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I think this is general a pretty good argument, and in good faith, but I can't help but think that at some point power users and developers become a leading indicator.

Poor longevity and rising prices and useless or missing features wont result in a slow decline in sales -- the momentum will keep carrying things until some tipping point when complete disconnection from the market makes things get ugly.

Developers and creatives were never the major customers of Apple gear, but in the mid-to late 2000s when things started to pick up they were great evangelists. I don't think it's a good look when those people are vocally saying they're going to switch.

>> I really don't think you are Apple's target audience.

I am a creative professional - which, historically, was a very important part of Apple’s user base; and the reason I still use their products.

The ecosystem and workflow of using an iPhone or iPad to write a simple musical idea in GarageBand on the subway, and then finding it already on my iCloud on my MacBook Pro at home, so I can open it up in Logic and refine it, is unparalleled.

Anecdotally, I’ve never had anyone whom I’ve met, dev, creative, or casual user, who enjoys or uses the Touch Bar.

It’s not even just the touch bar. The keyboard, the soldered RAM and SSD which prevent upgrades, the lack of ports, when I spend more for a MacBook now, I’m getting far less than I did in my many years of purchasing them.

Furthermore, I could pull up a heap of references for this, but it’s a much more serious case with the SE form factor than even Apple’s current garbage laptop offerings.

There are practically a lot of people with smaller hands - they would be happy to give Apple their money but have nothing to give it for.

I'm a dev and like the touch bar. Ask me anything

I'm a developer also. I have no issues with the Touch Bar. I kind of like it. I never used the F keys anyway. I mapped my escape key to caps lock. I view it as the next iteration or evolution of the basic fingerprint reader on many PC laptops and notebooks.

I am more surprised by the hatred for it. It's extremely easily hackable [0] [1] and I was thinking all sorts of people would up with interesting ideas and uses for it over time.

[0] https://github.com/zakrid/awesome-touchbar

[1] https://github.com/erikolsson/Touch-Bar-Lemmings

I don’t think it would be hated if it didn’t replace the layer of existing keys, or offered any kind of haptic feedback.

I was shocked at a second revision of the MBP without haptic feedback on the Touch Bar.

When your hand accidentally touches that miniature touch screen and random things happen on your mac how do you control the urge to hurl it across a room?

When would my hand accidentally touch the touch bar that sits above the keyboard? I literally don't think this has ever happened to me, I'm being honest

I had no idea I was doing it, and couldn't explain the bizarre behaviour until I literally looked at the keyboard, but apparently my left pinky finger is hovering slightly above that area most of the time, and occasionally brushes it lightly enough that I don't even notice—but enough to trigger whatever behaviour is there (particularly irritating as a heavy vim user with a stuttering keyboard, who suddenly finds I'm unexpectedly in normal mode).

Weird, happens to me all the time, reaching for things on my desk, grabbing the laptop, resting my hand in the slightly wrong place.

Happens to me whenever I hit the number keys just below the touch bar, unless I am very careful. I suspect it is mostly a matter of hand shape.

You are certainly one of the rare ones. This happens to me and my co-workers so often it's become a running joke.

1) Would you like a physical function bar as well?

2) Do you use anything to customize the Touchbar to your liking? (I haven't used OS X in quite a while, and haven't heard of anything)

3) How's the rest of your keyboard doing? Do you like it?

1) No, the only one I could see an argument for would be the escape key, but I'm not fussed about that personally, but I also don't live in Vim. Apps also have custom touchbar functions that are more useful than just the function keys in my opinion (you don't have to learn as many keyboard shortcuts for each app).

2) I don't, other than the customization you can do within macOS. I think the only thing that I've really done is remove the Siri shortcut from it.

3) Good so far. I have a 2018 model which has the silicon membrane under the keys and is supposed to be a bit more resilient. One benefit that this whole mess does have is when my battery deteriorates I can get a new one for free by using the keyboard replacement program. At this point if I didn't already have the MacBook I would wait for the next keyboard design to buy one, but personally have not had issues (yet). As far as the typing experience I find it good for short burst typing and the short key travel is generally fine with me, despite using mechanical keyboards elsewhere.

2. The touchbar is very customizeable. GoldenChaos-BTT is the best one:

https://community.folivora.ai/t/goldenchaos-btt-the-complete...

1. Personally, no.

2. I love BetterTouchTool – I use it at work and at home. Ambivalent towards the touch bar without it, LOVE the touch bar with it.

3. My mid-'16 personal Macbook has the "stuttering keyboard" issue – extra characters typed if not careful. I haven't been doing much side-work lately so I can ignore it, but it's a real pain in the ass for sure. Haven't had that issue on my 2018 work Macbook (yet).

I also like the TouchBar and use BetterTouchTool a bit. But the limitation that annoys me is that I can't simultaneously customize it and display app specific context buttons. As in one section customized if a spotify thing is playing, but otherwise make the space available for overriding.

Have you investigated the option in BTT on a button to always display regardless of context?

Right now I have a spotify song display alongside default apple controls. But afaik there isn't the ability to allocate a bit of the touchbar to BTT, Apple default controls, and app specific context controls. BTT takes over most of the bar, but then I lose the ability to easily use pycharm debugging controls for example.

>> I am a creative professional - which, historically, was a very important part of Apple’s user base; and the reason I still use their products.

The keyword there is historically. It's pretty clear that Apple has shifted its market focus away from the creative space. It's made some efforts to win them back with the latest Mac Pro, but they are a minority.

This isn't even a criticism of Apple (clearly that decision is making money for them), it's just the reality of the situation.

Well, it sure feels shitty to support a company for years, who has supported you in your industry for years, who suddenly just says ‘we couldn’t give less of a shit about you anymore.’

Just for record, I don't know any non-creative/developer who own macs. Anyone else does not like the touchbar. The same subsets care about headphone jacks or not.

I'm 6'1" and think I have decent sized hands, I'd still prefer the 4S size if I could get it

All that said, historically sure, but creative and/or professionals are not the target of a mainstream phone meant to sell millions of phones.

I've given up dreaming and just deal with it as I still prefer iOS to Android

Go to any college. Most people there buy Macs for simple note taking.

Given the number of people I used to see in the street using the shitty quality earphones that were in the box with a new iphone, I think the reality is that most of Apple’s users don’t really give a shit about music quality in the first place.

I think the iPhone SE is a special case in that it's still supported to this day, and actually works fine in most if not all regards. Any user happy with it has no reason to be vocal.

Most people won't be making blogpost about how they're not interested in new phones when the one they have is still fine.

As an aside, I think people don't complain about the TouchBar because it's rarely used outside of the sound and brightness widgets. The majority of people aren't using escape or control keys like crazy, which could explain why mostly devs are in cries. There's no such split for using a phone, so when the iPhone SE is effectively dead and there's no gateway to a similar product, I expect the real wave of complain to rise up.

There are 26 million software developers in the world, virtually all of them own a work or personal laptop (many both), and they have a much higher percentage of owning Macs vs the normal distribution.

Apple "only" sells 18M laptops a year. Software developers likely account for 1/4th (or more) of their MacBook sales.

Many of those software developers are in developing or middle income countries and can't afford a Mac. Just because software developers have a higher rate of buying Macs it does not follow that 1/4 of Macs are bought by software developers.

iOS development in particular seems to be a huge contributor to this.

Where, 15 years ago, I entered the software industry, Macs were virtually non existent in the workplace, I now use one - along with about 25 other people on my floor.

I don’t know. I think the fact that it’s a Unix you don’t have to futz with. I know a lot of software shops in the past 15 years that we’re all Macs, where no one was doing iOS development.

Exactly. Which is more likely: Apple is just ignoring people left and right, making terrible decisions and bleeding money, while you, an HN poster/redditor, know precisely what Apple is doing wrong and can fix it. Or Apple is doing user testing and your needs do not reflect the general population?

requiring an extra adapter to connect you phone to your laptop really goes against the "it just works" creed

It’s laughable.