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chucker
 
Join Date: May 2004
Location: near Bremen, Germany
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2019-08-13, 11:56

Quote:
Originally Posted by kscherer View Post
In a certain sense, that is precisely what you want: Make it more difficult for your competitors to copy you.
Oh, sure, but in this case, it really isn't helping the perception that the Mac is no longer forward-looking and trend-setting.

Quote:
Originally Posted by kscherer View Post
Unfortunately with Touch Bar, it isn't on every Mac, so developers are loath to put too much effort into it. It needs to reside on the desktop Mac, as well as all laptops in order to get enough momentum to draw truly interesting adoption.
Yup, that's a big factor.

(And I still don't get why they don't add a Taptic Engine to it. It would help alleviate concerns that you can't feel the keys. It still won't be the same, but closer. Maybe they tried and it wasn't that great, but surely it wouldn't be worse, and would enable some additional uses?)

One good thing: Sidecar in macOS Catalina will effectively bring the Touch Bar to all Macs connected to an iPad. That… won't be many at first, but I can imagine an iMac + an iPad hooked up via Sidecar will actually be a popular setup among creatives. (Competition like Duet Display and Astropad is at least popular enough to be mentioned now and then in the podcastsphere, and Sidecar would have more marketing budget…)

But still, it's… not great that three years in, they don't have an answer to "I want the Touch Bar, but on an external keyboard". Not even just on different Macs, but also on the MacBook Pros themselves: how exactly are you supposed to use an MBP ergonomically these days? You can't easily hook it up to a Retina-like display because about the only option is really expensive and ugly, and you also lose the Touch Bar.

Quote:
Originally Posted by kscherer View Post
iPhones are like this to a point. They all need to have Face ID, and they all need to support Force Touch. Apple used to be the brand that was focused and consistent. Now, they have too many screen sizes, too many UI differences, and too many screen shapes. They need to find some commonality amongst their products.
Well, at least they're improving the bad Force Touch situation in several ways in iOS 13.
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