Hacker News Reader

Comment by forgingahead | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting that a lot of the frustrations being expressed online over the past few years about Apple's product design choices (Macbook Pros losing their developer focus, iPhones getting more ridiculous with their designs, etc) are linked directly to what this article claims -- that Ive has been pretty absent since 2016, and it's not just the lack of a strong product leader at Apple, but also a rudderless design team that has led to these issues.

Whether any of that will improve now remains to be seen.

View on HN

For all anyone knows Ive probably was a proponent of the touchbar. If for one am proponent of the touchbar, and as such I have no need to be very vocal about the support (if you don't like it then you don't).

No flamin' -what do you like about it?

I think it looks kind of cool seeing the various things flying across it, but ultimately it's just a cool looking distraction, and the lack of escape key for an emacs user is death.

After remapping my caps key to be both control and escape I honestly don’t know how I used to work with the real escape key. If anything, Apple should build this mapping into macOS so I don’t have to use some third-party app to do it.

It is nowadays built into macos, check your keyboard settings, there is a special keys remap option

Yes, remapping caps lock to either control or escape is supported by Apple, but not remapping to both control AND escape.

>the lack of escape key

It bothers me when people say this because it's just not true. And what's worse is it's just true enough that someone can argue "well you know what I meant" while still saying something entirely untrue.

The touchbar Macbook has no physical Esc key but it does still exist and works just like any other button. Nearly every image of a touchbar Macbook on Apple's website shows an Esc key plain as day on the touchbar: https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/

The only people who say "touchbar Macbook doesn't have an Esc key" are either people who have never used it and have been misled by others on the Internet, or are the people who did the misleading in the first place.

You might as well criticize a smartphone keyboard because it doesn't have an Enter key or an "e" key. How can you type on a smartphone when it doesn't even have a spacebar!? A touchbar Macbook doesn't have an Esc key in the exact same way your smartphone doesn't have a spacebar. As in: it entirely does have a spacebar and anyone who says it doesn't is deliberately misleading you.

Phones are meant to be looked at. Technically there is a way to accomplish the esc signal, but its definitely not a key.

>Technically there is a way to accomplish the esc signal

By... pushing the button marked "Esc"? Same as basically every other keyboard? I wouldn't call that a technicality.

What button? Or do you mean the touchscreen?

A button on a screen is still a button. The “reply” button I’m clicking on right now does not cease to exist just because it doesn’t have a physical switch under it. It’s functionality still works the same.

A context based escape touchscreen is not a fucking escape key.

I'm a daily driver of one of these crapboxes for work. IT DOES NOT HAVE AN ESC KEY. I am not misled. I am not someone who has never used it.

>You might as well criticize a smartphone keyboard because it doesn't have an Enter key or an "e" key

Yes, because everyone knows that touchscreen typing on a smartphone is the paragon experience for typing. The experience that beats all else. Clearly, I want this experience on my development machine. THANKS APPLE!

Oh wait, touchscreen typing fucking sucks. It sucks everywhere. It sucks SO badly that the ONLY place it ever became acceptable was a form factor so small that they were forced to compromise the experience to fit in screen real-estate.

Why I'd want that experience front and center on a macbook is fucking unfathomable.

So there's your criticism. "The touchbar Macbook Pro has an awful Esc key". That's true and is something worth mentioning. "The touchbar Macbook Pro does not have an escape key" is being so deliberately misleading that you might even call it a lie.

The iPad Pro does not have an escape key on the keyboard. This makes it impossible to use vim without remapping the keys. This is a fact and is a serious problem if you want to use vim on an iPad Pro smart keyboard.

The touchbar Mac does have an escape key, even if it's not one you enjoy using. It is possible to use vim with the default configuration of a touchbar Macbook Pro without remapping keys.

Again, there is no reason to lie and say "the touchbar Macbook Pro doesn't have an Esc key". You don't like it. That's fine. But if it actually doesn't exist, you should sue Apple for including it in almost all of their press pictures.

>IT DOES NOT HAVE AN ESC KEY

This is a lie.

It gives you a limited amount of control of a second app while you have another one one fullscreen.

For example: You can use Quicktime to record yourself speaking to a set of PowerPoint slides, and then use the touchbar to end the recording without needing to exit the slideshow (leaving an ugly view of your desktop that you'd have to edit out with postprocessing afterwards).

Oh goodness, it's wonderful. I have a Quake-style "visor" Terminal available everywhere at a touch, mapped difficult to remember key combinations (ctrl-opt-command-D for responsive design mode? really?), a button to turn toggle javascript in the browser, 1Password everywhere… frankly it's a drag going home to the external keyboard.

- It does everything the function keys do (volume, brightness) but more. It lets you turn the volume/brightness key into a slider, or you can flick it left and right to quickly adjust.

- Replaces otherwise mostly unused row of F-keys. Let's be honest, most people never used these (at best 1-2 of the F keys).

- You can add your own buttons for quick actions

- Context sensitive touch controls based on app. Few apps support it but it's only a plus here.

- Escape key has a bigger hit box now. Granted it no longer has "physical feedback", but as someone who codes day and night on it I can assure you that you will get used to it if you simply keep an open mind.

People just hate on it as they always do with new things they are not used to. Change always comes with resistance.

Hilarious how Ive gets blamed for everything.

He is not responsible for the features that goes into a product. Nor is he responsible for which demographic a product is targeted towards. It's a combination of various executives in particular Phil Schiller and Jeff Williams.

Do you think Ive couldn't get the keyboard or the useless bar removed if he wanted?

It's not like Apple has thousands of products. The entire executive team would be discussing the strategic direction for their products and the R&D investments needed e.g. TouchBar. But ultimately Apple is product marketing driven just like other large product companies.

And people like thin devices (hence the keyboard) and shiny new features. What users think is far more important to Apple than what Ive thinks.

> What users think is far more important to Apple than what Ive thinks.

Then why do they keep soldering RAM onto their mobos when there's not a single person who wants it?

Probably because there's effectively not a single person who explicitly _doesn't_ want their RAM soldered on to the mobo, and soldering on the RAM allows them to make the product thinner, which people _do_ want (or at least can be convinced they want through advertising).

If the amount of extra people who will be convinced to buy a Mac because it's thinner outweighs the people who otherwise would have bought one but didn't because it has soldered-on ram, they're gonna do it.

Because it is cheaper and 98% of the users don't think about it and don't care.

as chief design officer you’d think he’d be responsible.

He used to be responsible though. Until 2011. And even if Steve wanted something batshit insane, he made it work.

I've said it elsewhere, but I've suspected (as this article seems to confirm) that he's been coasting / lost the spark he once had a while ago.

Designer's and artists have fickle motivation. He clearly fed off of Job's "fuck you, fuck this, this is trash, make it better" style of challenges. Because Job's actually 1) knew when it was a good design and 2) appreciated it. I'm doubtful that the flock of MBAs who took over have that same passion, so Mr Ive has lost his own.

I think you made a great point there. Ive was the Scotty to Job's Kirk - he'd make it work somehow, even if it was crazy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com