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"Hello Again" Apple holding mac-centric media event October 27th 10am PST

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I have both the 13" non touch bar and the 15" touch bar.

For 2" more, the display on 15" is much bigger than 13".

Let me see if GAF supports emojis ☺️

I don't use touchbar often. keyboard shortcuts are quicker.
 

xevis

Banned
I don't use touchbar often. keyboard shortcuts are quicker.

Yeah, that's what I don't understand. People who want shortcuts already use the keys. So the touchbar is for people who don't know shortcuts exist, or something?

There are a few cases where it makes sense to drag your finger along the touchbar but we already have a touchpad for dragging. The entire thing could have been implemented as a virtual on-screen bar. Press Fn, get an overlay at the bottom of the screen that shows the same thing as in the touchbar. Now you can click, drag, whatever. Release Fn and the thing goes away.

Maybe I'm overthinking this. Fo sho I'm still bitter they jettisoned my escape key

*sigh*

I've a few more weeks to wait until the Least Exciting Macbook Upgrade Ever arrives :(

EDIT:
Well well well. It looks like my suggestion above is a thing that already exists. It even works by pressing Fn!
 
Yeah, that's what I don't understand. People who want shortcuts already use the keys. So the touchbar is for people who don't know shortcuts exist, or something?

There are a few cases where it makes sense to drag your finger along the touchbar but we already have a touchpad for dragging. The entire thing could have been implemented as a virtual on-screen bar. Press Fn, get an overlay at the bottom of the screen that shows the same thing as in the touchbar. Now you can click, drag, whatever. Release Fn and the thing goes away.

Maybe I'm overthinking this. Fo sho I'm still bitter they jettisoned my escape key

The Touch Bar, in my experience so far, doesn't really help with quick actions, but it can make things like picking colors or scrubbing through photos/timeline/etc easier. As for the ESC key, the button is basically always there on the left, so I wouldn't worry about it. Tapping that general area will activate it.
 
Just got mine this afternoon. Was on a 2011 Macbook Air that was on its last legs. I've pretty much been spending my time just setting it up, so can't give too detailed of impressions yet, but man: screen is awesome, size is awesome (love how it stacks up to my Air and makes that look big), and everything else is just the buttery smoothness I expected and missed as the Air's health took a turn for the worse.

I was surprised to find that I actually really liked the keyboard. I think I'll need an adjustment period for the trackpad though.

As for the touchbar? Non-factor so far, either positively or negatively. Only minor annoyance I've had is that turning down volume is two steps now, versus one with the real key.
 
As for the touchbar? Non-factor so far, either positively or negatively. Only minor annoyance I've had is that turning down volume is two steps now, versus one with the real key.
Just hold the volume icon and drag left or right with your finger (don't drag the slider itself, keep your finger where you initially held down). Just one step, and in one swift motion rather than having to repeatedly click.
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
The Touch Bar, in my experience so far, doesn't really help with quick actions, but it can make things like picking colors or scrubbing through photos/timeline/etc easier. As for the ESC key, the button is basically always there on the left, so I wouldn't worry about it. Tapping that general area will activate it.
The far left blank space is pretty much escape, yeah. It always activates even if you never hit the touchable area itself
This was one of my concerns. Glad to see they were smart and that empty space still acts like a button like the space next to the Apple logo in the macOS menu bar.

As for the touchbar? Non-factor so far, either positively or negatively. Only minor annoyance I've had is that turning down volume is two steps now, versus one with the real key.
Just hold the volume icon and drag left or right with your finger (don't drag the slider itself, keep your finger where you initially held down). Just one step, and in one swift motion rather than having to repeatedly click.
Yeah, it's a one-step motion now. I can understand people not realizing it though because it doesn't give you any idea that you can do it, but it's shown off in this video: (Starts at 6:06 if the link doesn't work right.)
https://youtu.be/TuIjYL7Ith8?t=6m6s
 
What does the bolded mean?

USB Type C and 3.1: clearing up the confusion

What has happened with the case of OnePlus and the other out of spec USB adapter cables is that they are not setting this resistor properly. A number of companies are opting for 10kΩ values, perhaps mistakenly thinking that they are meeting the maximum capabilities of the specification when in fact they are breaking it. This could mean that a USB Type-C device attempts to draw 3A from an older charger than can only handle 1A or less, a recipe for destroying your charger or port.

So this resistor stops you from breaking devices with too much current.
 

X-Frame

Member
My 15" came last night and coming from a 2010 MBP it is an enormous upgrade.

I can't understand how I went so long without a Mac with a Retina display.
 

Juice

Member
Yeah, that's what I don't understand. People who want shortcuts already use the keys. So the touchbar is for people who don't know shortcuts exist, or something?

There are a few cases where it makes sense to drag your finger along the touchbar but we already have a touchpad for dragging. The entire thing could have been implemented as a virtual on-screen bar. Press Fn, get an overlay at the bottom of the screen that shows the same thing as in the touchbar. Now you can click, drag, whatever. Release Fn and the thing goes away.

Maybe I'm overthinking this. Fo sho I'm still bitter they jettisoned my escape key

*sigh*

I've a few more weeks to wait until the Least Exciting Macbook Upgrade Ever arrives :(

EDIT:
Well well well. It looks like my suggestion above is a thing that already exists. It even works by pressing Fn!

I'm a developer and I've memorized the shortcuts in almost every Apple stock app over the last 13 years and the Touch Bar *still* enables single-tap actions you can't for any other way.

Best of all, it's completely discoverable for the 99% of the world who struggle to understand or learn key combinations.

Here are just 3 examples from this week, of 6 or 7 that really impressed me:

• Record/Stop in quicktime https://instagram.com/p/BM0KwJxj3e8/

• Declutterred, movement and resizing of calendar events (this is incredibly painful if you have a full calendar with the mouse) https://instagram.com/p/BM4L7PhjBZO/

• actions that pop you into *other apps* based on context. Here I'm still looking at a calendar event but since I didn't create the invite, the UI changes to be ways to contact the owner https://instagram.com/p/BM6fRmADbuR/

And this is just day 1! If watchOS and iOS are any indication, Apple will take several years to iterate on ways to improve these interactions.
 
Maybe I just noticed it now, but does anyone else's Touch Bar menu flicker for a split second when four-finger swiping between full-screen apps? It doesn't happen when I click the icon on the dock to switch between full-screen apps.

It's sort of grating at my nerves...
 

X-Frame

Member
Maybe I just noticed it now, but does anyone else's Touch Bar menu flicker for a split second when four-finger swiping between full-screen apps? It doesn't happen when I click the icon on the dock to switch between full-screen apps.

It's sort of grating at my nerves...

This is the only thing I have noticed that is a complaint of mine so far with the Touch Bar. Minor thing but it is also annoying me too as it happens almost every single time swapping between apps like you said.

Hoping this can be fixed with an update.
 

Theonik

Member
Any way you could go 4K? There are some nice 100% sRGB 4K displays on the market now for $400-$500 last I checked.
That's a 4K monitor.
e: Nevermind, yeah go for Dell's 4K screens though keep in mind IPS panels are great for colour reproduction and viewing angles, not so nice for media and gaming.
 

entremet

Member
Does anyone know if you can daisy chain those LG Monitor with the 13 inch versions?

I loved that with the old Pros and Thunderbolt Displays.
 
Anyone who has their Touch Bar model already, what's the battery life like? Mine's being delivered this coming week and I've been reading some rather worrying reports on the battery life so I'm curious if people here are experiencing the same thing.
 

jstevenson

Sailor Stevenson
Anyone who has their Touch Bar model already, what's the battery life like? Mine's being delivered this coming week and I've been reading some rather worrying reports on the battery life so I'm curious if people here are experiencing the same thing.

my 13" (and I may switch to the 15) seems to get around 7-8 while surfing with brightness around half, but I haven't used it a ton in one sitting honestly
 

Owari

Member
I'm really curious, what happens with the touch bar when you try to run Windows with boot camp?

Do you just not have function keys? Or did they actually bother to write some Windows drivers for it?
 

The Real Abed

Perma-Junior
I'm really curious, what happens with the touch bar when you try to run Windows with boot camp?

Do you just not have function keys? Or did they actually bother to write some Windows drivers for it?
I'm sure the hardware has a built in set of buttons for when macOS isn't loaded.
 

mackaveli

Member
Will this USB C hub be okay?

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01ACWIX18/

I will not use it for power or charing etc., I just will use it for the HDMI port and then to connect my two external HDDs to it.

I have read briefly that some Hubs can wreck your laptop if it's not up to spec or something. Will I be okay? My brother coudn't get these cheaper Hubs as his employer said the cheaper hubs aren't on the list that they can buy as it might damage laptops so he had to buy the $300+ hubs. I do not want to spend $300 on a hub.

Thanks.
 

jts

...hate me...
I'm really curious, what happens with the touch bar when you try to run Windows with boot camp?

Do you just not have function keys? Or did they actually bother to write some Windows drivers for it?
You really expect it would to be able to run Windows without Esc or function keys?
 

giga

Member
First time owning a 15" MBP and I love everything about it except the size and weight. Still have the MacBook Escape, which is such a great size, but the performance difference is definitely tangible for high workloads. Blah. I have until January to return these so we'll see.
 

RDreamer

Member
So far my experience with the actual touchbar is that it is kind of useless. Granted, Adobe hasn't updated yet and I'm sure that's where it'll either crash or not for me...

I just feel like it's stuck in this weird space of being slightly customizable but also not customizable enough. I can think of so many cool or useful things to do with it, but I can't currently do those things and I don't have hope it'll change since that space is needed for whatever other program might need it.

I kind of think the touchbar would have been better off if it was an addition to the keyboard rather than taking away the function keys. They it wouldn't HAVE to have an esc key all the time and it wouldn't HAVE to have volume stuff, etc.

An example: I'd love if whatever music I was playing was down there with small album art and track list with a pause button and skip to next track, etc.
 
First time owning a 15" MBP and I love everything about it except the size and weight. Still have the MacBook Escape, which is such a great size, but the performance difference is definitely tangible for high workloads. Blah.
Split the difference and get a high spec'd TB 13" with the higher TDP than Escape? Quad core probably still much faster though.
 
Had to make some duplicate copies of files last night and realized just how jaw-dropping the performance on this SSD is. The true MVP of this MBP.
 

RDreamer

Member
Had to make some duplicate copies of files last night and realized just how jaw-dropping the performance on this SSD is. The true MVP of this MBP.

Yeah the SSD is crazy. I didn't have flash at all so maybe I would be blown away anyway, but I'm opening 2 gig photoshop files in a few seconds when they would have taken like 3 minutes with my old laptop.
 

jts

...hate me...
I kind of think the touchbar would have been better off if it was an addition to the keyboard rather than taking away the function keys. They it wouldn't HAVE to have an esc key all the time and it wouldn't HAVE to have volume stuff, etc.

Funny you should say that, looking at my MacBook Pro retina I feel like a good place for it would be... wait for it... the screen hinge. Doesn’t take any extra space, allows to keep physical function keys, and it’s tilted to the user. Wouldn’t need to be as large either. Of course it would have to be tweaked, possibly could not even be feasible, and I know they completely changed the hinge mechanism for the 16’ MacBook Pro. But still here’s the poor mockup I put together.

T2yMDtv.png
 

RDreamer

Member
Funny you should say that, looking at my MacBook Pro retina I feel like a good place for it would be... wait for it... the screen hinge. Doesn’t take any extra space, allows to keep physical function keys, and it’s tilted to the user. Wouldn’t need to be as large either. Of course it would have to be tweaked, possibly could not even be feasible, and I know they completely changed the hinge mechanism for the 16’ MacBook Pro. But still here’s the poor mockup I put together.

T2yMDtv.png

That would have been pretty rad, but at least on my 15" MBP there's a lot more space between the keyboard and screen. You'd have to move your fingers quite a bit to hit something on that bar. It wouldn't quite come out like that unless they reconfigured where the keyboard sits now, too.

The good part about the current touchbar solution is that it's possible to quickly click something on it since your finger placement shouldn't be too far away unlike a lot of touchscreen implementations. So, if we kept the function buttons and added a touchbar that would be a bit further away, unfortunately.
 
Funny you should say that, looking at my MacBook Pro retina I feel like a good place for it would be... wait for it... the screen hinge. Doesn’t take any extra space, allows to keep physical function keys, and it’s tilted to the user. Wouldn’t need to be as large either. Of course it would have to be tweaked, possibly could not even be feasible, and I know they completely changed the hinge mechanism for the 16’ MacBook Pro. But still here’s the poor mockup I put together.

T2yMDtv.png
That looks hot.

Also, is Preview absolutely broken for anyone else? Not only can you not Shift + Up to select multiple thumbnails in a PDF, but replacing an existing file with the same name using "Export as PDF" results in the entire document turning into a blank paged 6kb file that can't be undone.

And half the time I use the four-finger gesture for Mission Control, the animation gets stuck halfway and I have to do the gesture again.

WTF Apple, fix Sierra
 
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