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Comment by geerlingguy | Hacker News Reader

Not sure if the whole post or only part is /s, but IMO they need to have the courage to drop the Touch Bar. Everything else I can live with, but now there’s literally no MacBook Pro I will buy. I have the 2016 Function Key model, and maybe my next upgrade will be to a 2015 Pro... or to a non-Apple laptop (sigh).

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I'm certain people who are OK with the touch bar don't care about it as much as the people who hate it, but I for one prefer that they are iteratively innovating on the keyboard for macs. I'd rather they do that than make a thick brick of a laptop with a row of mostly useless function keys that a vocal minority has been harping for.

That's fine. I myself will continue to purchase from Lenovo, who tried something similar to the Touch Bar and removed it after listening to customer feedback.

Lenovo actively lost my trust (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish), as opposed to Apple which doesn't care about my opinion but is upfront about it.

Never installed on the ThinkPad line, so not my problem :)

I think "the company that makes my laptop has only installed spyware on other laptops" is a pretty weak security guarantee.

my 2015 Pro is so much better than mycompany 2017 Pro w/ touchbar

like people are saying, most people just don't care about the touchbar. It does get annoying at times (as a vim user). Why WHY do they hide the esc key and have it take two inputs to increase the volume/brightness by more than 1 tick (sliding is terrible).

Other than that, I totally agree, the real focus should be the keyboard. Because it's shit. Here aresome of the awesome problems I go through on a daily basis at work.

- space bar double spaces all the time. Turned off key repeat and also whatever other suggestions I could find on Stack

- backspace deletes too many characters

- keys double type or are just not responsive (space, left shift, fucking / for some reason)

yeah, real fun using it especially while I'm on call right now and working on prod servers!! WORK ON THE KEYBOARD APPLE

You can just put your finger on the volume or brightness icon and slide it. You don’t have to pick it up or wait for the slider to appear.

You can also set the esc key to stay visible.

yeah I downloaded Dock to display my dock and esc key at all times.

Thank you for the tip. Knew you could use the slider but thought you actually had to be on dot, feel so dumb. Never tried sliding in place!

For your keyboard problems, just get it repaired. It's free under a four-year warranty, and it usually only takes one day: Just drop it off at an Apple store, and pick it back up the next day.

(Also, if you're a vim user, you should really remap Caps Lock to Esc. There's a pane in System Preferences for it, and it should be done whether or not you have a touch bar.)

Pretty sure that having a work laptop gone for a day is not an ideal situation for most people.

Caps Lock is better remapped to CTRL in my opinion. However, with Vim I always use CTRL+] instead of ESC because I think it’s easier to reach.

I'd also like to add that there's a chance they also swap out your battery during the keyboard repair.

Except now we have only one MacBook Pro choice: one with a more expensive part that uses more battery and is another possible failure point. It’s a net negative for anyone who is even neutral to it, never mind someone who uses say the physical escape key on a regular basis.

The keys that the touchbar replaced were definitely not useless - they were media control, sound control, screen/keyboard brightness and expose/mission control/launchpad (and of course, ESC.)

Those are all extremely common keys to use. And yes, you could also use them as "F#" keys I guess. Now, those keys are non tactile and much, MUCH less pleasant to use. Also, if you're watching a movie in the dark and you turn off your keyboard backlight the stupid touchbar stays lit up for 45 seconds.

I think Apple will eventually kill the touchbar or at least offer a version without it.

I think the corner they've painted themselves into is they know they can't charge more for a non touchbar version and if they offer it for less that's cutting profit margin as well as a tacit admission that it isn't a beloved feature.

But their choices over the last few months along with the revelation that they're finally ditching their butterfly keyboards leads me to believe it's coming.

They are ditching butterfly keyboards due to the reliability issues (dust causing keys to malfunction), not because of they've abandoned the quest for thinner, lighter laptops.

The keyboard was previously awesome. Just put the old version back. Why iterate on something that sucks. The form sucks, the switches suck, the arrow key layout sucks. Go back to the good times of the <= 2015 boards.

I use my function keys constantly as text editor shortcuts

Most people don't, and the touchbar just makes it more versatile for more users at the cost of tactility.

The touchbar is awful, but the show stopper is the keyboard. Had mine replaced once, and now some other keys are failing. Even if they all worked the feel is atrocious. They are selling $2000 laptop computers that you literally cannot use without an external keyboard. That's brand loyalty for you.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Touch Bar turns in to the entire keyboard. Surprise, no more stuck keys!

The 12” MacBook is the only laptop model I’ve purchased twice. Very disappointed to see it get the axe. I bought one in 2015 despite only reading negative reviews, stuck key issue was there for a few days on and off in the beginning and then never an issue again.

If you travel a lot, the extra weight of the MacBook and the charger along with the tiny dimensions makes it almost unnoticeable thrown in a backpack.

> Surprise, no more stuck keys!

And the ultimate in low travel!

Well, I don't know … auto-correct does a sufficiently good job that I'm actually more accurate typing on my iPad Pro's soft keyboard than on my MBP's real keyboard. (And the Smart Cover's keyboard is definitely better than the MBP's; no skipped or doubled keys, and comparable travel, or at least it feels like it.)

Yeah, the touch bar is quite a turn off for me too. That and the crappy keyboard made me always use the laptop in clamshell mode, which ironically I ended up liking quite a bit.

What's clamshell mode?

clamshell mode = with the lid closed

So that you can SSH into it from your server?

Or with external display, keyboard, and mouse.

Why wouldn’t you just get a Mac mini and save $1000s?

Because some people like moving?

Yeah, that's the main reason. I can still use it as a laptop and I bring it with myself when I travel somewhere, but when I'm home, it's pretty much a desktop

Sometimes I wonder how many people use Macs mainly in clamshell mode. I’ve been doing this for the last 10 years or so because working on a laptop is a huge ergonomy antipattern and Apples keyboards are famous for giving RSI.

I would do this but the fan runs much more when closed. As is, I use my 2017 MBP exclusively with the wireless keyboard from my 2008 iMac.

Generally putting something a few mm thick between the two halves, to give an air gap, helps.

Sometimes means the screen won't turn off, so it needs to be manually disabled/turned off instead.

Despite the outspoken geeks that hate the Touch Bar, Mac revenue are their highest ever. The majority of people don’t care.

I think you're right. In Europe macs are not used as tools for professionals, but as toys for rich kids. You never see macbooks in any company unless they are an Apple shop but if you go in the old town center, in the most hipster cafes, you only see youths with macs.

Yeah most people use it for browsing the web, syncing their iPhones and not much else; for most is a luxury item used as another success symbol, like driving a BMW or wearing Gucci belts.

That is utter nonsense. The university research group that I worked in replaced Dell Linux-based laptops for Macbooks. Hardly toys for rich kids.

I’ve seen homeless people in Copenhagen using Macs. It literally blew my mind.

Denmark is a different world, people just throw away something as soon as they get a better version or starts malfunctioning in the slightest way.

A significant number of the academics I know and work with have a MacBook of some description. They’re incredibly popular in Universities. I can run PowerPoint for teaching as well as all the *nix stuff I need for research.

There is hope that they are clearing up inventory of the old chassis & touch bars before they ditch them all together for a redesign with scissor keyboard at the end of this year though. A redesign is certain at this point, we just don't know when.

If you want to enjoy the touchbar you have to have https://pock.dev which is free

Nice that there’s a free version. $ -> BetterTouchTool https://folivora.ai/

I don't care that the Touch Bar is there. (It was distracting to me at first in that it lights up and changes icons when I switch applications and it is usually sitting off to the side as I prefer to type on a real keyboard. I disabled most of the distractions.) But why can't we have both the Touch Bar and a set of real function keys and an escape key?

Or the courage to make the Touch Bar...retina?

I love the touchbar and use the auto-complete function fairly frequently with it.

I like the touch bar. Sure it's a few tweaks to get it how I want but I like it.

I love my touchbar :)

Just sell it as a dongle. Lord knows they've done that with enough other things. For those who actually use it, it doesn't need to positioned just above the numbers.

Could easily be placed at the top of a magic trackpad, even if it's two rows or something. IMO it's a much more natural fit that way and could be easily added onto any machine for the, I want to say 10, people who find it useful. Or, get this, above the row of function keys on a magic keyboard.

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