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Full-Size Function Keys Expected to Feature on New MacBook Pro Models
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I don't care about the keyboard or the trackpad on the MacBook Pro. Because I need/want a numeric pad (something Apple will likely never put on the larger MacBook Pro because they're fixated on having the identical keyboard on both the smaller and larger laptops) I'm stuck with an external keyboard and mouse.
Except it wasn’t in the one feature everyone actually cared about, which was recording time.
I never had a MacBook with a TouchBar, but it seems very useful. The only thing I didn't like from the previous generations was that the ESC key was part of the TouchBar. In the latest models, it's a separate key.
Full size keys are welcomed, also the recent key system being used. I have a 2016 MacBook and whenever I type on it I someone get irritated; it seems to be the way the keys feel when I type.
Full size keys are welcomed, also the recent key system being used. I have a 2016 MacBook and whenever I type on it I someone get irritated; it seems to be the way the keys feel when I type.
Yeah, ask any programmer or anyone else who makes a living writing stuff on a keyboard how helpful looking down is. Or even other professionals who look at their work on screen and use keyboard shortcuts to select functions.
Funny that they're making the function keys full size... to compensate for the notch? In normal operation the notch will take up the middle of the menu bar where there's nothing generally... but what about full screen apps?
I'm one of them. 3D Touch was awesome but, yes, it did only have half-assed support (by Apple, no less). 3D Touch was the same as an analog controller. It had MANY more levels of pressure detection than just "peek" and "pop."
Haptic touch can mimic SOME of 3D Touch, but the biggest issue I have with it is the "unintended tap" (that Steve bragged the iPhone knew to ignore) is now considered a feature. "Don't rest your finger there, then," where as 3D Touch required purposeful pressure.
I'll stop bitching when they allow the number only keyboard to become a trackpad by long tapping the 0. Ok. I'll stop now.
Count me as someone who will miss the touch bar if it goes MIA. In particular, I loved the feature in Keynote where I could scroll through slides and easily pick the one I wanted to go back to as I addressed a question. And, the emoji picker was nice. I got used to how the sound slider worked. Ultimately, for me, it was way more beneficial to me than fixed function keys, whose main use for me is F11 for show desktop.
An issue with the Touch Bar was that they never offered an external version. 95% of the time I used my MBP with an external display, keyboard, mouse. So I never got accustomed to using the Touch Bar because even if I did find something useful about it I couldn't use it all the time and even would forget about it.
Agreed, there should have been a Touch Bar version of the magic keyboard.
You know what, that might be the direction they take. Just mimicking the touch bar and non touchbar versions they had for 13” Intel MacBook’s just last year.
I personally like the touch bar thanks to BetterTouchTools.
Had been wondering much the same.
This is Apple’s style of thinking. They more often than not iterate instead of abandon.
The only drawback here might be that it’s not possible to offer all the same types of interaction (eg. dragging a slider along a bar, or slipping through an interface).
But I do seem to remember ‘OLED keycaps’ were a pre-Touch Bar speculative focus.
Having function keys reduced the cost. Maybe the removal of the Touch Bar is a cost choice, other components would make the machines excessively expensive?
Apple should have included touchbar on their external keyboards if they wanted an impact. But they didn’t.
Apple should have included touchbar on their external keyboards if they wanted an impact. But they didn’t.
I will also miss the Touch Bar. I use quite often, on Firefox to refresh, open a new tab, go to the home page, go to the previous page. On Preview for highlighting and changing color of the highlight. It does so much more than function keys. For using emojis. In the Finder, for deleting files (so easy).
And especially on Keynote, while doing a presentation.
But it seems even Apple didn't use it to its full potential, as it was never implemented in apps based on Catalyst: News app, TV app, Podcast, Find My, Maps. Should have been simple.
But oh well. As long as it has a functional keyboard, that'd be great. I will still likely buy one soon, but will need to get used to a new working method. It was really time-saving.
And especially on Keynote, while doing a presentation.
But it seems even Apple didn't use it to its full potential, as it was never implemented in apps based on Catalyst: News app, TV app, Podcast, Find My, Maps. Should have been simple.
But oh well. As long as it has a functional keyboard, that'd be great. I will still likely buy one soon, but will need to get used to a new working method. It was really time-saving.
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When I was given a 2018 MBP to work on a project, that's exactly what I ended up doing. I was composing music for a Netflix series with Logic Pro - presumably exactly the kind of Pro App that was supposed to gain tangible user interface benefits from the Touch Bar. But even working to super tight deadlines and constantly being in a time-crunch, nothing that ever showed up on the Touch Bar while using Logic was compelling enough to make me start using it, let alone start seeing it as indispensable. Didn't take long for me to just set it to default as regular function keys and forget about it.
Incidentally, I don't think it was an accident that Apple chose to leave out the Touch Bar on the M1 MB Air but left it on the M1 MB Pro. They knew these machines were going to be very closely comparable in speed and specs, so this was an excellent opportunity to informally test just how enticing having a Touch Bar really was to customers. Of course it wasn't the _only_ difference between those two machines. But if the M1 Air sold in bigger numbers than the M1 Pro (which seems to have overwhelmingly been the case, at least anecdotally), then that'd be a pretty clear indication that users weren't seeing the lack of a Touch Bar as any kind of loss at all.
Lastly.. considering that the Touch Bar has been around since I think 2016, the biggest clue that it hasn't been a hit is that Apple never made keyboards (for use with iMacs, Mac Minis etc) with a Touch Bar. Surely if it had really taken off, with major apps (either 3rd party or Apple) using it for really compelling interface enhancements that people really got used to as second nature, then customers would have been clamouring to have the same capabilities brought to desktop machines as well. After all, if you're a pro user, it makes no sense that the best and most efficient way of working with your key app(s) could only ever be accessed on a laptop and never on a high-end desktop. The fact that the demand for this never materialised really says it all.
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When Apple introduced the Touch Bar and removed the physical ESC key, they added ESC as a remappable key in System Preferences. It's trivial to make the Caps Lock key, which most people probably never use, be the Escape key. For uses like "vi" noted back on an earlier page, it's way easier (and less stress on your hand) to do that than to be reaching up for the later-returned physical ESC key. I'm not sure why people complain and/or jump through hoops trying to reconfigure their application(s) when this simple remapping has been available.
There are some serious technical challenges with that. The touchbar is a display that needs to be driven and can send arbitrary input not keystrokes. Not only would significant hardware need to be added to the keyboard (driving the price up), but the connection and protocols would need to change as well. I suppose it would need to be some kind of USB-C connection. Possible, and one could imagine Apple adding this as a premium option, but I wouldn't read too much into it not being done yet, either. I mean the marketing department might have taken a look and concluded that, while people are willing to pay $1000 for metal stands, $500 for a keyboard was going to stop them.
I'm used to the smaller function keys on my Retina MBPs. I'm getting the 16 so trackpad size won't be an issue. So nothing-burger for me so far. I use the function keys for volume, screen brightness and some programs I use make use of them. A remote control would solve the issue of volume, stop/play, next/prev song. One thing that I miss from my 2007 MacBook Pro.
