
Nyancat on the touchbar - matt2000
https://github.com/avatsaev/touchbar_nyancat
======
m0dest
To evoke maximum outrage, you should show AdMob mobile banner ads on the Touch
Bar. First app to do it wins a free press cycle.

~~~
Mayzie
Don't give anyone ideas.

~~~
madaxe_again
Of course it'll be done.

Here I am with an iPhone 6s, and on the average site I see less content than I
did on WAP - many sites are 80/20 or worse on mobile.

How long until hardware manufacturers include dedicated advertising displays
in exchange for cheaper up-front hardware?

~~~
nothrabannosir
Tip: if you have another browser, turn off JS in Safari. Use Safari until you
really need JS, copy paste URL, Chrome, go to clipboard link, retry. It's
laborious, but it beats getting bent over the knee by mobile ads.

~~~
qb45
Sounds like state-of-the-art pre-adblock technology.

Browsing with no-JS/JS browsers indeed is laborious nowadays. I use this
approach out of habit on my desktop machine, but on my new laptop I just
couldn't bring myself to copy this solution and installed an adblocker
instead.

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awalGarg
So... just about the touchbar and not this particular project:

The touchbar is on the keyboard, almost perpendicularly (and many times at an
obtuse angle) opposite to the screen. So I have to move my head up and down
all the time. This is not an issue with the regular keyboard because it has
physical buttons which don't change their meaning, so I have memorized the
layout and I can use my muscle memory.

To avoid moving human head up and down, maybe they should have put it adjacent
below or above the screen, you know. And while they were at it, maybe they
should have just merged it into the screen seamlessly... Oh, and while they
were at _that_ , they could make the entire screen a touch-screen instead of
just a small bar. Just imagine... a touchscreen laptop. Now _that_ would be
amazing, right?

~~~
idlewords
It should be legal to murder someone for touching your laptop screen. I can't
think of a bigger co-worker foul than that.

Making a screen that people are supposed to touch would be an unthinkable
crime.

~~~
mirkules
Smartphones and tablets undid _years_ of training on my coworkers to stop
touching my screen.

I just gave up and now always keep a microfiber wipe or rag next to my screen.

~~~
squidi
How can we explain these people that like to point at a laptop screen with a
pen? I'm mortified every time I see it.

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hanief
Apple's HIG[1] on the Touch bar is actually great. You can sort of understand
the reason Apple put it on the Macbook. You can at least envision two
interesting things:

\- Touch UI for scrubbing/scrolling contents faster.

\- Dynamic shortcuts for most used commands that previously only accessible by
using the keyboard.

[1]
[https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Us...](https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/AbouttheTouchBar.html)

~~~
monkmartinez
You mean like the ginormous trackpad directly beneath the keyboard? Wouldn't
it be cool if they built scrubbing/scrolling right into that?

Also, dynamic shortcuts! Like the kind you get with BetterTouchTool[1]?

[1][https://www.boastr.net/](https://www.boastr.net/)

~~~
hanief
I haven't actually tried it yet, but by watching the launch demo and several
screenshots of touch bar on app like Photos or Final Cut Pro I can see that:

\- Touch Bar is probably better on scrubbing/scrolling because you can
actually see the zoomed out content, like the entire timeline of the movie on
FCP.

\- I haven't tried Boastr. I am sure it's useful and faster for pro. But on
first look it's pretty complicated. It's not built in to the Mac and not
easily accessible, especially for new user.

~~~
monkmartinez
So scrubbing on a tiny screen where your finger occludes the items you need to
see? Otherwise, the trackpad or screen itself would make more sense....

~~~
grzm
I think there's something to what you're saying here. That's often been an
argument for the mouse/pointer vs touch screen as well. How is this different
from using a touch screen in general? Or are you saying that's problematic as
well? Having an additional Touch Bar to effectively increase screen real
estate by removing the necessity of dedicating screen space to the slider
control seems like a win.

I don't do video editing or anything like that. My experience with a slider is
pretty much limited to Netflix and such on my tablet :) Seems to work pretty
well there. I can see how it might not work as well for fine-grained work. But
that's an argument for touch screens in general, isn't it? Or do you think
there's a distinction between Touch Bar and touch screen?

Caveat: On some video sliders, you can move vertically as well to
increase/dilate the resolution of the horizontal movement. You won't have the
same room with the touch screen. A couple options I can think of: use the
track pad or a key press to modify the Touch Bar tracking; or perhaps track
the speed of movement on the Touch Bar to modify the resolution, e.g., slower
movement, higher resolution.

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antishatter
As silly as the touch bar looks this type of project gives me hope for its
usefulness.

~~~
anothermoron
You seem to have a strange definition for "usefulness".

~~~
garrettgrimsley
The charitable interpretation of their comment is not that Nyan Cat is useful,
but that this is a creative use for a new medium/input device, and that we
will likely see more uses developed for it that we had not previously
envisioned.

~~~
antishatter
That is what I was thinking about.

~~~
chris_wot
I can only imagine the opportunities that arise for Cialis and Viagra
"marketers".

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gedy
I'd consider the touchbar more useful for UI interaction if it were instead in
either:

\- The trackpad

\- The bottom 1" of the laptop screen

~~~
nom
Or the spacebar!

~~~
nathancahill
Hmm.. I might use that. For typing, I wouldn't miss the physical space bar key
like I'll miss the physical escape key. It would be closer to where my hand is
naturally on the trackpad too.

~~~
nom
it could still work as a key :>

~~~
tdy721
But will it work like a key?

~~~
nom
It should be possible with enough care. A touch sensitive space bar would
really enhance a keyboard (I'm mostly using a desktop though, doesn't make
sense on a laptop)

~~~
addicted
That actually sounds like a pretty brilliant idea to me.

If the space bar area was converted to the track pad. Tapping it would be a
space, while dragging it would give you the touch bar like features. So for
example, when using Word, you have formatting options on the space touch bar
like they demonstrated on the touch bar. If you tap it, it's a space, but
start sliding from the left, and the formatting options appear on the screen
itself, and you stop sliding when you reach the option you want to select it.
Basically, tap to touch, and slide to scrub between options (or between a
timeline).

This way you also wouldn't have to take your eyes off the screen to know what
options are available.

~~~
scotchio
Love this. Please go work at Apple

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ryanbertrand
My big issue with the touch bar is it will be a far awkward reach for me when
I use my desk with external monitor with a external keyboard. It's really only
useful when I work outside my office. :(

~~~
culturestate
Same for me, but - anecdotally - I've noticed a ton of people working with
their laptops and external monitors in a stacked arrangement lately. They
don't use a secondary mouse or keyboard, and instead keep their laptop in
front of them with the external monitor above and behind it.

~~~
ryanbertrand
Ahh interesting. I will give this stacked approach a shot then! Thanks

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Pxtl
I want to see a music app on it so somebody do a sweet theremin solo on that
thing keytar style.

~~~
err4nt
Do you have a mouse or a touchscreen? You can already do this pretty
succesfully:
[http://staticresource.com/theremin.html](http://staticresource.com/theremin.html)

(Note: android, and computer users can use this righht away, but iOS users
will need to add this page to their homescreen before Apple is fully convinced
that the users DOES want to hear sounds generated via the web audio API. Seems
silly, but Apple doesnt trust that users know what they want)

~~~
stevetrewick
But I _don 't_ want to hear sounds generated by the web audio API. So this
behaviour seems entirely correct to me.

~~~
err4nt
Well if you are writing your own HTML and JS instruments, chances are you do
want to hear sounds generated by the web audio API.

Are the users of Safari and Mobile Safari so different that on the desktop its
totally fine (as in any browser) but Mobile Safari users need it blocked
unless they take action to hear it? I cant think of any reason to single out
the users of Mobile Safari with such a feature.

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StreamBright
I was worried that the touchbar will not have any legitimate use. On a bit
more serious note, is there anything that this could do that is worth the pain
of removing the esc and fn keys from the user point of view? I can hardly
think of anything.

------
DonHopkins
They should sell boxes of adhesive bluetooth touchbars by the dozen, so you
can stick them all over the place.

------
billconan
I thought about putting super mario on that bar.

~~~
bdcravens
Or the world's shortest level of Pacman

~~~
lightedman
I can't wait for Bonzi Buddy to make it here. /s

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davesque
That's pretty much all it's good for.

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ovao
That about sums it up.

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maxaf
The touch bar will be what finally compels Bloomberg to build a Mac-native
Terminal. Mark my words.

~~~
phyalow
There really isnt any need for a mac or linux terminal, Bloomberg anywhere
works great and so does running Bloomberg inside a VM... Also they would just
release a new keyboard with a touch bar given 99% of the install base is
Windows.

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Pica_soO
Imagine Microsoft Clippy providing great advice to the users of the touchbar.

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taurath
Dammit, literally what I was going to do, but my macbook ships in another 3
weeks.

~~~
kylec
Xcode has a Touch Bar simulator you could have used

~~~
taurath
Xcode is on my work only laptop sadly - this'll be my first personal MacBook!

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cobbzilla
could someone who has the TouchBar tell me: is it possible to lock the
function keys in place? Does the user or the app have ultimate control of its
little screen?

edit: I say this as someone who loves nyancat, and would love to have a nyan-
mode on/off toggle somewhere, if I had a TouchBar.

~~~
ryanbertrand
They did talk about customization with a drag and drop interface. Hopefully
they allow us to drop what we want there!

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JoeDaDude
For those of us that will not buy a Macbook anytime soon(the one I have is
working just fine), show us the youtube!

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chb
Thanks, I'll wait for Canonlake and LPDDR 4.

~~~
chb
I'll just leave this here.... [http://mjtsai.com/blog/2016/10/27/new-macbook-
pros-and-the-s...](http://mjtsai.com/blog/2016/10/27/new-macbook-pros-and-the-
state-of-the-mac/)

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Fej
Hasn't this meme kinda... played out at this point?

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Maybe? But if you want to shove a meme onto the touchbar this is pretty much
the perfect one to pick because of how it works.

