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Evidence in Trademark Filing Points to MacBook OLED Panel Officially Called 'Magic Toolbar'
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I would say the people who type that slowly and have no interest in touch typing are only hurting themselves with a keyboard at all. I've seen people get amazing speed out of a cellphone screen-keyboard with 2 thumbs and predictive text, and I'd suggest that's the better platform for predictive text. Moving your hands from a keyboard to a touchbar and eyes from a screen (or keyboard) to a touch bar is just too slow an operation while in the middle of typing.
To me, the nMB keyboard feels like smashing my fingers on a sheet of glass with a little bit of rubber as padding. It is very painful for me to use it for any length of time.
Actually, I do agree with you about the Samsung bloat. Android makes it very easy for you to swap out the launcher. I'd recommend the Nova launcher to give you something very close to a stock Android feel.
I get keyboard preference, I really do (though mine seems to run exactly opposite to yours), but your comment made me wonder if you were serious or being a bit hyperbolic. Do you own an Apple laptop now? Because if you do, it sounds like you are willing to settle for a sub-optimal keyboard experience already in favor of (insert whatever your reasoning was for buying an Apple laptop), and there's a change that reasoning still applies despite the keyboard.
If you don't, then obviously I'm just reading too much into it. I was just wondering.
I have a MacBook air. I use it for casual stuff, mostly because the screen is broken and about 10% of it is unusable
, hence me holding out really hard for Apple's new laptopsThe Apple keyboard in the MBA is one of the best keyboards in mobile I've used. I am slower on it due to the shallower throw compared to desktop keyboards. But for casual typing it's perfectly acceptible, even if I'm a bit slower on it.
But th e new MacBook keyboard's short throws are way too shallow for me. it feels like I am mashing the tips of my fingers down on a hard surface when I type. There's also almost no feedback except for that mashing. My hands started to hurt as well as I guess they weren't used to the shallow throw so the amount of force I was using was like jamming my fingers against a wall.
I get that there's going to be compromise in smaller devices. but the nMP keyboard goes too far for my preferences.
Just did one of those fancy "online speed tests" with my work's cheap dell bubble dome keyboard, which I generally don't like. stupid typos slowed me down
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In an age of Amzon & Google devices that work with voice, what the heck is magical about a keyboard?
A week before Apple's just-announced October 27 Mac-centric event, a newly discovered trademark filing has been unearthed online, suggesting a potential name for the OLED panel on the new MacBook Pro. According to information rounded up by Brian Conroy at The Trademark Ninja (via The Next Web), a trademark filed by a company called "Presto Apps America LLC" for a device dubbed the "Magic Toolbar" could be Apple's name for the touch bar panel on its new MacBook Pro line.
They spend more time making up catchy names than anything else these days. Just release the goddam Mac Pro already!!
I agree, but then I haven't seen an implementation of it. Predictive text seems to make much more sense on the actual monitor inline with what you're typing. But I'll keep an open mind until I see what they might have in store.
That actually seems like a fairly common response to low-travel keyboards for people that learned to type on and fell in love with something that requires a good amount of force to register a stroke (like a quality mechanical keyboard). I learned to type almost exclusively on laptop keyboards, which have always been pretty soft or spongey in comparison, and so I don't think I strike quite as vigorously as a lot of folks. So that might be the difference right there.
I've tried Nova, and it was certainly better. But there were still a lot of little issues I had with the whole experience. If I were going to buy and Android phone I'd go with an HTC or that new Pixel over pretty much anything from Samsung.
this I do see as a possibility. I learned to type on IBM Model M Keyboards, and have used Mechanical keyboards for desktop use for the better part of 30 years. Heck, my "Keyboarding" class in Grade 9 (23 years ago, I'm starting to feel old), would literally be an hour class of copying text out of our textbooks into IBM PS/2 word processor. and then repeat on a new page.
do this for a year straight, every other day, and eventually you get into a comfortable habbits for typing.
I'm trying to imagine what will happen on the next generation of kids who grew up starting with touchscreens. My nieces have never used a real keyboard in their life. But they can type fine on an iPad (ALthough i've never seen anyone touch type on a touchscreen, nor have any reasonable speed)
I just responded to DevNull0 who was saying the same thing about getting some painful feedback from that keyboard, and I'm starting to think the reason I don't have that response is that I learned to type on the spongey laptop keyboards of the early - mid 90's.I have a MacBook air. I use it for casual stuff, mostly because the screen is broken and about 10% of it is unusable
The Apple keyboard in the MBA is one of the best keyboards in mobile I've used. I am slower on it due to the shallower throw compared to desktop keyboards. But for casual typing it's perfectly acceptible, even if I'm a bit slower on it.
But th e new MacBook keyboard's short throws are way too shallow for me. it feels like I am mashing the tips of my fingers down on a hard surface when I type. There's also almost no feedback except for that mashing. My hands started to hurt as well as I guess they weren't used to the shallow throw so the amount of force I was using was like jamming my fingers against a wall.
I get that there's going to be compromise in smaller devices. but the nMP keyboard goes too far for my preferences.
Just did one of those fancy "online speed tests" with my work's cheap dell bubble dome keyboard, which I generally don't like. stupid typos slowed me down
For me a quality mechanical keyboard feels way too stiff, and I actually get joint pain after typing on one for an extended period of time. But the nMB keyboard is this fantastic thing that barely requires any force but still gives me a satisfying little click when I hit it. I guess I'm just soft.
So basically I learned to type on crap keyboards, and that's prepared me well for Apple's current lineup.
I will give mechanical keyboards one thing, though, they sound super awesome.
Conceptually I like the Surface products, but I think they're way more niche and compromise in a lot of ways that people seem to simply ignore. The ads look cool, but do a lot of people really pull out the pen to do much in the way of real work? Yes, for notepad type work it makes sense but for serious work and not just edits and mark up? (I'm honestly asking.)
1. I don't care for touch interfaces on my work machine at all. I like a mouse better. I even like a trackpad (at least an Apple-style trackpad) better. I'd actually really like a pen that worked decently on the trackpad (or even on an external magic trackpad) specifically for the above: the one time I find myself wanting a pen like input on my laptop is when marking up an image or a document. If I'm sending a screenshot with notes to developers on what to change, that is hands down my preferred method of doing so.
2. I actually use a laptop in my lap. Surface? Not so good for those mornings where I am working in bed.
I don't think there is a reason Apple couldn't combine the two, but in a lot of ways I think the need or self-evidence that they should is another issue. Is a Surface the future? Do a lot of people really need both? Enough people that it makes sense to compromise to bring them together? Again, I don't claim to have the answer to this, but in my small window of experience, the Surface works really well for some people but it's an admittedly small group. (People doing a lot of mobile note-taking and markup and even presentations—in general, people who use a traditional laptop as secondary to using a tablet, but never vice-versa.)
I feel that way too only because I switch between traditional keyboards and MacBook keyboard. If you use the MacBook keyboard long enough, you will adapt and your typing accuracy and speed will be comparable. To be honest, the old IBM PC keyboards of the 1980's were better. And the old electric typewriters of that era were the best for pure typing speed and accuracy.
I can touch type on the big iPad Pro... sorta. If I'm not watching the text on the screen, crap hits the fan real fast. So it's inferior. But I think I could get used to it IF they had some sort of texturing on the screen to help me feel where the edges of the keys were AND they put a taptic feedback engine underneath every key that would register each stroke.
Which would be way more expensive than just making a keyboard like the MacBook that has an e-ink screen on every key. So I don't see it happening anytime soon.
The ghost of Steve Jobs still uttering "Magic" in the hallways... Ugh. Please Apple, stop it with the "Magic" stuff.
*for people that learned to type on them. I have used some old electric typewriters in the past, and I was utterly abysmal on them, mostly because I just wasn't used to them. For me Apple's newer keyboards are the absolute best for speed and accuracy.
Maybe. Maybe not.
"Magic Marker" has been around since 1953.
Apple still managed to score trademarks on their various "Magic" devices.
(Modulo different consumer product areas etc.)
Computer code is not hard to understand. It's all 1's and 0's. To simplify it a bit, we abstract the 1's and 0's to numbers, and then abstract the numbers to letters. The letters are abstracted in turn to words, then sentences, then paragraphs, and finally cat pictures. Computer code is just a matter of adding, subtracting, and transmogrifying cat pictures.
As to wireless communication, I think Albert Einstein* explained it best: "The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat."
*: (Yes, it probably wasn't Einstein. I prefer to believe that everything the "fortune" command told me on Unix systems in the 80's was absolute truth - it makes day-to-day existence so much more meaningful.)
What an awful, stupid name for it. It's too bad Stanley already trademarked "Functional Utility Bar" for their FUBAR line.
Maybe call it the Dynamic Utility Message Bar, or DUMBar for short.
I get what they're trying to do, playing off Arthur C. Clarke's law of "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Using "magic" as a code-word for "advanced technology" is a great way to keep the concept non-threatening for the technophobes, but most people are probably too dumb to get the connection.
Maybe call it the Dynamic Utility Message Bar, or DUMBar for short.
I get what they're trying to do, playing off Arthur C. Clarke's law of "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Using "magic" as a code-word for "advanced technology" is a great way to keep the concept non-threatening for the technophobes, but most people are probably too dumb to get the connection.
Amazon and Google have tablets...this is a laptop, wrong thread for your complaint.
I hope I'm wrong but I'm having a hard time envisioning anything that could be done on this OLED strip being significantly innovative or useful enough to justify all the hype and the pretentious name. Prove me wrong Apple!
You went to a better school than me. Grade 9 was 25 years ago for me and we used ancient electric typewriters that at the time were so old the correction film for them had been long-since discontinued. Other than that, my experience was the same as yours.
I love Apple's recent keyboards, because they're so solid (can't speak to the latest MacBook, having only used it for a moment in the store), but I liked the Apple //e keyboard too. One of my all-time favorites, though, was the old IBM 029 keypunch (we had a couple surplus ones in the computer lab in high school; I took advantage of this to do my Fortran on punch cards - even then it was a throwback) - on those, the key mechanism was very nice, but also the entire machine (the size of a desk, weighing hundreds of pounds) hummed and shuddered like there was an idling V8 engine inside it. When you pressed a key, it was like there was a little guy inside whacking the punch card with a sledgehammer - so satisfying. These days when people say, "no, this mechanical keyboard, see, there's a klack when you press the keys"... heh, they have no idea.