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Comment by Eric_WVGG | Hacker News Reader

That's a good point, and I did do exactly that in the pre-Touch Bar days as I had no use for most of the "media keys."

What the Touch Bar gives me is context sensitivity, different suites of commands on a per-app basis. Evidently I'm just lacking the mental agility of remembering that F2 is "open responsive desktop mode" in Safari and "clean build cache" in Xcode.

As for the arguments of touch-typists here, I'm a touch typist and don't look at the keyboard either, but the idea behind the Touch Bar is that it's just within visual range of the screen. Bumping it half a centimeter higher would make it even more so.

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But why encourage people to look down when typing anything?

Basically everyone learns to type without looking at some point which is the ideal zone you want users in (a one-to-one connection with the machine, eyes straight, hands down).

Context switching the UI in a computer interface, often randomly depending on the app, while requiring the user to look down to use it is terrible UX. This whole technology screams ‘because we can’ (aka there was space to do it) rather than developers needed help with anything.

The worst part was including Escape key into it, which is where most of the complaints come from as it’s a critical part of modern OS and browser interfaces - not just vim/emacs.

By including the escape key it went from a voluntary / side interface for certain use-cases (complex music, photo, or editing apps for example) to becoming part of the primary keyboard/HCI itself which is where it crossed the line from a mediocre idea into a bad idea.

Also, Touch Bar is located above keyboard, so your own hands obscure the view. It would make much more sense to put lcd display in place of touchpad, like Razer did in their concept laptop[1], or Asus in theirs [2].

[1] https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/1/9/16866206/ra...

[2] https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/05/asus-zenbook-pro-15-scre...

Why label literally any button? Just number them all, and if a pilot can't remember that button F81 means "gear down" well that's user error.

Hitting a function button is not "typing" in any real sense anyway, use being so relatively infrequent. Can you really hit F8 consistently, without looking?

Maybe the doctrinaire solution would be to delete the function keys, if "thou shalt not look at keys" is the ultimate commandment. But that's incompatible with legacy needs.

Back in the pre-GUI days when use of the function keys was far more prevalent, software would sometimes ship with cardboard overlays to indicate which key did what action. The touchbar is bringing that old idea into the 21st century.

I would have preferred they scaled it back and include physical Esc and power keys on either side, but in other ways it presents a real improvement in computing UX which is too rare these days.

F8 is right next to F9, which is super important for loading autosaves in Bethesda Softworks' games, so thats a big affirmative over here.

The main question was can you hit F8 without looking? Assuming your point was you can because you've become familiar with hitting F9 on a keyboard from your experience with Bethesda games, a better question would be: can you hit the F8 key without looking on a MacBook Pro (without Touch Bar), the laptop in question with an OS that doesn't play Bethesda games?

Damn, you are too good. I don't think I could.

I think the fn keys are the only ones I havent memorized - because I havent needed to for any applications.

If I played a game requiring something like that I'd learn it quick.

I previously bought an all-black mech keyboard with no key labels which looked sleek but I didn't like it, swaped the keycaps out two days later. Switching to a new keyboard is probably a good time to keep them until you get used to it!

I'm a touch typist, but never used the F keys enough to not have to look down. I think a lot of the TB hate is because the ESC key was removed and people just don't like change.

I've used Macbook Pros with the same keyboard for years and can reliably hit the volume buttons, display brightness, keyboard brightness, etc. without looking.

But that’s a solved problem. It’s a toolbar. It’s way more flexible, and you don’t need to look away from the screen, and your hands stay in their normal typing/tracking position.

The touchbar is basically a toolbar that Apple has moved to the least accessible part of the entire laptop.

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