Telling you what you should want and listing your available options are two different things. It sounds like you have this all figured out so I'm done with whatever this is we are doing.
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Love TouchBar thread discussion [merged]
- Thread starter PhilMacbook
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I’m actually curious why they haven’t already added a second haptic feedback engine to the Touchbar, to give that tactile feedback those of us who are regular users of the F bar are used to.
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I’m glad to know I’m not alone I’m this. I’m actually a fairly new regular to MacRumors forums, and honestly some of the negativity on here gets to be a bit much. Some negativity can be warranted, but sometimes I just think to myself, if you really hate Apple products so much, why are you even on here? But my filter turns on and I am reminded that if I call said users out on it it just fuels their fire and I become an Apple fanboy.
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For me.... it takes longer than a physical button. Not for everyone. I'm an oldie though.I agree about the last part, which is why I'm hoping the Touch Bar will get haptic feedback eventually. Still, don't think you're right that everything the TB does takes longer than a physical button, and I would argue that there are some obvious counterexamples.
- Digging through a submenu of the menubar until you find a function that might not have a shortcut, as opposed to... just pressing the toggle on the TB for it.
- Activating PiP in Safari. This is IMO a huge one since some websites deliberately hide the PiP-prompt from you; YouTube and Netflix being prime examples (well with YouTube you can double-right-click a video which in itself is very unintuitive to figure out; but I don't think Netflix has such a workaround). So if you want PiP for Netflix for example, you gotta hunt down 3rd-party-extensions. With the Touch Bar, it's just one button press.
- Without the Touch Bar (and an ad-blocker), you're sometimes confronted with 15-30 ads on YouTube that you have to sit through. With the Touch Bar, you can skip right to the end of them (or at least this was once possible - not sure if Google has ever done anything against that). In practice, this means that you can support your favorite content creators on YouTube and still don't have to watch through entire ads.
For PIP on youtube I just know that I double right click.
I don't Netflix on the computer.
And for ads on youtube I have RED/Premium, cause i'm old and don't like sitting through ads. I don't have much time left
cause old.And ads for other things I have an ad blocker built in to my router so most things never even pop up, device wide.
To the OP: I'm a super fast touch typist. Initially I was neutral about the touch bar. I actually preferred, and still do, physical function keys. That said, having ACTUALLY USED the touch bar for over a month and a half now, I've gotten used to it and found it to be … functional. If you actually own the product, you'll get used to using it. Which makes me agree with a lot of the posters I've quoted below.
The fact that almost every app I use has custom touchbar options has made it EXTREMELY usable for me from forwarding songs, switching tabs, accepting popups, doing actions that otherwise would require the mouse. I like it.
I have to agree with this. The IN REAL LIFE people I've talked to actually like it, my wife and I included (we like it). Like with anything you buy that you're not used to, you get used to it over time. Thanks for the info about BTT - buying it now!
Summarizes it well for me. I REALLY like how I can accept/decline calls via it as well.
But to bring attention to your MRF has been very negative for the last year or so. I can't stand it anymore. I come here to enjoy Apple products... because like millions of other users, we actually enjoy these products. Yes, I had to save up for them and wait until I could afford them... why people feel the need to criticize something they can't or don't own is beyond me.
Thanks again for recommendation for BTT. Getting that now.
I do miss the Eject button for the Touch Bar, that would be very useful when installing software and ejecting the installers or USB drives.
The Touch Bar hate is strange. I think the perceived cost is obviously making people start off looking to hate the thing but I think with Apple you always have to leave the idea of ‘value’ on the floor. It’s the type of company that will make you pay for extras on an exponential scale.
However, the reason the bar is there is that hardly any normal people use the top row regularly. It’s a redundant part of the keyboard for many and never existed on normal qwerty typewriters anyway. We also have the iPad with its changing keyboard layout depending on the mode your in. This was something that everybody said wouldn’t work. We had companies like Microsoft and Blackberry betting heavily against users adapting to these virtual keyboards. They were very wrong. People adapted.
Yes I get the touch typists generally don’t look at keyboards. But I feel like it’s not meant to be used like that. It’s more like having a thin iPad screen attached to your main keyboard that can act as another type of remote control. And it seems people are finding creative uses for it.
I would wager that after a few years people will be really pissed off if they remove it as people will come to rely on it.
This is definitely the type of thing I want Apple to do and only Apple will ever do it. It’s easy to give people the same stuff, day in day out. However to move things forward you have to be willing to give the customer things they never knew they wanted.
Given apples history pro users ALWAYS get annoyed by pretty much anything they do. It’s like a built in reflex action. If Apple actually listened to pro users they would be finished. There are so many things they have done that pro users considered distracting or not worth the money. From Final Cut Pro X, to retina displays or MacBook airs. They all were hated by pro’s or considered not worth it. I’m glad they don’t listen to that vocal minority.
However, the reason the bar is there is that hardly any normal people use the top row regularly. It’s a redundant part of the keyboard for many and never existed on normal qwerty typewriters anyway. We also have the iPad with its changing keyboard layout depending on the mode your in. This was something that everybody said wouldn’t work. We had companies like Microsoft and Blackberry betting heavily against users adapting to these virtual keyboards. They were very wrong. People adapted.
Yes I get the touch typists generally don’t look at keyboards. But I feel like it’s not meant to be used like that. It’s more like having a thin iPad screen attached to your main keyboard that can act as another type of remote control. And it seems people are finding creative uses for it.
I would wager that after a few years people will be really pissed off if they remove it as people will come to rely on it.
This is definitely the type of thing I want Apple to do and only Apple will ever do it. It’s easy to give people the same stuff, day in day out. However to move things forward you have to be willing to give the customer things they never knew they wanted.
Given apples history pro users ALWAYS get annoyed by pretty much anything they do. It’s like a built in reflex action. If Apple actually listened to pro users they would be finished. There are so many things they have done that pro users considered distracting or not worth the money. From Final Cut Pro X, to retina displays or MacBook airs. They all were hated by pro’s or considered not worth it. I’m glad they don’t listen to that vocal minority.
If you know where the F keys are, you don't need to look at the keyboard.
I'm a touch typist and without any physical feedback its rather difficult to know that your touching the F3 or F4 key and in some of the apps I use, that will produce some rather different results, which could be rather negative.
Are they not in the same place, just with the missing tactile feedback? I am not against any opinion, just inquiring.
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Ah, yes, definitely. My remark for the above post stands answered, in touch typing. Since I am not much of a function key user, I like the bar. Pros should have the option and Apple might, just might have something up its sleeve next year or with the next iteration.
I've not been a big fan of the touch bar but I'm sat here on the floor with my MBP, on the phone via my iPhone. I've been texting and browsing at the same time. The different contexts on the touch bar have worked pretty well. I'm not so sure about how useful it would be when, say, just browsing though.
Actually you just hit on one of my pet hates: virtual keyboards that change layout according to what you are doing. Switching to a number pad is fine, but I will change keyboard apps to avoid one that insists on sticking a "@" or a ".com" button where part of my spacebar normally is because it thinks I'm entering an address - nothing causes me so many input errors as that type of crap. One layout, stick with it, that's just more efficient.
So my next MBP will have a touchbar, because the remaining non-touchbar models just don't make sense. I'll use BetterTouchTool to create a fixed layout with features that are useful to me, and that will be it. It will not be as easy to use as fixed buttons because there's no tactile feedback, but it looks like I'll be able to add some useful features so that will partially compensate. So win some, lose some. And as I use an external keyboard in the office it will never become really central to my workflow because it will only be there half the time, but that's due Apple's lack of commitment to it rather than mine.
Same, I only visit at certain points (product releases) I often feel I am posting on a Microsoft forum asking about Apple products on here
BTT costs $6.50 by the way. I think you will see Apple add more BTT-like functionality to the Touchbar as time goes by (e.g. they have added Automator actions in Mojave). It's always Apple's approach to start with things very simple and add functionality as it evolves (e.g. first iPhones had no 3rd party apps!).
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Had the same thought... theoretically, you could eliminate the Trackpad as a "thing", and let the whole chassis around the keyboard be touch sensitive...
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BTT let's you activate the Touchpad haptic feedback when you press buttons. Provides nice feedback for the Touchbar.
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Yeah, I come here to learn things, and while I want to hear opinions pro and con, it seems to have become more vitriolic over the years. Ten, fifteen years ago, these forums were much more substantiative, it seems to me. But then this seems to be a problem across... well... our whole society lately, IMO. I think MacRumors should consider something like StackExchange which seems pretty good at filtering out the noise.
And it is not uncommon for a 3rd party to do something that is a great addition to another product. BTT does exactly that for the touch bar. I don't mind paying $6.50 for someone else to put effort into making it more useful for me.
This is really interesting, I didn't know you could do that with the Better Touch Tool app.
Think I am going to get that tonight as a matter of fact. Thanks for that!
You can configure the touch-bar to be static.
A lot of the belly aching here can be solved by taking 2.5 seconds on google and learning to customize how the touch-bar behaves, and what it displays (you can turn off the siri button if your accidentally hitting it like another poster claims, for example).
I love mine. Having quick customzable shortcuts feels like the future. Just one tap and I can lock my mac for example, which I have to do all the time for work.
I feel like much of the complaining are by people who don't own one, and want to make themselves feel better about that. I'd wager they are a bit more upset about the price, which some may consider prohibitive.
I would like it if the Touchbar could remind me of usage syntax for UNIX command line commands. Make it like predictive text, except as predictive commands. Terminal programs have hinted at this sort of functionality. When you're entering a command, the Touchbar automatically updates to give you a quick link to the "man" page so you can lookup the documentation.
Thanks to the useful posters in this thread - really helpful read. To the negative posters, please leave your negativity at the door - I wish threadstarters could delete posts for this reason and keep us all on-topic.
I've got my new MBP arriving on Monday, and I'm really looking forward to trying out the TouchBar. I think that I'll find my uses for it, and as a FCPX user, I really don't have all that much use for the function keys... so for me, it's an added bonus.
No experience yet, but I'll try to remember to come back and add my thoughts after a month's worth of use.
Thanks for making a positive thread too!
I've got my new MBP arriving on Monday, and I'm really looking forward to trying out the TouchBar. I think that I'll find my uses for it, and as a FCPX user, I really don't have all that much use for the function keys... so for me, it's an added bonus.
No experience yet, but I'll try to remember to come back and add my thoughts after a month's worth of use.
Thanks for making a positive thread too!
Folks, BetterTouchTool is amazing. Specifically, the complete replacement preset I've found. You can modify the settings to fit your needs as I have. @GoldenChaos is several presets down the page below, but it's so worth the download and import.
https://github.com/vas3k/btt-touchbar-presets
https://github.com/vas3k/btt-touchbar-presets
The problem with this is that if you are Unix savvy, you can just type it in to find things. Most experienced unix users will rarely, if ever, look at the keyboard let alone the touchbar.
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Thanks for this link. I'll check it out and see if there is anything I can make use of for myself
There are several good presets on that page, with Golden Chaos being the only full replacement. It's fully customizable as well in BTT, so with a few edits you can have all the added functionality but set the exact way you want. This is what the Touch Bar should have been from the beginning imo.
Of course I'll preface it won't work for everyone's needs though.
Right, but even the most experienced UNIX user runs into areas where they're totally lost or forgetful of the details. You can't type it in if you can't remember what you're trying to discover. If the Touchbar were able to be smart enough to suggest most common usage patterns with certain commands or remember what you did the last few times and recall what you did before, that'd be really useful.
No offense to those in here that love the TouchBar and find great ways to configure it and make it useful with extra software (I also love BTT)..
But candidly speaking, it's an indictment on Apple a bit that this feature is not more baked straight from them and much much more of a "clear win". We are years into it and it's still highly divisive and really rather odd that it requires such extra effort (and really 3rd party software) to function in highly useful ways.
Imagine if the keyboard or trackpad itself really needed BetterTouchTool to do a great job.
It'd be pretty weird and not a good look on the part of Apple. I feel that way generally about the TouchBar.
I personally believe it'll go away or become optional somewhat in sync with FaceID on the Macs.
I think the TouchID being there and using the TB hardware is part of why the TB is still around.
Just my opinion - no need to flame me - we can all agree to disagree with reasonable opinions here.
But candidly speaking, it's an indictment on Apple a bit that this feature is not more baked straight from them and much much more of a "clear win". We are years into it and it's still highly divisive and really rather odd that it requires such extra effort (and really 3rd party software) to function in highly useful ways.
Imagine if the keyboard or trackpad itself really needed BetterTouchTool to do a great job.
It'd be pretty weird and not a good look on the part of Apple. I feel that way generally about the TouchBar.
I personally believe it'll go away or become optional somewhat in sync with FaceID on the Macs.
I think the TouchID being there and using the TB hardware is part of why the TB is still around.
Just my opinion - no need to flame me - we can all agree to disagree with reasonable opinions here.