
Apple kills the non-Touch Bar MacBook Pro - modeless
https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/09/apple-macbook-air-macbook-pro-updates/
======
retrac98
99%+ of my usage of the touchbar is pressing escape, adjusting screen
brightness, speaker volume, or accessing music controls.

All of these worked flawlessly when I had physical keys, but now it's hard to
know what I'm pressing without looking, and sometimes the controls become
unresponsive to touches or drags.

I'm a programmer/business owner, so perhaps it's useful for other sorts of
creative professionals, but it feels like a total gimmick to me.

I applaud Apple's innovative spirit, but the touchbar wasn't useful at launch,
it isn't useful now, and they don't seem to have put any effort into making it
better. I hope they kill it with the next Macbook pro release and just go the
touchscreen route like everyone else.

~~~
ravenstine
Why on earth do I need to tap twice to adjust the screen brightness? I
couldn't find a way to just have two increase/decrease buttons. Why can't I
adjust how long the touchbar stays active for? Why does it disappear at all? I
can't imagine the touchbar would exist in its current form if Steve were
alive.

~~~
Kronopath
Turns out if you do a small rightwards/leftwards swipe on the brightness or
volume buttons, then you can increase or decrease them by one notch without
opening the slider.

It’s not an intuitive or discoverable command.

~~~
ravenstine
Yeah, but that's still two gestures instead of one.

~~~
jvzr
You don't need to tap then swipe, just swipe.

------
Eric_WVGG
This thread is going to dissolve into a pile-up on the Touch Bar, so I wanna
jump in front of this.

Readers of this site are mostly “hackers,” however mutated or dumbed-down that
term has become over the years, correct? Everyone here has their windows and
spaces just so, a full complement of shortcuts and trackpad gestures, and if
they're serious about the Macintosh tools like TextExpander.

As standard as GUIs are, we've all experienced a moment of disorientation when
borrowing another person's computer. The more experienced and skilled that
other person is, the greater that disorientation due to the amount of
“hacking” they've done on their own environment.

So how come this impulse stops at the Touch Bar?

I've hacked the hell out of mine. I've mapped inscrutable keyboard commands
like cmd-opt-ctrl-D to context sensitive buttons, included globals for quick
terminal visors and development tools and password managers… it's slick as
hell and I hate giving it up when I occasionally opt for the external keyboard
at home.

The Touch Bar is amazing, you just need to hack the damn thing. Yeah, Apple
should have done a better job making it more useful out of the box, but it's
possible to do some really wild stuff with it.

map your Caps Lock key to Escape and go to town.
[https://github.com/vas3k/btt-touchbar-presets](https://github.com/vas3k/btt-
touchbar-presets)

~~~
eropple
I am a touch typist. I never look down at the keyboard, ever. The only time
the Touch Bar is involved is when I accidentally switch tabs because the Touch
Bar buttons trip even while you're pressing the 2 or 3 key on the keyboard,
and then I'm lost in a different tab than the one I was working on in the
first place.

Is there a preset that never shows _anything_ on the touch bar, _ever_ ,
except for the Escape key and the "global" brightness/volume buttons? Can this
be done in, like, _five seconds_?

If not, then I might Frisbee this computer straight out the window. If so, I
would love to know how.

~~~
stu_k
System Preferences > Keyboard > Customize Touch Bar (at bottom). Drag off
buttons you don't want, drag on buttons you do.

Not 5 seconds, but probably less than a minute.

~~~
eropple
This works for "global" buttons but VSCode, Firefox, etc. put their junk on
their anyway. I want all of it gone. Some applications so conveniently let you
turn them off (VSCode is one of them, now that I've looked)--it's absolutely
ridiculous that I have to do it for every application and I want it all to
GTFO, globally. How does one do that?

EDIT: So I found it - if, in the Keyboard preferences pane, you pick "Expanded
Control Strip" instead of "App Controls", apps can't awfulify the touch bar. I
now have haptically null touch points that do what I expect a Mac's top row to
do, which is worse than having keys that do what I expect a Mac's top row to
do, but it isn't as bad as it was at the start of the day.

------
docker_up
I will never ever buy a MacBook Pro if they don't get rid of the TouchBar. The
sheer arrogance of Apple to think they know better than their customers
infuriates me. I only use a 2018 MacBook Pro because work supplied it, and
because my 2015 MacBook battery was dying and the only option the IT
department gave me was to upgrade to the 2018 model.

I may simply go back to Windows at home if that's the case, and will use a
Windows Laptop at work if possible. Seriously, fuck Apple for this arrogance.

~~~
hu3
I'm still salty about the magsafe.

~~~
wlesieutre
MagSafe was nice, but I'm a big fan of being able to use an industry standard
$30 charger with 60W USB-C, 3x USB-A ports, and a removable charging cable.

Having to replace a whole $80 proprietary charging brick because the cable
connection frayed was a pretty shitty deal.

~~~
docker_up
I have collected 4 magsafe chargers from the various companies I've worked at
because when I returned my laptop or got an extra, they never asked for the
chargers back. It was very convenient, but now that I'm on the 2018 USB-C one,
I have to throw all of them away via e-waste because I have literally no use
for them.

~~~
wlesieutre
You could try eBay or Craigslist for those.

Since Apple never licensed out MagSafe, the market has been full of poorly
built counterfeits rather than anything from reputable manufacturers. That’s
another thing I don’t miss.

Anyway, I’d bet there’s still some market for used MagSafe chargers to be used
with older macs whose chargers have frayed.

------
peterkelly
I wasted two hours the other night because of the touchbar.

I had turned my macbook pro's screen brightness down to complete black as I
was using an external monitor only, and in a dark environment. Some time later
I happened to restart my machine, and both the internal and external displays
came up completely black.

The touchbar displayed only "Esc", without the normal brightness control. I
had to figure out from memory how to log in without being able to see the
screen, i.e. exactly how far I needed to move the pointer on the trackpad to
click on my username, without any indication of what state the UI was in.
There was no controls on the touchbar to adjust the display brightness and an
external Apple USB keyboard which _did_ have the brightness control keys was
not recognised. Fixing it required both an SMC and PRAM reset.

I would pay a significant premium for a macbook pro without the touchbar. I've
had other cases where the machine appears to be (but isn't necessarily)
bricked and there's no indicator lights anywhere to show what's going on, even
if the machine has power. I hope with Ive's departure they'll dial it back a
bit and start building machines which might be slightly less beautiful but
include some of the more practical affordances.

/rant

~~~
anthonybsd
Hah. I have dozens of horror stories like that. Listening to Spotify at work,
headphone jack plugged in to the Macbook. Get a phone call from the wife, need
to run to meet her in the restaurant in the city. Close macbook, pull out
headphone jack, grab a soda from company fridge on the way down,run into a
semi crowded subway car. Remember that I had Tomcat running in IntelliJ, need
to kill it. Sit down, open the Macbook. Now Macbook is blasting Norwegian
death metal at full volume to the entire subway car while I'm trying to make
the touch ID stupidity work with my wet finger with no way to reach the volume
controls. Embarrassed, close the macbook, music inexplicably takes 30 seconds
to shut down. Sigh.

I don't even want to go into the horrors that is working in vi with touchbar
escape key...

~~~
dzhiurgis
You need automute, buddy [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/automute-preventing-
awkward-si...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/automute-preventing-awkward-
situations/id1118136179?mt=12)

------
lloeki
I am a developer. The Touch Bar is useless to me. I remapped Caps lock to Esc
expecting to be annoyed, but still hit Esc nonetheless because it works. And I
deftly adjust volume using the Touch Bar slider using press-and-slide (not tap
then pick-and-slide), relying on the += key for tactile positioning (but the
position itself is largely muscle memory by now)

I am also a musician. The Touch Bar is fantastic to adjust tuneables in
GarageBand, without the gorilla arm or wobbly screen effect you get on
touchscreens.

If it were annoying to me I'd just remap the two or three functions I use as a
developer to some keyboard shortcut. After all I'm a developer, I think I can
handle that fairly swiftly by myself if no tool were available (and I'm fairly
convinced there is).

~~~
eropple
_> The Touch Bar is fantastic to adjust tuneables in GarageBand, without the
gorilla arm or wobbly screen effect you get on touchscreens._

I futzed around with the touch bar in Logic when I got one and wrote it off
almost immediately. Logic Remote (which works with GarageBand, AFAIK) already
exists and works with an iPad. Clear labels, clear text, manipulating multiple
elements easily at once--it's a _better solution_ than what they tried to
wedge in with the touch bar.

The bigger problem with the touch bar is that, as a developer, I end up
hitting the touch bar controls all the time. VSCode "helpfully" has previous
tab/next tab buttons on it--and so when I try to hit 2 or 3 on the keyboard,
sometimes I brush against them and suddenly I'm disoriented and typing in a
completely different tab.

This machine is a work laptop. (Typically my music stuff is done on a 2012
rMBP, which is why I already had Logic and Logic Remote set up.) When I
started, I asked for a half-the-price Thinkpad on which to run FC30 and was
denied because "everyone else uses a Mac." I love the job but between the
garbage touchbar and the hand-wreckingly shallow keyboard travel the computer
they gave me it's easily the worst part of my day.

~~~
nawgszy
> hand-wreckingly shallow keyboard travel

Now, I don't disagree with your sentiment, touch bar is definitely a nuisance
without any superior use case over the buttons that were there before... But
why do you think this keyboard wrecks hands? It is definitely the fastest
keyboard I've typed on, and shallow keyboards are definitely inherently easier
on the hands by any metric I can think of

~~~
eropple
I'm a keyboard pounder; it's just the way I've always typed. The best laptop
keyboard I've found is the Alienware 13/15\. The next best are any of the
standard-travel Lenovos.

1mm travel keys just leave me thumping my fingertips off the laptop chassis
all the time. It hurts.

------
notafraudster
To me the bigger news here is killing the MacBook. It's a weird product --
crazy overpriced, and with a bunch of concessions in terms of the design, but
I like that it's extremely light (33% lighter than a MacBook Air) and has no
fan. I had hoped never to buy another laptop with a fan again. Yes, I know
performance sucks, which is why I run most of my code on a server instead of
locally on my computer. I think really the best other options without a fan
are all Chromebooks.

I would guess Apple will revive the fanless model when they switch to ARM
processors in 1-2 years.

~~~
davnicwil
I'm a bit disappointed and surprised by this news. Agree with everything you
said about the price being ridiculous and the performance being inadequate,
but it was all about the form factor - what a _gorgeous_ machine for travel-
friendly computing.

I always viewed it as a v0.1 of the future of their light travel-friendly
laptop model, and fully expected it to receive incremental performance
upgrades and eventually replace the Air. I was hoping that in a few more
years, I'd be able to buy one of these as a complement for travel or maybe
even to replace (depending on the weight / performance tradeoff) my 13-inch
MacBook Pro.

I assume, since they only gave it a minor upgrade once in like 3/4 years and
the price was pretty ridiculous, that they just couldn't make it work. I hope,
as you say, they can figure it out, perhaps using their own ARM CPUs, and
eventually relaunch this model or continue making the Air thinner and lighter
with the same performance.

~~~
mrkstu
May be a sign laying groundwork for an ARM Mac- the 12" MacBook is the obvious
target for initial replacement by an ARM variant. By not having a side-by-side
Intel-ARM model Apple minimizes market competition and direct performance
comparisons.

------
Someone1234
When the Touch Bar is discussed the discussion often turns into "is the Touch
Bar useful or not?" When the crux of the whole issue is that they removed a
row of keys (F- keys and escape key), because the new oversized touchpad
needed to be 10mm bigger.

If they had simply left all the keys, shrunk the touchpad, and added the Touch
Bar above the keyboard, people who didn't like the Touch Bar would simply
choose not to use it (or even shut it off) and people who loved it could
continue to do so.

That's the issue. Not the Touch Bar itself's benefit, that's a red herring.

~~~
robert_tweed
While this is true, I am also put off by the increased attack surface of a
proprietary embedded OS (watchOS) running in the touchbar, outside the control
of the main OS and by extension, not under my control either.

Given how much everyone around here hates similar things like UEFI and the
Intel IME (with good reason), I'm surprised this one seems to slip under the
radar. Probably because everyone is much more incensed about losing necessary
physical keys. Classic misdirection.

~~~
scarface74
The T1 chip also serves as an authentication chip, a disk controller, and can
be used for video encoding/decoding.

~~~
robert_tweed
That's kinda the problem. It's a secure enclave (potentially a good thing) but
a far too complex one with too many responsibilities and capabilities.

I am of the opinion that the secure enclave for fingerprint reading should be
something that updates ideally never, and requires a hardware jumper to be set
if one is absolutely necessary.

Ideally I'd like the firmware to be open source too. Those are two related but
different issues though.

~~~
scarface74
It’s not like the chip isn’t based on years of work. It based on the same
technology and design that’s been in iPhones since 2013.

------
ngngngng
Disclaimer: I like the touchbar. I swapped escape and caps lock, installed
Pock, and never looked back.

This is my last MacBook. Xubuntu on a Thinkpad x1 carbon works great for
everything I do, at a fraction of the price, with a keyboard the doesn't stop
working with dust, and with more than just USB-C.

~~~
snek
I just got an x1 extreme, and although it takes a bit more fiddling than an x1
carbon to get running with Linux, it's an amazing experience after my macbook
air. Hackers, if you want to move away from the mac ecosystem, take a look at
thinkpads running linux.

~~~
nathan_f77
I was wondering if you could please provide some more details about the
fiddling? Were you having issues with the graphics card, audio, sleep mode,
etc.?

It looks like a great laptop, and I'm tempted to get one instead of a new
MacBook. But it might also be dangerous to get the latest model if Linux devs
haven't had time to support it yet.

------
kirykl
Removal of the function keys actually dates back to Jobs

"When I invited Jobs to take some time away from NeXT to speak to a group of
students, he sat in the lotus position in front of my fireplace and wowed us
for three hours, as if leading a séance. But then I asked him if he would sign
my Apple Extended Keyboard. He burst out: “This keyboard represents everything
about Apple that I hate. It's a battleship. Why does it have all these keys?
Do you use this F1 key? No.” And with his car keys he pried it right off. “How
about this F2 key?” Off they all went. “I'm changing the world, one keyboard
at a time,” he concluded in a calmer voice." [Steve Jurvetson on Steve Jobs
2011-10-06 By Steve Jurvetson.]

------
josho
The Touch Bar was what finally pushed me over the edge to remap caps lock to
escape. I'm shocked at how much I enjoy ESC being close to the home row (I'm
not even a big vim user). For this change alone I am glad to have the Touch
Bar.

~~~
js2
I use caps lock as control. It would be hard to relearn that muscle memory.

~~~
nsxwolf
As an old Sun keyboard user, Caps Lock as Control feels right. That's also
where it is on my HHKB keyboard.

As a vim user, escape is too high up on most modern keyboards anyway. The
ADM-3A terminal vi was invented on placed it to the left of the Q key, which
was a lot easier to reach. HHKB puts it where the tilde key traditionally is,
which is pretty close to the original intent of vi.

Remapping tilde on touchbar MacBook Pros would be a good solution, if there
was an obvious other place to put tilde/backtick.

~~~
salgernon
During the 80s there was such a plethora of keyboard variants, I learned never
to trust where ESC would be; you can use control-[ on most keyboards to
generate the same key. When the MacBookPro went useless for ESC, my muscle
memory just switched over. (This is somewhat conditional on control being next
to 'A', which is the only place it should ever be!)

------
jtdev
It’s unfortunate that so many design decisions are made with little regard for
the true utility of what’s being designed, of which the touch bar has
essentially zero.

~~~
patejam
What utility did the previous bar have?

Volume changing? Screen brightness? Those are better with the touchbar.

Escape key for vim or whatever? Switch your caps lock with escape! You should
have been doing that the whole time!

The actual function keys? I don't use them enough to need them showing up all
the time. And an extra key to get them up again is no big deal.

I agree that the touch bar doesn't _add_ a whole lot of utility, but I can't
see the argument of it removing any utility.

~~~
andrewfong
> Volume changing? That's better with the touchbar.

Not really. My wife has low vision. Changing the volume used to be a muscle
memory sort of thing. Now it's an awkward fumbling mess, especially if she's
in the middle of a meeting and trying to mute her laptop.

We've locked the buttons to a static position so she knows where to press but
there's still no tactile feedback.

~~~
patejam
Accessibility is a good reason to not like it, that's very fair. That alone
puts it from my original neutral position to it being a negative overall.

------
teamski
Imagine a random manufacturer, let's say HP, was the one bringing a touchbar
to their notebooks. Some press, a lot of laughter but quickly, nobody would
talk anymore about them and/or buy that notebooks.

With Apple, people keep on complaining OVER years. The touchbar, the prices,
the crappy keyboards... the reason? IDK, maybe they are locked-in and can't
move to another platform but there is only one single reason to be locked-in
on macOS: if you develop apps for iOS, otherwise every other platform is
currently way better and switching is a matter of days. Once I had the
keyboard trouble on a $4K MBP I switched instantly and never returned to
macOS.

~~~
chisleu
I'm addicted to CMD+C/CMD+V.

I've tried making it happen in Linuxes and windows, but always with failures
in one app or another, or having to configure each individual application I
use independently.

The keyboard is _the_ reason I love mac for running my Linux clusters. If I
didn't have that, I would have the fantastic UX features like instant
scrolling. Scrolling anywhere else is a choppy and laggy nightmare for me.

~~~
teamski
Just put Ctrl on Caps and then ctrl+c and +v is on par or or even better.
Don't know anyone who is using the original control. Even better: create a
tap/hold key with Esc/Ctrl on Caps. Then you have a superior keyboard
experience because the alt keys are better positioned and usable. On Macs you
have just Cmd as the only sane/reachable modifier key compared to crtl and alt
on Windows/Linux. However you could also somehow get this setup on a Mac with
fiddling with Karabiner. But here again Windows' Autohotkey is superior.

Re choppy scrolling, I have a Windows precision touchpad on my notebook and
it's super close to a MBP but what is even much better than a MBP touchpad:
get a Logitech mouse with a free wheel eg the G502, best scrolling experience
and buttersmooth.

I thought also there is nothing else than macOS but there is even more good
stuff outside. eg window management on Windows or linux eg with i3 there is
just 100x better. on macos it's a joke to nonexistent.

~~~
chisleu
Pinkies suck. alt on windows was fine, but ctrl's keyboard mappings on windows
/ linux has always been a pain for me.

~~~
teamski
You are faster pressing Caps with your pinkie than Cmd with your thumb.

------
sincerely
The non-touch bar pro that was previously available was a pretty old model,
right? First generation butterfly keyboard?

If that's the case I'm not sure it makes sense to read too much into this.
They will probably reintroduce a non-touch bar option when they refresh the
pro line later this year.

~~~
ppeetteerr
I believe it's the second gen butterly keyboard. It's a good laptop for every
day use, but it came out late 2016, pretty long ago now.

------
module0000
I got a touchbar model immediately when it was released from my job. It
arrived shipped next-day-air in the morning, and by lunch, I gave it to
another employee who wanted an upgrade. Haven't touched another Mac since
then, and this reinforces(to me) that I made the right decision. I don't know
any of you work with those things... That design decision solidified for me
that Apple wasn't interested in my demographic(sysop/programmer/etc) using
their laptops.

That said, I did get a lot of "oohs" and "aahs" from other employees coming to
look at it. Those went away when I'd open vim and ask them to take it for a
test drive.

------
Lowkeyloki
One step forward, two steps back. They're finally getting rid of the horrible
butterfly keyboard in favor of a more traditional scissor switch, but they're
gonna make damn sure you have a touch bar.

~~~
saagarjha
I'm pretty sure the keyboard mechanism has not changed in this revision.

~~~
Lowkeyloki
No, not in this revision. I was speaking more generally.

------
bsg75
Apple kills the (s/non-Touch Bar//) MacBook-Pro.

There is nothing "Pro" about a touch bar, even for fields outside of software.
Apparently Ive's departure means Apple is _not_ returning to function-over-
form.

~~~
dpkonofa
Wholeheartedly disagree. I use the Touch Bar religiously for media production
including scrubbing through audio/video and adjusting dials/filters/tones and
I've remapped it to include my most used functions in things like VSCode and
even iTerm.

I get that it's not for everyone but to generalize and say that it's not "Pro"
is delusional.

------
todd8
As an oftentimes Emacs user and a sometimes Vim user, I need more keys not
less. I especially want more modifiers in consistent locations. Laptops
frequently move these around, put a fn key where ctrl normally goes, or don’t
even provide a ctrl key for the right hand. Apple does all of this.

Further, why does the spacebar have to be so wide? It makes the Alt and System
(mapped to Hyper, Meta, leader keys whatever) harder to reach without looking.
Microsoft offers an new ergo keyboard with a split keyboard, but then doesn’t
provide a way to map the left and right pieces to separate bindings.

------
dkarl
I've asked a lot of non-programmers about the Touch Bar. Musicians, graphic
designers, teachers, writers, managers, architects. If I describe the Touch
Bar, they are able to confirm that their laptop has one but are not conscious
of it as a significant change in design. It's just a different way to change
the volume. They are neither aware that it's supposed to be more useful than
that, nor aware of why anybody would be bothered by it. To them, having the
Touch Bar or not is about as meaningful as whether their gas cap is on the
left side of the car or the right.

------
aylmao
The Touch Bar is just poorly executed— for the gimmick instead of the
experience. It would be good if it had haptic feedback and was activated by a
force touch like the trackpad does.

Allow me to touch it without pressing anything. Let me slide my finger and
feel a click whenever I "hover" a different button. Add an option to show me
an indication on screen of what I'm hovering, so I don't have to look down.
Then when I decide to "press" the button, trick my brain into thinking there's
moving parts like the trackpad does.

Give me the buttons of the future.

The big problem for me is that it's a touch-screen instead. Keyboards and
trackpads are designed to have you rest your hands on them until you press, so
it's awkward to have something that doesn't let you "rest" on it. They both
are meant to be used while looking directly at the screen, so it's annoying to
have to look down to know what you're pressing.

------
andyfleming
The answer is obvious to me.

Add back the physical top row, but keep the touch bar. Just put it above the
physical top row.

I like the idea of the touch bar for customization and various use cases, but
I don't do that now, because I want my top row to continue to act as simply
and consistently as possible.

For example, the contextual menus for programs. I think the whole concept is
really interesting and adds a cool layer of interaction. However, I don't want
to give up my quick access to my normal functions like volume, expose, etc. So
the end result is that I just turn all the contextual options off. So I've
never had a chance to fall in love with the touch bar, because all I use it
for is a crappy version of what my top row use to be.

~~~
dpkonofa
As much as the Touch Bar doesn't bother me and having the physical F keys
seems a step back to me, I think this is the right answer anyways. They'd
appease both sides of the argument and they wouldn't lose much at all. Even if
they had to make the trackpad a little smaller, it's fucking gigantic on the
newest models so losing a small bit of it wouldn't hurt anyone at all.

------
crazygringo
Having talked to a lot of people... the Touch Bar is _not_ meant for regular
computer users or for developers.

The Touch Bar is meant for _graphics, audio and film professionals_. That’s
the “Pro”. It’s an incredibly flexible “picker/slider” for colors, volumes,
mixing, and so on.

I know HN hates the touch bar... and I personally have no use for it... but
_we’re not the market for it_. There is a market for it, but it’s _not us_.

I think it’s helpful to acknowledge that in these conversations, rather than
act like Apple is making dumb decision in a vacuum.

(And I’m personally happy there’s now a retina MacBook Air without it, which
will probably be my next machine.)

~~~
HyperTalk2
Who are these graphics, audio, and film professionals who asked for a Touch
Bar?

------
skizm
Is there any way to essentially lock the touchbar in a fixed configuration?
Like I'm a programmer and willing to write a mac native app if that's what I
have to do, but I want the same set of things there and I don't want other
programs to be able to hijack the buttons I have locked there.

If I could do that, then I can live with it, since then it is just a massive
battery drain instead of being a massive battery drain as well as extremely
inconvenient.

~~~
jki275
That's doable in settings. Mine displays nothing but fn keys all the time.

------
addicted
I have a conceptual issue with the Touch Bar. I’m struggling to understand
what the Touch bar can achieve that a toolbar that exists on the screen would
not be better at. Especially on a laptop with the great trackpads that the
MacBooks have.

About the only benefit is that it doesn’t take up screen space, but in that
case a single trackpad gesture which brings up a touchbar like toolbar right
where your mouse pointer is seems like a much nicer input mechanism.

------
satokema_work
I initially got a macbook seven years ago to work at a mobile shop and dabble
in iOS. I liked the form factor and the *nix basis, so I've stayed with them a
bit.

Between the touch bar (which bothered me enough to downgrade my work laptop to
not have it), keyboard problems, and migrating away from their BSD roots, I'm
completely done. I don't care if Linux desktop is clunky or bad, at least I
can use it on a laptop that doesn't suck.

------
owenwil
I dunno...the story is that Apple killed two machines today: \- The non-
touchbar MacBook Pro (RIP, function row)

\- The 12" "MacBook" (which I adored, largely because it was so tiny)

What's strange is that it appears that this was a streamlining effort—but if
you get into the weeds and look at the "base" model 13" MacBook Pro, it's not
the same machine: it has two Thunderbolt ports, rather than four, despite
sharing the same moniker as the higher-end MacBook Pro. Go up a model, and you
get four for more money along with the better processor, which isn't
immediately clear, either.

That means it's got fewer thunderbolt lanes, as well, which is a classic
nickel and dime move that's going to make it even more confusing given most
people just buy the base model.

Now, my question is: are they clearing the decks at the low-end 12" for a
clamshell/ARM laptop? It seems incredibly obvious that it'll start at the
bottom to avoid disrupting the pros.

------
bondolo
My laptop is connected to an external monitor and keyboard more than 90% of
the time. I use the function keys on the external keyboard.

Is the touchbar useful? Is it good? Who cares, it is not getting used. Given
Apple's butterfly keyboard issues using the laptop keyboard as your primary
keyboard isn't really an option anyway. For the limited amount of time I use
the laptop keyboard the touchbar certainly isn't worth it.

If Apple sold a decent external keyboard, not the fucking aluminum chiclet
keyboard, with a touchbar I would certainly be willing to consider the
touchbar on whatever merits it has, but as a tiny touch enabled 3rd screen
above an infrequently used keyboard it is irrelevant. I, like many people,
thought that the Optimus OLED keyboard with programmable dynamic keycaps was
neat. I'd be willing to give a touchbar external keyboard a fair shake.

~~~
erikpukinskis
It just occurred to me that the situation with the Touch Bar is similar to
what Apple has done with 3D Touch... it seems like Apple is making a bet that
more complicated input devices are better, which is a total about face from
their past positions. Notably the 1-button mouse, and the original buttonless
iPhone.

I think it's a bad call. To me, these input devices create a lot of confusion
for very little benefit. I think it's a sign Apple has given up on the
philosophy of trying to make everything accessible to the average user.

They have gone over to Microsoft's philosophy, which was that UIs should be
like an iceberg, with a deep well of hidden functionality for advanced users
to discover, and then a separate "normal people" UI layered on top of that.

I think there's a MASSIVE opportunity right now for someone to build a new OS,
designed around a very limited set of inputs, and a highly constrained widget
library. With an emphasis on speed, putting as little as possible on the
screen, and like Apple of old, having simple apps that let people do things
pros typically do.

For example, you could design a UI that would allow you to easily cut together
clips from multiple videos. This was hard, and then iMovie made it easy, but
now it is hard again. Those kinds of features make good ads, and lead to good
word of mouth.

Basically, take Steve Jobs' original strategy with the iMac/iPhone and do it
over again. Apple has totally departed that path.

~~~
snowwrestler
> it seems like Apple is making a bet that more complicated input devices are
> better, which is a total about face from their past positions.

Swapping hardware buttons for touchscreen controls has been a huge success for
Apple for over a decade, with the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, even the Apple
Watch. The Touchbar is just another step down that path.

It's arguable whether a fixed set of hardware "F" buttons are more usable, or
well-labeled touchscreen buttons. Again, a decade of evidence suggests that
software-defined touchscreen buttons are more usable. An iPad is much easier
to use than a Mac. You can hand an iPad to a 5-year-old and they get it right
away.

> They have gone over to Microsoft's philosophy, which was that UIs should be
> like an iceberg, with a deep well of hidden functionality for advanced users
> to discover, and then a separate "normal people" UI layered on top of that.

Apple invented that paradigm by adding keyboard shortcuts to a GUI. They have
continued it by adding a command line interface and multitouch gestures to Mac
OS.

The Touchbar is similar. If you take it out of the box it is simple and easy
to use. But if you are an advanced user, there are all sorts of options to
customize it.

~~~
0xd171
> Swapping hardware buttons for touchscreen controls has been a huge success
> for Apple for over a decade, with the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, even the
> Apple Watch. The Touchbar is just another step down that path.

It isn't a step down that path though. With the iPhone/iPod/iPad the new
interface completely changes how you use the device (moving to a phone without
physical keys for example). The Macbook touchbar doesn't do that, it just
makes things a bit awkward by adding an additional way to interface with your
device.

------
Tiktaalik
Terrible news. Well I guess I'll cling to my non-touch bar Macbook Pro for as
long as possible and hopefully they'll go back on this decision in the
future...

------
fabiospampinato
Damn, can we get a macbook that works? I think the touchbar is fundamentally
flawed in that if I'm looking at the screen I can't look at the touchbar, and
vice versa, and there's no tactile feedback at all, basically the opposite
characteristics that a keyboard should have.

------
paulcarroty
> The Pro still starts at $1,299 ($1,199 for students) with 8GB of RAM

Well, using Linux makes more sense after new MBP specs, every time.

~~~
saagarjha
8 GB of RAM isn't top-of-the-line, but it's plenty for a lot of people.

------
contingencies
Swore I'd never buy another Mac but bought one this week (had a Dell XPS15 for
a year and a half) to supervise a cross-platform app development project and
many things were annoying me with NixOS (clean but not quite there yet for
desktop use and may never be: too many missing packages) which had replaced
Gentoo (~biannual reinstall required due to portage rot), neither of which
work perfectly on laptop hardware. (Also much of my Linux work is now embedded
or remote and banks here in China require Windows VMs.) Wound up just going
for it, not disappointed but fairly expensive as always.

It's true, the touch bar is annoying, and I am a _vi_ user so escape is
critical. But it's not really any more annoying than adjusting between apple
keyboards and PC keyboards: a bit of muscle memory. I just wish you could
disable the whole thing entirely, at least the lights, while keeping the
escape key. Haven't figured out right click on the touchpad yet, it's
currently quite irritating. The press-to-drag brightness is kinda cool, and
the fingerprint lock is also cute. The Mac is about 1/2 the weight of the
Dell, although the Dell was last-year's model on sale 1.5 years ago so that's
to be expected. My back will thank me on business trips. USB-C is the biggest
physical adjustment, and I'm all for it. Yet to select an appropriate external
keyboard (might buy Apple) or HDMI adaptor (won't buy Apple), happy to take
recommendations.

~~~
pknopf
I wrote a tool that I'd like your opinion of. It should solve your "OS rot"
problem.

[https://godarch.com/](https://godarch.com/)

~~~
contingencies
"Just use a VM/container/jail/dedicated machine" is a great solution to any
problem except, now you have _n+1_ problems. I am a huge fan of
functional/declarative environments, hence NixOS, but these approaches have
limitations. General purpose computing's attraction isn't emulating single
purpose microcontrollers...

------
standardUser
The Touch Bar is all about accidentally grazing some unknown button with part
of your hand and then trying to figure out what just happened and how to get
back to the thing you were trying to do.

------
jonnycomputer
Instead of the Touch Bar, I'd be happy if a new MBP had an ethernet port, usb
ports, headphone ports, mini-display ports, an SD card slot, and a lock slot.

oh yeah, that's what my 2012 MBP has.

------
aembleton
Clicking the link to the article takes me to
[https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_...](https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_cc-
session_4b296de7-acb9-4c29-9c91-37bc727642e9)

This is blocked at my DNS level. Why is engadget.com forwarding to this
address?

I just unblocked guce.advertising.com and it forwarded to engadget, so this
must be some sort of tracking system.

~~~
aorth
I came to say the same thing... that is super annoying. Happy to just not read
the article in this case. :)

------
barefoot
I’m a developer and love the Touch Bar. I’ve never had a problem pressing the
escape key and I use VIM and other applications that make use of it on a
regular basis.

While I’m not a fan of replacing physical controls with touch-sensitive
counterparts in safety-critical settings like cars and airplanes I think the
Touch Bar is a significantly underrated improvement that I use and enjoy
constantly.

I wonder how many other users feel the same way but never comment?

------
Razengan
Lack of haptic feedback aside, the Touch Bar is objectively better than the
function keys it replaced:

It can display more options, many different types of controls, and you can see
what each control does without needing to memorize it or having to look it up
like you would with the F# keys.

Why go back to a limited set of ambiguous numbers that do a different thing in
each app? I can't even remember the last time I needed to use a F# key in a
Mac app.

People saying they'd pay extra for a non-Touch Bar Mac, consider some free
apps to customize it to your preferences:

[0] [https://medium.com/@brendanleglaunec/making-the-macbook-
touc...](https://medium.com/@brendanleglaunec/making-the-macbook-touch-bar-
useful-9ec93764fc40)

[1] [https://folivora.ai](https://folivora.ai) \- BetterTouchTool for
customizing the Touch Bar, Trackpad, Magic Mouse etc.

[2] [https://pock.dev](https://pock.dev) \- Display the Dock in the Touch Bar
+ play controls + some status

------
captainredbeard
Apple ET: are customers actually surprised and delighted with the touch bar?
I’ve yet to meet one who is.

------
jimmy_f
Is the baseline MacBook Air sufficient for a CS major? I don’t want to spend
extra for the pro.

~~~
magtux
I don't think you even need a MacBook Air. I've always used Linux for
development. If you're not tied to MacOS, get a Thinkpad with Ryzen + Radeon.
It will run better on Linux. If you want the MacOS experience, get a Air.

Irrespective of what you get, you cannot do serious compute on a laptop.
Because actually using it at full power kills your battery.

~~~
wffurr
"serious compute" is for servers. For programming homework, a Macbook Air is
fine.

------
DanHulton
For those of you who've remapped Caps Lock as Escape, what do you do when you
need to type a long string of capital letters? Do you have some other key
combination mapped to caps lock, or do you just hold shift the whole time?

~~~
asperous
In those rare occasions in sublime text I select all, cmd+k, cmd+u.

If I was typing all-cap constants, I just type the variable in lowercase and
use the autocomplete feature

------
nikivi
I genuinely love my Touchbar. It's an extension of my macbook.

I use it to show my active TODO, time and date, when I am on break and soon
current calendar event running + Karabiner profile.

[https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/my-mac-
os/tree/master/btt](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/my-mac-
os/tree/master/btt)

People who like to hate on it, didn't invest time in learning that you can
program it to show what you want. And as for physical keys, with Karabiner,
there is no need for those keys as they are too far away from home row anyway.

~~~
cujo
I love to hate on it, because it is impossible to "program it to show what I
want". I want keys I can feel. I want to not silently trigger whatever goddamn
touchbar "button" because one of my fingers grazes over it. I want to be able
to hit the appropriate "button" by touch.

"And as for physical keys, with Karabiner, there is no need for those keys as
they are too far away from home row anyway."

Or you know, we could just have the physical keys.

So maybe slow your roll on how all of the haters just didn't "invest the
time". Sometimes stuff doesn't work for people and it's not a learning curve
issue.

I can appreciate that it may work for some folks. Maybe you should appreciate
that it doesn't work for others.

------
RocketSyntax
How are they messing up hardware?! That's supposed to be their biggest
strength.

My 5 year old macbook pro has a 128GB SSD. With the size of docker images and
software modules that fills up in no time.

------
esturk
I had to remap my ESC key to the caps lock button just so I can get a physical
button because of the touchbar. This will only make that arrangement the
default for all my setups.

------
brailsafe
I have one the 13" non-touchbar, and am dissatisfied for other reasons, but
actually kind of like the idea of it existing. I personally don't think I'd do
anything with it, but as a developer, it seems neat to have another
platform—or aspect of a platform—to build on and extend your apps into. Much
like VSCode having extensions that allow you to order pizza while you're
coding, the idea of it seems like something need to write code for.

------
rnikander
I can go to BestBuy and get a 1TB SSD for $140. Is there any reason to pay
$200 more for the MacBook Pros with bigger SSDs, rather that buying the drive
separately?

~~~
mcintyre1994
You won't be able to put that SSD you buy in the laptop.

~~~
rnikander
I have a 2012 MacBook Pro, and I upgraded the SSD by myself. Has something
changed? I see articles online that suggest it's still pretty easy to unscrew
the cover and plug in a new SSD.

~~~
iak8god
RAM and storage are soldered to the motherboard:
[https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/501498/Is+it+possible+to...](https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/501498/Is+it+possible+to+upgrade+Memory+\(RAM\)+and+Storage+\(SDD\)+later#answer501500)

------
hartator
Hum, aren’t there rumors that say we are going to have the refresh of the
MacBook line this fall?

I would be sad is they do kill the MacBook 12”.

~~~
nnx
They did kill it today. Not available anymore.

------
reaperducer
I wonder if this is going to encourage developers to finally make full use of
the Touch Bar.

To date, support has been spotty, even within Apple's own programs. Now
programs without Touch Bar support will stand out. It's not something that can
be seen as a gimmick anymore, even if to many it is.

(Still, I think dumping the escape key was a mistake.)

------
fossuser
They also killed the regular Macbook in favor of the Air (which is a long time
coming, but I wish they'd killed the Air instead).

I never understood why the Air and the standard Macbook continued to coexist,
one of them had to go.

This makes their product line make a lot more sense:

Macbook Air, Macbook Pro (I'd probably drop the 'Air')

iMac, iMac Pro

Mac Mini, Mac Pro

------
touchMyApples
This is Apple's way of blowing out the last of their unpopular inventory.
People are avoiding it, but they have laptops to move.

It will go away in a year or two, but they need to apply a marketing rationale
(newer! better!) to their course change.

We all know it sucks, but PR says they need to save face.

------
geodel
Apple not caring what developers want seems to me extension of developers not
caring what users want.

------
elbasti
I find that an under appreciated use case for the touch bar is UI discovery.
I'm a fairly savvy computer user, but there have been many times when using
new software that the touch bar has shown me a feature that I did not know
there was a shortcut for.

------
drivingmenuts
Touch Bar as a concept is a good idea, but it should be an accessory, not a
built-in thing.

It’s the reason I use a Das Keyboard instead of the laptop keyboard when doing
just about everything now. It’s too easy to fat finger that blasted thing.

~~~
bdcravens
Used a Das, loved it, but was too loud for my environment. (Even brown with
dampers) I did switch to the Magic keyboard with 10-key - ergonomics aside,
works great, with all the F keys and shortcut keys you give up on MBP.

------
coupdejarnac
Dude, I'm getting a Dell. And running MacOs in a VM for occasional ios dev.

------
SpaceManNabs
I wonder if this means that tech companies will start offering better Windows
notebooks (maybe even *nix pre-installed notebooks) for use as a daily driver,
as an alternative to the Macbook Pro offerings.

------
mcintyre1994
I guess at least they've added a touchbar to the lowest end model instead of
just removing that model from the lineup which is what I initially thought
they'd do.

------
sbr464
Idea: Add gesture support.

Two finger slide for brightness or volume. Different from/to direction with 2+
fingers, maps to different functions, to ease use without looking down.

~~~
dpkonofa
Eh? It already has gesture support. You can flick the volume and brightness
buttons to change the levels one step at a time or you can drag on them to
pop-up a slider control.

Unless you're suggesting global gestures where two-fingers anywhere on the TB
would control volume. In that case, I'd have to see a use-case. I can see that
going horribly wrong and being triggered accidentally all the time.

~~~
sbr464
I meant multi finger gestures, similar to the touchpad.

If you hit anywhere on the Touch Bar (or maybe left/right side) with two
fingers and drag, you could map to volume/brightness.

When you press the wrong key and drag, the buttons disappear and you have to
wait a moment for it to clear, difficult UX if you aren’t looking.

------
banku_brougham
Absolute deal killer for me. I’ll get good use of my current MBP but in the
horizon I see a migration out of the walled garden.

Wait till they replace the keys with iPhone keyboard.

------
karangoeluw
I am still using the 2013 MBP primarily because:

\- It has ALL THE PORTS

\- No gimmicky touch bar

\- No butter-a$$ keyboard

If Apple doesn't revert these dumb changes, I will simply get a Dell or
something else.

------
ageyfman
The touchbar is garbage, why for the love of all that is good does Apple
continue investing in it, having found 0 killer apps for it?

------
garysahota93
Has anyone ever used the word completion or quick emoji picker on the touch
bar? I've found both of those to be very useful!

------
babyslothzoo
Huge mistake. The Touch Bar is a bad user experience.

Pro users need a physical ESC and F keys, that seems fairly obvious.

------
eznoonze
Anyone know if the new Macbook Air is still using the butterfly keyboard or
the new scissor?

~~~
jakobegger
According to Macrumors they have the 3rd Generation butterfly keyboard:
[https://www.macrumors.com/2019/07/09/all-2019-macbooks-
have-...](https://www.macrumors.com/2019/07/09/all-2019-macbooks-have-new-
material-keyboard/)

------
lelf
I honestly don’t understand how an infinitely and easy customisable high-
resolution million-colour second display, supporting multi-touch gestures,
could be called useless by the majority of commenters on the site called
_Hacker_ News.

~~~
wildrhythms
I was taught to touch type. I was taught that looking at the keyboard is a
failure to type properly. What value does the touch bar offer me?

------
ab_c
Geez. Give me back a physical ESC button. I've had to remap the caps lock so
that I'm not fumbling around to trigger escape. If this was one of Jony Ives'
designs, don't let the door hit you on the way out, mofo.

------
olliej
Noooooooooooooo

Seriously I’m 100% Mac, but the touchbar is consistently awful

------
musicale
I think I want to remap ` to ESC and ctrl-' to `

------
antoinevg
For fucks sake.

------
submeta
Wait, what?!?

------
exabrial
Why do we endure this.

------
andrei_says_
Hackintosh it is.

------
HyperTalk2
Who on earth even asked for this Touch Bar in the first place? The move always
struck me as out of touch on the same level as "install this creepy U2 album
on everyone's iPhone against their will".

------
sbhn
The touchbar looks nice. I am a religious apple fanatic so image is all
important to me. My god, i had loads of chicks coming to my mac and sliding
there fingers in it. I had to slap a few naughty hands lol. Sad to see it go.
Those were the days.

