to music all day. Changing the volume and skipping tracks without looking is great to keep the flow going.

You know where the F-keys are due to experience, and also the sound control is right next to the power button. If you don't use them a lot, you look at your keyboard, but for infrequent usage that's OK since it does not occur a lot. Non-issue, and bad example. I use expose, sound & brightness control most and I can use them all blindly. Just like I can use Esc blindly. Controlling music or changing keyboard brightness I have to look but I don't use these a lot. And with that being said I seem to get pretty good at getting to pause/play key without looking.

And the ESC key?

I on the other hand do not touch type (very well), and regularly touch type function keys (F5-F12 while debugging).

Every time I debug, for the past 25 years.

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