Why Apple's adaptive Touch Bar will flop Apple has ignored a page of very recent history by introducing its "Touch Bar", Lenovo reminded us on Thursday. Last week Apple replaced physical hardware function keys on its new laptops with a touch sensitive OLED strip, the "Touch Bar". This isn't an original idea, and it has failed spectacularly when introduced to the …
Yep, Lenovo didn't have control over the OS as Apple do, they didn't have a suite of their own applications, and they didn't have enough market share to interest 3rd party developers.
All of the above were factors against Lenovo, before we even consider whether their hardware implementation was any good or not.
Yes, and Lenovo doesn't have a subset of its customer base that accepts anything Lenovo does, and rationalises Lenovo's dumb mistakes as being nothing more than their own inability to deal with "progress".
And this is really is a stupid, awful idea, and it's bad on more than one level. Superficially, it forces users to divert their visual attention from the screen down to the keyboard, because it removes the ability to find the Fn keys by touch. But that's not why it's a disaster for people who actually do work with their computers.
It's a disaster for users of all kinds because it removes the bloody Escape key. Does nobody in Apple's "design" group use Adobe Creative Suite anymore? Or Excel? Or vim? Or XCode? Have they never needed to force-quit an application? (Command+Shift+Escape, and it's the only way to restart Finder when it hangs). A surprising number of Mac software dialogs also dismiss with "Cancel" when you press Escape. It's something that you pick up over a decade of using an OS.
Escape has a specific meaning on Macs: it means "exit this mode, cancel". It's as much an essential command key as Backspace, Return ("confirm") or Tab ("go to next").
The only commonly-used Mac application I can think of that doesn't map Escape to a function is.... Safari.
So there you go. Apple thinks that its customers will only ever use the web browser. And that's probably true of the floods of vacuous tech-bloggers who'll treat us to articles proclaiming how nobody needs the escape key anyway just because they didn't...
You can set the function keys to be always on. This might not help the people who are used to finding them by touch, but I dare say their finger will be fall pretty close to the right area of the bar - you hands will already know where they are from typing on the conventional keyboard. That's some users.
Another set of users will find the touchstrip a far more versatile HID device than a row of F keys. For many tasks - such as adjusting volume, or some other variable - it will be faster than using keys and consume less attention.
I'm a Windows CAD user. Your argument does seem to be that because the touchbar might detract from your work flow, those people it benefits don't do 'real work'. No, they are not idiots, they just use their computer for different tasks to you, often audio, video and photo editing work long associated with Macs.
>Does nobody in Apple's "design" group use Adobe Creative Suite anymore?
Adobe showed off their support for the touchstrip at its release. During much of the Adobe presentation, the virtual Esc was present in the normal place, and only disappeared when the touchstrip was being used as a slider. It appears that the virtual Esc key returned when the demonstrator tapped the touchbar. The video is here:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/adobe-photoshop-touch-bar-update-apple-macbook-pro/
Your argument does seem to be that because the touchbar might detract from your work flow, those people it benefits don't do 'real work'.
No, my argument does not seem to be that at all. I'll re-state it for you here: by replacing a proven useful interface with one of dubious and as yet unproven use, Apple is losing sight of what people who use their equipment need. Maybe the touch thing is useful, but surely the amazing design skills of Dieter Rams Jonathan Ive could have found a visually harmonious way to accommodate a touch bar and the escape key -- tossing the existing functionality is laziness at best, form-over-function at worst.
"Nobody needs [feature] anyway" is the cry of the Apple apologist, but I've never been in that camp - my needs are representative of me alone; I've no right to tell other people what they should and should not need.
True, I've bought my share of Apple computers over the years, but I've never felt the need to use the receipts for them as some kind of identity card. In the twenty years I've used Macs, I've spent a lot of time avoiding tedious arguments about why I wasn't using Windows (or Linux), and yes, I occasionally suggested Macs to people I thought might find them useful too, but I'm not going to buy an Apple product that doesn't meet my needs just out of some misplaced need to belong.
I'm well aware that I'm not Apple's customer anymore - their product decisions made that clear to me. I was wondering if they'd make something that would change my mind on that, but the only two personal computing products that have made me look twice at them have both been from Microsoft: Surface Book last year, and the Studio last week (I'd love the latter, but I only do illustration as a hobby these days, and can't justify the price on that basis).
The irony of "boring old Microsoft" leading the way in personal computing hardware is not lost on this ex-Apple employee.
The Escape key needs to come back, and probably will. But apart from that I don't see the issues.
Can you honestly say you can use unlit F-keys in a dark room?
I certainly can't. I'd prefer the OLED strip for that.
Daylight: Depends on how bright the OLED is, but phone users seem happy enough (I prefer IPS LCD personally).
Don't know if they added haptic feedback, but that would be nice for that strip.
I like the idea of keys that adapt to the foreground app, as long as some can be set aside as static.
What? So you DO look at the keys then?My whole point..
If it's dark and I have to find the bloody thing I'll be looking for the laptop itself and not just the keys :)
I don't know if I'm alone on this but I can can touch type happily on a normal keyboard with a normal set of keys however when it comes to hitting function keys I tend to look at what I'm doing because firstly they're not normal keys to press (and function keys are aligned differently on many keyboards) and secondly because function keys tend to have rather more "interesting" functions therefore I'd much rather that I pressed the correct one first time. Even though the Escape key is generally in the top left of a keyboard it's action is often more dramatic than just a normal key press therefore I'm likely to find myself looking at the keyboard to check this one as well.
My pet hates: Laptops which swap the bloody Fn and Ctrl keys around (Lenovo) and particularly those laptops that decide that in order to use the normal function of a function key that we have to press the bloody Fn modifer key to do so. Because I'm really going to want to put my laptop into hibernate with the single press of a key. Idiots. I have the same level of hate to the idiot keyboard manufacturers who put power keys onto keyboards as well... usually just where the Insert, Home and Page Up keys should be.
I need physical keys. I do a lot of translation work, Office, Adobe CS and support an ERP system. They rely heavily on function keys.
Even on PCs, it is annoying that on many newer devices and keyboards, I need to use a "function shift" key + function key to get the key to react "normally".
If I need Shift + Ctrl + F5, on my laptop I need to press Fn + Shift + Ctrl + F5... As they are used so extensively, any keyboard that does away with the function keys is a non-starter for me.
It is possible to hunt through ribbons or menus to find the relevant option, but it is a lot slower and breaks the workflow as you need to take your hands away from the keyboard.
True. But his point about Apple not listening to end users is spot-on. There is no bidirectional exchange going on there. Apple decides and we are expected to acquiesce. We're tethered to the AppStore, we get an interface that is increasing iOS-like, we get thinner and thinner even if pro users keep saying that smaller isn't what they're after, we get the interfaces Apple decides we need, despite howls from the user community.
If Apple runs into rough waters ahead, it won't be because of Lenovo or Google or Microsoft. It will be because Apple won't give users what they want/need.
Is the touch bar that much of an advantage over physical function keys considering it how much it adds onto the cost of the device? That's one expensive touch screen!
I like the tactile feedback of a physical switch when doing things like muting sound, changing screen brightness etc. No way would I get used to a touch ESC key.
Seems a bit of an expensive solution looking for a problem to an old luddite like me.
The BBC Micro had a little plastic pocket built into the keyboard above the F keys to house keyboard overlays.
But, no, it's not worth $300 extra. But it's also not the only additional thing you get for your $300. You also get a decent bump in baseline processing — from 2.0 Ghz to 2.9Ghz — and a couple of extra Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports.
>I like the tactile feedback of a physical switch when doing things like muting sound, changing screen brightness etc.
Definitely - I recently splodged almost a £100 on a mechanical keyboard (actually a 'gaming keyboard', though I don't play games). Most productive money I've spent in ages - I'm old enough to remember proper keyboards, but I'd somehow got used to the crap that gets peddled as quality these days.
I've been using my original Saitek Eclipse keyboard for over 10 years now. Gaming keyboards are amazing. As a side note, I picked up a real bargain on it's replacement for when it eventually dies.
The local market was selling high end keyboards for £10. I picked up a Cooler Master CMStorm Ultimate Quick Fire with Cherry MX Browns, the reason for the price? Italian keyboard layout.
However, as I touch-type and they use QWERTY layout, despite the different positioning and use of symbols accents etc, the key layout maps exactly the same as my current keyboard and maps perfectly to the English language settings in the OS.
The touch bar is expensive so why lie!
The difference in cost between touch bar enabled and non touch bar is $300. Not $300 - $400, why would you even imply that. But even $300 is a bit inaccurate because that is not all you get for your $300.
You go from 2.0Ghz to 2.9Ghz CPU
1866mhz to 2133Mhz memory
Iris 540 to iris 550 graphics
2 USB C to 4 USB C ports
Putting this in dollars and cents terms Apple charges $100 to go from 2.9 to 3.5ghz so who knows the actual cost is.
Isn't the 15" model $400 extra to get the touch panel? That's why I said it. I didn't consciously lie.
Granted, the internal spec of the touch bar machines is higher, but the point is if you want the touch bar you have to pay the extra. You have no choice. You can't pick and choose components at purchase time like, say, Dell.
This is the problem with Apple kit. If you want the 2TB SSD or example, you have to pay a huge amount more because that model has all manner of other higher spec components as well, which you might not even need. You can't just add the bigger SSD by itself.
Say this was Dell, you might be able to add just the Touch Panel as a $100 extra. You just can't do that with Apple's pricing scheme. It starts getting very expensive very quickly with you paying for bits you don't want to get the ones you do.
>Is the touch bar that much of an advantage over physical function keys considering it how much it adds onto the cost of the device?
It really depends upon the application. On my desk now I have all manner of human input devices - a camera with scroll wheel (relative), D-pad, two jog switches (relative), four absolute dials or sliders, a two-level shutter button.
A mouse with many buttons and a scrollwheel which also moves left and right.
A joystick I found second hand but haven't found a use for yet - 3 analogue axis, analogue throttle, little hat and many buttons. Tempted to waste a few hours making it control my laptop's volume and media.
My car stereo has a proper knob for the volume. When I encounter car stereos which use two buttons for volume control, it makes me want to seek out the person responsible and shout at them.
A cheap Wacom digitiser, gathering dust. Tried to turn it into a MIDI controller, but Windows had other ideas. A friend has a bigger, pricier one, and swears by it for CAD work.
"Is the touch bar that much of an advantage over physical function keys considering it how much it adds onto the cost of the device?"
You have it back to front. By charging more for laptops with the touchbar, it gives the touchbar an air of luxury, and thus seen as progressive by consumers.
If it succeeds, then watch the the next generation of Apples eschew keys all together, replacing all those expensive to design to be reliable keys with a cheap, mass produced capacitive touch screen.
Other features: No USB, firewire, or even power jacks!
The new line will be seamless, and inductively recharged.
After all, anything you could possibly want to do on your foldaslab will be available as a quick download the Apple Store™, right?*
* Then El Reg will cover the bun fight as Apple sues Nintendo for ripping off their IP with the DS, DSi, and 3DS.
PS: This is snark, nothing else. Buuut,.. if it comes true, you read it here first!
Windows and it can work as a tablet.
IMHO, it failed back then because the underlying H/W was not really good enough to work as a tablet.
MS was dependent upon Intel and still is.
Apple has complete control of the H/W and O/S.
One was a hodge-podge that didn't work together and the other was engineered to work together.
MS has learned a lot in the meantime yet their dabble with an ARM device was a failure. That said, the Surface and the legacy Intel X86 seems to run pretty well within bounds.
@Steve Davies 3
Apple has complete control of the H/W and O/S.
Uh, no, they don't. They are using off the shelf bits like everyone else does. They just get to customize how they package these bits. Like everyone else does...
Control over the OS, and how it works with the hardware, yes. But anyone can buy these bits and put them on a platform.
Apple doesn't use entirely off-the-shelf components even if the custom parts tend to be minor; a good recent example is the display controller in the 5k iMac. A more relevant example is that the touch bar MacBook Pros contain a small ARM processor running something derived from iOS to maintain the bar, which is a spin-off of the homegrown iPhone processors of recent years, which go quite a bit further than being mere respins of one of the reference cores.
It's not a huge amount of exclusive silicon, but it's not nothing.
"The MS Tablet failed because Bill G insisted it had to run Windows when the hardware of the time was clearly not up to it. If the iPad worked, it is because Apple wisely decided it should have an OS that worked with the hardware."
And how is different to Lenovo doing some half-arsed solution, and Apple doing it the right way?
Seems like an identical scenario to me.
The windows tablets of 15+ years ago (or whenever it was) generally weren't bad systems overall, although I only got to use a few of them.
The key downsides were the price and the rather less than stellar touch screen experience which was stylus driven only which also lagged in time behind presses and the rather poor handwriting recognition - it was inaccurate and slow therefore it was easier to use the on screen keyboard instead.
The main and simultaneous advantage and disadvantage was that it ran a largely standard OS and applications and while some worked with what was effectively a single button mouse, many didn't.
Posting from a 2011 MacBook Pro which is holding up fine, apart from the "retina" screens on newer models I haven't seen anything which would encourage me to upgrade (and for me "retina" is nice-to-havem, not must-have).
Touch bar - pointless gimmick, I'm one of life's ESC users, moreover yet another set of ports incompatible with anything I have, meaning lots of dongles... no thanks. Yes I do use the SD card slot a lot. Next laptop will run Linux, fortunately I'm not particularly invested in Apple stuff
>Touch bar - pointless gimmick, I'm one of life's ESC users,
Fair enough, that's your use-case. Will you concede that Photoshop users can benefit from context-sensitive virtual sliders? Not only Photoshop, but many an application in video, photo and music.
I'm not a Mac user, so I'll keep on using keys or extra mouse buttons to modify the scroll wheel. I hear that some more modern Windows PCs actually have decent trackpads, but mine dates from the era when PC trackpads are just horrible - barely good enough to get you by when you've forgotten to pack your Logitech mouse.
Yep, like you I find my ageing laptop still up to the task! :)
Say, just for one minute, that the new Macs were fantastic in every way apart from this touch panel, then maybe we'd put up with it and Apple would deem it a commercial success (even though we all hate it).
The risk is that Apple identify it as the sole reason why no one is liking the new Macs, drop it, and then make everything else even worse than it is at the moment. That might be terminal for Mac in general; if Apple cannot identify the reason they're not selling they may falsely conclude that a Mac (of any design) won't sell in the future, and give up.
It's kinda the same in the PC world. MS think Win10 is ace, it isn't, so we're not buying PCs. Our old Win7 boxes are fine, so we buy nothing. Cue lots of talk about the terminal trajectory of the PC market...
Someone somewhere is going to have to make a usable, affordable PC class computer. We're not going to develop and write everything from this point onwards on mobile phones.
Apple's bottom line suggests they are smarter than you give them credit for. Do not mistake what they say in public (which is always well stage-managed) for the inevitable conversations that Apple have had internally.
You say that 'no one is liking the new Macs', but at the moment their pre-orders are high. Now, you and I might both suspect that is in part because of the long over-due CPU upgrades. In addition, I suspect that Apple have waited until now to bump the specs because they want to maximise adoption of USB-C over USB A, DisplayPort, HDMI etc, and adoption of the touch strip. Both the port selection and touchstrip will be better in the long run with 3rd party support, so it is a good strategic decision for Apple to draw people in with the long-awaited CPU/GPU upgrades and thus create a larger pool (a critical mass) of touchstrip/USB users. This interpretation might be incorrect, but it is plausible.
Make no mistake - Apple employ a lot of very bright analysts, and supply them with expensive-to-aquire data to work on.
>Someone somewhere is going to have to make a usable, affordable PC class computer.
That's never been Apple's game, yet here they still are. Windows laptops have come ion leaps and bounds in the last decade. A £300 laptop only feels cheap and slow in comparison with its pricier peers - taken on its own merits, it does all the simple tasks without much fuss.
Product Design is what Ive does, and as a discipline it is concerned with how things are used - function. The 'use' of a laptop doesn't just cover the times it is being typed on, but also how it feels to carry around, what you do when it goes wrong, everything. Cook was never an arbiter of product design, but was very competent at managing supply chains.
Product design, like engineering, is about compromise. More battery means more weight. It doesn't follow that there is one 'correct' balance of battery and weight. There is more than one way to skin a cat.
The Macbooks are good screens and keyboards in a lightweight package (the reason for a laptop's existence) with good enough CPU/GPUs for most tasks. They also expose their PCIe lanes to any bit of kit you want to plug into them. It's not an unreasonable approach, given they'd never be able to produce a variant which suits every user 'out of the box'.
You might remember how adamant Jobs was about not including BluRay support on any Mac. His logic was that Joe Punter would soon be streaming movies (or watching BluRay on a big TV through a games console), and the smaller group of people who really needed to burn Blu-ray discs would just attach their own drive.
They've snuffed out the Pro line and renamed Air to Pro .
However Lenovo's problem was that nothing would have used the touch bar apart from Lenovo's bloatware. Apple's already made changes to the OS and their apps to make them use the touch bar and the API is in Xcode for everyone else to use.
>Apple apparently forgot to make the screen touch.
They didn't forget - they just reckoned nobody wanted to be holding their arms out in front of them.
Where Apple do make a touchscreen computer, they think its more important that it be light than it is able to run applications designed for mouse and keyboard - hence the iPad.
Adobe make iPad apps that provide tool palettes for Photoshop on OSX - so hybrid touch interfaces for OSX do exist if a productivity application will benefit from it. This is on top of established support for Wacom stylus tablets.
Obviously, this requires you buy both a Mac and an iPad, but Apple don't mind that.
I use OSX with my Cintiq. Cintiq's are a touch screen with accurate stylus. Generally used by artiistic types, CAD/CAM types, etc.
Many OSX (and Windows, etc) applications have in-depth support for them. But, they're used a bit differently than a "laptop screen you could draw on". Though, someone would probably be able to make that work.
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