Amen. If a company like Apple “gets” the value of things like tech in an attractive wrapper, unboxing an item with nearly a full (or >50%) charge, etc., how can they have taken so long at undoing being so awful at designing durable cables/chargers? I’m on my 3rd power block/cable for my 2014 MBA.
They're marked with their primary functions (brightness, volume, etc) too. And if you're familiar enough with the keyboard, it doesn't matter how they're marked because you don't actually need to look at them at all—that's the beauty of physical keys.
The touchbar function could be great! But many of us appreciate & use daily (hourly) the discrete function keys that are 1) findable without having to look often and 2) immediately ready and do not require a few taps to access a particular function. Apple’s awfully good at introducing “A” by eliminating “B” while assuming nobody will miss “B.”
Sure, but the downside to keys with dedicated functions is that I have no use for the M1 Air's F3-F6 being dedicated to Mission Control, Search, Dictation, or Do Not Disturb when I access the first two via the trackpad or keyboard and the last two rarely. Hopefully Apple will make the Touchbar as a BTO option on the new M1BPs.
I really hope they do exactly this. Having to replace the whole charger when the cord inevitably wore out was the only real weakness in MagSafe charging before.
Gross. I only just now realized they took away keyboard brightness controls for these things. I guess I could remap that search button to Alfred or something.
No, he had nothing to do with the decision as to what ports were included.
I don't mind it. I like the volume slider and Do Not Disturb button and it's nice for Autofill on web forms in Safari. But I'm also a touch typist and rarely use it for anything else so I probably wouldn't pay a premium for it.
I know right. They should have kept the keyboard brightness as a single on/off toggle key with the level of brightness in ControlCenter.
Fair enough. I only use F1-2 and F7-12. I suppose I could always remap 3-6 if I had a use for them, but it's more about the physical key press than the actual functions for me. I shouldn't have to look at my keyboard to know what tapping in a specific area is going to do.
Most likely there will be an Intel version because the M1 systems can not do everything an Intel processing system can do at the moment. I can see this model being the last of the dual processor selection configuration. You could order it with a Intel or a M1 depending what you are doing with it. Apple still has some issues they need to work out on the M1 and this would give them one more year to work out the engineering designs.
There are many functional advantages to the Touch Bar; you are focusing on the one disadvantage, and it mainly only applies to programmers, which is a small percentage of the population.
I want to keep the ability to charge from both sides, personally.
