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Comment by kkylin | Hacker News Reader

I blame this mostly on Apple's human interface guidelines:

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...

Scroll down to "Design Considerations": "Use the Touch Bar as an extension of the keyboard and trackpad, not as a display."

But what I really want is for the touch bar to be a display and input device for things normally elsewhere: time, date, maybe CPU usage, etc. This to me is not a hardware problem, but one with policy.

Edit: what I really want is for Apple to let people experiment with new hardeware, rather than impose their vision on how it should be used. Unlike many others I don't actually hate the touch bar and see some potentials, but not if Apple restricts its use.

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Personally, I feel as though Apple got it wrong in the HIG. It is a display and it can't be treated as an extension of the keyboard (in a useful manner) given its lack of tactile differentiation. If Apple doesn't want people to look at it like a display, and the content of it is dynamic such that I don't know what the bar represents, then you can't fulfill the HIG. If Apple had an in-OS feedback mechanism that asked users, once a month, if they found Touch Bar useful or an impediment and then also collected number of keystrokes (opt-in) in that month my guess is the distribution of users who interact with their computer primarily through keyboard input will respond that the Touch Bar is an impediment. Those largely clicking for a majority or interaction would likely find it useful. Either way Apple got it wrong by assuming users would always find it better than giving buyers the option without.

Doesn't Apple itself use it as a terrible little mini-display in some multimedia apps, like Logic, to show a ridiculous multi-track "view" on the damn touchbar itself? Like several individual tracks all squished together? And they talk about "human interface" ?

It's not just a view, it's a control. There's a difference between sticking random, non-interactive information in the Touch Bar and having it be a contextually dynamic control.

Checkout Pock - https://pock.dev

This looks really cool. Thanks!

Haptic Touchbar also helps a bit (but I am not going to buy it) https://www.haptictouchbar.com

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