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Apple Could Add Force Touch Sensors to Future MacBook Pro Touch Bar

They should implement mini oled displays into physical keys. It would give us the best of both worlds. They could also be haptic keys. A simple tap would activate the touch buttons and a long press would act as a “physical”press. The software would be able to tell accidental taps from intentional ones to avoid mistakes, almost like palm rejection. Dedicated “keys” are a lot better then one giant pane of glass.
 
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mattspace said:
Woo, strap in folks, the feature noone wants on the Macbook Pro, to get the feature noone cared about on the iPhone.

Michael Jackson, eating popcorn while looking amused.
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I like the TouchBar - it works great for what I use it for (and I use BetterTouchTool to extend / customise it further).

Sure, the choice to add / remove it would be good for folks, but I strongly disagree with the sentiment that it's useless, or that nobody cares about it.
 
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Can’t wait for my first Touch Bar MacBook to arrive next week... I almost never use those fn keys, just the ESC, and it’s hard to find things the rare times I need them i.e. the volume buttons or play/pause.

Maybe this hatred is a developers’ thing? I don’t understand, Touch Bar seems so much better to me.
 
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felixen said:
Just saying, 3D Touch on iPhone X is part of my motivation for still using it. Emphasis on “part” - in other words, it makes my decision to skip the new stuff every year a bit easier. There are a lot of people on here who loved 3D Touch
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So you’re still on iOS12 I take it. The stealth castration and death of 3D Touch in iOS13 in phones where the hardware was promoted as a feature, like the X, was a absolute disgrace. Nothing to do with “discoverability”, just penny pinching in new phones and wanting the lowest common denominator across the range.

Hearing about Force Touch possibly being reintroduced in other Apple products just rubs salt in that festering wound.
 
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I thought haptics would be the best thing they could add. I’m not quite sure how force touch would help, but combined with haptics, might help it feel like a more useable interface. My main problem with TB is I forget it’s there until I press something by accident. Maybe force touch capability would prevent this?
 
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From normal viewing angles, the current touch bar really looks dim... if at least they made it so it's optimized for the angle where you'd normally see it from....

There's so much to be improved here. Haptic feedback, customization, the option of it just displaying the F keys or the dock or some widgets or the menu bar.

EDIT: Oh wow, better touch tool seems to do all that. Nice!
 
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Veinticinco said:
So you’re still on iOS12 I take it. The stealth castration and death of 3D Touch in iOS13 in phones where the hardware was promoted as a feature, like the X, was a absolute disgrace. Nothing to do with “discoverability”, just penny pinching in new phones and wanting the lowest common denominator across the range.

Hearing about Force Touch possibly being reintroduced in other Apple products just rubs salt in that festering wound.
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But my iPhone XS still has force touch running iOS 14.2

For example, camera only opens from Lock Screen if I force touch. App icons react much quicker to force touch compared to long press.
 
MrCrowbar said:
From normal viewing angles, the current touch bar really looks dim... if at least they made it so it's optimized for the angle where you'd normally see it from....

There's so much to be improved here. Haptic feedback, customization, the option of it just displaying the F keys or the dock or some widgets or the menu bar.
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I suggested they show notifications there when the display is off. Surely that would be a battery saver.
 
Royksöpp said:
They should implement mini oled displays into physical keys. It would give us the best of both worlds. They could also be haptic keys. A simple tap would activate the touch buttons and a long press would act as a “physical”press. The software would be able to tell accidental taps from intentional ones to avoid mistakes, almost like palm rejection. Dedicated “keys” are a lot better then one giant pane of glass.
Click to expand...
I'm sure they have a few patents for things like that. I remember seeing the articles on MacRumors a year or two ago.
 
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I wished Apple will remove the touch bar alltogether. Never liked it. I prefer touchscreen instead of this little gimmicky bar. Force touch would make sense on touchscreen. Other than that why releasing something they will remove soon after as they did on iPhone. What's the point?!
 
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nexusrule said:
All major and most minor creative professional apps (design, photo, music, presentations etc.) have implemented the Touch Bar, meaning a lot of professionals use it. In my office a lot of people in product, design and tech roles uses it and find it useful, me included, and we are several thousands people. That a few people don't like it doesn't mean it's "the feature none wants" at all, I mean there are probably like 5x more people that likes it in my office alone than all the detractors of it in this forum...
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The numbers are probably exactly opposite. More people don’t like the Touch Bar. “Professionals” don’t look down at the keyboard and work off muscle memory. Looking down at your keyboard slows you down. Apple actually had to make the escape button a physical one because of the irritation to most people. The real test for the Touch Bar is to make it optional and see how many people pay the extra money.
 
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They really need to rethink the touchbar and get it to act more like a touch strip.

So you can launch an app from the dock by touching the touchbar under the relevant icon, slide your finger left and right to move along the dock, double tap and slide to move an icon.
In wordprocessors quarter the bar to tap for home, end, page up, page down, and swipes to scroll
Or tap and hold to select a menu bar item and then scrub left or right to scroll down the list to select you option.

Having to take your eyes off the screen to look at the randomly changing bar is a nightmare, I find it useless, it's more a hinderance to productivity for me than a bonus.
 
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I think, at this point, the only way to please both Touch Bar lovers and haters (I’m one of the latter), could be to include both the function keys row and the Touch Bar, trying to make room for both rows. There’s a gorgeous space available between the keyboard and the screen bezel to put a wider, taller touch bar.
 
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Marbles1 said:
The Touch Bar would be useful if it somehow had physical buttons - which could dynamically change according to the layout.

Something like this: https://www.yuelilianyuan.com/new-project

Keyboards are best when you don't have to look at them; and when you don't accidentally press buttons.
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Just having haptic feedback, like the MacBook's trackpad, would go a long way towards improving the Touch Bar. At least it would feel more like real buttons.
 
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