[bmurphy1976]

This app was released recently:

https://pock.dev/

It puts the dock in your touchbar. It's the first time in the 9 months I've had this laptop where I've actually gone "ok, this is useful" and I am actually using it. I now have the dock auto hide and I mostly use the touch bar to open apps.

That said, I'd still prefer they ditched the touchbar in favor of function keys. I'd be happy if they shrunk the ridiculous size of the touchpad a bit, and put a row of function keys in between the touchpad and keyboard as well.

[pault]

Personally, while I have never once used the touchbar, I do think the ability for apps to display contextual function keys has a lot of use cases. I would be happy if they released physical keys with little oled screens on them, like that old Optimus keyboard. Apparently it was garbage but the tech has come a long way in ten years.

[mbreese]

I think that one thing holding this back is the lack of a desktop keyboard with a touchbar display. If there was a normal sized keyboard where you could have a full keyboard and a TB display, that would help give an incentive to have more touchbar apps like pock.dev.

Unfortunately, so many people hate the current version of the touchbar that there hasn’t been much innovation in this area.

[dfawcus]

A slight improvement over that invented by Apricot 36 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT_Apricot

[IshKebab]

Apps can display contextual functions on the screen! The main problem with the touchbar is that you never look at it. It's not discoverable.

[pault]

The problem with the touch bar is that you have to look away from the screen to use it. Physical buttons would allow you to touch type, and I don't think it's a problem to scan the keys a few times when you start using a new app. In that sense they are just as discoverable as keyboard shortcuts. You look them up a few times, and eventually you use them without thinking about it.

[SonderDesign]

We're working on that currently for an entire keyboard

www.sonderdesign.com

[pault]

Interesting, I've been wondering for years why nobody makes e-ink keyboards. I'm old enough to remember the $1,200 Optimus keyboard that had OLED screens in each key. Everybody wanted one, but then it turned out they were total shit to use. E-ink should have far fewer challenges than oled screens though. Just a bit of feedback: your product page doesn't tell me anything about the hardware design. I would want to know what kind of switches you are using, materials, travel distance, tactility, etc before I would consider buying one. You might want to include some detailed technical specs on another page if you want to attract the hardcore keyboard nerds. While they aren't a large market, they are influencers. I'd also like to see some video of the keyboard being used before I plop down $200 on a preorder.

[robocat]

Windows laptops are far worse than the touchbar: replacing the function keys with volume, brightness etc.

The two worst keys are the touchpad lock key, and the WiFi key. Both of which "crash" the laptop when your average user hits them unintentionally: because either the touchpad stops working or the internet stops working. Absolute madness.

[noisem4ker]

In all the laptops I've seen, volume and brightness controls require the Fn modifier to be pressed (or can be set to do so), else they behave as F1-F12 normally.

[ianai]

They did themselves disservice by replacing the f keys with a Touch Bar

[kkarakk]

honestly what do you use the dock for? i find i set up my windows in different workspaces at the beginning of the day and just toggle between them. the dock is more of an annoyance nowadays.

[elamje]

The https://pock.dev Touch Bar is great. It can show you the DateTime, battery life, all of your open apps, but the thing I use it for most is Spotify. You can do swipe gestures on the Spotify Touch Bar icon to control the music player without opening the app at all.

[bmurphy1976]

I do that as well, but I don't keep every app open all day long so the dock still comes in handy.