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Craig Federighi Says Touch Bar on New MacBook Pro Has 'So Much Potential' For Developers
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It doesnt take much then.
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actually thats a great use for it. Then I dont have to have those annoying popups.
Laptop touchscreen displays are on a vertical plane and are fatiguing to use. Not an enjoyable experience.
The MacPro touch bar is on a horizontal plane, essentially an extension of the keyboard.
Honestly I was expecting Apple to get into foldable laptops that can be used traditionnaly, or purely as a touch device.
Its the perfect challenge for Jony Ive. All he need to to design a product that can work in two ways, with some nice hinges. Do it better than Lenovo Yogadick. Wether Apple likes it or not, this is coming more and more. ITs a wave of hybrid products that can look nice, works nice, has everything you need from both worlds. Instead they´re still stuck in the old laptop days.
Its the perfect challenge for Jony Ive. All he need to to design a product that can work in two ways, with some nice hinges. Do it better than Lenovo Yogadick. Wether Apple likes it or not, this is coming more and more. ITs a wave of hybrid products that can look nice, works nice, has everything you need from both worlds. Instead they´re still stuck in the old laptop days.
Most hands on first impressions I read were quite positive. Of course the sniping peanut gallery here would say tech writers are just butt kissing so they get invited to the next event.
How about people put their money where their mouth is and not buy this stuff if they hate it so much. You really want Apple to go in a different direction? Stop buying their stuff. They'll get the message quick when nobody is buying their products.
Add this to an iPad without increasing the price then I might be interested. But as it stands a $1800 plus laptop does not fit into my lifestyle at the moment. Not when I have a iPhone 7 Plus for on the go and a custom built i7-6700k gaming computer at home. I sold my iPad Air 2 because I didn't really need it so it's a stretch to even say I would buy one again.
I haven't tried it myself and although it looks nice, I think its an ergonomic disaster. You go from the trackpad (blindly) to the touch bar (you have to look), use it... look at the screen if it's okay and over and over again... Can't believe Apple comes up with such an ergonomic disaster like this. They really don't get it and are out of ideas. Did this really took 4 years to develop.
Same for photo's. I don't get the double functions with the trackpad. Multitouch on the trackpad is ergonomic logical in my opinion (you can keep your eyes on the screen and naturally perform certain tasks on the trackpad).
I understand the pricing. Numbers of Apple's iPads are down for years, by upping the price for the notebooks, they hope to sell more iPads. With this pace of innovation they'll sell less from both.
This feels like a last minute gimmick they added to pretend to re-design the pros. It reminds me of the Jet Black iPhone, I am almost positive that was added at the last minute to have an extra selling point on "upgraded" 6s's.
I wonder how many people who were against the headphone jack removal now have "iPhone 7 128GB" in their sig
Not the point, you have to look at it to make the right selection and scroll while covering up the keyboard.
Reaching sideways for the mouse while looking at the screen is much more intuitive.
It may not be a big deal other than the extra price for those who rarely use the function key row.
If anything they could have put that strip into the trackpad. It is now supersize, so no space issue.
Or plan B use the iPhone or iPad as an additional input device via BT or hook up, make an app with the touch bar
and you put it next to your MBP and do anything that needs doing.
Kind of a touch screen with a learned iOS experience.
Could even add a ton of other actions without scrolling much.
I agree — actual buttons are much better! I was hoping that there would be raised bars between the areas / displayed buttons so you can still use your fingertips to quickly input commands. I mean the ESC button is one of my most used button and they've moved it!
Disappointed with these upgrades and i think this is a dead end line. Fingerprint is ok - for right handed people and what if you spend a lot of your time at a desk with you laptop connected to a bigger screen & external keyboard! I wanted much better graphic options too.
Disappointed with these upgrades and i think this is a dead end line. Fingerprint is ok - for right handed people and what if you spend a lot of your time at a desk with you laptop connected to a bigger screen & external keyboard! I wanted much better graphic options too.
I'm a developer and I use them all the time in various apps without looking. It doesn't seem like they built this with "Pro"s in mind. But what I think will bother me the most is the lack of a physical Escape key.
I find it quite amusing that you think a touch screen Mac is only an industrial design problem to solve. macOS was not built for touch. Redesigning it from the ground up to support touch (or merging it with iOS) comes from software engineering, not industrial design.
Wow are people that clueless on how engineering and supply chain works?
There will be a storm of Apple transitions away from x86. I switched to Apple because of the x86 transition and the ability to emulate or boot into Windows. Lose that, and Apple loses me and many others like me.
Right now I am sorely tempted by Windows PCs. My primary software is now available on both platforms. I see nothing comparable from Apple in terms of a price-performance ratio. That is the greatest misfortune.
Exactly! Apple is taking the same design approach to their laptops that they use for their phones. The evolution of things like a touch bar etc. will mature as developers get on board and really exploit the possibilities, but this takes time and the first gen. model will not see this potential and yet Apple asks its base to pay a massive premium for an underwhelming laptop that we've been waiting for for over 2 years. The fact that I have to get close to $3k to have a 1TB SSD and they capped the RAM to 16 GB is just insanely stupid. They should have provided a much better incentive and acknowledged just how far the MBP line had slipped in regards to performance when compared to their PC competitors.
The location is the perfect place. Look at the top row of the keyboard you are typing on.
Those are keys that need to be available, but only occasionally. Keys to control display brightness, sound level, iTunes controls, etc. The top row is the perfect place. Ditto for default touch-bar controls as well as for app-specific feature controls.
When you're busy writing a letter or document with the keyboard, how often do you hit the screen brightness keys? Once every sentence, or paragraph, or page? They're low duty cycle keys.
For the few that draw on a screen (e.g., Wacom), sure. Apple has something for them already, iPad Pro, which by the way has better touch-sensitivity and stylus interaction than anything you listed.
For those that write code, that crunch numbers in excel, that maintain databases, that write documents, that perform data analysis, and more, having a reclining display is useless.
I think the touch bar is a great compromise. It gives a dynamic touch interface that adapts to whatever app is being used, in a natural place alongside all the other user controls (keyboard and trackpad), without requiring the user to touch the actual screen.
Thinking out loud...I'm sure Apple developed an on-screen version of the touchbar that they used for testing and to allow third-party software vendors to develop to the interface before the hardware was available (using touchpad gestures to simulate touch). I wonder if/when they would make the on-screen version available to the general public. This would allow the feature to be available to more users and thus make more sense for software vendors to develop to it - otherwise the market would be a bit too limited.
Meh, been developing software for 20 years, I'm not missing any functionality that it provides.
Most professionals have adapted to learn countless shortcuts, in fact probably one of the biggest things most professionals do when using a Mac is to learn and use a lot of the keyboard shortcuts that Mac software and OS seems to relish providing, even more so than Windows applications, and many Mac users love to boast about how well they can use shortcuts to make their user experience more efficient and quick.
This toolbar is a great tool for newbies wanting to learn a program and need to visually see the commands on a toolbar that changes with the context of what they are trying to do, but to say this is a great feature for professionals is, again, another statement made by Apple that they truly do not understand the professional market. I hardly look at my keyboard, ever, during the day and can get a lot accomplished.
Look, if in 5 years EVERY laptop has copied this idea, then I will concede that Apple innovated and changed the way we use computers for the future. Sometimes what Apple does is not always immediately apparent.
But there has also been numerous contextual screens on keyboards for years, look at Logitech's history of keyboards with secondary function screen, even Razer had a laptop with a trackpad that had a screen with contextual content on it. It's not a new idea, but the fact that this concept hasn't really taken off isn't because Apple needed to come along and improve upon the idea, largely what happens is that the novelty of this feature wears off because there are generally faster ways for professionals to gain the functions needed to do their jobs more efficiently than looking down and finding the region of a flat surface to touch to make something happen.
Most professionals have adapted to learn countless shortcuts, in fact probably one of the biggest things most professionals do when using a Mac is to learn and use a lot of the keyboard shortcuts that Mac software and OS seems to relish providing, even more so than Windows applications, and many Mac users love to boast about how well they can use shortcuts to make their user experience more efficient and quick.
This toolbar is a great tool for newbies wanting to learn a program and need to visually see the commands on a toolbar that changes with the context of what they are trying to do, but to say this is a great feature for professionals is, again, another statement made by Apple that they truly do not understand the professional market. I hardly look at my keyboard, ever, during the day and can get a lot accomplished.
Look, if in 5 years EVERY laptop has copied this idea, then I will concede that Apple innovated and changed the way we use computers for the future. Sometimes what Apple does is not always immediately apparent.
But there has also been numerous contextual screens on keyboards for years, look at Logitech's history of keyboards with secondary function screen, even Razer had a laptop with a trackpad that had a screen with contextual content on it. It's not a new idea, but the fact that this concept hasn't really taken off isn't because Apple needed to come along and improve upon the idea, largely what happens is that the novelty of this feature wears off because there are generally faster ways for professionals to gain the functions needed to do their jobs more efficiently than looking down and finding the region of a flat surface to touch to make something happen.
He is the most charismatic and engaging presenter they have. It's almost bizarre they don't use him more often to unveil other products, but with Apple and their new direction (these Macbook Pros), it is completely understandable they are aloof to anything that makes sense business wise moving forward. They are riding on the fumes of Job's vision, it will dissipate soon.
I wish grieving idiots like you would come to your senses or do us all a favour and go grieve elsewhere.
It is not stealing, it is a copyright violation and breach of contract. Apple does not seem to go after private users, however.
The big downsides to Hackintosh are that you need to install additional kernel extensions and tweak the boot loader, which may not always work without problems (although the tools have become quite good, on their own account). This requires you to turn off System Integrity Protection. I don't think Hackintosh computers are insecure by definition, but you'll be installing more software at a lower system level and that always presents the opportunity for more vulnerabilities.