[coldtea]

>The touch bar examples shown are a usability disaster. You're going to hide UI from the screen and make me keep looking at the keyboard to find functionality?

That's the wrong way to think of it.

It's not a keyboard, it's an adaptive toolbar. And it's close to what professionals in several industries pay handsomely for -- control surfaces, only this one is also adaptive.

>I stopped looking at the keyboard every 10 seconds when I learned how to touch type.

It's obviously NOT meant for typing heavy workloads. Secretaries and programmers coding will not use it when doing their thing.

[Eldandan]

These professionals in several industries paid handsomely for the Adaptive keys on the 2nd generation Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon. So much so that Lenovo had to remove adaptive keys for the next iterations.

[coldtea]

>These professionals in several industries paid handsomely for the Adaptive keys on the 2nd generation Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon. So much so that Lenovo had to remove adaptive keys for the next iterations.

Things are not the same just because they are instances of the same concept.

Lenovo's implementation was black and white, did not have controls such as slide, sweep, multitouch gestures, etc, and was just a novelty from a single Wintel vendor with not much third-party app support or OS support.

Apple's implementation adds deep OS support, will have software vendors onboard (judging from the adoption of older features Apple puts into its hardware/OS, it wont be more than a year when most apps people use will support this, from Photoshop which does already, to the Apple Pro/iLife apps (of course), to Pixelmator, Premiere, and tons of others. It also has color, multitouch/gestures, etc, which increase the utility much more, along with higher definition (for thumbnails and such which it also does).

Also Lenovo's other than that didn't sell much to the creatives market, where such a feature would be appreciated more (if it was done properly of course). Macbook Pro's already sell very well to creatives.

It's the same old story really: more thought out, more integrated, and more supported implementation beats "first to market this general idea" every time.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

Eh. In the days when the animals talked, there were keyboards with generic function keys in a top row, with enough space around them for a plastic template sheet labeling the keys with functions for specific software.

Some templates came pre-printed for specific packages, some were blanks for pencil-your-own. Rarely used, but at least those thingies were cheap and did not remove real keys.

[agumonkey]

Such things were even part of marketing features, lots of old calculators had them. HP calculators even had dedicated modules paired with custom .... stickers (or overlays) to adapt "like" the touchbar.

[tylermorten]

Your comment made me miss my Intellivision for some reason :(

[agumonkey]

Everybody wants 'this' yet nothing nailed it. Keyboard are strange beasts, and designers rarely have the right context or experience. A virtual bar is awesome in theory; but the fixed and tactile qualities that seem idiotic today are actually part of the value. Imagine a piano without keys. Even non weighted keys are despised by any musician. Your mind and body have lots of subtle cue sensors to perceive and react accordingly. Anything that contradicts this will fail for refined/industry use.

[coldtea]

>Even non weighted keys are despised by any musician.

Not exactly. Jazz and classically trained musicians, yes. Rock, pop, electronica, etc gigging keyboardists play non-weighted keyboards all the time.

>Even non weighted keys are despised by any musician. Your mind and body have lots of subtle cue sensors to perceive and react accordingly. Anything that contradicts this will fail for refined/industry use.

We have already been over this when the smartphones came out without actual keys.

[agumonkey]

> Not exactly. Jazz and classically trained musicians, yes. Rock, pop, electronica, etc gigging keyboardists play non-weighted keyboards all the time.

True, but every time I've seen linear keys used, it was for "parody" accompaniment.

> We have already been over this when the smartphones came out without actual keys.

And I miss it every day.

[theseoafs]

> True, but every time I've seen linear keys used, it was for "parody" accompaniment.

Then you can't have been paying much attention.

[yojex]

To add to this, I didn't interpret it as "hiding UI" either. I don't think anything will be exclusively available for use on the TouchBar. The way I understood it was the TouchBar will behave like shortcuts to existing functionality.

[Stenerson]

+1 To me it was more about saving mouse movements than hiding UI. Don't mouse all the way to the top of the screen to click that. Press this dynamic, context aware, button on your toolbar instead. If you'd still rather use hot keys, go for it!

[givinguflac]

Exactly. It even showed the same UI on the screen as far as I could tell. Personally I think this is a much more streamlined than the surface dial

[wtetzner]

The thing about the Surface Dial is that you don't have to look at it. If you want to press a button on the TouchBar, you have to look at the keyboard.

[seanmcdirmid]

I can imagine programmers using the touch bar while debugging, pause, steps would easily go on it.

[Maarten88]

Doesn't seem like an improvement. F9, F10 and F11 have done this quite well for the last 20 years for me. I can use those blindly while looking at the code and using the mouse to hover variables that I want to inspect...

[coldtea]

>F9, F10 and F11 have done this quite well for the last 20 years for me.

For what use? Keyboard shortcuts? That's not even half of what this is about.

F9, F10 and F11 can't replace a slider, or a color picker, or dialing in e.g. audio filter resonance, or sliding through frames.

>I can use those blindly while looking at the code

It's NOT for typing/coding. Think pro apps instead (and also lots of non pro, but not text-based apps).

[dmitriid]

Let's think pro apps.

Every single shortcut shown in the cringe-worthy demos today is already mapped to a well-known keyboard shortcut in the app. And pro users can use those shortcuts without ever having to look down at the keyboard.

Final Cut demo claimed that "some of these shortcuts are hard to find in the menus of an advanced app" whereas: 1. the touchbar was displaying the simplest of shortcuts, many of which are already mapped to keyboard shortcuts that professionals use 2. menus in MacOS have a built in search which touchbar lacks, obviously 3. the very next demo of Photoshop showed touchbar shortcuts nested two layers deep and are basically undiscoverable.

What the hell is touchbar if not a totally useless gimmick for actual pro users of pro apps?

[coldtea]

>Every single shortcut shown in the cringe-worthy demos today is already mapped to a well-known keyboard shortcut in the app. And pro users can use those shortcuts without ever having to look down at the keyboard.

I'm a pro user (of NLEs) and I don't "use those shortcuts without having to look down at the keyboard". Only a few of them.

And it's not because I don't do shortcuts in general (I've used Vim for over 20 years in all its glory).

Profesionals use external interfaces all the time, e.g. for color correction, editing etc. While this doesn't fully replace this, it's more than adequate for a lot of what those do, and perfect for editing on the field.

It's also not about those "keyboard shortcuts". Flipping through movie frames with variable speed is not a shortcut. Applying filter resonance on a DAW is not done with a shortcut. Heck, this can even change several items together at the same time (e.g. 2 virtual sliders etc). There are literally tons of other things we now use sliders, dials, etc for in Pro programs, and which arbitrary speed and "jump to place" (not just "one click at a time" as shortcuts offer) will be great.

>What the hell is touchbar if not a totally useless gimmick for actual pro users of pro apps?

It also has no wifi and less space than a Nomad from what I heard. Lame.

Anyway, let's give it a year and we'll see how many pro's swear by it.

[dmitriid]

> Profesionals use external interfaces all the time

Hence the need for the touchbar is further greatly reduced

> It's also not about those "keyboard shortcuts"... There are literally tons of other things we now use sliders, dials, etc for in Pro programs, and which arbitrary speed and "jump to place"

Which are delegated to a tiny strip in an awkward location (notice how carefully everyone is holding their fingers at ~90 degrees to the keyboard) controlled by very imprecise finger movements

> Anyway, let's give it a year and we'll see how many pro's swear by it.

I can agree on that :) We need more actual field experience

[stinos]

Well obviously it's not for coding, but I understand the one you're replying to perfectly. And I think there are hordes of developpers out there coding daily on their MBP. Which are now sort of left alone. Anecdote, though I doubt I'll be the only one for which the lack of F keys is a showstopper - also see other HN comments: after about 5 years on a Dell I was thingking maybe this year to go back to a MBP (even though my last one lasted only 3 years) but seeing I spend a lot of time debugging, which translates to repeatedly hitting F-keys which is burnt into muscle memory, it's just not going to happen. Even if I'd learn to do it with that bar thingie, it's a bit of a waste of time since going back to any other machine the bar isn't there.

[coldtea]

>Which are now sort of left alone.

Why? When were coders big on the function keys? Aren't you supposed to not take your hands from the home row, even with Vim/Emacs?

[stinos]

Coders don't just write code (no, you don't need F keys for that and yes your hands kan stay on the home row) they also debug it (for which the environments I, and seemingly others, use, assigned the F keys many many years ago)

[jontro]

I always forget which is which. Now looking at the chrome debugger F8 is used for Pause/Resume. Step Over F10, Step into F11, Step out Shift F11. Hence I use the mouse.

As an occasional debugging user it would be a great addition to have this on the keyboard.

[wtetzner]

I wonder if it would have been better to just allow different images to be displayed on the existing hardware keys. That way, you have physical keys, and can use them without looking, but when you're in an app that you're unfamiliar with, you can look and see what the keys are for.

[kbutler]

I always use those keys on a physical keyboard while looking at the display, but with a touchscreen, I always have to look where I'm pressing keys, and even then my fingers are sometimes slightly wrong.

[rabboRubble]

I have something like a touch bar on my Windows laptop. The main problem I have with it is that I touch it without knowing I have. Many a time I've gone down a rabbit hole of WIFI network issues to only discover that I've accidentally toggled WIFI off by brushing the bar.

This is one feature on my Windows laptop I don't like and not excited for a new Mac with one.

[ecnahc515]

If they use haptic feedback it might not be so bad. Plus, apple controls the OS and hardware together, so they can ensure notifications must be shown for behavior like turning off WIFI or something similar.

[rabboRubble]

Read a review, no haptic feedback [0]. Bummer. You are definitely right about haptic making a touch bar less prone to accidental touch.

[0] https://digg.com/2016/macbook-touch-bar-reviews-apple

[racl101]

"It's obviously NOT meant for typing heavy workloads. Secretaries and programmers coding will not use it when doing their thing."

- That's exactly what I understood as well.

I can see the touch bar being a boon for people who produce music through their macbooks to have a control surface.