
Apple says no fun allowed on the Touch Bar - kyriakos
https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/27/apple-says-no-fun-allowed-on-the-touch-bar/
======
eridius
I'm not sure the article author really understands how the Touch Bar works.

> _I for one was thinking of what the first Touch Bar games would look like,
> or how it could act as a Rainmeter or MenuMeters-like at-a-glance view of my
> machine._

People are going to experiment with toys for the Touch Bar, sure, but nobody's
going to actually try and publish a game for one. Not only would the audience
be very small, but the Touch Bar itself is so limited that you're not going to
be able to make a game for it that's worth buying. However, normal games can
and should use the Touch Bar to extend the keyboard to do great stuff (e.g.
RPGs could put Inventory, Character Sheet, Skills, etc as buttons on the Touch
Bar, or use it as an alternative input for controlling some types of
abilities).

As for MenuMeters-like at-a-glance, this is why I say the author doesn't seem
to understand how it works, because the only way you could have an at-a-glance
view in the Touch Bar is if you actually put focus on the app that provides
it. You cannot have a background app that provides Touch Bar content (like you
can for stuff in the menubar). The foreground app controls what's on the Touch
Bar. So the only way to have at-a-glance meters on it is if the foreground app
is the one providing those meters. And if you have to put focus on a
particular app to see your meters, then it's not really at-a-glance after all,
and it would be quicker and easier (and actually usable for people without
Touch Bars) to simply have that app show the status on the screen when you
give it focus.

~~~
awesomerobot
I mean, you could do all of that — Apple just won't let you.

~~~
randyrand
On OSX you can distribute an executable without Apple's permission. The
touchbar API may or may not support all use cases, but reverse engineering the
lower level interface is probably not too hard.

~~~
awesomerobot
Hopefully! I don't think anyone would be surprised if the touchbar was "App
store verified" only.

~~~
tinus_hn
One of the main demos was for Photoshop which is not on the Mac App Store. I
would be surprised.

------
rayiner
> Who wouldn’t want a stock ticker there, or a Twitter feed, or a progress bar
> for downloads and file operations? There are plenty of possibilities to
> explore here, and it seems a disservice to insist that things remain
> monochrome, key-shaped and static.

No Mac user has ever thought "gee, this third party design is so much more
tasteful than something that follows the HIG!" Apple is right to keep
designers on a tight leash.

~~~
thefastlane
they took away the Esc key and all the Fn keys. Apple's HIG is dead to me now.

~~~
acdha
Just looking at [http://www.apple.com/macbook-
pro/](http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/) shows that's not true:

[http://images.apple.com/v/macbook-
pro/j/images/overview/touc...](http://images.apple.com/v/macbook-
pro/j/images/overview/touchbar_access_function_large.jpg)

Maybe wait to actually use one before trying to rally the mob with pitchforks
and torches?

~~~
thefastlane
i appreciate you pointing this out concerning the Fn keys. at the end of the
day, though, i want real keys. i'm not a starfleet officer and i don't want to
type on a flat screen.

~~~
awesomerobot
I'd type on a flat screen if it made me a starfleet officer though

------
delinka
Only the foreground app gets to put things in the touch bar. Excellent - I
don't want some background process putting animated ads there.

Beyond that, Apple can't possibly limit what the foreground app does.
Distribute your tasteless animating app with a Developer ID cert, and annoy
people to your heart's content.

I do want a screensaver that also uses the touch bar. Nyan Cat is acceptable
in this context.

~~~
Spivak
> I don't want some background process putting animated ads there.

If you are legitimately worried about this then I am in horror of what
software you're running on your computer.

I could understand having it require user approval but forbidding it entirely
seems short sighted.

~~~
awesomerobot
If I had an application that advertised to me like that I'd just uninstall it
immediately, like I do on my phone.

I think a lot of people in this thread are getting so riled up about bad
design the only alternative they see is totalitarianism.

In this case I think if you're giving an application your focus it should be
able to use a secondary screen however the user wants it to. If the experience
is bad people won't use your app.

Apple is instead saying "we know what all the good experiences are, so don't
go having any bright ideas" — hopefully they won't strongly enforce any of
their "guidelines"

------
pyrophane
How many negative posts about the new MacBook have graced the front-page of HN
since the announcement? It feels like a lot.

I don't really understand the degree of animosity that the new MBP is drawing.
Apple isn't, nor have they ever really been, the makers of the ultimate dev
machine. They were always just the company that makes a laptop with decent
power that was actually a laptop (not a desktop with a hinge in the back)
which ran a unix that was, for many, more pleasant to use than linux. That
hasn't changed with this release.

Would I like them to maybe be a little less obsessive about thinness if it
meant getting a keyboard with a bit more travel? Sure.

Do I think that maybe a 32GB of RAM might not be quite the battery-killing
trade-off that Phil implies? Kinda. Do I expect Apple to give me the option to
make that choice on my own? Not a chance.

And when it comes to the Touch Bar, I didn't really expect Apple to make this
a free-for-all for developers. They've long had this tendency to want to
control how developers use these new features to ensure that it doesn't get
away from their vision. But will someone figure out how to hack the Touch Bar
and make it do some very interesting things? Oh, absolutely.

~~~
gosubpl
"obsessive with thinness"? new MacBookPro - 14.9 mm MacBook - 13.0 mm Asus
UX305 - 12.3 mm Samsung Series 9 900X3 - 13.0 mm

I don't think we can call that obsession. And please note that both Asus and
Samsung have keyboards with around 2mm travel - laptop standard.

~~~
pyrophane
My biggest concern is that I won't like the keyboard, but I do most of my
typing on an external keyboard anyway, so I suppose it won't be the end of the
world. Once you get used to a mechanical keyboard it is hard to go back to
typing on any laptop keyboard.

------
dvcc
I await the first few apps to put ads on the Touch Bar. It seems all but
inevitable.

~~~
mortenjorck
Doubtful, mostly because there just isn't that much ad-supported software on
OS X / macOS. And Safari certainly doesn't expose any access to it.

~~~
Terribledactyl
I believe with safari open, you see a representation (favicon? I don't know)
of your open tabs and favorites. I bet something could leak through there, at
least with a desperate enough site.

------
wesleytodd
"Don't be creative with this new tool we made for creative people" -Apple

Typical Apple restricting the ecosystem. Guess we all knew what we were
getting ourselves into.

~~~
st3v3r
It's not like they're going to ban apps that do this. They're just saying,
"These are the best ways to use this thing."

------
stcredzero
_Now, admittedly, some of these things could be annoying or pulled off
poorly._

This is one of the things that Apple has always been serious about doing
right. Generally, devs who complain about this class of things are proved
wrong in a few years. (Remember all of the outrage about background processes
from the 2nd gen iPhone era?)

That said, even Apple is getting less Apple-y in this regard.

------
kemiller2002
Really? You know what I expected on the keyboard? The escape key, but clearly
Apple didn't have a problem with violating that expectation.

~~~
tjohns
Several screenshots show that a escape key can be placed on the touch bar by
apps that need it (e.g. Terminal).

There's certainly a good argument that physical keys are better, due to
tactile positioning and response. But there's still a virtual escape "key".

(And on a related note: Folks could make the same argument about the
F13/F14/F15/Help buttons that are traditionally on a Mac keyboard. Or the lack
of Print Screen/Break/Scroll Lock from Apple keyboards in general. Keyboard
layouts actually do change with time. Heck, look at the "Space Cadet Keyboard"
from an MIT Lisp machine to see how much things have changed.)

------
Razengan
Good, sensible guidelines from Apple, and it's not like you can't ignore them
and distribute your app outside the Mac App Store.

------
ccvannorman
I've read a TON of pushback on HN about the new touch bar. After reading this
article it dawned on me -- the reason _I_ hate the touch bar is because it
isn't tactile. Instead of feeling for the volume up/mute/lightness up/down
buttons, I'll have to stick my face into my keyboard to know what I'm
pressing.

My solution would be allowing _individual pressable physical keys_ to be
changed via LED display, so that I can still feel them, but developers can
modify what that key means. Yeah this would disable "sliding" which I don't
care about.. is anyone with me on this? I hate having to look at things.

~~~
eridius
There's a bunch of external keyboards that do this already. AFAIK, none of
them have proved to be particularly popular or have a lot of developer
support.

As a side note, I don't think I've _ever_ pressed volume up/down or brightness
up/down without looking at the keyboard first. I simply don't press them often
enough to have muscle memory for their location, and every keyboard I use puts
them in slightly different places anyway.

~~~
mi100hael
To each their own, but I use esc heavily in vim, and brightness & volume are
one in from each edge on all mac keyboards that I'm aware of, so they are easy
to hit without looking. Lack of tactile buttons is going to be a huge pain in
the ass.

------
kprybol
I'm kind of OK with this. Yea I think that there are a ton of really
cool/interesting things that could be done with the touch bar, but given that
it serves the important role of being the power button and controlling user
access via TouchID, I really wouldn't want to risk either of those
functionalities even if it means less "fun".

------
comex
This article is very misleading. Apple has always had UI guidelines (HIG);
that doesn't mean they ban apps that don't follow them. It's a recommendation,
not a proscription.

------
skeptic2718
Given they showed some pretty interactive demos in the keynote, I'm thinking
it's all allowed if you're Apple but 3rd-party developers should be concerned.

------
cphoover
Would be cool to put a code editor minimap on the touch bar.

~~~
agumonkey
ed is back.

------
fabrika
How are they going to control this for non-App Store apps?

~~~
mazlix
I'm pretty sure its only talking about App Store apps.

~~~
baefage
But maybe they'll make it hard or even impossible for apps outside the MAS to
use the touch bar.

------
orbitingpluto
Given that displays favor landscape over portrait, there's a lot of free space
above the numbers. My bet is that the next iteration will have the function
keys and the touch bar after the alienation of developers becomes apparent to
Apple.

------
ksk
Has anyone here used the touchbar in person? I'm interested to know how easy
it is to touch individual controls on the bar. Like can you be in the middle
of typing and hit the keys or do you have to stop and poke at it.

------
drivingmenuts
> Who wouldn’t want a stock ticker there, or a Twitter feed, or a progress bar
> for downloads and file operations?

I want function keys there. I have a perfectly good screen to show all that
other fluff on.

------
msane
This thing looks terrible.

How did

 _" Let's add TouchID to the MacBook!"_

become

 _" Let's get rid of escape, power, function keys, volume, brightness, media
controls ... and replace it with a second tiny screen!"_

?

------
bcheung
There goes my pong controller.

~~~
WiseWeasel
FWIW, the guidelines suggest not using the Touch Bar as an _output_ device,
i.e. as an extension of the screen, not that you shouldn't use it as an
_input_ device. Pong paddle control should still be an acceptable use of the
bar.

------
curiousgal
Yet another huge FU to developers.

~~~
budde
As a macOS user, I'm pretty pleased Apple is discouraging the use of the Touch
Bar as yet more real estate for 'innovative' developers to plaster unwanted
notifications or other distracting garbage. Besides, if you have a compelling
non-approved use of the touch bar nothing is stopping you from distributing it
outside of the Mac App Store.

Now if only they could take a look at the user-hostile default "allow" option
on the dialog Safari presents when a website wants to start sending you push
notifications...

------
tn13
The primary reason for this may not be that Apple does not want you to do it
but it is probably the hardware and software that powers this feature is
probably not robust enough to handle that creative potential. In short this is
a substandard piece you are buying.

I will be surprised if someone does not hack and if apple does not provide a
proper API support to modify and have fun with this feature.

~~~
matt4077
Well they showed a dj using it to control a synthesizer during the keynote, so
I think (in short) that was a substandard comment I was reading.

~~~
tn13
What do you think is the delta between orchestrated demo v/s real usability of
a particular feature ?

~~~
matt4077
Well he was using it. I'm quite sure they didn't fake it. I'm absolutely sure
I couldn't do it.

I'm also remain very certain that Apple is not trying to discourage people
from using this thing because it only has a life span of whatever hours of
active use. How I know it? Because they have been selling touchscreens for ten
years now, under much stronger constraints, without any such shenanigans. And
also because it is an incredibly stupid theory.

