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Comment by hn_user2 | Hacker News Reader

I'm really surprised by the negative reactions to the context bar. Does everyone really have memorized what all 12 function keys do in every app they use? I think this could tremendously help usability for pretty much every application other than my IDE, since I do have those memorized.

Being able to hit a function key without looking? I may be able to to touch type. But I've never trusted myself to hit a function key blindly.

I will say. Stepping through code could be difficult. Where I repeatedly am stepping over lines while looking at the screen. I imagine my finger could drift. Couldn't say without using it, but I imagine I would keep one finger on a number to ground my hand while tapping step over or step in.

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Yes, I touch-type function keys. And having used the X1 Carbon 2nd generation, I hated the "touch-strip" function keys, both because they have no boundaries between keys and because they have no tactile feedback when pressing.

The "context bar" seems like a huge win for people who look at the keyboard (who do comprise a huge fraction of the market), and a huge loss for touch-typists.

That said, I also don't use that many function keys, and I've slowly started remapping the keys I care about to other key combinations. In practice, I care about a few sets of function keys, most notably F11/F12 (commonly used for fullscreen, which I've now remapped to Super-F), and F4 (Alt-F4 to close applications, for which I've now trained my fingers to use Ctrl-W or Ctrl-Q and report bugs on the occasional application that doesn't accept those).

"I hated the "touch-strip" function keys, both because they have no boundaries between keys and because they have no tactile feedback when pressing."

I don't know about the boundary between keys thing, but for tactile feedback: Force Touch?

"The "context bar" seems like a huge win for people who look at the keyboard (who do comprise a huge fraction of the market), and a huge loss for touch-typists."

I don't think so. I touch-type, but I hardly ever touch-type the function bar. Doubly so on a Mac, because the function bar is, by default, used for brightness and media controls.

> I don't know about the boundary between keys thing, but for tactile feedback: Force Touch?

I've (briefly) used a device with Force Touch. It doesn't come anywhere close to replacing the depress-and-release of a physical key. It's better than nothing, barely. But I don't want to use a tablet with an on-screen keyboard as my primary productivity device; I want to use a laptop with a physical keyboard.

> I don't think so. I touch-type, but I hardly ever touch-type the function bar. Doubly so on a Mac, because the function bar is, by default, used for brightness and media controls.

That seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I also know many Mac users who don't know why anyone would need a right mouse button, let alone a middle mouse button. If you design your interface to not need it, and you know people will never run third-party applications that do, then sure.

Nobody does need a second or third mouse button. I spend hours a day in Mac, Linux, and Windows desktops and the pointing experience with a trackpad on a Macbook blows away what you get on any of the others, no matter what hardware is plugged in.

Yes, but you have to configure it. You setup your gestures, fix their backwards idiotic "[un]natural-scrolling", and make sure you have your right mouse button setup.

The right mouse button is set up by default.

You'll get my highlight-buffer-paste-on-middle-click only if you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

If you've trained yourself to only need one button, then yes, you only need one button. But look how well that's worked out on the iPhone, with a heavily-overloaded one button, with hard-to-discover functionality.

Running Debian on an old Macbook 4,1 (2008) on my first ever Mac and am not thrilled with the trackpad, or the keyboard layout. The best configuration I've yet mustered is:

  #!/bin/bash
  synclient TapButton1=1
  synclient TapButton2=3
  synclient TapButton3=2

This gives a minimally usable touchpad, with two-finger-tap right-click, side-scroll and tap-select.

I am still scratching my head at the absence of right-click and the key layout. I have no actual Mac OS experience to compare to, but Imagine they've done it all well when it's used as intended. Otherwise, it's working great and the build quality is solid. I am already fantasizing about Linux on a newer model, maybe with a PC mouse or external touchpad though.

Well it's ok because it's a function bar, which is barely used on any Mac at all, aside from (as others have pointed out) odd cases or people who are super dedicated to some sort of function mapping.

The right click thing is astounding to me... Everybody uses right click. Mac or not.

>I also know many Mac users who don't know why anyone would need a right mouse button

Macs have effectively had right mouse buttons for around a decade. Two finger click on the trackpad, or a literal right click on an Apple mouse (there just isn't a physically separate right button).

Just an aside you can change the configuration to default to function keys and require th fn key for the system functions like brightness and volume. It's the first thing I swap. Hate having to debug with one finger on the Fn key.

I'm glad you can do that, but I'm not going to. The only time I really use those keys is for the brightness/media controls.

You can even change this on a key-by-key basis using a neat tool called FunctionFlip. This enables you to have certain F Keys work natively, while other F Keys require you to hold down Fn...

http://kevingessner.com/software/functionflip/

There's a big middle group, people who generally touch-type with the best of them, but couldn't touch-type an Fn key to save Manhattan.

They just aren't that useful for many people, and so the muscle memory never forms. (They are also really far from home row on some keyboards)

> They just aren't that useful for many people, and so the muscle memory never forms.

I'd be surprised if the majority of touch-typists on Windows don't have muscle-memory for Alt-F4, at a minimum.

> They are also really far from home row on some keyboards

Fair enough; helps that I exclusively use and prefer laptop keyboards, to the point of having a USB ThinkPad keyboard/mouse combo on my desk.

But there is no commonly used Mac shortcut that uses the function keys.

escape key being the one exception. That is in my muscle memory.

Esc, play/pause, mute, volume down, volume up, Cmd+option+eject (sleep)

Show desktop.

I pretty much only use ESC, F11 (show desktop) and F5 to reload the browser + the occasional f6 to jump to the browser address bar. I've also reversed the standard mapping so F11 is triggered without the fn-key.

show desktop: I use the trackpad gesture

reload: cmd+r

jump to browser bar: cmd+l

I have no idea what Esc does, I never use it.

Esc: cancel dialog

Function key shortcuts have never been a significant Mac paradigm, and for good reason. Apple certainly would never put something OS-centric like 'close window' on a function key. They use contextually-relevant letter keys for shortcuts, and have been on a decades-long crusade to destroy the F-keys entirely. They haven't shipped a system with function keys that defaulted to function keys in 15 years; it's third-party software and the odd legacy text-based UI where you find them. The controls these are used for by typical users (volume, music, brightness) are not really things you need to be able to hit without looking, and exactly why I can see this succeeding on the Macbook where it was a frustration on the X1.

fwiw, I regularly use the back/forward/play buttons on my mac keyboards, and I can touch type them.

That and option-shift-volume buttons to move volume up/down quarter ticks which is super helpful with earbuds that get way too loud otherwise.

I can touch type F1, F2, F11, F12 because they are brightness and volume up down. At F7-F10 there are music controls, I would assume I hit them with 80% accuracy or less if I try to hit them directly.

Really sad to see them go, as well as the esc button.

I'm still on a 2008 macbook, and it was just kicked off from new OS updates (just updated to El Capitan) and the "next" device I look at and like is like 2013 model or something.

I am using Linux on a white Macbook from 2008 with an SSD. I still get OS updates, and while not a beast, it does a decent job for what I need (code editing, browsing).

Oh yeah, I have almost no qualms about using this old one, well except for the fact that it is officially not receiving new OS versions - which eventually will become an issue.

The small resolution, no battery life, slow processor are only minor annoyances to me. It is fast enough for me, I do iOS development/browsing/movies.

Even though I have a general sense, I always look to check, as I don't want to do something crazy, eg press alt+f4

I used to be pretty good at touch-typing to them back when lots of games used the F keys (Mechwarrior series, Dark Forces II, X-Wing, that sort of thing). These days just mashing in the general area of F4/F5/F6 (quick save in many games) is all I can manage without looking.

I've also gotten worse at the number row now that few games use more than the first 3-4 for quick slots or weapons.

I would be surprised if any developer who regularly used an IDE hadn't memorized the various function keys for debugging etc

Believe it or not, but there are touch typists who aren't developers. Quite a lot, in fact.

Touch vs. Visual is only one spectrum of change here.

I remap function keys for global purposes like window tiling with Divvy. Seems like context-sensitivity will delete what I consider to be key functionality.

presumably you could override a context-sensitivity with global parameters just like you could remap the keys?

I have an X1 Carbon from work. Overall an OK windows laptop, but man does the eink(?) touch strip thing suck. While I think that the Macbook version will be far superior, I hope they manage to solve its glaring shortcomings. Some observations:

1. Questionable utility. Sure, there's an icon for 'copy' and 'paste', but I cannot imagine it being easier for anyone to hunt along a non tactile touch surface located in an awkward position to hit that icon rather than just using Ctrl + C (or the mouse, which you've just made your selection with). That's a shortcut almost everyone knows.

2. Poor/Non-existent third party software support. Basically works for IE and Windows Explorer and that's it.

3. Software that drives the screen is poorly made and crashes occasionally.

4. The strip is a 2 bit/pixel B&W screen that is hard to read and is not backlit.

That X1 touch strip sucked enough that they took it out of the very next model I was holding off buying my X1 until I confirmed it didn't have that strip. Not being able to tell where the keys are without looking is bad for professional users - it splits your attention from the screen where your work is, and the tool you use to do your work.

Function-key shennanigans reminds me of an apple laptop from years and years ago, well before the unibodies came out, where the function keys were hard up against the screen - hit a function key, and you bang your fingers against the screen (well, most of the time).

With Apple's version you're bound to wonder how you ever got by with a mere keyboard and mouse.

Every personal computing device is either a) a rough prototype for some Apple product or b) a shameless knockoff of one. The Carbon touchstrip was the former.

It seems likely that the sort of thing you would put on such a key would be better served by either a spot on a tool bar preferably with an actual textual label not a cute icon or a physical button .

The former is visible without looking down at your hands the latter is easy to press. I believe this combines the worst of both worlds.

I don't know how to address your last sentence it sounds clever but it means virtually nothing. If apple does it first its a knockoff if someone else does it first its a rough prototype of something apple will ultimately do better. Heads I win tails you lose?

I haven't used a function key since WordPerfect 5 for DOS.

not even F5 to refresh?

Cmd-r

Cmd-Shift-r for me.

To hell with caching!

Just R in Vimperator.

how about Escape?

I was really worried about Esc, then I realized, you know, there's gotta be a way to remap the whole touch bar to be Esc.

Remap Caps Lock to Esc?

Where would the ctrl key go?

You can configure caps lock pressed alone to act as escape, but when pressed in combination with other key to work as control. Very useful for both vi and emacs users.

Interesting. How would you configure this on a Mac?

You would install this: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements

I use Karabiner and BetterTouchTool in combination

Control + [

Lets talk European keyboards, [ is alt+8. This has been a long running frustration for apps that don't allow remapping but use the US/UK keyboard as standard.

I'm not sure what "European keyboard" you have but mine doesn't work that way. [ is a key on my keyboard I don't need to press any modifiers for.

It's also a bit odd to generalise this to European keyboards as some layouts vary wildly on the continent based on the lack of or added letters to their alphabet. Also, UK is in Europe so would count as a European layout.

To be more specific, this is true at least on a German QWERTZ layout.

Control + ] or Control + [ is frequently the escape character, although not always. You can usually type it with Control + some key right of P. In the Swedish keyboard, use Control + å, German is Control + ü. But it does vary wildly, French is Control + 6, Hungarian is Control + 5, and so on.

I learned escape as C-[ long ago and never regretted it. Too many keyboards tried to be smart about it.

On, and control next to the a,and caps lock something that requires two people to turn keys at the same time from separate bunkers.

For me:

F2 - rename

F4 - jump to the address bar (explorer, elsewhere)

F5 - refresh in the browser, execute/debug in various places

F9 to F12 - Visual Studio debugging and navigation

F11 - full-screen toggle (browser)

When I was SW Dev...my most used Function keys are... F7 - Single step

F8 - Step into

Shift F8 - Step over

F9 - inspect symbol

F10 - execute to cursor

I have the same keyboard and same problem. I am desperately hoping that Apple is (a) using some taptic magic to make it easy to feel the edges between keys (this is possible from the original haptic/taptic research) and (b) requires a CLICK instead of a TOUCH to reduce accidental touches. A physical escape key wouldn't have gone astray either, as a power terminal user particularly with vim -- different escape keys (no matter how good or bad, simply being different in tactility) also drive me a bit batty.

^C and C-[ is escape in vim too, so it's not /as/ painful if you change your habits.

Actually ^C and ESC aren't exactly equivalent.

  CTRL-C          Quit insert mode, go back to Normal mode.  Do not check for
                  abbreviations.  Does not trigger the |InsertLeave| autocommand
                  event.

^[ however is. Personally, I use ^[ to avoid reaching to actual ESC and ^C to exit any weird states entered by misclicks.

Notably, ctrl-c doesn't apply your changes from ctrl-v mode across all other lines. Minor, but still.

Maybe you move your finger on the bar and see where you are real-time and release to execute? That'd be great - especially if combined with tactile feedback.

You haven't lived until you've used Apptivate[0] to map the function keys to your most commonly used apps (I think with them "inverted" so you don't need to hold "fn"). I have F1 -> Finder, F2 -> Postico, F3 -> Chrome, F4 -> Sublime, F5 -> iTerm2, and can touch type each of them. It feels great to easily flip between those apps as necessary. It's like Cmd+Tab but goes to exactly the correct application each time.

I'll still probably get one of these MacBook Pros eventually, but the lack of F1 buttons is a loss.

[0] http://www.apptivateapp.com/

Was going to check it out, then realized it's too late. Maybe better off not knowing at this point.

I've been doing this (with a different util) as my primary way of navigating for 20 years. It makes screen clutter irrelevant. Without physical function keys, I can't think of a way to maintain this with the same convenience, being able to do it one-handed with either hand, avoid conflicting with stock shortcuts, and not sprain my hand.

Fortunately, I use an external keyboard much of the time, which I selected almost wholly for its proper 4-groupings of function keys, letting me touch-type them.

All my most used apps are just three keypresses away -- I chord my caps-lock (remapped to ctrl) and ';' keys to bring up spotlight, type 'c' for instance for chrome, then enter. Super quick and don't have to leave the home row.

Windows has this feature built in. Win+1, 2, 3 etc maps to the location on the task bar. It's one of the best features most people didn't know existed. Swapping between applications becomes very fast and precise.

I'm really annoyed that more people don't know this one because this is one of the main reasons I don't like using os X.

As always with Windows, though, the UX isn't quite right...

If that spot is occupied by a pinned shortcut, Windows will run that program. But it won't remember that it's done that - so if it takes a while to start, and you press the key again, it will see there's a shortcut to a program that's not yet running, and... run the program again. So while trying this feature out, and wondering why nothing was happening, I managed to open 3 copies of Unity and 7 copies of Visual Studio.

> Does everyone really have memorized what all 12 function keys do in every app they use?

I use IntelliJ Idea, Google Chrome Developer Console, World of Warcraft and those applications make heavy use of F-buttons. At work I usually use large monitor and external keyboard, so I probably could use this notebook anyway, but F-buttons for me are extremely important and using notebook without external keyboard would be a huge headache.

Yeah. I guess my point is they would still be there. Except instead of labeled F8 it's labeled "Step Into" and instead of F2 it's labeled "Target Mob" or whatever wow f keys do.

Way better ux for the average user since I would hazard a large number of people don't actually know what those f keys do.

Honestly I don't see that cross-platform applications will implement it. At least in near future. So probably it'll be those F-keys, but without physical sense. Overall I agree, that icons instead of buttons would be better (I'm always confusing "step over" and "step into" hotkeys).

Anyway it's better to try it before judge. May be those keys are fine or may be I can live with different hotkeys.

F9 is toggle breakpoint. F10 is step over. F11 is step into. F12 is step out-of. That's all that's important and Apple can blow me if they think I'm going to map those to something else.

I guess my assumption is that those are what would be on the context bar when the ide is running. Whatever used to be function keys are there, but now with labels.

Why wouldn't the equivalent touchstrip keys be mapped to those whenever you're in your IDE?

I like the tactile feedback. I don't want to be taking my eyes off the disassembly and register display.

Yeah I think this is a valid point. I guess we won't know until we try it. But my guess is we will learn where they are in relation to number keys. So index on 5 key to ground your location and then ring finger to tap step over repeatedly. Just guessing. Maybe I'll hate it.

Then again, each of those "buttons" could be 3" wide, making it very easy to hit without looking. Much more so than trying to hit the correct button today.

Actually, doing things like stepping through code might be made easier. Since the key positions can be remapped, you could split the bar into 3 big "keys" - back / step / forward. Or maybe even do something like pressing harder to step continuously through code.

I think, with a little imagination, this could be a really good thing. I'm a touch typist but generally I have to look at the function keys when I need them. If they could be remapped on the fly for different programs, WiFi networks, etc. then it would make things much easier. How about a "boss" button when playing a game? Or a button to kill all sound output when your in Chrome?

Speaking of hitting a function key blindly, Command-F5 is how you turn on VoiceOver. How will that work if F5 is just an image on a smooth surface?

"Hey Siri, turn on VoiceOver."

But Sierra doesn't have "Hey Siri" enabled out of the box, right? But a solution that works may be not too far off. In earlier versions, pressing the 'fn' key twice enables voice dictation out of the box, if that's the keyboard default for Siri in Sierra, that could do the trick.

Do you never use the Esc key without looking?

What about ctrl + c?

If I understand your suggestion, ctrl+c doesn't work in all the contexts where I use escape (modal dialogs, editor autocomplete popups, etc).

Honestly. Can't really think of when I use escape to give a real answer. I think I could hit it without looking, but I don't think I hit escape that often. Or maybe I use it all the time and won't notice until it's gone.

But yeah. If ^[ or caps lock mapping is not an option, and your workflow requires a lot of escape presses, it could be annoying to have to look down to hit it.

Get out of a dialog quicky. Get out of the OS popup (e.g. File save). Get out of the current context in your editor/IDE (e.g. Search etc) Cancel something. Cmd+esc takes you to the previous up from cmd+tab (instead of cmd+shift+tab). Ever wanted to cancel drag and drop?!

Honestly the Esc key is indispensible.

> Cmd+esc takes you to the previous up from cmd+tab

I've always used cmd+~ for that

exactly -- vim users who haven't transitioned to ^[ hit it all the time

Also, this looks to me like yet another not-particularly-useful tentpole 'feature' when I really wish they would spend some quality time fixing abundant os and finder bugs.

Why transition to a double key combo rather than use CapsLock as Esc? The other quite useful "universal" key is the § key on a European mac keyboard (which is for some insane reason just under Esc where ` normally would be)

Because your fingers stay in the normal location. To hit escape, I have to either lift my left hand or rotate sharply at the wrist.

Yes, but you capslock is more accessible than the ctrl key in my opinion. I quite like the option to remap capslock to both ctrl (when used with another key) and to esc when pressed alone, that was suggested in other comments.

I only use it for escaping from a full screen view on youtube

I hit Esc without looking all the time. It's how I dismiss modals. I foresee a good deal of ` in my future.

I have also learned to find the keyboard backlight brightness keys in pitch darkness.

Why would anyone use Esc over CapsLock?

Because they've mapped CapsLock to CTRL?

They should map both Control and Escape to Caps Lock. Control when combined with other key or held for longer than 250 ms, and Escape when pressed and released within 250 ms.

That's awesome, I had no idea you could do that. MacOS Sierra? Doesn't appear to be present in El Capitan Modifier keys - or is it a third party utility?

Can do it using Karabiner (https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/).

Sadly doesn't support Sierra properly yet.

Check out ControllerMate. It lets you remap anything with complex logic.

The original blog post that introduced me to this setup describes macOS setup: http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/a-modern-space-cadet/#cont...

On X11, https://github.com/alols/xcape just run `xcape -t 350 -e 'Control_L=Escape'`

On Windows, AutoHotkey: https://github.com/myfreeweb/dotfiles/blob/32c9cfd8d5e0a3a2c...

plenty of games use ESC in input options as an exit out of selection. "Press key to bind or ESC to cancel", with your solution I would end up with unwanted CTRL binds

I don’t see how. Do 250 ms pass quicker when you’re in a game?

But ctrl is FIRE! Well, it was until games started to suck.

I hit Esc without looking about 500 times a day. As does nearly every Vim user in existence, I imagine.

s/day/hour

Haha, yeah - 500/day definitely seemed low to me

To be honest, my ratio is probably more like 750/hour, considering that I do 100% of my work in terminal windows, use nvim as my main code editor, use a tiling window manager (whose keybindings include escape for some sequences), use mutt for email, newsbeuter for rss feeds, weechat for irc…

I just didn't want to seem overly hyperbolic in my original post :)

Not a vim user (but I know how to use it-ish). The escape key as the key in vim always struck me as an odd choice, ergonomically.

Of course, I've mapped ctrl to the caps lock key, so...

The original vi was created on a keyboard that had Esc in the place where CapsLock now lives (on a standard US or UK English 104-key keyboard)

The original `vi` was written on an ADM-3A terminal. If you have a look at the keyboard layout

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADM-3A#/media/File:KB_Terminal...

You can not only see why Esc was easy to hit, but also the arrow keys (and, in common with other terminals of the time, why "home" is "~")

^[ will change your life -- you don't have to move your left hand up to hit the escape key!

I've considered it, but I've spent the last ~10 years of my life learning and using Vim with esc ingrained into my brain. I've managed to retrain some combinations by sheer force of will and major effort, but I think I might be too far down the rabbit hole for Esc.

I've been trying out jj as escape, but I keep forgetting to use it.

IMO that's a terrible escape sequence.

I agree for the most part. But on the Mac keyboard the Escape key is tiny and way off the home row. C-[ is awkward and there's only a small control key in the left side so I miss it all the time (my pinkies aren't good at hitting the right key for some reason.)

I've remapped Caps Lock to Control and that's working out better.

I'm thinking it'll be rad to map the entire bar to escape for vim use.

I'm sure there are a lot of folks on both sides, though, so I'll reserve judgement on whether removing F keys in favor of context-aware touch keys is a good idea or not.

However, I do use them frequently every day, so I'm skeptical. A pricy laptop without F keys doesn't appear to be a 'Pro' offering to me.

I don't really understand the brouhaha either, unless my assumption is wrong that an opt-out option will be given for context based remapping on an app-by-app basis if not system wide? Surely, there will be "hacks" to allow things like REALLY BIG F KEYS ALWAYS ON skin, etc.

The bar makes sense for people who look at the keyboard to type, otherwise it makes no sense. Where it might make sense is if it were still physical keys but you could customize the letters etc on them and generally just change how they function. Which is a concept that has been around since 2004ish. To me this is a cheap way for Apple to have a touchscreen without having a touchscreen as the actual screen. Unless they show some crazy functionality, the I don't get it. Even the "touch ID" thing is sort of a "why?" for me when you have Windows Hello using your face as the password.

> Being able to hit a function key without looking? I may be able to to touch type. But I've never trusted myself to hit a function key blindly.

Try it. Just in your IDE, since that's the only place you use them anyway. It's easy enough once you get used to it, just like touch typing in general.

"other than my IDE, since I do have those memorized". How do you do this ? I use Xcode and Intellij and it's a PITA to remember the function key mappings while switching between the two. That said I'm not sure how this context bar will solve that though.

Ideally, you would standardize keycaps across all editors. I've been meaning to but haven't come around. It'd also be great if there'd be some standardization – not necessarily on the shortcuts themselves, but around a format to specify them. .editorconf, or the vscode language servers are great examples of this sort of anarchic cooperation, but shortcuts don't seem to be in scope for them.

When using XCode I would have a piece of duck tape stuck over the F6 key so I could instantly locate Step Over and Step into.

I wonder why the debugging shortcuts never got at least somewhat standardized. I switch semi-regularly between xcode, qtcreator and visual studio and it is driving me nuts. (also I am too lazy to remap them and then hunt all of the conflicts that ensue)

It would be nice if they added the Taptic feedback on the touch bar as well.

I was kind of hoping for a touch screen Mac. Is that ever gonna happen?

I never want this. Why would I mess up my beautiful high resolution screen with fingerprints?

I rarely notice any fingerprints on my beautiful, high-resolution iPhone screen.

And I much prefer using a REAL computer with a REAL file system and REAL USB connectors for loading arbitrary data and organizing it into an arbitrary directory hierarchy and begin able to work on those files with any arbitrary combination of a REAL command line for extra powerful, customizable tools and REAL power GUI apps.

The multiple-degree-of-freedom stylus like the iPencil could give even more power to a real computer. Unfortunately, the thinking at Apple seems to be that if you want the power of a great stylus, you'll have to give up the real computer and use it on the toy OS that Apple seems to want us all to move to eventually.

Counterpoint: I notice fingerprints on my iPhone screen. I'm constantly wiping it on my jeans to get rid of bits of dirt, finger grease and other stuff.

I'm ambivalent about a touch screen Mac. I do know I've got plenty of fingerprints on my screen even without one :)

I was hoping for that too, but after some interactions with touch screens on Windows laptops, I realized there's very little I actually want to touch on a Desktop UI.

Try a touchscreen Chromebook. After a while you stop using the trackpad for a lot of interactions. It's a lot easier in a lot of cases to point-and-press than to have to move your cursor to the opposite corner.

What do you use the touchscreen for on ChromeOS? I basically never used the touch screen on my Chromebook until the beta with Android app support.

Well, touch almost makes complete sense in a web browser but few other places on the desktop.

Scrolling, hitting links etc would be easier.

Funny.

I was just earlier toying with the idea of getting the iPad Pro as my second monitor. I just started using duet with my regular iPad, and was surprised both at how well it works for display and its touch screen!

Display rate is not great at highest resolution but perfect for my slack, dash, or current project displaying with browser sync while I work in my IDE on the main screen.

> duet with my regular iPad

cool. I'm gonna try this out at home. Thanks.

Nice, I had looked at this before and it seems they have a 50% discount right now. Time to pick it up I guess.

I don't think your shoulders are going to like it too much.

I can safely say I never look at my keyboard.

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