Comment by TheRealSteel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheRealSteel | Hacker News Reader

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I don't believe the Air got rid of the Touch Bar -- it never had it. It was only on the Pro. What's so "Pro" about replacing the useful function keys (including the escape key) with a bar that does nothing but pick emojis is beyond me.

I strongly dislike the Touch Bar. I'm typing this on a 2019 MacBook Pro whose Touch Bar died yesterday, leaving me with no escape key, no volume buttons, no keyboard brightness buttons, and no play/pause button -- leaving me to do all of those in software -- including escape.

I never found a single useful purpose for the Touch Bar's main mode, so from about two weeks after I bought it, it's been set to simply show function keys ("expanded control strip"). This means I have function keys that accidentally activate when I'm trying to type numbers, that timeout and disappear to save battery, that can't be 'hovered' (touching without pressing) and that have no tactile feedback, slowing you down by forcing you to look away from the screen. And now - I've lost the entire row.

The touchbar as a more complex, expensive and easy to break part is such a poor design choice. Though so is the rest of the butterfly keyboard. It shouldn’t cost so much to replace such a simple part that is directly used everyday.

This is also why I dread having to get a new car with all the fancy electronics, they might be cool and useful now but apart from touchscreens being inferior to handle without looking on them (something I prefer to avoid while driving), that’s one thing that will both break and in general be worse than my phone, probably already when it comes out and by the next generation at the latest. (Quite ironically Bluetooth as the interface to my car was the first thing that broke and would cost EUR 900 to replace, which makes me happy I didn’t take the navigation)

I wish I could just pay a premium for longer lasting design. It also shows how silly it is when companies say they want to be net zero on emissions, then produce something that could easily work well for almost a decade were it not for some ridiculously expensive part breaking.

Just yesterday I finally found out why Word on the Mac kept selecting text while I was typing! After weeks of thinking the touchpad was ultra sensitive, I figured out that my finger hovers over F8 when I type the letter 'y'. F8 activates Extend Mode in Word, so my typing got captured to expand my selection to the next occurrence of each letter. I never felt myself touch the key at all.

That brings back memories! I kept accidentally playing/pausing music with this stupid Touch Bar. I worked around the problem by removing most buttons and keeping the right side of the Touch Bar empty.

The physical keyboard eventually became totally unusable so I now use an external keyboard 100% of the time, which solves the problem once and for all. Thanks Apple!

Protip: remap capslock to escape. It's supported in the OS settings.

That's what I've done, but I hate having to adjust my typing habit. It's annoying enough that thanks to the touch bar I'm now incapable of typing escape on any other computer (because I'm in the habit of merely touching escape, not pushing it), now I have to adjust again and I'm going to be in the habit of pushing caps lock.

GNU Readline has destroyed my ability to work on non-readline editors. It's worse when I am using a machine where caps lock means caps lock. I have it bound to control (on hold) and escape (on tap). When I typo on a different machine and reflexively type ^A^K to kill the line, it comes out as capital "AK" instead. Repeat multiple times.

That's actually a good habit to build.

Here's a windows utility you might find useful: https://github.com/susam/uncap

And here's an editor that's accommodating to your newly trained typing skills ;) https://www.vim.org/

Long play to plug vim.

Good work.

I had to break this habit as well, and also as a result of the touchbar. I empathize with this struggle, it took me a couple of weeks to get used to capslock escape, but it was worth it.

Believe me, you'll love using Caps Lock instead of ESC very soon. I switched the two using Karabiner (for mac) and I wonder how I used computers all those years before that. If you use vim (or vimium on Firefox), you'll absolutely like this change.

Caps Lock as ESC on short presses and Cmd+Opt+Ctrl+Shift (Meta key) on long presses has opened up a lot of shortcuts on IDEs and OS for me.

It's been so many years that I can't remember how it is not having these combos.

You can switch it in keyboard preferences under “modifier keys” now, no need for Karibiner any more. Can’t remember when this was changed but it was a few years back

I feel like that’s where the control key needs to be, I use that way more than escape, especially in combination with other keys and so it’s best when I can reach it easily.

My MBP has a tactile escape key. A much needed improvement over the full touch bar.

Indeed I noticed the 2018 Macbook Pro became a much more useful machine for work and I was a lot more productive once I started using it clamshell-mode only with external keyboard/mouse/monitors.

The new 2019 MBP has a physical escape key. The touch bar is fantastic for my needs. I love being able to adjust applications with a touch panel slider. I do audio/video work from time to time.

I can see programmers hating it though.

I produce video, and I have to tell you... the touch bar? I love the thing. I suspect you may not be part of its target audience.

Never occurred to me that they could die, lol. That really sucks.

It always should have been on the screen.

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