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Re:MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future by 59nadir on Monday November 14, 2016 @09:55AM (#12950122)
There's nothing in this review that convinces me that the touch bar is improving anything. If anything, paragraphs like these convince me it's at best on par with just regular keys:

> you no longer have one-touch access to brightness and volume adjustments; instead, you need to tap the button and then dial in your changes on a slider that pops up beside — not beneath — your finger. I’d be annoyed by that, but fortunately you can move the slider without actually touching it, by keeping your finger held down on the bar. It’s surprisingly inelegant, in that you end up controlling a slider that you aren’t actually touching. But it is efficient, and I got used to the new control scheme within a day, able to operate it by muscle memory the same I would a physical key.

They don't seem to have integrated this themselves, even. Why introduce something that you can't even use reasonably yourselves?

Re:MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future by WayneBro on Monday November 14, 2016 @11:13AM (#12950717)
The touch bar is the type of gimmick that Apple loves though, because that's what sells hardware.

When OS X was released, the Dock was that gimmick. It added "curb appeal" and demoability according to Bruce Tognazzini, an ex-Apple employee who wrote the first five editions of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines - http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html

Re:MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future by ihuman on Monday November 14, 2016 @11:17AM (#12950752)
> The touch bar is the type of gimmick

Sorry if this comes off as rude, but what's the difference on HN between a gimmick and a feature? In dictionaries, it says that a gimmick is a feature that exists to get attention. However, doesn't that describe most new features in technology?

Re:MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future by WayneBro on Monday November 14, 2016 @03:22PM (#12952971)
I think you explained it perfectly. A gimmick is a feature to get attention. It's not an indispensable future. It's not a necessarily very useful feature. It's just there to get attention.
Re:MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future by kennysmoothx on Monday November 14, 2016 @10:00AM (#12950164)
For the power users, those of us who learn and have hotkeys streamlined into our work environment, the Touch Bar doesn't add much to us, except perhaps a new medium of fine controls (think sliders)

However to the users who aren't savvy, or who don't know hotkeys, this brings controls that would otherwise be in deep within the menu bar, right in front of the user. I think that could be incredibly useful to a lot of people.

Re:MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future by laumars on Monday November 14, 2016 @10:07AM (#12950196)
While that's probably true, there used to be a time when the MacBook Pro was specifically aimed at power users. Which is likely why these features are being viewed from that perspective.
Re:MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future by slantyyz on Monday November 14, 2016 @10:22AM (#12950312)
The hardest pill for a lot of people to swallow with the latest generation is that Apple has moved on from these "power users" and are selling premium mass market computers while keeping the "Pro" suffix.
Re:MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future by ralfd on Monday November 14, 2016 @04:03PM (#12953351)
Though I never use the function keys for setting shortcuts. Beside volume/brightness it is a largely ignored row of keys.
Re:MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future by reacharavindh on Monday November 14, 2016 @10:52AM (#12950550)
The easiest solution to keeping both power users and the other users would've been to keep the function keys and the escape key as they were and add the touch bar located one row above.
Re:MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future by rz2k on Monday November 14, 2016 @11:20AM (#12950774)
Apple has historically avoided worst of both worlds solutions.