Having a virtual ESC key in software that can be frozen, where part of your keyboard chord to kill apps includes the ESC key is really, really, stupid and caused me lots of wasted time that could have been saved had there just been a hard ESC key.
But yeah, it was stupid, especially given that software developers are a very visible market for them in the Bay Area. As soon as the 16" came out with an Esc, I ordered one at work and bought one at home so I guess they won, but it's another step towards getting me on a Linux or Windows PC a generation or two down the line.
1) install karabiner elements
2) select complex modifications
3) add rule
4) import more from internet
5) import change caps lock key v4
6) add rule change caps_lock to control if pressed with other keys, to escape if pressed alone
...is my actual current setup, along with a bunch of other key mapping. But I started with what I posted above, which everyone with Mojave+ on a MBP has available already.
I'm very afraid of getting too used to it and then having it stop working.
As far as the immediate concern goes, Karabiner is such a popular thing that I suspect there'll be some way to support it. If not, I won't upgrade. I just bought this MacBook Pro, and it'll probably continue to be usable on 10.15.x for its lifetime. I'm not too interested in my gaming keyboard and 10 key pad becoming unusable, at any rate.
If they actually completely kill software support for this, I guess next best thing would be a USB intermediary to process the key codes. Possible it's doable with a Raspberry PI or something, and there are enough mechanical keyboard enthusiasts on Mac someone would be motivated to do it. Won't help for the internal keyboard though.
See https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=69169.0
Edit: Correction: It actually runs TMK, but I flashed QMK on it.
It’s a “simple modification” (specific type) in Karabiner though, if you use that. I use PC mechanical keyboards so most of my typing devices a) have swapped around mod keys and b) map right ctrl to fn so I can do Mac device hotkeys from pc keyboard.
:__)
*yes, fingers pointing at me
The ergonomics of moving it closer far outweigh any benefits from it being physical vs touchscreen.
; Author: fwompner gmail com
#InstallKeybdHook
SetCapsLockState, alwaysoff
Capslock::
Send {LControl Down}
KeyWait, CapsLock
Send {LControl Up}
if ( A_PriorKey = "CapsLock" )
{
Send {Esc}
}
returnRun `:inoremap jk <Esc>` to try it out.
The keyboard for the ADM-3A shows a Ctrl key to the left of A. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A#Hardware
The VT100 shows CAPS LOCK to the left of A. https://vt100.net/docs/vt100-ug/chapter1.html#S1.1
So on which visual terminal was ESC to the left of A? Or are you perhaps referring to ex, an antecedent of vi, which was designed for hardcopy terminals? If so, which hardcopy terminal had ESC to the left of A? I've looked at the images for some and can't find that.
https://dave.cheney.net/2017/08/21/the-here-is-key
https://vim.fandom.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key#Avoiding_th...
I did not notice at first, but I could not reduce the volume, since its control was gone.
Then I tried to restart finder, but the escape key was ‘gone’.
I have an even better story about the one that replaced this (same model).
I did add the "Do Not Disturb" key to the touchbar; it's nice to have one-button access to that function when I need to get work done without distractions.
This takes the touchbar from 'annoying' to 'ok this is kind of useful actually', for me at least. I spend a lot of time on a keyboard + trackball combo, but keep my laptop propped a bit for TouchID, zooming, and one or two other useful idioms.
I've been hiding the Dock for a solid decade, and it's a more useful default than, say, the illegible window snapshots Safari insists on offering over the obvious choice of favicon + a few letters of the title.
It's baffling to me that none of Chrome, Firefox, nor Safari, offer that interface for the touchbar on Mac.
I do find the Touch Bar useful for music controls and scrubbing through a video, but that's about it.
I do not use the Fn keys in MacOS - and having media controls, screen lock, and other data in the touchbar makes more sense for me. It was and is an experiment in user behavior and UI. Some like it, some don't. I'm not committed to it, but I don't want the HN bubble to think their "bad touchbar" is the only opinion.
Some want headphone jack, many don't. Some like the butterfly keys, many don't. Touchbar, USB-A, Magsafe, Touch ID, small OLED form factor... they pick a side and go.
Not quite one button, but option- clicking the notifications icon at the far right of the menu bar will also enable do not disturb
I was forced to remove several buttons from the touch bar, because when I go to type numbers I will occasionally brush the bar with my fingertips, interrupting my workflow as something random suddenly pops up.
I hate the Touch Bar.
I went so far as to build a physical escape key -- #couragekey -- a few years back (just as a joke, but it does work) https://twitter.com/martinmroz/status/995003391314083840
I just put in my order!
[edit] also the #couragekey was a really fun project to put together, I think I'll write it up to commemorate a real escape key coming back.
All of that only applies if you're a dev, so I definitely agree that the touchbar was a fuckup from Apple, but it happens that it's massively useful for me
Is there a way to decouple touchbar from active window btw? For example if I have Skype running I'd like to have Skype's buttons on touchbar regardless of focused window. I tried using BetterTouchTool but all I found out was quite hacky ways to mimic keypresses and whatnot instead of pinning app specific UIs.
Useless to me too, that's just an example out a million things you could do.
> Is there a way to decouple touchbar from active window btw
You can, touchbar items are global, app-scoped or part of a group that you can open/close programatically (clicking on a touchbar button, usually). The annoying bit is syncing: you'll need to poll for the state of Skype.
I just have no use for a touchbar. After all, I have a screen! I never look at my keyboard.... it’s all about tactile feedback, which the touchbar notoriously lacks.
I find this very narrow-minded. You can't imagine a single thing that a programmable tactile interface would bring over keys (that you probably can't reliably touch-type either, fn keys are far)?
I never looked at my keyboard either. I still don't, I look at my touchbar from time to time to do things that would take me longer to do if I had to move a cursor (checking the time, my next calendar event, controlling music amongst a dozen things)
Moving the mouse doesn't really bother me, and there are a million ways to wire functionality to keyboard expressions or in-UI functionality. I do miss my hardware volume, prev track, next track, play/pause functionality exactly because I could use them easily without shifting focus at all, even to my keyboard.
OTOH I'm not holding my breath for Apple to meet my needs, they aren't that kind of company.
Personally, I've never spent any time trying to customize the touch bar because I am never using my laptop without an external keyboard, because of how fuckin' terrible the built in one is. So happy they added some travel back to the keys. I have put off buying a new laptop for years because of how much I hate that stupid keyboard.
Also there are actions you can program on the touchbar that don't require looking at it. For instance I set it up so that sliding two fingers anywhere on the touchbar changes the volume.
Are you old enough to remember when PC applications came with templates that fit over a 101 key keyboard to show you what all the fn keys did? That's why very little outside professional tooling uses them for anything but system-wide shortcuts anymore. They're horrible for discoverability so unless you live in the app enough to thoroughly memorize them they aren't terribly useful.
As much as I don't care for the Hot Bar in general, it is far better for per-app shortcuts that are used rarely enough not to require (and thus develop) muscle memory. You'd need one of those OLED keyboards to do much better.
On the keyboard, you don't know what a key would do in a given situation.
Sounds like we need a third option.
I actually only just now thought of mapping 3-finger swipe to undo/redo. I've only been messing around with it for five minutes but it's kind of nice, honestly! It's better than cmd+z when you need to undo/redo more than once, because it bypasses the key repeat setting.
you do have feedback with the touchbar! As I recently learned, the trackpad click isn't really a click. It can be triggered by software! And bettertouchtool has a specific action for "touchpad haptic feedback". That means you can trigger a touchpad click when you tap a touchbar button, and it perfectly fine as feedback.
Yes you do have to look. I'm not recommending touchbar actions for things that you do so often that it's a problem (though I have a big button to switch between firefox and vscode, big enough that I don't have to look). But it's not like I was using fn keys without looking either
I wouldn't mind the dock being visible when I'm using my large external monitor, but it just takes up too much space on a 13/15inch screen imo.
My dock auto hides and I only use it to open the downloads folder.
Very rarely I can't find a window and I use a hot corner to show all windows of the space but it happens once a week at the most.
I got used to it pretty quickly, and I've had press-Alt mapped to Esc for many years.
It was always annoying, and the 16" with a physical Esc is much nicer.
Now all Apple has to do is add some haptic feedback to the damnable thing and I'll actually like it.
The only advantage to a virtual Esc is getting that piece of real estate if you don't happen to want one, and as has been pointed out elsewhere, Escape is an important affordance in macOS-land, even if you aren't a Vim user.
The important report here is a process freezing both the UI and the touch bar, and therefore option-command-escape being unavailable to bring up force quit. That's obviously bad, and I would call it broken. Edge case but an important one!
This is just a quibble about whether it's worse enough to deserve the moniker "broken", though. I'm not personally attached to that, just want to point out that it does in fact break an important action in the core vocabulary.
No it doesn't. All that it indicates is that there was a preference for it by part of their demographic. Again, developers are in the minority here. Most Macbook users don't care and it was an easy concession to make from Apple.
If this has never been a problem for you: nice! But it's been so much of a problem for everyone else, and they've spoke up about this so much, that Apple undid that decision.
There is literally nothing that the physical key does that the virtual key on the Touch Bar can't do.
See, the problem is that I rarely use the laptop's own keyboard. Only in cases where I'm actually on the go. If I'm at the office or at home, I'll have an external keyboard (and monitor).
While the laptop's own display remains useful, the keyboard becomes awkward to reach. The touchbar, even more so.
Now, if Apple's external keyboard had a touch bar, now that would be useful.
I can sort of understand the potential appeal of it, especially in terms of customization. But even though the Touch Bar is 3 years old, am I the only one who is reluctant to invest time in learning it (this includes learning how to fully customize and optimize it) because it seems like the kind of feature that may soon disappear into obsolescence? It doesn't help that it's the sort of hardware feature that is literally only applicable to 1 of 3 computers I currently use. But unlike other Apple-pioneered hardware features (multitouch trackpad, built-in Touch ID), Touch Bar seems very unlikely to eventually become a popular cross-platform feature.
Plus, Apple is not known for hardware cost-savings as being a primary factor in their key decisions.
Apple is a business and prices its products based on demand. If people are willing to pay a high price, you bet they're going to charge a high price. The savings from not having many hardware variations on a single model are simply accumulated into their bank account.
And they might not cut costs when it comes to the hardware itself, but they are known for having a limited number of options and customizations when it comes to hardware.
If you want to Think Different, you don't want apple.
I don't use function keys, but do use the media keys (mostly volume and screen brightness) by touch. The touch bar is hilariously named imho, because you have to look at it to use it.
When you're buying a $1650-4000 machine, $50-100 probably isn't gonna make potential buyers balk.
When you're buying a $99 keyboard, $150 is a fairly big difference. And honestly given the $99 price tag on Magic Keyboard, I'd guess Magic Keyboard + Touch bar would be like $199 at least. How many people do you think would buy it at that price tag? You also have to consider that Magic Keyboard currently works with windows, linux, etc, so the potential users are much wider than a Touch bar enabled keyboard, which would only work as intended with macs.
Where's the iPod Touch of Mac OS?
You can use the Touch Bar on your iPad (using an app like Duet Display, or even with Sidecar if you have a modern MacBook). I find it to be useful in certain situations.
You can use karabiner elements to remap CAPS LOCK so that it’s ESCAPE when tapped and CONTROL when held.
For example I love that apps written to use (eg VS.Code) now have labelled buttons rather than imposing on me to remember strange function buttons.
I've used Macs full time for 6 years and your post here right now is the first time I knew that was possible. OTOH I've been using Emojis in the touchbar since I got a Mac with one.
Honestly I think most people would rather save $200-300 than have the touchbar.
If you look at the average mac user, not pros but regular office people, they use stuff like Launchpad and rarely use keyboard shortcuts. You'd be surprised how many macOS users don't even use Spotlight for instance.
The passive CPU cooling on the Air is a deal breaker.
See the NotebookCheck review of the i5:
> At around 30% CPU load (installation of OS updates), the fan is clearly audible and we are already above 40 dB(A), which is hard to understand considering the low performance level.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-new-2020-MacBook-Air-Core-...
This is such a silly comment. You actually have no idea.
That way you keep people happy who aren't looking down at the keys, and you give new users/etc nice graphics to help describe what the buttons do.
I use an external keyboard with the Touch Bar all the time. Pretending like you have to use one or the other is disingenuous.
Guess which key Apple will remove next :)
Remap caps lock (a useless key anyway) to escape.
This is in System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys > pick 'Escape' from the dropdown next to 'Caps lock key'.
If you wanna get fancy you can rewire right-ctrl or whatnot to esc too if you like that.
There are also 3rd party utilities like [Karabiner](https://karabiner-elements.pqrs.org/) which is undoubtedly the front runner for mac remappers (And public domain to boot). It's very scriptable; for example, if you want, you can set it up such that a longer press on caps lock really is caps lock (making use of the led for visual feedback that you engaged caps lock), but a short tap is escape. This does mean the ESC cannot register until you release.
If only there was some software to make this keyboard not sound like a slap fight between 2 otters...
"The new magic keyboard, not only with the new inverted T arrangement of arrow keys, but also with absolutely brand new physical function keys featuring all new haptic feedback experience."
Instead, Jony Ive insisted on the touch bar replacing the function keys, and here we are. At least the butterfly switches are finally dead.
The 16-inch MacBook Pro takes workflow efficiency to a new level. The new Magic Keyboard features a refined scissor mechanism with 1 mm travel for a responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience. The Touch Bar puts powerful shortcuts front and center, and Touch ID provides fast authentication. A dedicated Escape key allows quick switching between modes and views. And the inverted-T arrow keys enable fluid navigation whether you’re flying through lines of code, navigating spreadsheets, or gaming.
The keys that are there (caret and circle) get some other place, which works fine for me, because I am used to having those somewhere else in the first place.
Have you tried using crtl-[? As a side benefit, it's less of a stretch on the little finger, and it ought to work across most vi setups.
Use CTRL-C or map something like "jj".
Remap CapsLock -> Esc
Changed my life.
(Functions as ESC if pressed alone, otherwise acts as hyper key which is great to use for keyboard shortcuts)