Touchy Touch Bar?!

[vpro]

So having spent a few days now viewing people from the Apple event demoing the touch bar.

I just realized that they tap on each icon to bring up yet another thing to touch. Especially with volume control, to raise or lower the volume, instead of three icons (mute, lower and raise volume), now you touch a single volume icon to bring up the slider, is it just me, or is that one too many steps just to change the volume?

Maybe that is where customizing comes in?


How is this going to add to productivity when you're always looking down at the touch bar, touching it so much just to do simple tasks, while your eyes should NEVER leave the content on the screen?

Is it just me?

 

[Floris]

Nope, not just you.

 

[Rkuda]

So having spent a few days now viewing people from the Apple event demoing the touch bar.

I just realized that they tap on each icon to bring up yet another thing to touch. Especially with volume control, to raise or lower the volume, instead of three icons (mute, lower and raise volume), now you touch a single volume icon to bring up the slider, is it just me, or is that one too many steps just to change the volume?

Maybe that is where customizing comes in?


How is this going to add to productivity when you're always looking down at the touch bar, touching it so much just to do simple tasks, while your eyes should NEVER leave the content on the screen?

Is it just me?

I believe I read somewhere you can tap the volume buttons and then start sliding your finger left and right to immediately start adjusting the volume. That sounds better than tap, tap, tapping to change the volume if it needs to be adjusted a lot.

Those system level controls are always available so you can probably start hitting them without looking when you've gotten used to it after a couple days.

 

[imom]

This is one of the reasons I knew I wouldn't like the Touch Bar, but I am hoping that it will be heavily customizable so I can disable it for all apps and keep the standard system controls.

 

[CodeSpyder]

It's a touch bar, but its UI is not etched in stone. Software can be changed if ways are found to make it work smoother.

 

[vpro]

This is one of the reasons I knew I wouldn't like the Touch Bar, but I am hoping that it will be heavily customizable so I can disable it for all apps and keep the standard system controls.

Ooooh you bring up a great point! If you're in a program and that bar changes, while you're multi-tasking you want to pump up or lower the volume, you are going to have to tap a few times before you get the volume slider, otherwise you still have to use the cursor to mute audio or come up with a keyboard shortcut.

Typical Apple lately, just loves slashing away at everything, they couldn't have both touch bar and regular function keys could they?

There are programs which have also developed iPad apps to interact with, so that you have a huge touch pad, rather than a ribbon, they should have called it the ribbon then.

 

[teidon]

By default the Touch Bar will always show the volume control button among couple other buttons. You can customize it so you can for example remove the Siri button if you don't need it to be there always. The volume and brightness buttons have dual functions: You can tap it to open it and then slide it, or you can just directly slide the button to adjust volume/brightness.

 

[Macalway]

We will just have to see. Looks cool

 

[finchna]

I believe I read somewhere you can tap the volume buttons and then start sliding your finger left and right to immediately start adjusting the volume. That sounds better than tap, tap, tapping to change the volume if it needs to be adjusted a lot.

Those system level controls are always available so you can probably start hitting them without looking when you've gotten used to it after a couple days.

On a button bar (old style) you hear short tones to inform you of the volume. Will there be a continuous tone or pulsed tone on the touch bar? What kind of aural feedback do you get so you don't need to look at the bar/slider?

 

[SWC]

On a button bar (old style) you hear short tones to inform you of the volume. Will there be a continuous tone or pulsed tone on the touch bar? What kind of aural feedback do you get so you don't need to look at the bar/slider?

They disabled that by default a few versions ago, if you want audio feedback you have to hold the shift key down as you tap the volume keys or turn the option back on in sys prefs. I haven't seen anyone test that out on the new units yet.