> 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.

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.

That’s really good to know, thanks!

The lack of direct volume control really annoyed me. I probably should have poked around the config instead of just being annoyed about it.

I wouldn't care about the touch bar if the esc+(sleep key) were still regular hardware keys. Those are the only ones that I actually use.

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.

As an aside, I switched Caps Lock to ESC a few years ago and after the 6 weeks(?) or however long it took to fully adjust, it's fantastic. I wish I could bring Caps Lock -> ESC joy to everyone.

The only issue with that for me is that Caps Lock as Control is also a useful mapping.

On my Mac I use Karabiner to map Caps + [key] to Ctrl, and a lone press to Esc. It's amazing.

I've done the same but Caps + key to Hyper (cmd+ctrl+option+shift), just to pair with custom shortcuts.

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).

Wow, that's a great idea. I didn't realize it had support for that.

Yep. Every single thread about TouchBar complaints has this or a very similar comment and people. Spread the knowledge!

That sounds like a perfect setup! Mind sharing the modification rule?

I map it to Hyper, but you can tweak this to just be control:

    {
        "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"
    }

Oh that's neat, thanks for the tip.

I do caps lock to control, and control to escape. I also set right_shift when pressed alone and not a modifier to forward_delete.

Complex key behaviors can be defined with Karabiner-Elements.[1]

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"}]}

[1] https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements

I feel like I'm the only one who actually uses caps lock for its intended purpose, and often...

Are you writing a lot of FORTRAN 77 or something?

as a french, on linux (and mac too), caps lock is the correct way to get accentued capitals.

I believe the price increase is purely based on the profit-maximizing strategy. If people will pay that much then Apple has no reason to ask for less. Unfortunately, I can not imagine myself switching to a Windows-based laptop. This is just another example of why monopoly is bad.

I agree that this is profit maximization, but the only monopoly Apple has is on sucking less than others at particular things that particular niches care about (privacy, UX, ecosystem integration come to mind).

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.

Of course you are right, Apple is dominating the market, not behaving monopolistically in the negative sense of the word.

I still request a MacBook for work, but I can no longer buy it for my private use. It's just too expensive compared to their competitors.

If you have the choice to purchase a comparable competing product, then it’s not a monopoly.

If it's any help, I found this tool useful: https://www.haptictouchbar.com/ (I'd be surprised if Apple doesn't build this into the Touch Bar at some point.)

This is $5 and there's a free alternative: https://github.com/niw/HapticKey

For those who are wondering, it's creating a haptic bump via the trackpad. You'll feel it right there if you put one finger on the trackpad and then touch the touch bar.

It's a good enough effect, though, I will probably keep it. Thanks for the suggestion.

The endpoint security stuff on my work machine rejected this software. I would be wary if I were you.

> I need more than one tap to change the brightness, volume or skip to the next song.

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.

No need to "quick swipe," you can just tap-and(-hold-and)-swipe. This is really easy and allows for fine-grained control

Wow, makes the whole thing much more pleasant to use. Pretty bad that I only discover this now, after a year and a half.

This comment was the best thing to happen today. This is still not as good as hard buttons, but it improves the experience tremendously.

My favorite is when my hands naturally come to rest near the top of the keyboard at least once a day they land on the brightness control in the touchbar and dim my screen to black.

Just an aside ... I set my lower-right "hot corner" to "sleep screen" on all macs I use - including desktop imacs ...

That way you can just drag the mouse to the lower-right corner and black the screen anytime you like ...

Lower right for me is Mission Control, and has been for years. It would be a tough unlearning experience on your computer ;)

Or that I try to press delete, and if my fingers are a tiny bit off, the computer goes to sleep since the touch bar is really sensitive. Even the edge of my finger triggers it.

I learned that while reading email and using "e" to archive that my pinky rests on the escape key. Took me a bit to realize why weird things were going on.

Other than that, I like the 2017 keyboard (assuming mine doesn't break) and touch bar.

The touchbar is awesome--you can immediately blow away all the worthless function keys and have a minimalist setup. I keep the escape key and the volume/brightness sliders, that's it. Keeps the entire setup feeling clean. People actually use the touchbar for context-dependent tasks?

Eliminating the entire keyboard for a touchscreen would also be "clean".

Clean != good. These are tools, not pieces of art.

I don't understand your argument from that point of view... with the same argument, I could tell you that adding 15 new keys to the middle of the keyboard would be good, because those keys may have esoteric function for a small number of users, and if you complain about their addition, I'd just remind you that this is a tool, not a piece 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.

Consider “remapping keys” as the digital equivalent of “customizing a tool’s grip to for your hand”. Or maybe “rearranging the workshop to put your most-used tools in easy reach”.

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.

Maybe I'm part of the minority (or since Apple's sales are still doing pretty good maybe the minority is just louder), but it's just weird that the line in the sand is being drawn at "the uncommonly-used keys are still there, but now they can be customized too, but only if you choose to use the default keyboard instead of an external keyboard".

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?

Its great for scrubbing through video. Tap and hold for fast, fine grained control.

My only complaint with the touchbar is its too easy to accidentally engage Siri.

Other than that it’s a good idea IMO.

Literally the first thing I did was remove the Siri button from the touch bar.

> Its great for scrubbing through video.

The touchpad is fine for that. No need for duplicating functionality.

> My only complaint with the touchbar is its too easy to accidentally engage Siri.

You can remove the Siri shortcut in the system preferences.

you can remove Siri from the touchbar

System Preferences > Keyboard > Customize Control Strip

> but the current implementation is infuriatingly bad:

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.

Check our BetterTouchTool it has a 40 day free trial so you give it a proper work out and let's you customise the touch bar completely. It's brilliant and worth every cent.

> It's not possible to buy it without the TouchBar any more :(

It is, but they didn't update the model at all.

You don't need to worry so much about most of these. Go to System Preferences > Keyboard. Change the Touch Bar shows to Expanded Control Strip. Then go to Customize Control Strip... and set the keys you want to always have displayed. I can guarantee you will be using the touch bar more often then you did the F* keys.

Hopefully see this article? [0] I don't have on-hands feedback on this but it sounded kind of promising (or at least a possible stairway to escape that special circle of hell)

[0]: http://vas3k.com/blog/touchbar/

> • I need more than one tap to change the brightness,

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.

You can swipe the volume or brightness buttons left and right to adjust in a single press.

>I need more than one tap to change the brightness, volume or skip to the next song.

this is the dealbreaker for me. :( i hope they release a model without the touch bar in the future

OP is incorrect, just tap and hold and then slide left or right to change the volume or brightness. It’s quicker than physical buttons and more granular.

> I need more than one tap to change the brightness, volume or skip to the next song.

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.

> I need more than one tap to change the brightness, volume

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.

Better Touch Tool addresses almost all of your concerns

Tap and hold brightness/volume icons then drag to change. Don't know how I figured this one out.

I’m fairly sure it was in the demo on stage, it is a publicised feature from day one (when I got mine) but people are so bothered about the escape key and other things that this feature gets lost in the noise.

Why didn’t they keep both the touchbar and the F keys. That would have been so awesome for developers, it would have enabled so many usecases without killing existing ones.

Wasn't the Touch Bar-less model 13" only? That's hardly a Pro machine anyway, since it has no discrete graphics.

There are a huge number of pro users that don't require integrated graphics. Most developers don't need them.

Hence most developers.

But discrete graphics aren't needed for lots and lots of other software either.

depends what your definition of "pro" is, even if it's 50% of all users who do pro work that need a GPU (Video, photo, CAD) there's at least as many who need a lot of memory/CPU for various other things.

Programming/compiling not-withstanding there are many tasks today that are CPU intensive.

Plus, real professionals use slack, so that extra memory is needed.

Yup, The 32GB version should really be called Slackbook Pro.

Using this.

The touchbar-less 13” is last year model with 7th gen CPU and old keyboard design.