"Why do I want to keep looking down to be sure the TouchBar has the keys I expect?"
How far are you looking down? I have to make more of an effort to look up to the menu bar than to look down at the function keys.
The touch bar looks great and makes a lot of sense. Far more than having to lift your hands up to touch a screen. I'm just not a fan of the price increases.
It might be cool, still have to check it. As an owner of the last lapzilla (17" screen) I think I'd just prefer a 17" screen and more space to put things. I feel like some of their demos are not as useful. Seems like fat fingers will be in the way instead of precise touchpad placement, same issue as using tablets/pads with just your finger, your finger hides precision.
- Picking a color with your fat finger having to look over your fingers and down to see it, why not just a color selector on the screen next to your work? Usually droppers are used as well, messes up flow.
- Browser tabs on the navbar, cmon, just use the tabs on the browser or hotkeys.
- Video editing on the navbar, not going to happen. Anything with sliders, precision will not be fun on that. Buttons will probably be fine.
- Placement changes, people know app dialogs/panels more than they will when having to look down at the changing buttons. If it sits there constantly changing while you do actions on the screen, it could be quite annoying almost like a flashy ad on a site forcing you to look down more than you want.
Customizing your keyboard a bit and the keys available is pretty nice, and it is probably cooler in person. But I feel like this won't be used much and will just be an annoyance.
I could be wrong, sometimes you get an Apple feature and it just works.
If you're questioning things that much, why have keyboard shortcuts at all?
>Anything with sliders, precision will not be fun on that.
Why wouldn't it offer precision? People do the same with trackpads right now. And multitouch on this thing looks far more useful than with a trackpad.
>Placement changes, people know app dialogs/panels more than they will when having to look down at the changing buttons
Why wouldn't people learn positions of buttons? Hell I can type faster on my iPhone without looking than most people can type with a physical keyboard.
I'd have expected people here to be far more accepting of this feature. This thing looks far more useful on a laptop than a touch screen, particularly for people like us who make heavy use of the keyboard.
Apple doesn't tend to make gimmicky features of this level, especially not at a $4-500 premium. It's a defining feature of the new MBP and I trust it has had a lot of thought put into it.
There's incredible potential here, it's sad a lot of people here don't see that.
It may very well be awesome, just pointing to concerns, I don't look at the keyboard all that much.
Keyboard shortcuts are precise and are unchanging.
Trackpad is precise because your fat finger isn't covering the result, same issue on tablets/pads if they don't offset selection from your finger, hard to get exact placement.
The touchbar demos they conveniently remove the persons fat finger. Larger sliders are fine like the Premiere timeline movement but trackpad and arrow keys work for that as well quite nicely.
From a button perspective it could be nice, I like customizing my keyboard.
I just wonder about the other things, I don't see myself changing browser tabs or sliders much on it.
I agree though that Apple doesn't usually throw in a gimmick that isn't well thought out but on the fence until I try it.
> Picking a color with your fat finger having to look over your fingers and down to see it, why not just a color selector on the screen next to your work? Usually droppers are used as well, messes up flow.
You don't have to look at the color picker, and you shouldn't. It is wide enough and will stand out in your peripheral vision, you can't miss it. Just shove your finger on it at random and slide while looking the text or element you are changing the color of. When you get to the desired color, you stop. Sounds nice to me.
> Browser tabs on the navbar, cmon, just use the tabs on the browser or hotkeys.
Depends on the implementation. Admittedly I don't keep an obscene number of tabs, but I usually navigate through them with ctrl-(shift)-tab. If the bar would let me slide my finger back and forth to go to the next or previous tabs, I might like it better than these keys. And of course, I wouldn't actually look at the bar: I would just shove my finger on it and slide.
I can think of a few other neat uses for this bar (albeit untested):
- A slider when you watch a video or listen to music that lets you rewind or go forward precisely (relative to the position of first touch). You would not look at it, you'd just reach and slide.
- Moving the cursor left or right to correct something: reach for the bar (without looking -- I don't know why everyone thinks they'll have to look at sliders to use them), slide in either direction. This could be faster than arrows in some situations.
- I think that using it to zoom or rotate might feel nicer than pinch/twist on the touchpad. I've never liked these gestures much.
- Subtitles when watching a video. I find them useful sometimes, but super distracting. Having them on the bar would be neat, you'd only look down once in a while.
The technology might get used badly, but it certainly has potential.
How far are you looking down? I have to make more of an effort to look up to the menu bar than to look down at the function keys.
The touch bar looks great and makes a lot of sense. Far more than having to lift your hands up to touch a screen. I'm just not a fan of the price increases.