Was it, though? The Macbook Pro was never marketed as a developer's machine. Its popularity among people who code was mostly due to the factors that made it popular with people who don't code, plus the coincidence of being Unix under the hood (a choice they didn't make in order to win software developers as hardware customers).

I always saw it as a strong portable machine for people who needed to work on the go. I'm sure video editors, photo editors, audio people use shortcuts and do touch typing.

I know a number of video and photo editors, and while this is anecdata, I'm positive that none of them touch type. I've seen a few of the hunt and peck on a regular basis. I mean, I'm a software dev and I'm not great at typing either.

As a professional photo/video/audio editor, my problem with this is not "touch-typing" but rather it's another thing I'll have to adjust my senses to. I'll have to relearn the keyboard and spend unnecessary time adjusting settings and configuration for something I don't need.

On top of all this, the keyboard will feel more fragile and have more complexity. I prefer reliability over unnecessary complication.

I believe Linus Torvalds used to use a MacBook (can't remember which one) as his dev machine. He most definitely runs Linux and this has nothing to do with macOS being Unix under the hood. I think hardware quality is a major factor why the MacBook is popular.

>> The Macbook Pro was never marketed as a developer's machine.

That's probably true, but isn't its success in part driven by the deluge of Linux/Unix users who were thrilled to finally have a Unix based machine with a beautiful UI that ran on Intel CPUs? Also increased sales from word of mouth by those same ex Linux users telling their Windows using friends to switch?

One thing constantly said to founders here is "don't let a vocal minority come in, tell you they love your product, and then turn into bullies that tell you how you should make said product. You never made it for them; they aren't your market. Don't get confused into thinking they are, just because they're loud." I think that about sums up the relationship between Apple and software developers who use their hardware.

I don't think Linux refugees and their recommendations would be enough to make something a top-selling product.

I think many in HN make the mistake of mixing UNIX and developers on the same sentence.

I happened to use LC III Macs and was a developer back then.

A few years ago I did some work related to acquiring new customers, which required creating an iOS application.

None of those experiences had anything to do with UNIX, yet I am a developer.

Personally, the only reason I am not found of the new Macbook Pro is the price, as I rather have something like the W510's successor.

It's a choice NeXT made, though.

The reason being the competition against Sun and SGI, as an easy way to bring developers into the system, not to let them out again.

Objective-C frameworks for user space and drivers, use of distributed objects, designing GUI applications via Interface Builder, productivity applications like Lotus Improv and Virtuoso, the way applications were packaged didn't had much to do with UNIX culture as such.

> The Macbook Pro was never marketed as a developer's machine.

And in fact AFAIK the standard developer machine at Apple is an iMac (which has an escape key on its standard keyboard).

At the very least, there is then a missed opportunity on Apple's part to continue serving an audience that:

A) Has been served by Apple in the past B) Provides value to Apple in the form of developing all kinds of software solutions that it's other users directly benefit from

Gonna point you to this reply, which is quite good:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12818193

Quite a coincidence to discover how well it serves them in the developer market. I think they planned it.

It would almost make more sense to put the touchbar on the regular Macbook and a set of proper function keys on the Pro model.

Not "almost". It would make more sense to put a frivolous toy on the MacBook, and keep function keys and ports on the MBP.

Come on, you might not like this, but calling it a "frivolous toy" is condescending at best.

As a developer, i'm extremely jealous. I've actually made something somewhat similar[0] with a physical keyboard because the idea of a set of keys that I can have do useful stuff is such a nice idea.

I would love it if not only was that set of buttons on my laptop, but that it was programmable and customizable per application (half of the keys on that keyboard only work in my IDE)

It might not be for you, but it's not useless.

[0]http://i.imgur.com/jQ72mEA.jpg Cut me some slack on the button functions themselves, I actually don't use a lot of them and want to re-do the layout for a while to get rid of them, but just haven't gotten around to doing it.

It's a nice-to-have, but it's not a game changer, and there won't be many situations where it provides a big productivity boost over a mouse + keyboard.

I would have been much more impressed with better basic specs, and maybe a new separate keyboard with touchbar/trackpad features.

A keyboard with OLED keycaps would be awesome for creative applications and for developers, because you could see a full set of functions at the same time, and you could set them up to switch automatically as you switched applications.

Trickle down market segmentation is hardly a new invention. Leaving the conventional keys to the more expensive model would be like setting up billboards that say "we invented this fancy new thing, unfortunately it's a downgrade from what we had before".

Apple built a new MacBook Pro keyboard without the Touch Bar for the low-end 13" version, so they theoretically could put that on their higher-end versions too. Maybe they should make the Touch Bar a no-cost CTO option for all MacBook Pro versions.

I commented on that before, but should I feel bad because I don't touch type the function keys ? I just can't believe that everybody here just touch type the screen brightness increase. Especially considering that those keys don't even map to the same function keys on all MacBook or external keyboards.

Also, do people really use the regular function keys in anger ? In my java IDE the only more or less common shortcuts on the function keys are the debugger run and step over/through. Those are used in "read mode" rather than "type mode" and I would think that a proper row of debug related custom button on the keyboard would rather be an improvement compared to remembering which of F7 or F8 step into the next line. And that's it, I don't use them at all in any other application, especially not in the terminal, text editor, browser, mail applications, ...

Is the HN demographic really that much more sophisticated than me, or is it simply overblowing the issue in a similar fashion that allegedly no "real power user" would get over the loss of Blackberry physical buttons.

Ironically, a few years back, as a proper power user touch typing function keys on a mechanical keyboard (windows use and abuse function keys for about everything), my choice of mechanical keyboard included those function keys and that was seen as a weakness by the "real pro user" of the time that never left the home row and were very proud showing off their happy hacking keyboard professional.

edit: Just to avoid confusion, I touch type. Just not the function keys.