You can add Volume/Brighness Up/Down buttons to the "always-on" touchbar by going to View -> Customize Touch Bar on the finder.
You can also start sliding from the "open slider" button without releasing your finger, which is more granular and IMO much nicer than having to press many times to adjust volume. If they only removed that giant pop-up on the screen with the current brightness and volume it would be a big improvement.
The lack of direct volume control really annoyed me. I probably should have poked around the config instead of just being annoyed about it.
But an even bigger problem for me is the price increase. The base TB version costs 200€ more (or 400€ if you'd buy the nTB 128gb version). With ne nTB version not getting the update, the updated MBP is too expensive compared to non Apple machienes.
But I really love using it for escape. I'm on a 2014 model but not going to the corner for escape is great. Plus I'm about to get one of these new ones, and I feel prepared since I have zero usage of the top row (other than the special functions).
{
"description": "Change caps_lock to hyper/escape.",
"from": {
"key_code": "caps_lock",
"modifiers": {
"optional": [
"any"
]
}
},
"to": [
{
"key_code": "left_shift",
"modifiers": [
"left_command",
"left_control",
"left_option"
]
}
],
"to_if_alone": [
{
"key_code": "escape"
}
],
"type": "basic"
}There are tons of settings posted on Github, and I just modified someone else's to get:
{"description":"Change right_shift alone to delete_forward",
"manipulators":[{
"from":{"key_code":"right_shift","modifiers":{"optional":["any"]}},
"to":[{"key_code":"right_shift"}],
"to_if_alone":[{"key_code":"delete_forward"}],
"type":"basic"}]}
A non-Apple device will do all the same stuff. It just might not do it the exact way you like out of the box.
I pay the Apple tax (albeit exceedingly infrequently) because I can afford it & it reduces friction in my life, not because I have no other options.
It's a good enough effect, though, I will probably keep it. Thanks for the suggestion.
I discovered recently that you could just do a "quick swipe" (very fast) on the button in the right direction on both the volume and brightness virtual button to apply the expected effect. Good enough for my usage.
That way you can just drag the mouse to the lower-right corner and black the screen anytime you like ...
Other than that, I like the 2017 keyboard (assuming mine doesn't break) and touch bar.
Clean != good. These are tools, not pieces of art.
Look at how many people here recommend rebinding caps lock to "esc" and control to caps lock and all other sorts of editing to the keys... should you remind them that rebinding keys is unnatural and the tool should be used the same way it's always been?
I guess it stems from the fact that I've never understood the argument that the touch bar took away the "esc" key... but on every touch bar MBP I see at the Apple Store, the esc key is still there, still right where it was, and still has the same functionality. The only difference is now if you don't use the esc key, you have the ability to remove it and put a more useful key there instead. But somehow this is a bad thing. I don't understand it.
If it's a tool, like you claim, it should be useful for getting work done. But instead you seem to actually want it to be made according to your exact design and visual preferences, which to me sounds more like you're actually looking for a piece of art.
Replacing the top row with the touch bar, in this analogy, is like someone else coming into your workshop and replacing several tools’ grips with big padded things that completely ruins the physical feedback you expect to feel, and never realized you used for fine control until you didn’t have it.
For me when I switched to a Mac, the hardest thing to get used to was the lack of a forward delete key (the Windows-style use of the delete key) and having to use a key combination instead. Even today I still struggle with the lack of pgup and pgdn keys, and the lack of home and end.
In light of commonly-used keys that are actually missing, I just struggle to accept the idea that the Esc key being a touch button but still existing is a hill worth dying on. Especially when, since the touch bar is customizable, everyone can now swap their (relatively) useless F1-F12 keys for the (relatively) more useful Home, End, Forward Delete, Page Up, and Page Down keys. Or whatever else they want it to be.
To me, it's like the digital equivalent to swapping a workshop's dedicated phillips-head screwdriver with one that lets you switch ends to be phillips or flathead or torx or whatever. Some small number of people may complain "but it's not the same way it's always been!", but it sure does make life a lot easier for a lot more people.
"It's not the same way it's always been" has been Apple's driving mission since... well basically forever. Think Different, right?
My only complaint with the touchbar is its too easy to accidentally engage Siri.
Other than that it’s a good idea IMO.
The touchpad is fine for that. No need for duplicating functionality.
You can remove the Siri shortcut in the system preferences.
System Preferences > Keyboard > Customize Control Strip
You left out how easy it is to accidentally brush with a finger and trigger various actions that you didn't want to do.
Especially infuriating when using Calculator and clear a result or turn a multiplication in to an addition.
It is, but they didn't update the model at all.
For what it's worth, if you tap and hold the brightness and volume buttons, it turns into a slider under your finger that you can immediately use. One tap + drag.
It's the one thing I miss about the Touch Bar after leaving it for the MacBook Escape.
this is the dealbreaker for me. :( i hope they release a model without the touch bar in the future
Happily, you don't - tap and hold the button on the touchbar and drag your finger from there. You do not need to move your finger to the slider. Same works for volume. Tap, hold, drag. Not sure about skipping songs.
Not true; you can change them by beginning a slide over the brightness/volume (and maybe other buttons that expand into a slider) in a single gesture without lifting your finger.
But discrete graphics aren't needed for lots and lots of other software either.
Programming/compiling not-withstanding there are many tasks today that are CPU intensive.
Plus, real professionals use slack, so that extra memory is needed.
I really wanted to like it, and the concept could perhaps eventually be good, but the current implementation is infuriatingly bad:
• I need more than one tap to change the brightness, volume or skip to the next song.
• The buttons are in different locations depending on context, so it's not possible to use it by muscle memory.
• TouchBar automatically goes to sleep, making the previous two points worse.
• It's not even that good for its intended purpose. Previews of things on it are too tiny. Most actions still require multiple taps, and it's in the uncanny valley between direct and indirect manipulation.
Fingerprint sensor is convenient, but the TouchBar ended up being a gimmick, not a pro feature.