Comment by MBCook
5 hours ago
I liked the TouchBar. There were two problems with it:
1. It replaced the F keys. I suspect pros wouldn’t have complained so loudly if it didn’t. And it was too expensive for the cheaper computers where it may have been more popular.
2. They never changed it. Ok the first version wasn’t a big hit. Other than bringing back the escape key they never did anything. They sent it out to be a hit or to die and gave up there.
#1 bothered me the most. A lot.
And the stupid thing was that there was plenty of space for a row of function keys and the touch bar.
no2 is what annoyed me the most. I liked it for the most part, but it was never updated, even on the software side we had very few changes. It could've been great.
Even though it's showing its age (and support is being phased out in recent builds), I still liked IntelliJ with the Touch Bar laptop.
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/touch-bar-support.html
Having the Touch Bar screen show up the relevant buttons for the context I was in was really nice compared to trying to remember which F key was which debug option.
A "I wish..." would have been a $200 usb bar and hub that could sit right behind my keyboard for a desktop.
That was one of my two primary uses!
The other was I made some Shortcuts that were very handy for me and set them up as buttons. It’s been over a year, I still miss them.
One would pop up a dialog I could type a Jira ticket number into and it would open it. I tried to do that with Salesforce but they’re insane so you can’t.
My favorite would open my next meeting. Know I have a meeting in 5 minutes? Hit the button and my browser would open the right Google Meet or Zoom and come to the front.
So useful.
The desktop problem is a real one too. It was great… as long as you only use your laptop as a laptop or your keyboard. Use anything else and you list it.
iMac? No. Mac Pro? No. Mac Mini? Don’t be stupid. No.
MBP only.