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Comment by tw04 | Hacker News Reader

After several years I can unequivocally say I still hate the touch bar. I love touch ID, but the bar needs to go.

USB-C was all about standardizing. I'm still not sure how I feel about it, I did love magsafe, but I also love that in theory someday I'll have one cable to rule them all. And I'll be able to charge my headphones/laptop/phone/random device with a usb-c cable instead of needing 8 of them.

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I’ve found that the Touch Bar’s fundamental flaw is that it doesn’t handle unintended touches well (which sadly affects multiple Apple technologies, including my Watch and even the trackpad occasionally), and that is directly related to the fact that it has no raised elements.

Furthermore, one of its main added features — the ability to do gestures that keys can’t do — just isn’t valuable. I haven’t seen a single example of something that was easier to do on the Touch Bar when I have a giant screen and trackpad/mouse already. I don’t need micro-scrubber interfaces or color sliders or Emoji bars, and the volume/brightness sliders are imprecise.

Despite customizing the bar with BetterTouchTool, including “vibrate” feedback, I invariably found I had to remove more and more things from the bar over time. Any functions in the central part of the bar were invariably triggering by accident. It was just too distracting to have things randomly happening when my finger slid onto something that doesn’t feel like an active panel.

Now, therefore, I have a Touch Bar with just a few things: a battery status indicator on the left end (near the thankfully-now-real Esc key), and the brightness/volume/mute on the right (near the wonderful Touch ID). And that’s it. It is literally 70% empty space now. This is ridiculous for something as complex and expense-adding as the Touch Bar. A complete failure of a technology.

> I’ve found that the Touch Bar’s fundamental flaw is that it doesn’t handle unintended touches well (which sadly affects multiple Apple technologies, including my Watch and even the trackpad occasionally), and that is directly related to the fact that it has no raised elements.

It's the worst. I constantly hit mute instesd of backspace.

Changing the volume or brightness is a complete pain now. It used to be just tap the key a couple of times and that was it. I would do it as a reflex without interrupting the work I was doing. Now I have to look at where the 'button' is, and then tap and slide. Completely awful.

It's easy to change this behaviour

Open the System Preferences app. Select the Keyboard option (third row, sixth item) On the first tab (also called Keyboard), locate the dropdown for "Touch Bar shows" and choose "Expanded Control Strip".

There are problems with that, too:

- Their “Customize Control Strip” sheet provides an arbitrary subset of volume buttons, which don’t include the ones I want. (Specifically, separate volume buttons and not “button that shows slider first”.)

- Previously I was very accustomed to feeling for the volume buttons, and even using modifier keys for very fine-grained volume changes. With default Touch Bar keys, this is basically impossible. It is sort-of-OK with BetterTouchTool customization but it took me awhile to find a combination that I liked. And, still not as good as the original volume/modifier keys.

This doesn't change that I have to look for the on screen buttons and can't just reflexively change the volume while doing something else. Changing the volume or brightness or whatever now becomes a discete task that stops me doing what I was doing before. This * 10 over the course of a day adds up to lots of distractions ovet time.

My touch bar freezes every hour or so when changing volume. I then have to close the laptop, wait for a second, and then open the laptop again. It's awful.

This is the only thing that I don't like about the touch bar. It freezes every so often for me too. However, the fix is a lot easier for me. I just open spotlight search (CMD + Spacebar) and it fixes it.

Wow! Just tried this and it works. Thank you so much.

You can also kill the relevant process: `killall ControlStrip`. I haven't had the precise problem you describe, but this did often suffice to fix strange frozen touch-bar problems.

> Despite customizing the bar with BetterTouchTool, including “vibrate” feedback, I invariably found I had to remove more and more things from the bar over time. Any functions in the central part of the bar were invariably triggering by accident. It was just too distracting to have things randomly happening when my finger slid onto something that doesn’t feel like an active panel.

Is there any way to disable the fixed `esc`? I could just ignore the touch bar, except for that. It haunts my vim experience and my attempts to use full-screen (which `esc` exists by default), since apparently my left little finger tends to rest there without my realising (maybe because I'm a vimmer?).

BetterTouchTool can remove the “esc” (or any key) entirely but I don’t think there is a normal macOS way to do it.

You mentioned the volume/brightness sliders as being imprecise. I don’t have a MBP, but I noticed that touchscreen sliders are really difficult to use accurately. Whenever I slide to a value I wanted, lifting my finger inevitably moves the slider over just a little bit selecting an adjacent value (just by virtue of my finger not being lifted straight up). Is this the issue?

I’m sure I have had sliders mishave like that, too. Mostly I just don’t want a slider in the first place; I prefer feeling for the volume up/down keys and tweaking the volume bit by bit, sometimes using modifier keys for extra precision. It is incredibly easy to input “slightly louder” in the old way. It is unnecessarily hard to input “slightly louder” with a wonky touch slider. And, at times I have blown up the speaker by touching it the wrong way.

You can just flick left/right on the volume/brightness icons to adjust a single increment, without having to bring out the slider. This isn't documented anywhere, it's another one of those hidden features you just have to learn.

I HATE the touch bar.

I simply H A T E it.

I hate it so much that I started to carry an TKL keyboard all the time with me just to avoid using this piece of sh*t touch bar and internal keyboard (MBP 2017).

As a developer it is crucial that I can use my keyboard without any looks but as there is no way to tell which function key you press on the touch bar the bar itself is completely useless for me.

Beside the butterfly switches one of the worst things Apple has ever introduced to their computers.

I just purged Apple from my life largely because the touchbar continues to live on. Love my new Lenovo, btw.

As a workaround for the touchbar that worked pretty well, I bought a silicon keyboard protector for the Apple Magic Keyboard, cut out the area for the function keys, and used hot glue to glue it over the touch bar.

Prevented the touchbar from activating at the slightest touch and did return some of the feel of actually having a row of keys.

Plus, the hot glue causes no damage to the aluminum and does hold for a good period of time.

Turn this into a product people could purchase and you'd become rich :)

My GF has a 2019 macbook pro and is using a silicon keyboard protector to avoid the touchbar as well.

I want to upgrade my macbook, but I've laughed so often at its 30$ fix for its 2000$ laptop that I just can't update to a macbook with touchbar with a straight face anymore.

I hate the Touch Bar as well, and I am very happy with my 2020 Air with a fixed keyboard and no Touch Bar. But can't you just remove the icons from the Touch Bar or set it to display the Fn keys?

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2019/02/27/customizing-touch-b...

The problem is that it is too easy to accidentally touch. Even if you set it to the Fn keys, a slightless faint of electrical conductivity between a side of your finger and the touchbar while you are pressing a number suffices for a key press. With a real key, you actually have to properly press the key. That might happen by accident, but is definetely harder.

Yes. It's the moments when you're carefully editing something really important... precisely pasting some line into a new location... you double and triple checked that everything is right.... and then BOOM your window is gone and replaced by some other app, or a control panel or... some weird thing happens and you're not sure what.

It's ridiculous.

The original Apple ][ had a reset key in the upper right corner of the keyboard that was WAAAAAY too easy to press.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e3/1b/53/e31b53767fad646fc635...

They eventually put a stronger spring under it so it was harder to press, but it was still terrible. There was actually a thriving after-market for $3.25 "RESET KEY PROTECTORS": square plastic tube shields that fit over the reset key so you had to stick your finger down inside of it to press reset.

https://apple2history.org/history/ah13/

RESET KEY PROTECTOR, which prevented accidental RESET on the earliest models of the Apple II, was available for only $3.25 from Special Systems Design. This was necessary because the RESET key, on the upper right of the keyboard, was easy to press because it had the same spring action as the other keys on the keyboard. Various methods (like this product) were used to stiffen that key, and make it harder to press.

https://imgur.com/a/jGpcT4Z

Special Systems Design ad for Apple ][ Reset Key Protector, from Apple Orchard v1n1 1980 Mar Apr, page 107.

https://archive.org/details/Apple-Orchard-v1n1-1980-Mar-Apr/...

Reminded me of how many times we'd accidentally kick the front of the nintendo on the floor and reset it.

Around 1994 or so One mac model (system 7) was notorious for having a power switch next to the floppy drive that looked like the eject button.

Those of us from a windows / unix back ground where for ever pushing the power button when we wanted to eject a floppy.

This brought back memories of using my first computer, a Mac IIci my dad gave to me and my brother. We had the mouse set up in front of it in a way that it was way pretty easy to hit the reset and debugger buttons, which seemed to happen more often in the middle of a spited game for some reason...

I swear on my Apple ][ (which had the stiffer spring under reset) you had to press ctrl at the same time. Mine had an after-marked Videx keyboard controller though, and maybe that was a feature of that controller?

edit: indeed, yes it was:

https://archive.org/details/Videx_Enhancer_II_Installation_a...

I forgot how amazing this controller was:

https://archive.org/details/Videx_Enhancer_II_Installation_a...

It had macros:

https://archive.org/details/Videx_Enhancer_II_Installation_a...

There is a switch on the keyboard interface card inside the ][+ that allows you to toggle between requiring CTRL be held down, or just pushing the reset key. I would assume that this was added later, and wasn't available on the earlier models.

So many homemade tweaks to fix glaring issues in expensive, premium products...

Remember the iPhone 4 where you had to hold your phone in a certain way so it wouldn't block the antenna? It's amazing that Apple can pump out products with issues like this year after year and still be a top dog.

You make it sound like Apple is the only one making hardware that has issues sometimes. They simply have to be better than the competition, and most of the time they seem to be.

Signal strength would be better if you hold it in a certain way and this was true for some other phones as well. I had an iPhone 4 and never paid attention to how I held it, and it always worked perfectly fine. Maybe it's because I used a bumper most of the time (like most people, at least here in Europe).

The return rate of the iPhone 4 was much lower than that of the 3GS [1], so apparently it did not affect many users in practice.

It's still bad design, but when I compare it to widespread issues I had with other tech devices relatively minor (e.g. spontaneously resetting Moto X 2013, self-destructing Moto 360 smartwatch back, etc., constant BlueTooth headphone drops on the Nokia 7 or 7.1).

The (by far) worst Apple design issue that affected me and people I know was the butterfly keyboard. It has left me sour for years and I considered to stop using Macs. I am very happy they have finally resolved that now. But many of the butterfly MacBooks were simply defective products. Only the later generations with seals hold up pretty well.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_4

I admire your resourcefulness and dedication, but it hurts me that people are resorting to literally cutting and pasting hardware workarounds just to recreate what had been a standard part of computer keyboards for decades until some highly paid, well-meaning design team decided to screw with it completely unnecessarily.

Hey Apple laptop division, if you or your social-listening analysts are reading this: I hope the price inflation permitted by inclusion of the Touch Bar helped offset the lost lifetime value of the customers that it continues to repel.

They didn't do it unnecessarilly, Apple's whole thing has been always shipping something different for the sake of being different. Sometimes it works fine, and sometimes it flops hard.

See - gems like the iMac hockey puck mice. I still wonder - who thought that was a good idea..?

Well, your take on the infamous puck mouse perfectly summarizes my attitude toward the Touch Bar: who thought this was a good idea?

Different for the sake of being different is raison d'etre for strong brands.

Wow, is there no software setting to simply disable the touchbar inputs?

Yes, you can customize and remove all the buttons so it effectively does nothing. I only have volume control on mine. This thread is a little odd with the heavy-handed touchbar hate.

Yeah, I don't like the butterfly keys, but the touchbar seems neutral to me. I've never accidentally hit the touchbar while typing. And while it has always seemed a bit gimmicky, I do appreciate some of the controls (sound, brightness, etc.).

Thanks for sharing, knew there had to be something easier than hot-gluing stuff on the laptop!

That said, I would choose physical keys over a touch bar myself.

It’s not just that. Where’s the tactile escape key? I’ve had my 2019 for a couple of months and this is the most frustrating change over my glorious 2015 mbp

On the new MacBook Pros?

You're missing the point. People don't want "nothing" up there, they want the keys that belong there.

It's great that it doesn't bother you, but some of us use those keys.

It have an easy solution, though... I just won't buy one.

Can you get rid of the persistent `esc`? I haven't been able to figure out how.

Honestly, this is a pretty regular occurrence and, in my opinion, just stems from people not even giving the Touch Bar a fair shake. As someone whose job is split between software/web development and media production/design, I'm incredibly happy with the Touch Bar. The only places I see people complaining about it is here on Hacker News and other developer-heavy sites where people just refuse to change their workflows even the slightest. I get that they don't want to and feel like they shouldn't have to but it's so ridiculous to me.

I would be upset if Apple removed the Touch Bar now. Sure, offer a Touch Bar-less option for these Luddites who won't even consider an alternative option but don't regress for their sake.

You wouldn't have any pictures of that silicon keyboard fix, would you? Or even a short tutorial?

I use Karabiner Elements to map space+1 through space+0 to F1 through F10.

I believe macOS sets up ^[number] shortcuts to do exactly that as well?

I believe the default for Ctrl-1 is to go to the first space.

But what I meant is to hold down the spacebar, then hit 1, and to make that be the same as hitting the F1 key. Because with a touchbar, there is often no F1 key, or you have to look to find it.

The Karabiner Elements profile called SpaceFN has the spacebar do double duty: If you hold it down and then press another key, then it acts as a modifier (like shift and ctrl and cmd). If you just hit the spacebar itself then it acts as the normal space key.

I'm using the F-keys to switch workspaces on the fly. I can't imagine going back. Pass on Mac.

The touch bar forces you to look at what you're doing in a place that should strictly be muscle-memory, and it's a flat surface that isn't safe to touch in an area where you rest your hands.

More than once I've hit the "back" button and inadvertently evicted myself from a browser video call, just by putting my hands on the keyboard.

tl;dr - Glad they brought back the escape key, now get rid of the rest of the touch bar.

+1 to TouchBar hate. It was a major factor in "upgrading" my personal machine to a 2020 Air, which is the best (least-worst?) of all worlds: Touch ID + F-keys. Luckily the size/performance tradeoff works for me; but anyone who needs the fastest Mac portable is boned.

My work machine is the new 16" MBP, and while the new keyboard is the best they've ever made, and the return of Esc is welcome, the goddamn TouchBar still drives me up a wall (especially when tweaking audio volume, which is something one wants to do instantly and reflexively).

It's easy to change this behaviour

While I'd still prefer keys, this is quite helpful, thanks for sharing!

The UX for volume and brightness on the touchbar isn't as intuitive as I'd expect from Apple, but you can press and slide to adjust them. Took me a few weeks to realize I didn't have to tap the volume or brightness button and then adjust using the up or down buttons.

Whoa. I've been on the 16" MBP for a few months now and didn't know that. This reduces my hatred of the touch bar by double digit percentages, for sure. Thank you!

Yes, that helps, but I still have to take a beat and look down, as opposed to muscle-memory and not even thinking about it.

My wife bought a MacBook Air last year, and the row of function keys with Touch ID sensor at the end is perfect. I'm so jealous, and hope they add the option to get that keyboard layout on the next iteration of the MBP.

> USB-C was all about standardizing.

USB-C is all about having a thinner connector and giving the appearance of standardizing.

Previously if the cable fit, it worked. There were just a bunch of different cables but that had largely settled down to USB-A cables to like 2 maybe 3 connectors on the other end.

Now we have cables that have the same connector on each end but do vastly different things and there's no clue as to what.

- Does it carry data or just power?

- Does it carry a video signal?

- How much data can it carry?

- How much power can it charge?

A USB-C cable that does everything is limited to about 30cm (1 foot) in length, give or take. I know because I use them to connect to a USB-C dock. If I wanted a longer cable to connect to something else, I could. I'd just have to remember not to use it for the dock.

How is this a good user experience?

It's also not as sturdy. I managed to break one of my ports on a 2016 macbook. Now I try to never let the cable hang from the port.

USB-C is shit. Apple lightning physical connector is still lightyears ahead in reliability, maintenance (dust) and physical size.

USB-3 standard is even a bigger mess. This whole USB 3.2 Gen 2 x 2 is the biggest clusterfuck in the history of naming things.

Somewhere I read that USB-C's cable design was informed by Apple's experience with thee lightning connector. In particular, one of the changes is that the lightning connector has the springs on the hardware side, which means that if the springs break, you have a major headache. USB-C puts the springs in the connector, so if the springs break, you just buy a new cable. That seems like a pretty big improvement, to me.

Anything can brake. It is all about probabilities, potential failures etc.

Spring failure is less probable than breaking a male part of a connector.

If a spring breaks, you have a second one.

If both break, you keep the charging functionality.

You break the male connector. Game Over.

…then you buy a new connector, as mentioned previously?

I mean the most delicate part, a male part in the usb-c port itself. Naming is hard >_<

Oh yes, that part always seemed like a weak spot to me. I guess it prevents exposed connectors on the cable? But that's not all that useful…

exactly :/ Just plain silly. I've already seen two phones in the wild with the damaged usb-c port. User made an error and tried to charge usb-c with micro usb? Yes. Was that preventable with a better design? Yes.

So now that I'm mostly working from home, I bought a Thunderbolt monitor, and the setup is actually pretty awesome. The montior has both USB-C and USB-A inputs. I've got a physical network cable plugged and my USB-A mechanical keyboard plugged into the monitor; and of course the monitor also acts as a charger for the laptop.

Boom -- instant docking station: Plugging in a single standard cable gives me power, ethernet, monitor, and external keyboard.

Obviously you have to carry around a USB-C adapter when actually traveling, but if you get a good all-in-one adapter that does ethernet, HDMI, and USB-A, I haven't found it too disruptive. Hopefully the USB-C form factor will take over and then stay as long as USB-A has.

Which monitor?

There were two I was looking at with the same LCD component, but just different configuration of controls & placement of external USB. The one I ended up going with was LG32UL950 because I found a place that had a $150 discount; now forgotten the other brand/model. The screen is so huge I've had to spend some time figuring out how to use the space effectively, but overall I'm pretty happy.

Interesting, I don't see an ethernet port. Do you use a USB adapter?

Er, yes -- I had written that it was a USB ethernet dongle plugged into the monitor, but I seem to have edited that out.

I've used the Dell U3219Q for over a year for this purpose. Importantly, the monitor provides 90W of power, which is needed for the larger laptops, especially when running power intensive tasks. Most USB-C monitors do not provide enough power.

> I also love that in theory someday I'll have one cable to rule them all

True, although they could have done what many of the pc laptop makers have done. They still provide their proprietary charger with many models (ie. ThinkPad connector), but the USB-C port can also be used to charge the computer if you one already or want to pony up for a USB-C charger. For example, I've used my macbook pro charger to charge my last couple PC laptops too (ThinkPad and Acer). Like you said, then I only need one charger on my desk.

I assume these manufacturer's do this because their own charger, especially the barrel chargers that some manufacturers use, are cheaper than USB-C chargers/cables. In Apple's case, they could have kept the magsafe connector because it's a better connector. But, I assume it was lost to cost savings or aesthetics.

I don't understand why people hate the touch bar or the keyboard. It's imperfect yes but the entire MBP keyboard+trackpad layout enables me to be insanely productive. The only reason I don't buy something like a Mac Mini is because I can't get a peripheral keyboard that is the same as the one on the MBP. The only thing I wish it had was a number pad.

Maybe you're just not realizing its potential. I definitely recommend checking out some cool extensions to the touch bar such as Pock https://pock.dev/

The Touchbar is terrible for Visual Studio Debugging. I have to take my eyes off the screen and cant rest my finger on F10 to step through code. That is ANTI productive. One of the reasons I spring for a macbook is so I can run MacOS, Windows or Linux on solid hardware. The touchbar is fine for things like Logic ProX or some other non development tool, but I need permanent function keys to work in Windows/Visual Studio. Thats a large part of what I do. IMO the touch bar is a GREAT idea if you also have physical function keys on the keyboard.

I guess a large part is that you can't use it without looking at it. If you're a touch typist you want to be able to do everything on the computer without thinking or moving your hands from the home row.

So there are a couple of glaring problems:

1. The keyboard. Ugh. The keyboard was ostensibly changed to shave half a millimeter off the thickness of an MBP. 0.5mm. The old chiclet keyboard was fine. The new one is basically worse in every way. It's louder, feels crappier to type on, has a high failure rate (as witnessed by Apple's free repair program) and is otherwise expensive to replace. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about the keyboard; and

2. The touch bar. This was is more mixed. The big problem is you don't have an option for not having it and Apple's reason for adding it is simply to raise the ASP (average selling price) of Mac SKUs. That's it. The old Macbook Air was too successful. Many people object to it because you lost a row of function keys with tactile feedback (ie physical key). Some really objected to the loss of a physical Escape button. Probably vim users.

I agree with you that Touch ID is great. I sure wish the latest iPhones had it (you could put a sensor on the back if you didn't want to lose the screen real estate). Face ID is absolutely atrocious.

Anyway, the problem here is that basically Johnny Ive went insane, chasing thinness to the extreme. Design is the art of compromise (as they say) and no compromising on thinness led to shitty products (eg the 12" Macbook).

There are many people here (myself included) that for years simply wanted a 13" Macbook Air with an upgraded screen (as close to edgeless as possible and higher res) and more memory. That's it. We waited for years. We got the shitty 12" Macbook instead.

It's incredibly frustrating to be so close to perfection but to take a giant step backwards instead.

Well put. I tried the new 16" keyboard, and while its way better than my 2018 MBP, its still not good enough. Chasing thinness really just seems to be something a select few wanted. As the name implies, I wanted a "Pro" laptop that had high spec processing, ram and storage. What I got is a laptop that doubles as a lap warmer, white noise generator, and user hostile to OS environments other than MacOS. So now I have a mid spec Surface Pro for development, and use the macbook for more creative type endeavors. I wish I could find a way to extract the keyboard from this surface and put it in my macbook. That would make me less annoyed by the heat and fan while running windows.

I disagree with everything stated here and, maybe I'm just lucky, but I haven't had any issues at all with the keyboard on any of my Macbook Pros (work, personal, or my SO's) and I can't go back to not having a Touch Bar.

I'm really curious about the numbers surrounding this. Especially with the latest sales figures, I'm curious if this is just a vocal minority or if most users agree with you that this is a step backward.

I don't hate it as much as I hate that it isn't an option. If it were a $500 add on I would never ever choose it as an option for my laptop, and now it's kind of mandatory if you want a fast macOS laptop. I will accept a laptop from my company with the touchbar, but I don't know that I would be willing to buy one myself. It's been a while since I used windows or linux as my dev OS, but might be willing to give it a shot with a good thinkpad. I hope apple makes it an option for the bigger faster MBP

I can't stand the Macbook Pro keyboard and touchpad. I accidentally input the touchpad on the regular basis because it's enormous, and the keyboard slows down my typing speed substantially. My "o" repeats somewhat often as well, as other people have suggested.

My best quality of life improvement with this machine was to connect an external windows keyboard and mouse. Swap the windows key with the alt key, and you have a beautiful macos keyboard.

I decided to become an early adopter of "USB-C for everything" in ~2017 and do not regret it. Between my laptops (work + personal), tablet, phone, VR, game console, headphones it is really nice to have a single 65w wall wart and a single cable that works for everything and only need to bring one charger.

The one holdout still is an e-ink e-reader, the Kindle Oasis's top review is a one-star review talking about lack of USB-C.

I might switch to an apple-based consumer tablet when they put USB-C on them. The pro tablet models already have USB-C but I don't need that kind of power.

USB-C is really nice. There are some complaints about cables but if you buy brand name cables (anker, cable matters, etc) they seem to last forever and don't have the problems the tech blogs speculate about.

I think twice in five years am I glad I had the magsafe adapter but I'm happy to live without it to avoid carting around a proprietary charger all the time. We lost my wife's magsafe charger while traveling and found out that those cannot be bought for any price when in rural areas, especially outside of first-world countries. Every town has a shop that sells/services USB-C phones/tablets/laptops though.

USB-C would take off like wildfire if there actually existed any proper USB-C hubs - not what's currently called a "USB-C hub" which is more like a breakout box which at best replicates the single USB-C port it takes up and adds a bunch of legacy ports; I'm talking about a proper hub that plugs into a single port and turns it into multiple ports, like those dirt cheap old USB-A hubs. You literally cannot move to an all-USB-C existence because with rare exceptions 1 port = 1 device.

As I've written before on HN:

A hub with multiple USB-C downstream ports cannot exist with any sort of reasonable UX. The C port supports multiple "alternate modes," which remap USB-data pins to other functions (like DisplayPort, HDMI, Thunderbolt, analog audio, etc.)

The various alternate modes are not simply transporting display/audio/Thunderbolt data over a USB channel. It's the difference between packet switching and circuit switching.

Plugging in, for example, an HDMI adapter to one downstream port affects what devices can be plugged in to other downstream ports.

A true HDMI adapter would revert all other downstream ports to USB 2.0. But... an HDMI adapter that's really a DisplayPort with internal DP -> HDMI converter can potentially allow USB 3.0 on the other downstream ports (or, potentially, ONE other port with DP and the rest with USB 2.0).

Either way, plugging in the HDMI adapter means your USB-C headphones might stop working (depending on whether they are analog or have an internal DAC).

How are users expected to understand that they need a certain type of USB-C headphones and a certain type of HDMI adapter in order for both to work at the same time?

From the point of the user: I have a mouse, a keyboard, a display, an external drive, and occassionally I need to plug in a flash drive, printer or some other device. There is one or two of those new small rounded USB ports on my computer which is not enough. How can I possibly plug in everything I need?

It's not the users' fault that the whole USB-C thing amounts to a very fast, very efficient and elegant garbage fire. It's the greatest port ever, it can do everything, except not at the same time, so I have to choose whether I want to plug in my keyboard or my display.

> How can I possibly plug in everything I need?

You cant. That's the entire point of my post. There's no way to accommodate your desire[1] with the USB-C port.

[1] To plug everything into one port with some sort of port expander thingy and have it "just work".

The best way I can sell Thunderbolt 3/USB-C to myself is that at Apple's size, they need to be able to sell (to consumers, courts, governments) that they aren't being anti-competitive, so by switching to designs that are open and standardized (Thunderbolt 3 is a spec, not a patent) they can better sell their market dominance as not driven by patents and lawyers.

I personally wish Apple would make something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Magnetic-Adapter-Connector-Quick-Char...

Before any of you see that and go "awesome, exactly what I was looking for!" - I've had several coworkers try various models of those adapters and all have told me they universally suck. Don't waste your money.

I trust Apple could do it with quality - frankly I'd be willing to spend $50+ for a reliable version of that.

I've got another trick to use in place of a Magsafe type cable. Get a cable that is a few feet longer than you need, and attach a couple magnets a few feet apart on the cable. Then click the magnets together. Now you have a cable with a loop that is held closed by the magnets. If someone trips over the cable, the magnets come apart and pull out slack from that loop, instead of pulling the cord on the back of the laptop.

Not quite as good as having the cord detach, but it still helps in the majority of minor trip-induced cord pulls (depending on how much clack in the cable you leave bundled between the two magnets).

Are you selling this on Instagram? I just got an ad in my feed for a product that does that

No, I was thinking of designing and 3D-printing a magnet holder clip -- didn't realize someone else thought of it too. I guess what they say is true, there is no unique new ideas.

Is what you saw just a couple clip on magnets (like what I was thinking), or is it a two-piece cord held together by magnets (like the previous comment mentioned)? That would be cool if someone already makes this as a product.

The product was a full integrated cable. I won't buy it for that reason as I would 1) like to retrofit my existing cables and 2) be able to choose the cable for the spec of the cable itself. If you made a clip and magnet for retrofitting on existing cables I would buy it if it was offered for a reasonable price.

I purchased that. It doesn't suck. Though, I bet Apple could do better if it were integrated.

Anecdotally, I’ve been using one of these (different brand but looks exactly the same) with zero issues between a Thinkpad X1 and a USB-C hub. It’s extremely convenient to be able to attach everything (PD, HDMI, USB) from a single cable that’s literally touchless. The magnet and positioning allows it to automatically connect when I set the laptop on my desk, and to use the laptop elsewhere I just pick it up and carry it away. Much better than a floppy MagSafe that only does power.

If you look into those magnetic things a little bit you'll notice they don't support full thunderbolt data rates. It’s largely physics that’s holding us up, not necessarily Apple. In theory data rates don’t matter strictly for charging but then we’d be back at a different cable/port for charging vs data transfer which would be subpar UX. If nothing else I think it’s why you only see these things aftermarket. I do share your sentiment, though.

I've been using that exact adapter for several months now and I'm pretty happy with it. Carries power and data for my home setup + I have a separate one just for power for my mobile setup. What were your coworkers' complaints about it?

It seems to depend on what you use them for.

In my experience, they're good for power. Driving a 2.5k monitor over DisplayPort works reasonably well if the computer is on a solid surface (not your lap).

But they don't work well for 4k video (especially with a direct HDMI adapter) or USB 3.0 data.

"Market dominance" might overstate the case.

Apple makes up for a small percentage of all laptops sold, even if you compare manufacturers (rather than "Apple" vs "Windows machine"). They have a smaller share of laptop sales than HP, Dell, or Lenovo, and very close to the same (depending on when you look) as Acer and ASUS:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/818439/global-notebook-c...

My gripe with the touch bar is that for every IDE you have to customise it to see the function keys by default. It's so damn annoying. Why can't the default layout be just the Fn keys ?

> Why can't the default layout be just the Fn keys ?

Because then no software would have used it. (Said ironically)

"Settings: Keyboard: Touch Bar shows" lets you permanently set to F keys or (my preference) the Extended Control Strip.

You can change it to show the F-keys by default in macOS settings. Then by pressing Fn you can view the "special" mode.

Because 95% of the people don't use them and for them having an emoji picker, a volume, brightness control is more useful. The small group of people who actively use the Fn keys can just enable this checkbox at the settings.

Someday they should make a pro model for the 5% of people who don't care about emoji pickers.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a big mainstream corporation to address the needs of 5% of their market share.

And lose touch typing

FWIW, I really hate IDEs (usually ported over from other platforms with little thought) that use function key shortcuts for commonly-used actions. I instantly remap "run" in every IDE to ⌘R.

I wonder why they haven’t replaced touchID with FaceID on MacBooks. There’s a camera and I find FaceID to be so much more seamless.

I suspect it's because of the target thickness the lid -- and the camera is located in the part that tapers.

Does the sensor need to be in the same place as the camera or could it be at the bottom of the screen?

FaceID requires more than a camera, there's an additional sensor involved

The day has come. Last year or so ;)

Macbook, Ipad Pro, Cheap phone (Moto G / Pixel 3A) everything on my desk shares just one power brick.

There are unfortunately some devices that are nominally USB C but don't actually support the spec properly, like the Nintendo Switch. So some caution is required still.

I thought more recent Switch firmware updates had closed that gap. Could be wrong.. I don't really remember where I read it.

The Switch may or may not freak out in the face of arbitrary USB-C chargers; but it's always supported Apple's USB-C chargers just fine. (I get the sense that Nintendo developed the console by relying on Apple USB-C chargers, until they made their own.)

Doesn't work on the dock though.

I travel a lot with my Macbook + Switch and I only ever bring my Macbook's USB-C charger. It works fine with the Switch dock.

I'm charging my Switch with random cables just fine? I've heard that the issue was only with third party docks, not with USB-C cables.

In what was does the Nintendo Switch break the standard?

https://old.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/87vmud/the_... (the Google+ links won't work anymore, of course).

I love the Touch Bar. I have almost never used the F# keys in macOS apps, in a whole decade now.

The touch bar is really, really awful. I'd definitely pay more to get rid of it.

- It's incredibly sensitive, so a slightly misplaced touch on the number row sometimes results in a wild function key that snaps me out of whatever I'm doing (launches iTunes, goes to Spaces, adjusts brightness).

- It's distracting. It's either a lighted row of fake buttons, or a constantly changing offering of useless app shortcuts. It turns on and off (again, distracting).

- The UX of using it as function keys is in every way worse than a physical button. You can't tell if the click registered by feel. Sometimes it even seems like it reacts to a click but then nothing happens.

I (a) remapped escape and (b) taped a piece of cardboard over everything except the fingerprint scanner, and the touch bar works much better.

> in theory someday I'll have one cable to rule them all

I predict a future with USB-D that's incompatible with USB-C and on and on...

Everything is going wireless. There are still some items that require plugging in but headphones, keyboards and mice, even hard drives, are all going wireless.

The Asus Zenbook, and the Asus Zenbook Duo, seem to expand on the idea in a more useful way. I am a bit surprised we didn't see the Macbook Pro go to a similar design (I.E. using the track pad as a display, or moving the track pad and adding a second display).

A standard data cable for laptops is fine I guess, but I want a distinct power-only cable that isn't complicated enough to enable malware attacks. And battery swaps. And a pony.

"After several years I can unequivocally say I still hate the touch bar. "

With BetterTouch Tool I have set it up so it's halfway usable. Still worse than the old function buttons though.

what are the adjustments you made with bettertouchtool?

I have volume and display brightness buttons, also a mute button and play/pause. They are permanent and don’t switch with the application. Pretty much like it was before the Touchbar....

I tried to use the Touchbar for a while without customization but I never could get the hang of it. It just seems useless.

Is that different from System Preferences > Keyboard > Touch Bar shows Expanded Control Strip?

You have more options. But it has been a while since I set this up so I don’t remember exactly.

Same here: I love the Touch ID but the touch bar is awful. The bar always moves around and the buttons I want are always at a different spot or just not there.

Magsafe or no Mac. Also touch bar needs to go. I mean, regardless of usability, just look at that eyesore! It used to be that Macs were for professionals. Now it's for showoffs only. Sorry. I really used to love Macs...

And yet you still can't charge an iPhone with USB-C.

I'm REALLY hoping this was the last major revision of iPhone (and airpods) to retain lightning. I won't hold my breath but I hope they finally make the move to usb-c.

Consolidate on something, at least. Here are the connectors to devices purchased from Apple in the past 12 months:

Beats Studio headphones: micro-USB (for serious, Apple?)

Beats Powerbeats Pro: Lightning

iPad Pro: USB-C

iPhone XS (a little more than 12 months ago): Lightning

See a pattern there? Yeah, me neither. I might as well have purchased them from separate vendors. And Lightning at this point isn't even a standard within Apple, it's just some jackass proprietary shit you have to buy special cables for.

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