
Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away – the Escape key - geerlingguy
http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/apple-giveth-and-apple-taketh-away-escape-key-macbook-pro
======
jfoutz
Wait! No! Caps lock is for control!

I like my mac, but i guess this is my last one. My hands are cold and sweaty,
so they aren't perfectly reliable with touch devices. No escape key makes me
sad. It might make Apple sad, but they'll probably just cry themselves to
sleep on their giant piles of money.

~~~
ihuman
You can make caps lock both escape and control

[http://www.economyofeffort.com/2014/08/11/beyond-ctrl-
remap-...](http://www.economyofeffort.com/2014/08/11/beyond-ctrl-remap-make-
that-caps-lock-key-useful/)

~~~
jfoutz
That, that is very clever. Ctrl when pressing chords and esc when used alone.

~~~
rys
Beware that one of the tools mentioned in that link, Karabiner, does not work
on macOS Sierra.

------
nostromo
I wish Apple would taketh away one of the modifier keys instead.

They have Function, Control, Alt, Option, Command and Shift.

Regularly I forget which one is which so I just start spamming them all.

And I can never remember what ⌥ is supposed to mean.

~~~
chc
Aren't alt and option the same thing, or have I been missing some nuance for
several decades?

BTW, I think ⌥ is supposed to look like scales, representing "option." That's
how I've always remembered it, anyway.

~~~
igravious
Actually, now that I look at it afresh doesn't it remind you of a railroad
switch. Can't believe I never noticed that before.

~~~
tajen
It's the electricity symbol for a switch.

~~~
igravious
Gotcha, thanks. Seems to be a near variant of a SPDT toggle switch, Single
Pole Double Throw. Can't tell if it is technically an electrical symbol or an
electronic symbol.

[http://www.rapidtables.com/electric/electrical_symbols.htm](http://www.rapidtables.com/electric/electrical_symbols.htm)
(fifth symbol down)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_symbol#Switches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_symbol#Switches)
(second symbol along)

------
pryce
Apple might have made some missteps lately, but they're not stupid.

The point of the "magic" toolbar is to help desktop users finally leverage the
useful things you can do with contextually aware keys/controls, which is more
in line with how humans approach things, and a massively under-recognized part
of the reason that iPads are so much easier for non-computer people to use
than PCs or desktops.

See that 'cancel' button in the screenshot? That will _be_ the escape key,
under basically all circumstances that you would want an escape key. Here it
says "cancel" which is more descriptive and is exactly in line with the
language used on all the buttons and dialogues the user will see on the
screen. "Cancel" is what it actually does. "Esc" isn't.

Especially if the user is currently in a terminal, or VIM, I would expect the
key to show the 'Esc' label and continue as normal. Under bootcamp, or under
older macOS applications that don't attempt to interact with the Magic Toolbar
API, I would also expect that area to show the 'Esc' key.

I'm looking down while typing this on a Microsoft keyboard and I see 5 giant
"My favourites" buttons and some weird "star" button, and a calculator button,
all of which I have never used, and which sit above the mouldering function
row which again is used fairly infrequently by me, and basically never by my
family members. That is not how to design an interface.

------
ComputerGuru
I just gave up on Apple ever shipping you are MacBooks and received my custom
order HP two days before they announced the October 27th event. My (magnesium
unibody) ZBook is as slim as my retina MBP, has a higher-PPI display, also
comes with a glass trackpad, has user-replaceable battery, 2x M.2 PCIe SSDs,
and upgradeable ram. I was able to pay a bit extra and get it with a mobile
Xeon CPU (E3-1545m with Intel's top-of-the-line Iris Pro integrated GPU) which
is the equivalent of the i7 6920HQ only with more cache and better graphics,
meaning I was able to buy 32 GB of ECC RAM for only $200. It has a 4GB nVidia
Quadro and still manages to weigh less than my rMBP.

The only thing that sucks is the noise. It's quite even with the fan running
at its highest RPM, but the frequency of the resulting noise is very
distinguishable and it has a tendency to rev up and down quite suddenly (and
often). It doesn't help that there are two fans, one on each side, which turn
on and off independently - meaning you can suddenly feel like you've lost
hearing in one of your ears until you realize the noise level is imbalanced. I
don't know if Apple will introduce Xeon workstations, but even if they did,
I'm not sure I'm ready to give up my three USB 3.1 (non-C), three thunderbolt
3 (/USB-C), power, gigabit Ethernet, and 3.5mm ports in exchange for a more-
pleasant audio profile.

Did I mention I've been a faithful Mac user for over a decade?

~~~
visionscaper
Won't you miss macOS? It is not just about the hardware, it is the combination
of the macbook with the OS.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I used Mac because it gave me a great UX with access to all my favorite
command line tools and a posix API I could build against. With Windows 10
_finally_ shipping a real, supported posix target (Ubuntu for Windows - what
an unfortunate name) vs the years of Interix (R) which was discontinued and
replaced by "Linux subsystem for Windows" which was discontinued without a
replacement until Nadella's "Ubuntu/Bash for Windows", I now no longer have
need for OS X.

Plus, Apple doesn't care about macOS. HFS has bitrotted away, the OS itself
has taken backseat to mobile, and Apple doesn't know if it cares enough about
its enterprise and power users to even release "point releases" of their
products - how much engineering tech does it take to replace a Haswell CPU
with a Broadwell with no fanfare or ado? Just do it and make it available?

~~~
mrsteveman1
> Plus, Apple doesn't care about macOS. HFS has bitrotted away

HFS is already being replaced with APFS which is excellent feature-wise, and
is available in Sierra for testing purposes. I expect at this time next year
we'll be seeing them use it by default on new macOS and iOS devices.

------
qwertyuiop924
Apple, stop removing things we need and replacing them with BS! Esc is an
important key, and I don't need less modifiers on my keyboard (I actually need
more - i3 takes up a good bit of S, and Emacs uses CMS: I could do with a
Hyper and an Fn to make things less cramped), and while Esc is important, it
doesn't deserve the same kind of prime placement as Ctrl does unless your a
vim user. I guess swapping it to Ctrl and swapping control to Capslk could
work, but Esc really should be bound by default.

------
Yabood
I was looking forward to buying the new MacBook Pro, but now I'm not so sure.
Lenovo replaced the top row on their Carbon X1 laptop with digital keys a
couple of years ago, and the results weren't that good. They were hard to use
and unpractical. Hopefully Apple's implementation will work better.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Honestly bough how often do you hit escape on a mac? So having it as a digital
key won't be the end of the world.

~~~
xj9
>50x a day, probably. I practically live in Vim.

~~~
etatoby
maybe you mean 50k (not x) because in Vim it's used every 10 seconds, which
makes it several thousands times a day

~~~
xj9
yes

------
rcarmo
"We have no escape", said one of my Mac-wielding colleagues.

So true now.

(Full disclosure: I've been writing at taoofmac.com for over 14 years now, and
even though I get why Apple is doing this, still find it dumb because I live
inside a UNIX terminal most of my time. I'm now considering switching to Linux
as soon as I can find a decent mail client, because, like Jamie Zawinsky, I
refuse to read my email in a browser, like an animal.)

~~~
digikata
Just curious, what mac-only terminal email client do you use now? I imagine
that most terminal email clients work fine on Linux. Or maybe I am reading
something incorrectly from your comment?

~~~
miloshadzic
I think he means that Linux email clients are not that good, and Apple Mail is
pretty decent.

~~~
digikata
That makes much more sense.

------
protomyth
I'm a bit more concerned that their isn't a dedicated power button. My Mac has
froze a dozen times in the last year, and I'm pretty sure a soft button isn't
going to be working.

~~~
mtmail
Maybe for a hard reset there will be a new key combination. Like Ctrl+Alt+Del

~~~
creshal
Or a tiny inset reset button you need a paper clip for, like on some
tablets/smartphones.

~~~
frandroid
I've ruined a laptop microphone that way once, thinking it was a reset
button... :P

------
willtim
Lenovo released an X1 Carbon in 2014 with a similar touch strip and
backtracked a year later. Personally I'm glad they did.

~~~
partisan
This is enough of an example to make one wonder why they would go down this
path. It makes me sad as I really do enjoy my MBP, but as a developer, these
changes are making the hardware unusable.

~~~
benologist
If it wasn't for the touch bar all we'd be getting is a slightly thinner shell
and a slightly faster previous-generation CPU, just as the PC industry starts
getting backpack desktops, desktop GPUs in laptops, OLED screens, touch
screens, removable screens that become tablets, VR headsets, external GPUs,
backlit keyboards you can adjust individual key colors on etc.

PC industry is definitely missing out.

~~~
Lio
> backlit keyboards you can adjust individual key colors on

Just out of interest but what, other than novalty, is the purpose of this?

I've seen it on a Razer gaming laptop. Is it just an entertainment thing or is
there some UX using this?

[edit] this is a genuine question BTW and not a weak attempt at snark.

------
0x0
I wonder if the reason there is no corresponding Xcode for the iOS 10.1+macOS
10.12.1 release is that they want to hold the official reveal of the magic
toolbar. Surely the latest Xcode macOS SDK will have some sort of APIs for
configuring the display/graphics/icons on the magic toolbar. Sucks if you're
developing for iOS, because unless you want to side-load beta versions of
Xcode, you will need to choose between being able to debug on the device or
being safe from the remote code execution bug in the JPEG decoder on anything
less than iOS 10.1...

~~~
geerlingguy
Not to mention it seems they're withholding a release of the Network Link
Conditioner[1] that works with Sierra along with Xcode. There's currently no
reliable method for limiting the entire Mac's upload or download bandwidth
under Sierra :(

[1] [http://nshipster.com/network-link-
conditioner/](http://nshipster.com/network-link-conditioner/)

------
Animats
The original Macintosh keyboard didn't have an escape key.[1] Or function
keys. Or cursor keys. Or a numeric pad, though you could buy one as an
accessory. You're supposed to use the mouse.

[1]
[http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/128k2.jpg](http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/128k2.jpg)

~~~
rcarmo
I used (and refurbished) a bunch of those. But I switched to the Mac full time
because of UNIX, not when it ran cooperative multitasking hacks atop a 680x0
CPU.

------
cm2187
For Excel users, a shortcut that I think few people are aware of. When editing
a formula, select part of the formula, and press CAPS LOCK+F9, it will
evaluate the value of the selection.

...the CAPS LOCK is not that useless!

------
frb
I just realized that there are still four keys on the bottom left side (next
to space).

Until now this used to be: Fn, Ctrl, Option/Alt, Cmd

Since Fn is obsolete now, due to the lack of F-keys, it makes me wonder what
the most bottom left key is.

Maybe (hopefully) they moved the Esc there.

~~~
amatheus
maybe the function keys accessible with fn+number, thinking about it it makes
sense.

------
xbryanx
I have the CAPS LOCK mapped to the escape key, which is great for Vim, etc.
However, there's one weird edge case problem. In After Effects the CAPS LOCK
is the one quick way to speed up rending of animations, by disabling the
render to screen option. It's oddly hard coded to that key specifically and
seems difficult to remap to anything else. I know I probably represent 1 of 10
people world-wide who have this problem, but I'm sure there are other odd
things hard mapped to the sad ol' CAPS LOCK key.

------
hashkb
Crazy Vim user here: caps lock is ctrl. jk or kj or fd or something like that
is esc.

~~~
prewett
Ctrl-[, otherwise you get Vi Finger from reaching all the way up to Escape all
the time. I don't even use they Escape key anymore except to cancel things
like GUIs.

~~~
mi100hael
I like having Escape in the upper left because I can just blindly whack at
that corner of the keyboard. Hitting '[' with my pinky is much less reliable.

------
tjbrennan
I feel like I'm the only person who uses Caps Lock. When I learned to touch
type, I was taught to use the shift key on the side opposite the letter being
typed. When typing more than two capital letters in a row, I'd rather hit Caps
Lock than paddle my pinkies back and forth. It's a hard habit to break.

------
Steeeve
I use an external keyboard with my mbp mostly, but I use my escape key more
regularly than all my F-keys and the fn/command buttons. I really don't think
I'd buy a laptop that was missing what I consider to be a key component like
that. I'm sure there's a contextual variant, but there's a pretty big
difference between a tactile button and whatever haptic OLED nonsense that
Apple put up there.

This might be good for their consumer target audience, but I don't think it's
good at all for their main proponents - techies and techie students. I'm very
surprised that this issue didn't pop up internally. I wonder about their
internal culture if this kind of a design went this far.

------
mattbillenstein
This stuff always brings me back to "there's nothing more simple than one
giant button"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA)

------
akohlbecker
Remapping Caps Lock to ESC at the OS level is not a viable proposition for
international users.

Source: am French with an AZERTY keyboard, we need Caps Lock to make
capitalised accented letters, such as in "À bientôt !"

------
Matachines
I'm really in need of a new Macbook and don't use Esc that much... but
Karabiner/Seil don't support Sierra yet so I can't do Caps Lock -> Esc + Ctrl
(please someone correct me if I'm wrong). That said, I have my own mechanical
keyboard I use anyway so it's not _that_ bad. I'll be the guinea pig for this
new kind of model.

Here in HN we can all say "I use X for Esc!" but this is going to be a problem
to the myriads of developers and regular people that don't know about these
tricks.

------
rocky1138
"Apple giveth"

Did Apple really invent the escape key?

~~~
geerlingguy
They didn't have it on the original Apple keyboard:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Keyboard#/media/File:App...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Keyboard#/media/File:Apple_Macintosh_Plus_Keyboard.jpg)

~~~
Lio
I believe that's a Mac keyboard. The original Apple I and II keyboards had an
Esc key.

[http://www.hp9845.net/9845/history/comparison/images/closeup...](http://www.hp9845.net/9845/history/comparison/images/closeups/apple2-top-
view.jpg)

The modern Mac owes as much to NeXT as it does to the classic Mac. NeXT also
had an escape key ...and the ctrl key in the right place! :)

[http://xahlee.info/kbd/i/NeXT_Computer_keyboard_66682.jpg](http://xahlee.info/kbd/i/NeXT_Computer_keyboard_66682.jpg)

------
triplesec
The position of the shift-lock key is terrible for something as powerful as
Escape, for most users, especially those with bear paws like mine. An
accidental press can have grave consequences. There's a reason it's at the
corner of the keyboard. And it's the one key everybody can find automatically.

------
untog
I'm very dubious of this bar being added to Macbooks. What % of apps are
really going to make use of it?

~~~
protomyth
The 10.12.1 update would seem to disagree with you.
[http://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/25/images-of-new-macbook-
pr...](http://www.macrumors.com/2016/10/25/images-of-new-macbook-pro-leaked/)

~~~
untog
I didn't mean dubious as to whether it exists, just that I'm dubious as to
whether it should.

~~~
protomyth
I get the feeling that many of us will wish an Apple designer had been dubious
as to whether it should.

------
NuSkooler
This business about the caps lock key being "useless" has been very puzzling
to me. As someone who learned how to property type, I utilize the key quite a
bit -- especially when programming.

------
abc_lisper
Man. As a emacs user who doesn't use meta key, this is sad!

------
mcphage
Why wouldn't the bar have a software escape key when showing function keys?

