
Apple announces new MacBook Pro with touch strip - crivabene
http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/27/13436750/apple-macbook-pro-announced-laptop-price-release-date-specs
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ralusek
Nothing particularly new, but I am comfortably in the boat of people that
don't feel that laptops need to be reinvented in any major way. 95% of what I
do is in the command line, the browser, or an IDE. I've consistently gone back
to my MBP to do all of those things after having tried many other form
factors.

That being said, I have to admit that I am at least intrigued by the Surface
Book. I recently tried the Linux subsystem on Windows and was pretty
impressed, it's literally just Ubuntu running with file access. The fact that
I CAN pop off the tablet portion, and if I'm so inclined for art, have
Photoshop, Illustrator, ZBrush actually available to me is pretty tempting.
The OS differences between OSX and Windows for me have always existed only in
the command line, so as long as Windows gives me bash and Linux, that pretty
much disappears.

Conclusion is, I don't think Apple is suffering from a lack of innovation in
the laptop department. I don't understand why people assume that we haven't
yet converged on the optimal form factor. Why I chose an MBP for my current
laptop wasn't because it offered anything totally innovative. It was already
derivative of 30 years of laptops with the same form factor. I chose it
because of the Unix development environment and the great build quality. I've
never used a Surface Book, but it seems like Microsoft has stepped up their
game in the build quality department. If their trackpad is as good as Apple's
(I have yet to use a Windows laptop where this is the case), then I'd start to
consider it a serious competitor. If the two have comparable build quality and
Unix, then their form factor innovation is going to be the only thing left
distinguishing them (for which Microsoft is obviously currently ahead).

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dchuk
I think conceptually this is really neat, but it could potentially suffer from
one major flaw: I hardly ever look down at my keyboard. A flat, digital screen
containing changing buttons does not cater well to touch typists, of which you
can reasonably assume most are who use a macbook pro.

Touch ID is sweet though.

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timmyd803
I'm on a 2015 MacBook Pro 15" and, just glancing down at the current function
row, it seems like it's really not THAT far away from the bottom of the
screen. So if you look at the dock routinely, jumping an inch or so to the new
Touch Bar might not be such a pain.

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Osmium
Would be curious to know if they tested the Touch Bar below the keyboard
instead of above it.

I wonder if, as the concept further evolves, the bar might become larger or
migrate locations. The comparisons they made to the original PowerBook were
interesting, in that it really showed how constant incremental changes really
add up in the long term.

Edit: Another possibility is to integrate an OLED display into the trackpad
too, so then you have haptics as well, and could interact with both mouse and
touch bar with one hand.

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pgaddict
I wonder whether they'll offer a version without a discrete GPU, and how
difficult will it be to install/run Linux on it ...

I've been looking for a good 15" laptop laptop for some time, and all other
manufacturers only offer 15" models with numpads, which is just awful. The
discrete GPUs are just a rather useless nuisance for me.

So I wonder whether there's more detailed info about the exact models they'll
offer, somewhere.

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Lio
I'm with you on the subject of numeric keypads on laptops. The ergonomics is
terrible for anyone who touch-types as your always pushed left from the centre
of the screen.

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pgaddict
I suspect there was a secret meeting where all the manufacturers discussed
ways to make the users suffer, and adding the numpads was #1 on their list.
The only two vendors absent on that meeting were Apple and Dell, but Dell then
attended the second meeting where they agreed to never offer i5/i7 CPU with an
integrated GPU. That's the best explanation why the only XPS15 config with
integrated GPU only has i3 CPU ...

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Lio
I'm not a legally qualified medical doctor but that does have a ring of truth
to it!

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laddng
One concern I have is that editing in vim is going to be more annoying since
the escape key is so essential to the vim workflow and now it's a touch key.

I know that some have mentioned that you can map the escape key to the caps
lock key, however, I've already mapped my ctrl key to the caps lock key for
more accessibility. vim problems :/

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jodoherty
This is why I've completely switched to using "Ctrl+[" instead of escape. The
escape key placement on a lot of keyboards is too inconsistent, plus it's just
so far away.

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todd8
I'm already looking forward to using the touch strip in the "professional"
apps like Photoshop, but I really spend a lot more time with IDEs and
specifically with Emacs.

One of the frustrating things about my various keyboards is that the function
keys are located in slightly different places. I already have to look down to
use a specific function key.

Emacs, by default, uses so many of the possible key chords using control and
alt and even command modifiers on the Mac keyboard that users are expected to
bind their own functions to some of the function keys. I'm wondering if the
touch strip will be capable of simplifying my interaction with a complex
interface like that presented by Emacs.

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lathiat
I had hoped it would be a click bar, rather than a touch bar based on my
experience with my Lenovo touch bar. Also hoped for haptic feedback... seems a
shame. At least it seems they have a bit of buffer room on both the left and
the right so your fingers can sit on the side of the machine without touching
something - I guess that does the job.

Will be most interesting to find out how the security is working, and if
they're making using any of the Intel security features on these new machines.
To date, they have been woefully bad at doing so, which is interesting given
the security push on iPhones and the controlled hardware platform.

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JoshGlazebrook
Seems to be well thought out and not just a gimmicky feature.

