Likely new Air and iPads as Apple is loosing market share in the education sector. MBP will be refreshed when Apple can be bothered, nor do I have any expectations of any great change, just more of the same...
Q-6
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Waiting for the 2018 MBP
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Likely new Air and iPads as Apple is loosing market share in the education sector. MBP will be refreshed when Apple can be bothered, nor do I have any expectations of any great change, just more of the same...
Q-6
Don‘t really get that point... the Touch Bar doesn‘t change the position of the key compared to physical keys. So if you don‘t know the position of the correct key then you can‘t touch type it anyway, in that case it doesn‘t matter if it is physical or not.
What the Touch Bar is lacking right now (in this regard) is an immediate physical feedback of if you actually hit a key or just the space between keys (similar to, how on a physical fn row, you can feel if your finger is fully on a single key or on the edge between keys, but you still need to memorize the position of the correct keys). Getting a characteristic physical feedback when you hit the right key and different haptic feedback (or none at all) when hitting the space between keys or two keys at once could easily resolve this; it might even be a step-up since the haptic feedback would most likely be adjustable to your taste and habits.
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It‘s not just personal preference though; there are many mostly objective quantifiers to compare products like these.
Independently of what you personally think of either of those touch stripes, you cannot deny that the Lenovo adaptive touch row has almost zero customizability whereas about the Touch Bar, almost everything significant is customizable. You cannot deny that the Lenovo only switches keycap descriptions for some very preselect app types whereas the Touch Bar is deeply integrated into the OS and into individual applications, and that one of them is just some physical keys slapped below a touch surface with some predetermined LED symbols whereas the other is a Retina-resolution multitouch OLED screen with a Touch ID sensor. Where‘s the fingerprint sensor on the Lenovo touch stripe btw? That‘s right, there is none.
These products might have had similar ideas but their implementations aren‘t even remotely in the same league. Condemning the Touch Bar just because Lenovo‘s adaptive touch stripe was bad/failed as a product would be like saying that a $300 Apple Watch is useless just because you don‘t like your $20 watch from the local supermarket; you‘d be judging those products because they have a comparable idea (showing the time right from your wrist) whereas their hardware, OS, features, customizability and implementation is vastly different.
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I donˋt know how things are in the US, but here in Europe the MacBook Pro is certainly the most used Apple device by students. So I see no reason why Apple couldnˋt announce new models at that event.
is this a bad time to buy? what are the biggest issues with the current model aside from touch bar?
The keyboard seems to be hit or miss and they reportedly suffer from high failure ratio. Also there's a pretty good chance of updated MBP's dropping in the following months.
Unless you are in desperate need for a machine then yes it is a bad time to buy. Wait if you at all can
Well, regardless of whether or not the Lenovo one is worse, some of us still really dislike the Apple Touch Bar. I'm just happy that my 2017 MacBook 12" and my 2017 iMac 27" with wireless keyboard with numeric keypad don't have one.
I suspect though an acceptable compromise for many (but not all) would just be to reinstate the physical ESC key.
Also, for the iMac, I wouldn't complain if they replaced F13 to F19 with a Touch Bar, since these function keys don't even exist on most Apple keyboards anyway. F13-F19 are the 7 function keys on the right, separate from the main function key row.
And as for touch typing, physical keys most definitely make it easier for most people. It's bizarre that you would try to claim otherwise.
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Any chance they’ll shrink the trackpad on the 15”? I know Apple doesn’t usually back down on its “innovations” but I really can’t stand the faulty palm rejection. It’s enough to keep me from updating, along with the faulty keyboard and the price increase due to Touchbar. I’m more and more thinking I’ll just get an iMac for home use and use my iPad Pro on the go.
But I’ve always had a MBP...
But I’ve always had a MBP...
I will admit I haven't spent much time with the touch bar beyond trying it in apple stores a handful of times. Perhaps if they made a haptip version it would actually aleviate my problems with it. One thing I don't get is how the haptic feedback lets you know which key you have hit. Would each key have it's own panel so it can click independently?
I can't really say if it would work at all, or I might end up preferring it (doubtful, but who knows). I'd need to try it to know for sure.
The generally accepted view up until a few years ago was that keyboards with more key travel generally felt better to type on. If Apple really has some research that explains why they think a super short travel is better, and not just a sacrfice they made for thinness, then I'd be really interested to see that research for myself.
If haptic feedback comes around for the TB then I suppose you could set different haptic feedbacks for the individual buttons. Maybe not in each individual app but at least with something as universal as fn keys or system controls. If Apple doesn't let you do that then I bet it will become possible with BetterTouchTool or the like. So pressing for example the F2 key could physically feel different than the F3 key, allowing you to distinguish between them without looking.
The idea in my original argument was that the hatpic feedback might not have to tell you if you hit the right key, just that you hit a key and not the area inbetween keys, and that you would still know from touch type memorization if you hit the right one by the position of your finger on the keyboard/TB. With physical fn keys, the individual fn keys don't feel different either, you only know from your position of the finger if you've hit the right one (given that you have memorized their positions), so I see no reason why that fundamentally shouldn't work out with haptic feedback aswell.
I can't say how good it would work out in practice. If the fn keys are something you'd use hours a day, then even with haptic feedback the TB probably won't compare to physical keys. But for people who would maybe use a few fn-shortcuts occasionally and usually touch type them, I think that could make for a better solution than what we have now. And not just fn keys but the TB in general could greatly profit from haptic feedback and Force Touch.
1. That's unnecessarily complex, aka expensive and cumbersome.
2. Haptic devices in iPhones and Macs are just single giant devices. Not multiple tiny ones.
3. That still doesn't solve the problem of having no physical buttons because it would still just be one giant (wide) button. The thing about physical buttons is not just the feedback, but it's also to keep your fingers centered properly. That's why Apple keyboards have bumps on the F and J keys for example. To consider this in different terms, think of a guitar. Most guitars are fretted (which would be akin to physical function buttons in this context). However, there are less popular fretless guitars (which would be akin to the Touch Bar). While fretless guitars do have advantages, they also have disadvantages, not the least of which is that they are much harder to play, because there are no frets to guide the musician.
The bottom line is that while the Touch Bar does have distinct advantages, it also has distinct disadvantages, and it seems for most people the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, at least up to now.
I can see the TB being greatly improved by some of the patents Apple has for a touch keyboard which were recently published. Until then, to me, I'm afraid it'll be too gimmicky for my needs.
I must admit that I don't really understand your first two points... could you elaborate? I don't know how expensive a single haptic engine is for Apple, but since they already have one below their trackpads, I can't imagine it to be too expensive for Apple to put a second and at the very most a third one below the TB.
You wouldn't need more haptic engines than that, everything else would be doable via software. Apple's current Haptic (or Taptic?) engines aren't just vibration-on-vibration-off motors, they are devices capable of a vast spectrum of different haptic sensory signals. They are like speakers, but for haptic feedback instead of audible one. If you've used an Apple Watch or iPhone 7 or newer (I'm on a 6s which still has the old haptic engine so I must presume it's as great there as on the Apple Watch) then you'll know how different the haptic signals can be, depending on the notification or the action you perform on-screen. It would absolutely be possible to output different haptic signals depending on the area of the Touch Bar you touch, and (via software) to give different buttons also a different haptic feel, if so desired.
Your third point is a good one, I agree with that. Haptic feedback wouldn't exactly give you a feel on how good your fingers are on a digital button. I was mostly thinking of this as a possible improvement to people who occasionally have some fn keys they want to blindly press, or who just want more physical/haptic feel on their TB in general, not as a solution for people who need fn shortcuts all day everyday; for those, physical keys would no doubt be superior (although then again, how many people actually fall under the last category – stretching your hand out for fn shortcuts like Command + Shift + F2 feels very awkward and unergonomic for me, I wouldn't want to press shortcuts like that all day).
Also regarding your other response to me above (hope you don't mind me not typing out an answer to everything you wrote): I don't think I ever said that digital keys with haptic feedback would make it easier to touch type. I don't think that. But I also don't think that this is a grand reason why the Touch Bar is a failure, considering its main concept isn't to emulate physical keys but to bring more oftentimes tucked-away and hidden features right to your fingertips with an iOS-style multitouch interface.
That was also the point I was making in the other post you responded to: the Lenovo touch stripe tried to do just that, it tried to emulate the physical system keys and nothing else and the way it did that was very lacking. It was destined to fail. The TB has its fair share of disadvantages, but it's hardware- and software-wise in a vastly different league than Lenovo's stripe, and I don't think it's destined to fail aswell just because Lenovo's thing did.
Not just Apple keyboards. Thats been a standard on keyboards since type-writers AFAIK.
To me this discussion comes down to one thing. If you are a touch typer - TouchBars or a touchscreen keyboard are fundamentally unusable. If you don't see why this is, then you are not a touch typer....even if you think you are...
This, literally
This is a huge part of the discussion but not the only thing it comes down to, I would say it's more important how much you actually used the function keys beforehand. If not, which is the case for a large part of the user base, then it doesn't really matter if you're a touch typist or not, because you have no need to hit those keys anyway outside of system functions. It doesn't matter if you can blindly hit some keys if you never use them.
Oh yes but I'm talking also about this idea that people are discussing about replacing the keyboard entirely with a touchscreen. But apart from that many touch typers need a physical escape key
One thing that has come up was people hitting the virtual escape key on the Touch Bar by accident. This doesn't happen with a physical escape key because it's actually has to be pressed.
Ah okay, to that I agree. Personally I'm not convinced a completely digital MBP keyboard like in that patent is going to happen anytime soon for that very reason, because it would be such a huge stepdown for touch typists or really anyone from physical keys, even with haptic feedback and all.
I think what's more plausible as Apple's next advancement in keyboard tech that they keep the physical keys but make keycaps that can change their description via E-Ink screens; the concept and the rumors about that have been floating around since a while.
For me personally, if Apple continues on the same path, I won't even consider purchasing another MBP. Using Lenovo p51 at the moment, because MBP is a complete dud to me.
Keyboard fails easily. But ok, they will fix that eventually.
My biggest gripe is with the TB. As a developer, and touch typist, I simply can't stand TB at all.
And for those advantages, well, I have to disagree... Almost everything TB can do, you can also do with keyboard shortcuts. And with kb shortcuts, it is way faster and easier. And you don't have to look at the keyboard while doing it.
Another thing is, TB does some very basic stuff way worse then fn keys. Like brightness, volume and simple stuff like that. And almost everyone uses those things on daily basis.
If they don't offer a 15" nTB MBP, I'm not purchasing one. Because I don't want to purchase a device that makes my work harder. I want a tool that can help me to get my job done in time, and not some gimmicky distraction that was put there without any good reason at all.
Keyboard fails easily. But ok, they will fix that eventually.
My biggest gripe is with the TB. As a developer, and touch typist, I simply can't stand TB at all.
And for those advantages, well, I have to disagree... Almost everything TB can do, you can also do with keyboard shortcuts. And with kb shortcuts, it is way faster and easier. And you don't have to look at the keyboard while doing it.
Another thing is, TB does some very basic stuff way worse then fn keys. Like brightness, volume and simple stuff like that. And almost everyone uses those things on daily basis.
If they don't offer a 15" nTB MBP, I'm not purchasing one. Because I don't want to purchase a device that makes my work harder. I want a tool that can help me to get my job done in time, and not some gimmicky distraction that was put there without any good reason at all.
Totally agree. But my suspicion is they will dump the touchbar in its current form and instead have a large trackpad that works with the apple pencil.
What the Touch Bar seems great for is scrubbing video and stuff like that, which would explain why Final Cut users like it.
However, I personally don't use Final Cut, and even if I did, it'd be on my iMac... which makes me wonder why they didn't introduce it on that keyboard. I suspect it's due to battery life... which in turn makes me wonder how much battery life on the MacBook Pro it takes. Oh wait, I don't need to wonder:
https://luckyicon.com/en/software/batterytruth/stat/
However, I personally don't use Final Cut, and even if I did, it'd be on my iMac... which makes me wonder why they didn't introduce it on that keyboard. I suspect it's due to battery life... which in turn makes me wonder how much battery life on the MacBook Pro it takes. Oh wait, I don't need to wonder:
https://luckyicon.com/en/software/batterytruth/stat/
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So the 15" TB model from 2017 lasts like... 7 minutes shorter according to this table than the 15" one from 2015 (5:04 vs 5:11)? And the 13" 2016 one a whole whopping one minute shorter than the 2013/14 13" TB model (5:24 vs 5:23)? Or what exactly can we deduce about the TB models from this table?
Also these differences might not even have much to do with the TB, there were some huge internal changes between the 2015 and 2016 models, among other things the battery got smaller (but the machines therefore also got more energy-efficient). The Touch Bar of course consumes some power, but I reckon it's a rather negligible part of what (according to your table) only seem to be a few minutes of difference in battery life anyway.
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In my opinion, even losing a tiny amount isn't worth it if it's used to entertain some useless function. Then it's just wasting energy, plain and simple.
At the moment, I am not in need of a new MBP. However, if the new model has significant upgrades that catch my eye, I may take a closer look and possibly purchase.