[consentfactory]

You know, Lenovo tried reinventing the keyboard a few years ago with their X1 Carbons by putting on a touch bar with function keys, volume keys, etc. and it was horrible. Trying to do any terminal work was horrible; for example, my insert key was touchbar FN + I or something ridiculous like that.

AFAIK, they didn't reproduce that model. Surprised Apple didn't take note.

[geerlingguy]

Yeah, I remember reading all the comparisons to the Lenovo version, and thinking that surely Apple must've improved from Lenovo's version, or added something more compelling.

But instead, they may have made it worse, if that's possible, because the escape key is indented, just to make the Touch Bar's graphical layout even on both sides. Definitely the worst case of form over function I've encountered with an Apple product.

[joch]

Even though the Esc key is indented, the empty space on the left still functions as Esc, meaning that the key is quite wide in practice.

[geerlingguy]

Not in my testing—if I touched around the left side without any part of my finger touching esc, it didn't register. And even when it did, the lack of any kind of feedback (Haptic feedback would be so nice here) makes it disconcerting at best.

[pawadu]

I actually think this could work better with the apple crowd. Some could be buying their first mac after owning an iphone / ipad and for those people touch does make sense.

The Lenovo crowd on the other hand are old-timers that want real keys that click and thats why the Lenovo touchbar was so hated.

[Piskvorrr]

Which, again, means "Pro is now just a marketing label, this is not a pro device."

[snowwrestler]

There are a lot of professions. Coders are over-represented on HN, compared to what are often called "creative professionals", who do graphic design, video production, photography, etc. Quite a lot of those workflows involve using sliders to set values by eye.

The Touch Bar is going to be great for those folks. And the new screen is better as well, displaying a wider gamut of colors than previous Macs.

Because Macs have gotten so popular with developers, it is easy to fool ourselves into thinking that developers are what saved Apple. But it was actually creative professionals who were one of the customer "pillars" that Jobs built off of when he came back. Developers flocking to the Mac is a fairly recent development.

[intoverflow2]

The other giant touch surface on the device works fine for this sort of thing. Even Apples flagship demo of scrolling a FCP timeline with the touchbar is better done using the trackpad which can also zoom in on timelines too and is better positioned for use with modifier keys.

- I work extensively in video/cgi software, it's not just devs annoyed by this device.

[freehunter]

Nonsense. For one, "pro" has always been a marketing label. Nothing inherent to the device excludes "normal" users, and not every "pro" user needs the MacBook Pro. I've seen a lot of professionals using iPads (and not the iPad Pro). I know that shatters your worldview, but a laptop marketed as "pro" has never signified that the user was actually a professional, and not using a laptop with "pro" in the name has never signified that the user wasn't a professional.

Your definition of "pro" is not universal. It is not absolute. Anyone who says "the new MacBook Pro is not a pro device!" needs to get over themselves. You're not the arbiter of what can and cannot be considered "pro".

[true_religion]

The Pro has always been expensive, which means that if you're just buying a laptop because you want to faff about, then you'll get an Air---it is much lighter on your lap and your budget.

Getting a Pro meant you wanted some kind of 'performance'---perhaps for games because of the separate video card, or a better CPU to run some taxing application.

What I have heard is that if you're a person who lived and breathed Excel, or you're a developer, then you'll likely use the function keys.

Personally? I've never used the function row keys for anything anything raising and lowering the volume of my machine.

[aloisdg]

Lenono X1 Carbon Gen II. My current labptop and I really like it. I could be better but it is nice to use.

[intoverflow2]

Really hoping this gets canned as a bad idea like the Lenovo one.

But the only time I can remember that Apple canned such a major feature in their hardware was the iPod Shuffle going voice only back to buttons.

Feel this release is way too high profile so we're going to be stuck with this mess.