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Comment by alex7o | Hacker News Reader

Fight me but I miss the touchbar, it was customizable to be super useful with better touch tool

I think the problem with touch bar was that, it completely replaced the function keys, instead of complementing them. Other than that, I actually liked it.

Hah, that reminds me! My first work issued Mac didn't have the ESC key, just the touch bar. IIRC a program hung in fullscreen, freezing both the app and the touch bar. So I had to reboot to get out of it because the esc key didn't work.

Its interesting the touch bar was also hung up, as from what I recall the touchbar was actually driven by a separate processor (the T1/T2 chip) and had its own version of watchOS running. I would have thought it would have continued working, just unable to continue syncing with the rest of the Mac.

It’s rare but I’ve definitely seen my touchbar lock up or go dark and require a restart.

It also could get mad hot on my 2016 MBpro when video editing. Still love(d) that computer though…

Yeah, it locked up on me every couple months or so. Very glad to see it gone (as the primary ESC + F-row input).

I also would not mind it in addition to regular keys, there are some great interactions in there. But it's an extremely poor keyboard-emulator. Splitting off the escape key made a huge improvement, but it's nowhere near enough.

Yeah Apple has had a few missteps like this over the last 5 to 10 years. They assert themselves with that Steve Jobs mentality of “we know what’s best for you,” but he got it right more often than the current iteration. The touch bar was definitely not properly assessed by users before shipping.

I still own a 13-inch MacBook Pro 2019 with the Touch Bar, and I believe it’s the last Intel-based model.

What a nightmare. ‘Mad hot’ even on… just being alive.

Those 2019-2020 models are absolute trash. I don’t know what happened. My 2016 MBPro smokes the few we have bouncing around at work. They started falling apart like year 3, and my MBPro was the first iteration of their newer builds with the butterfly keyboard/non-optional Touch Bar!

You should have been able to Cmd-Tab to a different app; if that wasn't working, something more serious was going on. Also, if you have Spaces enabled, you can three-finger swipe, since a full screen app gets its own Space.

Another issue with the touch bar is that part of the laptop gets quite hot (especially on Intel CPUs), and so did the touch bar. I recall a few times feeling like I burned my finger just pressing esc during video rendering.

I think the lack of haptic feedback is what doomed the Touch Bar. If they'd been able to solve that problem, it could have been an acceptable replacement for the function keys.

I wonder if a keyboard where the keycaps are little eInk displays is feasible.

Already tried twenty years ago, although with LCD not eInk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard. The keyboard was too expensive to be mass-produced at the time, though.

That.

And I had to look down every time I had use it. I am glad to see it go.

I think the touch bar was a neat idea with a lot of potential but IMO they should have kept the row of physical function keys as well.

Another thing was that not all Mac notebooks had a touch bar, so developers couldn't put any vital features onto it.

And there was no Touch Bar-equipped external keyboard either, so users with a desktop system were shut out entirely.

The thing is I have never used the function keys on my laptop so that was not a problem form me, but also some of the custom functions I hard can just be mapped to fn keys so it is bit like it it us a huge loss

I don't necessarily use the numbered function keys all the time (as in F1-F12), but I use those physical buttons constantly. Brightness, volume, play/pause, mic mute, are all buttons I press a good bit. Many of those I'd rather just have be a single quick button, especially things like speaker or mic mute.

Volume and brightness are exactly the place the touchbar shines: tap and start dragging and you're adjusting a slider, which is much better than mashing a button.

No. So much no.

It utterly destroys the “quick incremental adjustment” that taps are better for. It makes it more involved to even complete maximal adjustments, which are just press and hold. It makes all adjustments more involved, it’s not merely a matter of locating a physical key, it’s orchestrating movements your eyes and hands have to track together toward a location that can’t be known , through touch detection that can get fussy for any number of reasons.

This is not theoretical. This was my experience with a touchbar MBP. The idea was just wrong for this kind of routine function.

Meanwhile, I can adjust volume blind by feel on a MPB with function keys. I never for a moment when doing this for audio or brightness think “I wish I had a slider” and even if I did I know how to find one for use with the touch interface every MBP ever has had.

Sure, a slider can make sense there, I agree. But now I've got a part of the screen dedicated to be the spot to tap to start changing the volume and a part dedicated to it being the brightness taking away from the other useful parts of the screen, or its hidden under a sub menu making it more annoying to rapidly change.

Imagine if on your phone to change the volume you had to swipe into a settings menu first and then change it on a slider versus just using the volume buttons on the side. Seems like a worse way for something you're potentially wanting to rapidly adjust, like when you accidentally start playing something way too loud.

Why not have the "buttons" change the touch bar itself into a slider when pressed?

If you locate them in the middle it could be a seamless "press, drag, release" action

That is what the touchbar did. It doesn't take two steps. You motion like you're dragging the volume button and the slider appears under you, already being dragged.

Fn keys usually double as media keys so I use them a lot, as do most laptop users I know.

Same. I still have my intel Mac as a secondary, backup device and I still love using it, in part because of the touchbar.

Interesting to hear a different perspective on the touchbar. I have yet to meet someone who liked it. Removes touch typing, requires you to refocus attention, etc. Changing the volume is easy, button same place always - but with touch bar I have to look down and do the slidey thing. If they implemented real keys with that display built in...now we're talking!

The touchbar was great when apps used it for useful things. It’s main sin was replacing the physical escape key and I suspect if even just that key had remained physical most people would have been fine with the touchbar because most people don’t really use the f-keys by touch. Most of the time when I’m using the f-keys, it’s to use the debugger for an IDE. And that’s where the touchbar really shined because instead of remembering whether f6 or f5 was step over, the touchbar could just display the expected symbol.

Personally I’d love to see the touchbar make a comeback either as an addition to the fkeys row, or as a set of e-ink/oled physical buttons where the fkeys are. Allow the displayed legends to update while still keeping the physicality.

Even without BTT, I liked the touchbar (especially on the Macbook “Esc” which restored the escape key). It was nice having keys that actually said what they did. Maybe someday, keycaps with an LCD-generated display will be feasible (or maybe e-paper for power consumption needs)

Yeah, I hated the keyboard but really did like the touchbar. Apple really dropped the ball there though. We shouldn't have needed Better Touch Tool to make it useful.

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