There are many things in the tech world that have gotten fantastically better in my lifetime (I am 40). GPUs have been amazing, machine learning has made great leaps. virtual reality is now semi-awesome and improving.
But a few things have been getting worse. One of the things I most lament is the move to touch interfaces instead of tactile buttons. See phones, cars, remote controls (apple tv) and now keyboards on laptops. It is a worse interface most of the time. I absolutely abhor it. The trend shows no signs of ever reversing though.
My car (2018 Honda HRV) has full touch everything. I hate it. Luckily the volume and track selection controls are on the steering wheel as buttons.
I don't want the Heater and A/C controls to be touch. Once you learn where tactile controls are, you don't have to take your eyes off the road. You build the muscle memory pretty fast to their location. This is many times more difficult, if not impossible to do with touch.
A touch keyboard on a phone is definitely worse than a physical one, I'd agree.
But a phone with a bigger screen is also better than one with a small screen.
And there's definitely some sort of maximum size practical for a handset.
Given these constraints, right now I'll go for the big screen and crappy input method. Even though it annoys me a lot and typing on it is painful, I think of the choices available to get a physical keyboard on there (larger phone, smaller screen) I'd take what we have now.
Totally agree with you on the cars part. The other day I rented a Ford Edge at an airport, and I struggled to start it. I had to look up the Ford Edge manual PDF and then find a youtube video to understand what I was supposed to do to get the engine running.
User interfaces that make people feel stupid, are not good user interfaces.
I suspect we'll see a correction. Often new technologies or interfaces get used for things that don't benefit from it or even make it worse. Then novelty wears off and over time we figure out what things work well and what things don't...
Touchscreens are better for some things, physical interfaces are better for others.
Agree. In summer I want the AC to start right when I get in. I don't want to wait for the car's computer to boot up. (And what if it freezes/has problems?!)
I think the keyboards in 2016 and later MBPs are deliberately terrible so that Apple can say "Our market research shows that customers view hardware keyboards negatively" and use that as a basis for either phasing out the Mac or introducing a new piezo touch keyboard or something.
Inspired by a blog post, which I think made rounds on HN as well, I customised my Touch Bar using a Mac app called BetterTouchTool.
Now I have shortcuts to my most used apps on the left, a Now Playing display connected to Spotify in the middle and audio controls (including a volume slider that you don't have to expand first to use) on the right.
This setup is always displayed, regardless of the app currently on the foreground. This means the controls are once again in a predictable place for my fingers and has made using the touch bar a much more pleasant experience.
I love it. I programmed it to show my current TODO task, when I am on break as well as my battery and time. So I basically replaced my menu bar with it.
I miss a real ESC key. I can’t tell if I’ve pressed it or not, which is problematic when using vi and touch typing. Haptic feedback would be a nice add-on to make it a little more tolerable.
Also, Apple’s default configuration with Siri in the upper right was a horrible design decision. It only took me a few hours of use to decide to reconfigure the Touch Bar’s layout.
I found it interesting that even an Apple Genius Bar employee was recommending a third-party app to me: BetterTouchTool.
I am not a fan of the Touch Bar. I’m one of those who thinks the 2015 MacBook Pro is the epitome of human achievement.But that being said, one thing that is cool about the Touch Bar is when you are viewing a video and it puts a “smeared” thumbnail onto the Touch Bar making it easy to visually seek. That’s really useful sometimes.
I really like my 2015 MBP, but outside the dated hardware in comparison I still think the 2012 model was "the best". Yes, it was thicker and heavier - but I didn't have to worry about buying as much RAM as I thought I'd ever need at purchase time, or storage for that matter (because while OWC sold replacement SSD's for the rMBP they were the only vendor, why Apple didn't adopt M.2 when it was released is beyond me).
Hell, Dell managed to put SODIMM slots + standard M.2 in the XPS 15 and at it's thickest it's still thinner than the 2015 MBP. You can't even argue that Apple does things for the sake of size when the competition beats them on it while maintaining upgradability.
One day I hope Apple brings back a proper MBP, because at this point I don't buy their products for the hardware but because it's the only sane choice for a *NIX-based workstation that doesn't require I constantly mess with things or give up loads of software to use.
MacBook Pro is a piece of dog shit. Why would you pay $2000-3000 for a computer that has the performance of a $900 PC?
Even the brand new top of the line Mac book pros only have a AMD 555x gpu. That is completely unacceptable for the price. They get utterly and completely destroyed by cheaper PC's in virtually every benchmark.
I find the touchbar kind of clunky to use (like the author), but I believe it's partly because it's suffers from a sort of "gorilla arm" problem ergonomically.
It's a touchscreen, so you can't lay your fingers on the buttons before pressing something (unless they add pressure-sensitive controls), and you have to reach across the keyboard, so you can't brace your hand on the computer chassis while hitting buttons. Instead you have to awkwardly hover your hand over the touchstrip to use it correctly, which is really awkward
Same here. Though it helps a little to customize it - in particular removing Siri from the bar, heh. No more accidentally calling Siri. Another improvement was realizing that you can change volume/brightness with one continuous move (touch -> hold -> slide).
In any case, I'd like to keep Touch ID, but drop the rest.
I'm still not in love with it, but there are two things that make the touchbar much more tolerable.
BetterTouchTool and HapticKey.
The advantages of BTT are obvious but HapticKey has been a really pleasant surprise. It gives every interaction with the touchbar haptic feedback. I now use the touchbar much more frequently.
I’m I the only one who is neutral or even slightly positive about the Touch Bar? I definitely can’t understand why so many people hate it. Take the two points of the article: 1) he uses an external keyboard 80-90% of the time, so he doesn’t care. Well, it’s called Laptop for a reason. 2) errors: I’ve been using the bar for quite a while and wouldn’t say the error rate is any higher than for any other key on my keyboard. I delete a lot of text because I hit the wrong key on the physical keyboard
I wonder if I’m the only one who doesn’t understand where all the hate is coming from
It's physically impossible for it to be better and faster to use than the keyboard. People who spend a lot of time on computer interaction care about wasting too much of it and of course hate it. Those people who learn keyboard shortcuts for all the software they use.
Not every iteration of a beloved product series ends up a classic. This is a down period for the MBP. I hope the clout of some decision-maker within Apple has taken a hit.
I’m in the same place with my personal laptop, however I did use a work-issued 15” with touchbar for a couple months before changing jobs and I actually liked the touchbar shortcuts for Xcode because it exposed stuff that for some reason I’ve never been able to remember the keyboard shortcut. Everything else (especially changing volume) I remember being a pain in the ass
Having used a touchbar MacBook Pro for the last year daily (both for developing and casual use) I also agree with the article. For the most part I ignore it as I usually have a tethered monitor and keyboard setup. However for those times when I do work directly off the keyboard I more often than not accidentally hit a button (the worst being accidentally triggering a build and being tied up for 10 seconds trying to frantically cancel).
I think it would transcend gimmick into useful feature if they added haptic feedback of some kind when it is used. I have plenty of memorized keyboard shortcuts so that I do not need to avert my eyes from the screen when typing, something that the touchbar requires to actually properly use. With some kind of physical feedback I would be more easily able to integrate it's use into my workflows, especially so if you could customize haptic feedback based on virtual buttons.
I was surprised they didn't use force touch from the iPhone as the way you interface with it.
It would feel so much better if you had to click the buttons, and it would cut down accidental brushes against it to basically nothing.
In fact, they nailed the haptic feedback on the macbook pro's touchpad so well, i'm still shocked they aren't doing more with it. A touchscreen that has buttons that only "click" when you click right on them, or being able to drag your finger slowly over the pad and feel "taps" when you hit an edge of something. I'm sure there's something i'm missing on why they aren't using it more, but it seems like they have all the ingredients for an awesome experience but just aren't using them all together!
I fully agree. Even though I don't own a touchbar MBP. I even choose to go with the older model because the touchbar could not be incorporated into my current workflow, even if it was great, as there is no separate keyboard with integrated touch bar (and frankly it would be to expensive if it was).
Agree. I found out that the small MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar still has an escape key and still has a headphone jack! So that is at least something to be excited about.
The author used the touch bar for two years and didn't think of removing the Siri button he accidentally clicked so much, or of adding volume controls to the expanded touch strip.
That's what I want to do: configure something that I used to not have to configure before. The touchbar replaced a row of keys that was fine before and required no extra effort. Once you configure something and it's no longer the default then you have to reconfigure every one you use or you have an inconsistent experience. I'm okay with this for many things but for a keyboard is ridiculous.
On the other hand, a standard feature that's been nearly unchanged for decades (a keyboard), that suddenly is radically different and has to have multiple customization's made by a user who may or may not know that customization's even exist, should not be considered a user friendly product.
It is a gimmick to satisfy novelty seekers. But it creates problems for old time users, it messes with muscle memory and having to look down is downright unproductive, it steals microseconds and takes you out of the context for a fraction of time. While kids love this, I know that it's less deficient than tactile buttons that are always there!
However, I think this could be great for new users, it is intuitive if you're new to computers: kids and old people who were never power users.
[+] [-] gameswithgo|7 years ago|reply
But a few things have been getting worse. One of the things I most lament is the move to touch interfaces instead of tactile buttons. See phones, cars, remote controls (apple tv) and now keyboards on laptops. It is a worse interface most of the time. I absolutely abhor it. The trend shows no signs of ever reversing though.
[+] [-] iClaudiusX|7 years ago|reply
touch interfaces
* requires visual focus
* no feedback
* low information density
hardware
* death of repair (everything is hyper-fragile, glued or soldered)
* death of expansion options (battery, storage)
* "de-contenting" or removing features to sell more accessories
* focus on vanity aesthetics over function
* ever-increasing prices for less YoY improvement
software
* death of QA
* death of stable releases (endless hash-barf versions)
* notification spam
abandonment of user control
* os-mandated default applications and services
* lack of security updates (android)
* forced beta testing (apple, windows)
app store model
* no discovery
* no search
* no user privacy
* abusive micro-transactions
[+] [-] H1Supreme|7 years ago|reply
I don't want the Heater and A/C controls to be touch. Once you learn where tactile controls are, you don't have to take your eyes off the road. You build the muscle memory pretty fast to their location. This is many times more difficult, if not impossible to do with touch.
[+] [-] Nursie|7 years ago|reply
A touch keyboard on a phone is definitely worse than a physical one, I'd agree.
But a phone with a bigger screen is also better than one with a small screen.
And there's definitely some sort of maximum size practical for a handset.
Given these constraints, right now I'll go for the big screen and crappy input method. Even though it annoys me a lot and typing on it is painful, I think of the choices available to get a physical keyboard on there (larger phone, smaller screen) I'd take what we have now.
[+] [-] sxp62000|7 years ago|reply
User interfaces that make people feel stupid, are not good user interfaces.
[+] [-] Reedx|7 years ago|reply
Touchscreens are better for some things, physical interfaces are better for others.
[+] [-] ekanes|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitwize|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martinraag|7 years ago|reply
Now I have shortcuts to my most used apps on the left, a Now Playing display connected to Spotify in the middle and audio controls (including a volume slider that you don't have to expand first to use) on the right.
This setup is always displayed, regardless of the app currently on the foreground. This means the controls are once again in a predictable place for my fingers and has made using the touch bar a much more pleasant experience.
[+] [-] nikivi|7 years ago|reply
https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/my-mac-os/tree/master/btt
[+] [-] byteCoder|7 years ago|reply
Also, Apple’s default configuration with Siri in the upper right was a horrible design decision. It only took me a few hours of use to decide to reconfigure the Touch Bar’s layout.
I found it interesting that even an Apple Genius Bar employee was recommending a third-party app to me: BetterTouchTool.
[+] [-] ephimetheus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimsmart|7 years ago|reply
https://github.com/niw/HapticKey
[+] [-] Angostura|7 years ago|reply
> "So is the Touch Bar a gimmick? I say yes."
[+] [-] TrevorAustin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beamatronic|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snuxoll|7 years ago|reply
Hell, Dell managed to put SODIMM slots + standard M.2 in the XPS 15 and at it's thickest it's still thinner than the 2015 MBP. You can't even argue that Apple does things for the sake of size when the competition beats them on it while maintaining upgradability.
One day I hope Apple brings back a proper MBP, because at this point I don't buy their products for the hardware but because it's the only sane choice for a *NIX-based workstation that doesn't require I constantly mess with things or give up loads of software to use.
[+] [-] jcden|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] writeslowly|7 years ago|reply
It's a touchscreen, so you can't lay your fingers on the buttons before pressing something (unless they add pressure-sensitive controls), and you have to reach across the keyboard, so you can't brace your hand on the computer chassis while hitting buttons. Instead you have to awkwardly hover your hand over the touchstrip to use it correctly, which is really awkward
[+] [-] vondur|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Reedx|7 years ago|reply
In any case, I'd like to keep Touch ID, but drop the rest.
[+] [-] mthoms|7 years ago|reply
BetterTouchTool and HapticKey.
The advantages of BTT are obvious but HapticKey has been a really pleasant surprise. It gives every interaction with the touchbar haptic feedback. I now use the touchbar much more frequently.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] baxtr|7 years ago|reply
I wonder if I’m the only one who doesn’t understand where all the hate is coming from
[+] [-] zzzcpan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frou_dh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhardih|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xCMP|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoblePublius|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathewsanders|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dean177|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] photigragraphy|7 years ago|reply
I think it would transcend gimmick into useful feature if they added haptic feedback of some kind when it is used. I have plenty of memorized keyboard shortcuts so that I do not need to avert my eyes from the screen when typing, something that the touchbar requires to actually properly use. With some kind of physical feedback I would be more easily able to integrate it's use into my workflows, especially so if you could customize haptic feedback based on virtual buttons.
[+] [-] Klathmon|7 years ago|reply
It would feel so much better if you had to click the buttons, and it would cut down accidental brushes against it to basically nothing.
In fact, they nailed the haptic feedback on the macbook pro's touchpad so well, i'm still shocked they aren't doing more with it. A touchscreen that has buttons that only "click" when you click right on them, or being able to drag your finger slowly over the pad and feel "taps" when you hit an edge of something. I'm sure there's something i'm missing on why they aren't using it more, but it seems like they have all the ingredients for an awesome experience but just aren't using them all together!
[+] [-] aequitas|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Justsignedup|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beamatronic|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhardih|7 years ago|reply
Basically the '15 model with improved battery, cpu, memory and hdd.
I'd buy one today if I could!
[+] [-] strikelaserclaw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mFixman|7 years ago|reply
This review is worthless.
[+] [-] choward|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nck4222|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lllr_finger|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmlx|7 years ago|reply
i solved it by having a static set of buttons and an app that vibrates the touchpad when i touch the bar.
the touch bar is the force touch of macbooks.
[+] [-] onemoresoop|7 years ago|reply
However, I think this could be great for new users, it is intuitive if you're new to computers: kids and old people who were never power users.