
Sampler for Mac Touchbars - anigbrowl
http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2020/07/09/free-macos-sampler-samplr-for-touchbar/
======
pcr910303
I guess this HN post will inevitably turn into about the MacBook Touch Bar, so
I would like to contribute my opinion on this:

I've said this multiple times here now, but the Touch Bar is really a joy to
use and very useful if you're not the person who's always using only Vim. My
personal feeling is that the people who dislike the Touch Bar heard the bad
things about it, tried it for a time and two, decided that it's not something
good, and spreading the word.

Text suggestion is super useful, the emoji selector is useful very much, text
formatting controls are very useful, debugging controls are super useful (and
much superior than fn keys), moving between tabs are super useful, etc...
Really I can't understand all of the hate that the Touch Bar gets on HN.

And yes, you can touch-type on the Touch Bar, it's not context-sensitive
enough to develop muscle memory. You can just reach out your finger from your
keyboard without seeing when you're using a particular app. You get muscle
memory on how to trash the files on the Finder, comment out a line or rename a
variable in Xcode, control display or volumes, move between videos... (And you
can type esc super-reliably without looking at all, so really 'You can't use
Vim with the Touch Bar' is a bit exaggerated.)

One tip for all of the Touch Bar MBP users - you might want to install the app
HapticKey[0], which is a very super useful app that provides haptic feedback
on every Touch Bar touch. I consider this the biggest mistake on Apple's part
- with haptic feedback it's much easier to develop muscle memory (although I
did develop muscle memory without this app too).

[0]: [https://github.com/niw/HapticKey](https://github.com/niw/HapticKey) \-
or you might like 'brew cask install haptickey'.

~~~
bedbot
I never comment, and I appreciate your view, but suffice it to say that I hate
the Touch Bar enough that your comment has spurred me to post.

My company-issued laptop has a Touch Bar, and I can only imagine that it was
invented and distributed by some kind of malicious clique of saboteurs within
Apple who hate both (1) users and (2) Apple and want both to fail.

Brushing the Touch Bar accidentally with a finger leads Siri to interrupt me,
silencing whatever video call I'm on or music I'm listening to. Instead of
being able to adjust the volume manually or pause what I'm listening to with a
key that I can press without looking, I have to flatten and retract my hands,
peer down at the touchbar, and then poke through several options just in order
to do a simple operation, all the while terrified that Siri will interrupt me.

~~~
JohnTHaller
If you often listen to music/watch videos and need to adjust the volume, have
you thought about adding a physical volume knob? Something like this:
[https://www.droking.com/USB-Controller-USB-Volume-Audio-
Adju...](https://www.droking.com/USB-Controller-USB-Volume-Audio-Adjuster-PC-
Speakers-Switch-Control-Module-for-Adjusting-Volume-of-Computer-Laptop)

~~~
wingworks
I want to get something like that, but designed well with media keys and
separate vol/mic sliders for specific apps. Like Discord.

------
npunt
Touch Bar is great for sliding, but terrible for button presses as it often
rejects very quick button presses and of course you can't use it by feel.

90% of what I want out of the Touch Bar is the ability to slide up/down
brightness or volume. For some reason they don't implement it that way - its
either a double action of tapping to open sliders then sliding, or buttons
that take several taps to adjust how I like.

Maybe my use cases are crazy... I just don't get it though. Glad to see
someone trying to use it for what it offers.

~~~
ohazi
I don't understand why anyone would prefer a volume slider to discrete up/down
buttons. I almost never want to quickly slide to a specific volume, it's
always "this is a little too loud" or "I didn't quite hear that."

The action I want is a quick _relative_ tick up or down, then listen again to
see if the improvement is adequate, then repeat as necessary until it's
perfect.

Sliders are good for quickly moving by a large amount to a rough _absolute_
position. But they're _utter crap_ for fine adjustment.

Am I the only one who gets infuriated when trying to get to the exact spot I
want by rolling my finger ever so slightly to get a slider to move by half a
pixel? It takes _forever_ and it gives you RSI!

~~~
yakkers
You can 'flick' the volume or brightness button on the Touch Bar to the left
or right to turn down/up respectively. It even works holding down Shift+Option
to enable more fine control of either.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
> It even works holding down Shift+Option to enable more fine control

So now I need to use two hands and look at the control to use it when the
previous worked fine one handed on touch alone.

~~~
wingerlang
Fine grained control (+0.1 "dots") still required two hands before I think?

~~~
whywhywhywhy
Can be done one handed (opt+shift+vol) but it wasn't needed to fix inaccuracy
in the default interface as the post I replied to suggested

------
crazygringo
This may be the first interesting/good use for the Touch Bar many HN'ers have
seen.

But the touchbar was designed primarily for AV professionals from the
beginning -- sliding controls for filmstrips, audio sliders, colors, etc.

It's just that most developers have never needed to do any work like that, and
have never used the creative apps that expose this, so don't see the point.

But it's genuinely for the "professional" part of Pro. Not develop
professionals, but creative professionals.

~~~
randomdata
_> This may be the first interesting/good use for the Touch Bar many HN'ers
have seen._

I've only recently started using a device with the TouchBar, but as a
developer I've really enjoyed having debugging controls on it. It is nice
being able to have the main screen focused on the running application and
having the secondary debugging tools on the TouchBar.

~~~
misnome
How do you mean? More than the usual start stop step-in step-over? With
physical keys you can “home” your finger and press without drifting or looking
down at the bar, and I find that much easier.

About the only thing I’ve found useful is when plugging in a projector and
getting the “mirror or extend” buttons directly rather than having to remember
which symbol it is. Every other case it’s felt inferior and gotten in the way
(like display/sound/volume access in an app that uses it)

~~~
pcr910303
> With physical keys you can “home” your finger and press without drifting or
> looking down at the bar, and I find that much easier.

You can also develop muscle memory with the Touch Bar as I've mentioned in my
comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786774](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23786774)

~~~
forgotmypw17
Can you consistently activate things on it without looking and also know for
sure whether or not you activated it?

Is there some kind of force feedback?

~~~
pcr910303
Well, I do use an app called HapticKey which provides haptic feedback, but yes
I was able to consistently activate things on it without looking even before I
started using the app. Most actions I used provided direct feedback on the
screen (e.g. deleting, opening a tab, opening an info window, etc...) so
feedback was less an issue.

------
eksu
Site has been hugged by HN; here is the video that is embedded on the page.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fMlmzTBF_LE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fMlmzTBF_LE)

------
donatj
It's interesting to me that this is the first really interesting use of the
touch bar I've seen in the years I've owned a laptop with one.

I'm also sad that it requires Catilina, I'm stuck on Mojave for the time being
thanks to a number of 32 bit apps I depend on.

~~~
intopieces
If you're a fan of customization, BTT-GoldenChaos [0] has made the Touch Bar
indispensable for me; I don't like using a laptop without a Touch Bar because
of this app.

[0][https://community.folivora.ai/t/goldenchaos-btt-the-
complete...](https://community.folivora.ai/t/goldenchaos-btt-the-complete-
touch-bar-ui-replacement/1281)

------
gorkish
Little apps like this demonstrate why the touchbar really is a useful user
interface for certain things.

Had Apple had the good sense to introduce it without removing an entire row of
keys used heavily by the developers tasked with writing software for it it
might have actually worked out.

~~~
stimpson_j_cat
Doesn't this demonstrate why the touchbar isn't very useful?

Every part of this UI would be better without it--physical keys to play the
samples, a big touchpad to use slider controls with, the hi-def screen to see
it all happen.

(It's a really neat demo)

~~~
pampa
Just a thought. Instead of replacing the f keys and escape, they should have
just replaced the whole area under the keyboard where the trackpad is with a
touch screen. It is a win-win. Imagine a huge touch interface where we already
expect one, with haptic feedback AND visual feedback.

~~~
dmitriid
We can already imagine that. Apple increased the size of the touchpad for no
good reason. And palm rejection constantly fails causing the cursor to jump as
you're typing or pressing key shortcuts.

~~~
breakfastduck
I can see them expanding the cursor behavior in iPadOS into macOS, where its
magnetic and it's more like a touch surface.

If there was any trackpad to pull that off its the macbook trackpads.

~~~
dmitriid
Why would you ever want that in a desktop OS?

~~~
breakfastduck
It depends on the execution.

It feels super nice on iPad and if you're running a Catalyst app or such on
macOS that's designed for it, it could be cool to be able to toggle between
the cursors.

~~~
dmitriid
> It feels super nice on iPad

Because it's an iPad.

> on macOS

That's a desktop OS with an entirely different ... well, everything. Including
precision positioning of the cursor.

I can only see it as an accessibility option (in this case it might work
well).

~~~
breakfastduck
I would agree on the macOS point right now, but big surs design style leans
heavily towards a style that would probably work quite well with it.

I would only want it as an option, I would in no way want it to be the only
option. I just think the different cursor types could benefit different types
of applications.

------
jshaqaw
I’ll probably get downvoted to Hades here but I finally upgraded my mid 2012
retina MacBook Pro to the latest model and I quite like the touch bar. Yes I
know pure keyboard commands are more efficient but at this point in life my
available bandwidth for memorizing too many app specific keyboard chords is
limited. It’s nice to just tap “leave” when in a Zoom call or “pause” when
playing music.

~~~
cactus2093
That's the idea but IMO the major issue with it is that the touchbar is
dedicated to the currently in-focus application. That's basically the opposite
of what I want, if Zoom is already in focus I can click to leave just as fast
as I can use the touchbar to leave. If I have switched over to a browser tab
for taking notes and zoom is in the background, that's when it would be useful
to be able to leave the zoom meeting from the touchbar.

Edit: Music apps are somewhat privileged and play/pause can be done more
globally, but it's still multiple taps, and there are other cases I would like
to be able to use.

~~~
breakfastduck
Easily solved with Better Touch Tool and its config or plugins.

Yeah, it's an extra expense but it makes the touchbar truly useful.

------
iliaznk
So cool! If you're into that kind of stuff I strongly recommend trying out
this little gem
[https://urbanlienert.com/miditouchbar/](https://urbanlienert.com/miditouchbar/)
It's a touchbar midi-keyboard, it displays two full octaves and also has some
other controls like volume and panning for the current channel and some
others. But I mostly use the keyboard only and it works great with Ableton
Live. Much better than one octave on your computer keyboard when you want to
play while laying on a couch with your laptop! I'm really happy I've found it
and it makes the touchbar really useful for me.

------
mshaler
For me, only Pock [0] comes close to a possibly or passingly ergonomic use
case for the Touch Bar. (Not hating on vim.)

Hard-wired function keys as abstraction are cognitive overhead even if
mechanically efficient.

Touch Bar ignores ergonomics (screen to bar to screen) and what should be up
(interface queues) is down (enemy of touch-typing). Cognitive overhead and
mechanically inefficient (no muscle memory).

Not worse than QWERTY but still...

[0]: [https://pock.dev](https://pock.dev) (no affiliation)

~~~
sdoering
Pock made the Touch Bar usable for me. I added relevant real estate to my
screen, as I could now be fullscreen by default for all windows and not miss
relevant notifications from active apps on other screens.

------
below43
I've just started using a 2020 MacBook Pro. I was previously very apprehensive
about the touchbar (in fact, it was a key reason for me avoiding getting one
for some time).

A few days in, I'm super impressed with it, and think it is able to offer
subtle but effective workflow improvements within applications. (I think I'd
find it frustrating if I had an older version with no hardware escape key
though).

~~~
hobs
I still just press it randomly and issue commands to applications constantly
that I dont want, and that's after disabling half of it because I touched it
too much :\

~~~
throwaway744678
I regularly fat-finger the paste key on the touchbar (eg in Office apps, it
sits just above the [3] key) when typing a key on the number row. Since you
get no tactile feedback, it took me a few days to understand why random bits
of text appeared spontaneously under my cursor!

------
opan
I don't have a MacBook, but one thing that comes to mind reading the
discussions about this is the complaint of the function keys going away, and
whether there's a way to improve the default experience anyway. I use a 60%
keyboard, so if I want to hit f1 or f2, I'm hitting an FN key + one of the
numbers. I've used this keyboard for years and I really like it. Can you do
this in software on Mac OS? Add a bunch of FN+key actions so that you could
use the keyboard more like a 60%? Then the touchbar would be more like
configurable macro keys and less like a daring replacement of core
functionality. I will say it probably wouldn't work as well on a laptop
keyboard. I can hit my FN key on my Pok3r with the side of my hand because of
there being a drop in space below the keyboard, which you don't get on a
laptop because the body continues and there's an area for a trackpad. Same
story for hitting things like the ctrl key.

~~~
jeffhuys
If you press fn, the whole touchbar switches to the F1-F12 keys, or I didn't
read your comment too well and you already know that.

------
_bxg1
Question for someone who works in music/audio: is this actually useful as a
workflow tool, or is it just a cool tech demo/toy?

~~~
colecut
From the article: Alonso describes the app as “a demo of Samplr for the
MacBook Touch Bar.”

Samplr is Alonso's full featured iPad app.

From the website: *This free app is distributed as is. No support is provided
and no future updates are planned.

That said, I'm sure a talented and adventurous person could off pull using
this. You define your limits =)

------
squeaky-clean
Minor nitpick, but it's "Samplr" and not "Sampler". Samplr is a fairly well
known sampler application for the ipad. When I clicked the link I was
wondering if it was Samplr, or someone copying the same idea.

Very awesome idea though. Samplr for iPad is an absolutely amazing app which
is both a great musical idea and great demo of using a touch-screen for
innovative musical usage. I don't have a touchbar Mac, but have to agree with
all the other comments here saying this is the best usage I've seen of the
touch bar so far.

------
PaulDavisThe1st
For those us without touchbars (or even an apple machine), but who might have
been wondering just how far you could go if you really tried to make the mouse
into an expressive musical instrument:

DiN is Noise:

[https://dinisnoise.org/?what=screenshots](https://dinisnoise.org/?what=screenshots)
[https://dinisnoise.org/](https://dinisnoise.org/)

~~~
GordonS
An aside, but I always thought "din" was only a Scottish word - does it mean
noise/racket elsewhere?

~~~
pkage
Yes, it means noise/racket everywhere—though it is primarily used in the
UK/Ireland/Australia and fairly uncommon in the US.

------
dep_b
The Touch Bar should have been right below the screen, where I actually see
it. Otherwise I need to interrupt my flow by looking at it. I’ve made it
somewhat more useful with Pock (using negative spacing) but still not blown
away by it.

This kind of application and many other uses would be so much better if it was
like a part of the screen instead of the keyboard.

~~~
GloriousKoji
If it was on the screen the screen itself would slowly get pushed back with
each interaction.

~~~
dep_b
I mean that it should be at the top of the case instead of above the keys. If
the bottom bezel would be reduced they would almost touch, making it "a part
of the screen" instead of a part of the keyboard.

The current strip is out of sight all of the time so I cannot anticipate on
it's changed context without taking my eyes off the screen.

------
binarynate
I didn't mind my MBP's touchbar until it randomly stopped working two years
in. Now it just sporadically flashes an annoying bar of bright white light, so
it's completely covered in electrical tape to block that from view. So, my
experience with it has overwhelmingly been negative.

------
albatross
\- Given $2000+ laptop by company

\- Complains

I get that a lot of folks here are engaging in what they view as "healthy
design criticism," but, as a creative professional who does not have the
budget for such a machine, it's hard to see most of the complaints here as
anything more than privileged whining and failure to adapt to changing tools.

Laptops (and more broadly, personal computers) are designed as general purpose
machines; no knowledge of the end-user is assumed. There may be a pool of
activities a hardware designer may expect to take place on the machine, but
designing for any one of them in particular is likely to come at a detriment
to the others.

Special purpose tools exist for a reason, and perhaps such is needed in the
"Programmer's Laptop" space, but criticizing a general purpose tool for not
being purpose-built for a specific application is ridiculous.

Edit: because i English bad

------
lasryaric
I did not know the touchbar was that capable. Great job.

------
dml2135
Damn, too bad it requires Catalina. I've still been hanging on to Mavericks
for the 32-bit app support.

~~~
tolle
Mavericks? Do you mean Mojave? Because I don't even think Mavericks runs on
the Touch Bar MacBooks.

------
gonational
This is the best thing I’ve seen so far on a TouchBar.

I wish Apple would offer a version without the TouchBar.

~~~
stepstop
The MacBook Airs do not have it but.... I agree

------
alfonsodev
this would have made a really cool demo the day the touchbar came out.

~~~
toyg
Well, I remember one demo being a DJ scratching and so on. Not that far off.

~~~
speedgoose
This demo was so ridiculous it was funny. I don't know why they decided to
have such a demo and approved it. I'm sure the DJ wished he had a bigger
touchscreen.

------
Bootwizard
Kind of wish I stole my MacBook from my last job now

------
hashbig
Seems like an app better suited for the iPad than the touchbar. The Touch Bar
is meant to complement a desktop app, not be one.

~~~
nielsbot
There's an iPad version! This is a fun mini demo of the full-featured iPad app
on the Touch Bar.

------
brian_herman__
Nice! Thanks for making it free!

------
baggy_trough
Will pay money for next Mac to have no touch bar. It's awful.

~~~
sedatk
I stopped using my MBP 16 solely because of Touch Bar. The way my hands rest
on the keys causes accidental presses on Touch Bar and it drives me crazy.

~~~
baggy_trough
The only way I found around that was to set the Touch Bar to function keys. So
it's basically an inferior function key row in every possible way.

~~~
sedatk
I did that too and now it ruins my work in other mysterious ways rather than
simply locking the computer.

------
dumpsterdiver
I used to be able to refactor my code by pressing shift-f6, but now that I
have a touch bar it feels more natural to just use my mouse to click on a menu
and scroll to the option I'm looking for (if I can even find it). It's so much
slower.

The only progress happening here is my steady progression into madness. Why
don't you just take away our keyboards entirely and give us circles and
squares to push, Apple? And then we can giggle as drool runs down our faces
onto our shirts. Are you happy now?!

That being said, I like what you've made here. I refuse to purposely touch my
touch bar so I won't actually use it, but it looks fun.

Edit: Toned it down a touch. The touch bar is a sensitive issue for me...

~~~
pqdbr
I don't know if you know this already (I didn't), but you can go to Settings >
Keyboard, and in the first tab (Keyboard) you'll find two selects.

On the bottom one, labeled "Press fn key to show", you can select "Show F1,
F2, etc", so your function keys will always show up when you hold Fn.

Also, on the top select, I suggest you change the default setting to "Expanded
Control Strip", since I find "App Controls" totally uber useless.

Sorry if my labels don't match yours exactly, I'm on pt-br and did some
literal translation here.

~~~
dumpsterdiver
Yeah, I know that you can show images of the function keys, and I've tried to
use them, but it just doesn't work for me. I've learned that I rely very much
on tactile response from the input devices I use.

