Keep the TouchID button, get rid of the rest, just like the current Airs.
My wife and I rarely watch television, but when we do it's on our MBP. There literally isn't a way to adjust the volume on full screen video using just the keyboard; you have to exit full screen mode (to revert the Touch Bar to its default set of buttons), and then adjust the volume slider (which is still another screen deep).
It's infuriating.
Actually, worse than useless - I also run Bootstrap on my MBP, and when using keys on the touch bar you have to leave something like a 2s delay between each press for it to register. Maddening when F5 stepping through code!
I'm still holding out hope for a good keyboard and a proper row of keys along the top. In the meantime, I'm typing this on a 2012 MacBook Pro.
But it still lights up whenever you want it to be dark (like when a full screen video starts), and is dark whenever you actually need to look it it (when you decide to adjust the volume a few minutes later).
If they had real buttons that could be be completely dynamic it would be better. Basically what we see with a stream deck.
There are a few applications which enhance the TouchBar in one way or another. Perhaps the best idea I've seen is the one where it put the Dock in the TouchBar.
Now, Apple seems to cut corners where ever possible; as someone else mentioned the power brick no longer includes an extension cable. To make matters worse, the USB-C cable they do include is a "power only" cable and won't allow you to hook up other things to your MBP. This means to hook up your monitor to your new computer you have to remember to purchase a "real" USB-C cable.
This is on a product that costs thousands of dollars! Can they not afford to provide a usable set of cables with your $2,500 computer?
For some its an irritation. For others its a revelation.
The escape key being "hard to hit" is exaggerated to say the least, and the F-keys I only use then I debug and need to step through my code. I do other things when developing than stepping through my code.
1. Mission control 2. Brightness down 3. Brightness up 4. Previous track 5. Play/pause 6. Next track 7. Volume down 8. Volume up
After experimenting with all of the apps I use every day to see what controls they could provide, I ended up just disabling the app-specific touchbar controls entirely and going with my defaults for every app.
I know it's personal preference how everyone likes their own machine configured, but as someone who gets zero value out of the OLED display, it's frustrating how vastly worse an experience it is than than it needs to be. The touch bar is clumsy with its zero touch feedback, so that I'm always accidentally pressing it with my fingertips when using the number row, and it drives me crazy. It's so much worse than the function keys that even if they fixed the utterly broken keyboard mechanism I would never buy a touchbar Macbook. Fortunately, Apple is making it a really easy decision, since their display panels aren't even close to being the best anymore, their core components are perennially outdated and overpriced, and MacOS has long been neglected. What else is there? The touchpad? I just use a high-end gaming mouse because it's about a billion times more precise and reliable.
Way beyond "fixing" the Touch Bar's lack of ESC, this is far and away my preferred usage now.
[1] https://github.com/jasonrudolph/ControlEscape.spoon – a plugin (aka "spoon") for Hammerspoon.
[2] https://www.hammerspoon.org/ – a fantastic UI event scripting and customization tool for macOS
I want a full, physical keyboard. That's it. I won't buy another MacBook if Apple continues to forcefeed that pile of garbage as the only option. I said this in another comment a while ago: people who like Touchbar don't type. They're point and click users. People who type for a living despise it. I realize there are outliers but that's a pretty accurate characterization.
Also, take your angry generalizations about TouchBar users elsewhere. Aside from the ESC key loss I'm fine with the TouchBar, and know quite a few competent touch-typist developers who really like it as well. It is very divisive, but please leave off characterizing others' preferences according to your own frustration.
And I really do understand your frustration with the keyboards. They're just not great, and the reliability problems are a disaster. The only silver lining is that there's pretty reliable info that Apple is switching back to scissor mechanism keyboards for its laptops this year. Doesn't help the rest of us stuck with the "bad" years keyboards, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In that mode it's OK, but I still have to look down to mute the sound, which is inconvenient.
Sure it also has downsides but generic "F1" to "F12" buttons also isn't the pinnacle of UX.
It has value, it doesnt have enough value to remove an entire row of keys that have been of use for decades.
That is literally my only gripe with it
This one perhaps: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20531955
It's for graphics/video/audio professionals, the original Mac "pro" market, where it's a super-useful ultra-flexible slider/picker that works far better than a trackpad or mouse for that purpose. And the ones I know love it.
I get most HN'ers don't like it (and I personally have no use for it), but Apple didn't build it because they're dumb or are going for style over substance. It's just a different target market.
You know what else does that? A touch screen. Apple seems to be okay with it for the phones/pads. It would also be cheaper (since it's just an overlay on the glass). And the touch area would be the size of the screen that you're looking at, rather than a narrow strip you have to shift your eyes to.
You can swap Control to Espace there (probably the same place you mapped Caps to Control???)
I don't understand why it isn't an optional feature.
My little hobby circle is audio, and the touchbar is almost universally loved there too.
Edit: asked him about the touch bar, he says he doesn't want to change his workflow to use something new when he's got all this audio equipment that works fine.
The CEO and team leads also get iMacs for the office, but extensively use the laptops. There is exactly one tower in each office - the render farm.
I shortly contemplated getting a new MBPr, but with all the stories circulating about the butterfly keyboards and the touch bar, went with an ifixit battery replacement kit, about 100€.
I'm generally very reluctant to carry out these types of sensitive repairs myself, but opted to do it with help from a friend. If, instead of buying a new one, the customer prefers to keep a 2015 MBPr and is even willing to run the gauntlet of carrying out a difficult repair themselves, something's seriously wrong. And Apple should take notice.
If Apple were to re-release that machine with upgraded CPU, graphics card, memory and storage, I would buy one in an instant.
The 2105 MBP is no prize either. I just got an email this morning that it's covered by the battery recall — I had checked when the recall was initially announced and it wasn't included.
Soldered storage means I can't just pop my drive out and give it to Apple for repair. Glued in batteries mean I can't just pop the battery out with a quarter and swap it out at an Apple store.
So what? Apple wants two weeks to repair the damn thing. Sure I'd like to be able to upgrade stuff, but ease of service is (now) an issue I've to contend with. This may very well be my last Apple notebook.
It is the one key re-map I cannot live without.
(Anyone who used a Sun keyboard for a considerable period time is familiar with this layout. I do not know if any other systems predated Sun in this regard.)
The Macintosh didn't originally have a CTRL key, so Caps Lock went there. The first Mac to have CTRL seems to be the Macintosh II and SE, where you were offered the choice of the Apple Keyboard (control left of A) or Apple Extended Keyboard (caps lock left of A). Thus began decades of confusion.
Interestingly, the NeXT keyboard (1988) had no caps lock.
Several extra keys for typing useful symbols and non-english characters, and not a CapsLock in sight!
I believe the ASR33 may be the originator of Ctrl to the left of A:
https://www.bytecollector.com/images/asr-33_vcf_02.jpg
Other influential terminals such as the DEC VT series, and the ADM-3A also placed Ctrl along the home row (although on many of the DEC keyboards, there were two keys in the modern Caps Lock position - Ctrl to the left, and Caps Lock on the right).
Many early home computers had Ctrl in this position, including the Apple II and the original IBM PC.
The very first Sun workstation used a keyboard with the same layout as the DEC VT100, it then evolved into the more well known Sun layout, which later inspired the Happy Hacking Keyboard,
- Fix keyboard [check]
- Remove touchbar (or keep touchbar but also add back original function keys)
- Add MagSafe
- Add useful ports (USB-A, SD, HDMI)
- Add sufficient cooling
- Shrink touchpad to 2015 size
In other words, add TouchID to 2015 model, add some USB-C ports and upgrade internals.
It's pretty astonishing how a company like this can go backwards in so many ways.
I guess this is worse.
-edit: In Mojave, I found it in prefs/keyboard/Customize Touch bar
It's the only way to make a new MBP usable for me. I have to all but disable the damn touchbar.
I also have to disable force-touch on the trackpad to be able to execute all but the shortest of click-and-drag operations. Disabling two of the headliner "advanced" UI features of new MBPs are now very early initial setup steps for me. Machine's toss-it-out-the-window frustrating if I don't.
haptic feedback would be even better
From a UX perspective what they do is opaque and application dependent. To learn what they do in each context you do have to go out of your way.
Though I wonder if it'd have worked better if they were still tactile buttons individual panels on them, so the application can reprint them with their actual function name.
Keys-with-panels may be too difficult/expensive and the single row is also more flexible (allows for sliders, for example). But I’ve not really used these keyboards, I don’t know how well do they work.
Would love to see the touch bar removed (keeping TouchID). Or at the very least, add haptic feedback like 3D Touch to stop gliding fingers from triggering the buttons.