> In short, it’s for the 90% of software users that float between general public and pro users. It works.
Then they should have not called it a “MacBook pro” there is nothing “pro” about touch bar, it’s something useless that I have to pay extra for and I don’t need it at all.
Well, due to a bug in a specific version of vi, holding the space-bar for a few seconds causes the laptop to overheat.
I bought an external thermometer that connects via USB, and I have a daemon that monitors it to notice the overheating and send the ESC key to the application.
Ctrl+c is technically not quite the same as Esc: it doesn't trigger InsertLeave autocmds, and doesn't finish abbreviations. But as long as you don't have those you'll be fine.
I haven't tried it on a Mac, because I normally use a PC, but there Ctrl+[ is equivalent to Esc and saves reaching upwards (some PC laptops have badly placed Esc too.) I've been using Ctrl+[ ever since I discovered it.
Uh, no? I mean, the software you write _may_ be the reason, but it's in no way implied by the fact that you're a "vi user", I've ran fairly large pieces of software from old MacBooks with little problem, though _yes_, I did some data mining stuff that would kill the poor little things - but not every "vi user" ever does that. In the largest deployment I've worked with even Vi would be ran via SSH on a remote VM.
It's when you bring out Photoshop or (gasp!) Blender or Unity, or doing something else that requires serious memory, when things start getting dicey. It's a specific sort of professional they mean, otherwise almost every employed person would fit.
Just because they work in vi as their text editor does not mean they do not run other software on the same laptop. There are fields of software development where performance of your development environment matters.
Emacs believer here, but the same applies: it's not the editor, it's the supporting software. Like local instances of the project you're working on. Compilers. Web browsers. More web browsers in various team working crap you might need to be using (though I stick to using web versions of stuff like Slack; downloading them as apps is just pure waste of memory and compute). Videoconferencing for remote work. Etc.
Having to "touch" a completely different surface to press escape sounds absolutely awful. Unless there's a way to swap escape for a real key that you don't need I would consider that machine defective.
Capslock isn't entirely useless. I have mapped my capslock key to control but I still have access to it via a function key and do use it occasionally. Why do you think capslock is useless?
Because on the very rare occasion in which I want to capitalize more than one word, I can either hold shift, use tab-completion, or highlight in my editor and switch case.
The "Pro" in "MacBook Pro" has never meant "developers, exclusively developers, and nobody but developers".
As far as I'm aware, Apple doesn't and hasn't ever explicitly targeted its higher-end models at developers. They just happen to have been good developer machines, and so developers confused that for "I am explicitly the target market of this".
The vast majority of working professionals have not memorised what the F-keys do in arbitrary situations. (If you don't believe this, you've never worked in as a consultant for a wide variety of companies in a wide variety of professional fields.)
Not only do people not know what the F-keys do, but they have no ability to determine what an F-key might do in any given situation.
Not so with the touch bar. The touch bar will do what the touch bar indicates it will do, which is displayed on the touch bar itself.
As best I am aware, many of the F-keys have no specific use outside development applications. About the only two that get used in widespread applications are F1 and F5. IDEs make good use of them for debugging, but that's about it.
Other 'Professional' software such as video editing or music production usually sticks to key combos rather than F-keys. This is traditionally why the F-key row is used for things like brightness or volume, and why Macs use these as the default function.
I don’t know recently but in my experience it’s absolutely false.
In the ERPs or other enterprisy software they HAD to press the F-keys to do anything.
If they could do it 20 years ago I simply can’t believe that suddenly humanity has devolved and it’s unable to use function keys today.
i’m sure that humanity has the ability to learn to use he escape keys, just like i’m sure you have the ability to learn to farm your own food. that doesn’t mean you should have to do it to get things done though
computers have gotten easier and learning what F5 does is not in the realm of necessary things that people should have to know to operate their work device
> The vast majority of working professionals have not memorised what the F-keys do in arbitrary situations. (If you don't believe this, you've never worked in as a consultant for a wide variety of companies in a wide variety of professional fields.)
That's actually pretty sad (and should be remedied with some education, starting with emphasizing the fact that tools have a learning curve and you're supposed to follow it). I mean, look at non-professionals working with computers daily, like e.g. shop clerks. They have every possible shortcut used in their sales/inventory management software in muscle memory.
Think about all of the ways creative professionals augment their computers for touch-based interactions: jog wheels, sliders, drawing tablets. The touch bar is a good way to make some of those interactions more portable.
I am a creative professional - there's lots of stuff that can credibly be done on the touch bar. Just because a tool isn't suited for every possible use case doesn't mean it isn't still a useful tool.
Yes I have thought about it, and I do think "thinking about it" brings me tons of cool ideas about what you can do with it.
But the problem is, there's a huge difference between a cool idea and actual execution, just like Apple's Newton flopped but decades later iPhone succeeded.
I use Ableton pro to make music, I use final cut to make video. I'm pretty sure I fall into the "creative class" of people you're referring to, but I never use any of the touchbar features that ship with the apps unless I'm forced to. It's much faster to use keyboard shortcuts, and I'm sure most "pro" users are already much better with the shortcuts that they don't need the touchbar features.
I'm not saying the idea is bad. It's just a horrible execution.
Since you say you're a creative professional, let me ask you, do you actually use any of these features and think these really improved your life significantly? I'm not talking about imagination, i'm talking about actual product. In my case it's much more of a trouble than any real benefit.
I bounced into a guy that has his independent music label and creates music too, and he loves the thing, finds it freaking genius for the direct interaction and enhanced discoverability in his tools. He's definitely "Pro", but not tech-savvy.
The ability to have functions available to any piece of software that make that software more convenient for professionals who use those functions every day. Scrubbing a video or timeline in Final Cut, for example, is not possible with Fn keys but makes my job infinitely easier for editing.
Developers recommend friends and family on computer hardware purchases. We've seen it before: a company starts out (over)designing for a market segment that includes influencers, gets successful off the back of proselytization, decides to shift focus to the larger, more lucrative consumer market, and takes a big hit as the influencers move elsewhere.
Except, again, as far as I'm aware Apple has never marketed the MacBook Pro by running around Ballmer-style and screaming "Developers! Developers! Developers!"
They just made a good laptop, and developers used it because it was a good laptop. If anything, developers bought and used Apple's laptops in spite of shortcomings (as developer machines) which have been present for at least the twelve years that have elapsed since I first used one.
Meanwhile, I'm writing this comment on a 15" MBP with Touch Bar, and I use it as my primary dev laptop. And... well, it's still a good laptop. I would be less happy and less productive using one of the "equivalent" PC builds (regardless of whether running Windows or Linux) people always recommend. And I know that because I switched to Macs from one of those "equivalents" (a Thinkpad running Linux).
Add in that the people who are complaining about how this is the death of Apple are almost always posting while clearly indicating they've never actually used a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, and I don't put this down to Apple somehow "shifting away" from "influencers". I put it down as the same kind of foaming-at-the-mouth hate that every Apple product in history has attracted, due to those products committing the unforgivable sin of being Apple products. Company seems to've survived that.
And for what it's worth, the Touch Bar took some getting used to, but now it's fine. Some apps do useful things with it. Some apps don't. About what I expected.
"Pro" doesn't stand for "professional developer," it just stands for "professional." Professional includes designers, executives--anyone using the laptop for work.
Pro doesn't even imply computer power user. It just means the opposite of home/personal.
I never said it stands for "professional developer". I am also pretty sure any "professional" designer knows their shortcuts and does not need to look at the touch bar, nevermind the executive. How are executives going to use a touch bar in a useful way? Adding emojis in their email conversation?
I disagree completely. The Touch Bar is invaluable for me in Final Cut and the tools I use for development also use the Touch Bar. I like iTerms use of the Touch Bar. Just because it doesn't work for you doesn't mean it doesn't work for other "pros".
Then they should have not called it a “MacBook pro” there is nothing “pro” about touch bar, it’s something useless that I have to pay extra for and I don’t need it at all.