
Ask HN: No mechanical escape key in new Macbook Pros? - mattnedrich
I came across this photo (potential casing for new MBP): http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn.macrumors.com&#x2F;article-new&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;macbook_pro_2016_case_top.jpg<p>Notice the missing top row of function keys. People have speculated that this top row may be replaced by an OLED touch screen.<p>Comparing the above photo to the Macbook keyboard, it would seem that the top row includes the escape key: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cdn.macrumors.com&#x2F;article-new&#x2F;2014&#x2F;11&#x2F;retinamacbookkeyboard-800x484.jpg<p>If this is the case, any software developer that uses the escape key a lot may not be very happy.
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weinzierl
I'm in the market for the new MacBok Pro and the OLED row makes me excited,
but as a Vim user the lack of an physical escape key would be problem for me.

I have Caps Lock mapped to Ctrl and I'm glad that MacOS provides this option
out of the box, but Caps Lock as Esc is not an option for me. I hope there
will be an out of the box way to map Escape to something sensible. I'd trade ~
for Esc anytime, as long as ~ and ` are accessible via the OLED strip.

~~~
serge2k
> OLED row makes me excited

Can't imagine why. It sounds incredibly dumb.

Probably have to live with it since no one else seems to be able to make a
really high quality laptop. sigh.

~~~
busterarm
> Probably have to live with it since no one else seems to be able to make a
> really high quality laptop. sigh.

My solution to this has grown more and more to be "do everything on a remote
box via SSH" and then it doesn't matter what laptop I use.

I am a heavy Vim user, so this is easy!

~~~
mattnedrich
The MBP is nice b/c of the retina screen. Most laptops have crappy screens. In
fact, I would go as far as saying that the MBP has the best screen by a decent
margin.

~~~
busterarm
I definitely have to agree, but they're getting serious competition on that
front now. The Surface Pro is very close in ppi to the rMBP. Vendors are
asking for this to compete with Apple.

~~~
slededit
PPI isn't everything. The quality of the glass/plastic is also an issue. My
DELL 4K monitor certainly has the resolution, but it also looks like I'm
staring at a textured surface because they use cheaper acid etched plastic as
the anti-glare solution.

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gamedna
Back when the iPad was released, I ran a 6 month experiment to see if I could
live as a developer using only the iPad and the cloud. My initial findings
were quite positive, and the first few weeks were exciting and new.

As time progressed, task switching and copy/paste were obvious shortcomings
due to limitations with iOS, but the experience was mostly bearable but not
awful.

Towards the end it became unbearable as the escape key was so engrossed with
all things unix/linux that i gave up a month early.

If the escape key is actually vanishing, I am completely confused. macOS is a
unix derivative and apple has a boatload of developers. Why would they want to
alienate us?

~~~
dfsegoat
Have a blog / write up which chronicles your experiment? I always wondered if
I, or anyone could do this when i first got my ipad.

~~~
gamedna
Yes, but it was posted company internal and I do not have the rights to
republish. What were you most interested in so I can summarize in a paragraph
or two here?

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stevep001
I ended up with a ThinkPad X1 Carbon gen 2 -- it has a five row physical
keyboard, with the top row as a virtual keyboard.

It was constantly registering touches on the top row when I didn't want them.
With a laptop, I commonly rest my hand on the keyboard and touch -- but don't
depress -- keys.

Today it's only used in a desktop configuration with an external keyboard.

I'm not the only one who felt this way -- see, for example, this Ars review of
the gen 3, which said of the gen 2 keyboard:

"...the keyboard shed its top row of function keys, replacing them with a
software-controlled touchable strip, and used a peculiar arrangement for
buttons including home, insert, backspace, and delete. The result wasn't
better; it was awkward."

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/thinkpad-x1-carbon-
re...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/thinkpad-x1-carbon-review-a-
fine-heir-to-the-thinkpad-name/)

~~~
lj3
Lenovo has a bad track record with all things touch. For example, I have a
w530 and the trackpad is terrible. Apple, on the other hand, has a history of
well engineered touch hardware, especially the touchpad.

Maybe a touch strip will be great or maybe it'll be rubbish, but don't pre-
judge the feature based on Lenovo's increasingly shoddy engineering.

------
busterarm
I've been using an external keyboard (Realforce 87U at work. A 104 w/ Cherry
Blues at home).

Other than the coffee-shop crowd, how many of you would say you're exclusively
a laptop-keyboard user? Not a dig, just wondering.

If Apple offered an iPad Pro, running OSX with USB ports (or a thunderbolt
port usb hub) for a physical keyboard, I would switch over in a heartbeat.

~~~
mattnedrich
I actually use my laptop keyboard almost exclusively (my setup is MBP +
external monitor). I have an external keyboard that I use every now and then,
but I love the portability of being able to pick up and move.

~~~
gamedna
Even though I have a full desk setup with keyboard, mouse, I do spend quite a
bit traveling for work. Also, its very convenient to occasionally unplug and
move into the living room so I can spend time with my family if i need to work
late.

~~~
busterarm
I have (and when I need to, carry around) a KBC Poker when I'm traveling and
it was worked out well. I don't use the mouse for anything but web browsing
honestly and if I'm doing that or working late, I'm not really effectively
getting any work done anyway.

I mean, I see the appeal though...it's just the typing experience on that
keyboard sucks so much to me it's borderline-unbearable.

------
1_2__3
It's really hard not to see this as just a continuous and perpetual dumbing-
down by Apple of all its products, to the point of uselessness for essentially
anyone who isn't an 80 year old grandmother who's never used a computer before
and needs to use skype.

~~~
snowwrestler
On the other hand, the touch bar might introduce opportunities for more
sophisticated and flexible interfaces.

~~~
1_2__3
Will it, though? I feel like we're in the part of history right now where -
when it comes to computers anyway - we're going with what's cool rather than
what works. I'd say in general touchscreens have continued to be an utter
failure as a general-purpose input device, and that's why we only see it on
toy devices. Anything where what you type matters still uses some kind of
mechanical feedback.

Maybe with haptic feedback that'll change, but for now any attempt to move
mechanical keys to touch-screens are, for me, a net negative just because of
the basic facts of reality.

~~~
mod
Toy devices? Are you not exposed to modern mobile devices?

Anyone with a child that has access to a tablet can tell you that touch-input
is succeeding.

~~~
1_2__3
I call it a toy, you express indignation and then use children as an example.

The way children use toys is not the way adults use tools. Touchscreens have
proven great for "consumption" devices like phones, and have proven pretty
terrible for most everything else.

I'm not being too hard on them I should say, but anyone who thinks traditional
input devices will be replaced in general purpose computing with touchscreens
ignores decades of history and basic physical reality.

~~~
landryraccoon
How does your hypothesis square with the physical reality that a declining
share of users use non smartphones for ANY type of computing activity, and
sales of touchscreen only devices exceed sales of keyboard controlled devices
by an order of magnitude (with that gap growing every year)?

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snowwrestler
Apple could easily persist an ESC virtual button in the same spot. Or provide
a user setting to do so.

~~~
mattnedrich
I think they'll absolutely do this (assuming there isn't a physical ESC key).
But, I think the experience would suck for users that are hitting ESC all day
(e.g., vim users)

~~~
snowwrestler
If I were them, I would have kept the physical ESC and power keys at either
end and fit the touch bar in between.

They still could; the part in that picture might not be final. (It probably is
though.)

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taurath
I think they'll just replace the tilde key with the escape key if the photo is
a new MBP.

I press escape OFTEN, but tildes rarely. For the most part its to get into
consoles in games or other dev functions - I could see myself losing it and
not being too sad.

~~~
mod
The tilde key is also the ` key. (I have no idea what the name of it is).

That's used in markdown and ES6 pretty commonly.

Losing that key is a problem for me.

~~~
cauterized
Backtick. It's also used in bash scripting; and in Slack and presumably some
other chat services it's used to delimit quoted code (forcing monospaced
output).

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a-no-n
If there's no hackable non-Retina-like model with user-upgradable to 16 GiB of
memory and dual SSDs, the MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012) MD101LL/A will be
the last MBP I buy. Overpriced, soldered-on memory is BS.

------
meidan
I use VIM. I will not be upgrading to the newest apple products. I think I'll
phase them out instead.

~~~
eridius
Maybe you should wait until the products are released before judging them.

Also, a VIM user that actually uses the escape key? I don't know how you
tolerate that. I bound jk to escape years ago, and in the rare case where I'm
ssh'd into a machine that doesn't have my vim config I still find ^[ easier to
type than escape (which is probably because I bound caps lock to control so ^[
is easy to type).

~~~
wodenokoto
I don't use VIM a lot, mostly when committing stuff in git, so I'm quite naive
about it.

How would you get out of insert mode by writing jk? Or, how would you write jk
in insert mode without exiting?

~~~
eridius
Add the following to your .vimrc:

    
    
      if !&insertmode
        inoremap jk <esc>
        snoremap jk <esc>
      endif
    

(the insertmode bit can probably be dropped, but it's technically correct)

With this mapping, typing "jk" in insert mode acts as if you'd hit escape
instead (so it doesn't type the j or the k). To type jk in insert mode without
exiting, you either wait a second after hitting the j (once it shows up on
screen you're good) before hitting the k, or if you're impatient you hit
another key and then hit delete before the k, e.g. "jj<delete>k". The reason
this mapping is popular is because "jk" is extremely rare to type in insert
mode; you usually only type it if you're typing out the alphabet, or if you're
talking about how you map jk to escape.

The only annoyance here is if you type j by itself, you don't actually see the
letter show up immediately. This is because Vim is waiting to see if you're
going to type a k. If you type nothing, after a second Vim will timeout and
decide you're not invoking the jk mapping after all (and will then show the
j). Or if you hit anything besides k then you're obviously not triggering the
mapping. You can observe this behavior with any other multi-character mapping
you might have as well (e.g. anything with <leader> or <localleader>).

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sboselli
What about the up and down arrows? There's only key there in your first
image..

~~~
snowwrestler
The up and down keys are half-height without a spacer between them. Together
they take up the same space as one letter key. That's the way it has been on
Macbooks for a while.

The change on that keyboard is that the left and right keys are now full
height; they used to be half-height with a half-space above.

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stuaxo
Hm, how long until there are Linux drivers for this ?

