> No Mac user has ever thought "gee, this third party design is so much more tasteful than something that follows the HIG!"

Apple stopped following the HIG a long time ago. Even Gruber admitted it back in 2011. http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/uniformity_vs_individualit...

That article, by the way, is about a good counterexample to your point (Twitter for Mac).

I can't tell if this comment is sarcastic. Are you saying that apple's specified design is always better than anything else?

no, but averaging over most developers it's way better.

So... because some developers might use it tastelessly, no one should be allowed to use it creatively at all?

There is value in consistency and uniformity. If all developers follow the guidelines, then once you understand the conventions, any app should be predictable for the user.

If devs all go off in their own direction, then users have to re-learn the UX for every single app.

Is this surprising to you? This has always been Apple's approach. I'd say it is the most defining difference between Apple products and everything else. One of the main reasons people commit to the Apple ecosystem is that you get a more consistent user experience over Google's or Microsoft's.

They should just be creative within set requirements... just like how all creativity works

Apple envisioned a purpose for the bar. If all apps convey a consistent message about what the bar is there for, it will become easy to use. You will know that when you intend to do a certain thing, the bar will be there to deliver this predictable functionality. What it's there for will be obvious.

If on the other hand everyone uses it for different things, then the user will receive mixed messages about what the purpose of this thing is. There's no pattern. There's no way to develop a reflex without repetition. In this case it's not repetition of a certain action but a theme. Part of using the thing is conveying a consistent intent ANY time the bar used so the user receives clear messages. It's about being a good citizen. You sacrifice freedom in how you use the bar so it becomes natural for ANYTHING you might use it for on your computer.

It's to avoid the situation of taskbar icons on windows. These have no fucking purpose.

Hey, stop blaming developers for design fads, it's not them who invent all this crap!

As the Web proves every day, the problem is with designer and companies that for some reason treat the digital medium as if they were designing a goddamn paper poster - an ad that has to look pretty, instead of a tool that has to be useful.

So you must surf the net with CSS disabled, right? Get those pesky designers' opinions outta here.

Not yet, but I'm thinking about it. I just selectively block JS for now. But there's a reason Reader Mode is popular and personally, I've sent many an article to Pocket and Instapaper simply to be able to read them without gouging my eyes out.

"The web" is all articles? Interesting.

PS You know who decided what Reader Mode should look like? Designers and typographers.

Well, I know it's not all designers who do bad design. But more so, it's not developers who are doing bad design.

How do you know that it's not developers doing bad design? Because that tends to be my experience with it, at least these days.

Developers do plenty of awful design. Some designers do too.

A stock ticker or Twitter feed sound just awful to me. Hopefully when developers find a way to ship features like that, I have a way to remove that crap.

Just don't use the offending app. The bar's content always belongs to the foreground app.

Think different... as long as it is well within the defined manufactures guidelines.

they took away the Esc key and all the Fn keys. Apple's HIG is dead to me now.

Just looking at http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/ shows that's not true:

http://images.apple.com/v/macbook-pro/j/images/overview/touc...

Maybe wait to actually use one before trying to rally the mob with pitchforks and torches?

i appreciate you pointing this out concerning the Fn keys. at the end of the day, though, i want real keys. i'm not a starfleet officer and i don't want to type on a flat screen.

I'd type on a flat screen if it made me a starfleet officer though

If the emphasis is on "keys", then those images don't refute the comment you replied to.

Depends on whether you define “key” to include only single-purpose hardware keys or include several decades of prior art referring to “soft keys”, “virtual keyboards”, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_key

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_keyboard

I personally don't feel the need to be that pedantic — since I've used both good touchscreen keyboards and wretched hardware, I'd prefer to focus on the quality of any specific implementation rather than philosophical debates about the nature of a “key”.

Well, you understood the distinction that I was making, and I think it's a useful one to make. I'm aware of soft keys and virtual keyboards (it's been hard not to be, for a big chunk of my life). Physical/soft/virtual keys all have their own use-cases and some potential for overlap when you might choose one or the other.

That's why I was making the distinction; I feel like you chose the interpretation of "key" that could be trivially dismissed, rather than what they probably meant in the context of their complaint.

Luckily, we've got two implementations that we can compare, and that it would be logical to assume we're talking about: The Touch Bar and the row of keys that it replaced. The TB adds some pros: continuous (slider-like) or discrete (key-like) behavior, display of dynamic information, and general flexibility. It has some cons too, though: Lack of tactile feedback makes it impossible to use without looking, it potentially requires extra key-presses (and glances to the keyboard) to use the old functionality, key placement isn't predictable, etc.

My point being: It's reasonable to assume that the comment you originally replied to was complaining about the difference between virtual and physical keys, but your reply basically said "that doesn't matter, because you can simulate the missing keys".

Doesn't holding down the "fn" key bring them all back though?

It displays them on the touch bar, but it doesn't replicate the functionality of the physical keys. That's a mix of positive and negative attributes; the balance of whether it's a net gain or net loss is completely subjective.

That's a solid 9.5/10 on the Poe's Law scale.