Step aside: why the MacBook Pro touchbar does not help the development of touch interfaces
Every year, when Apple launches a new feature, a disgruntled grumble spreads to different corners of the Internet: “But on Linux / Android, this has long been and no one shouted about how cool this innovation is.”
This is such a mandatory white noise that accompanies any Apple innovations, which is usually not worth attention, because companies actually, as a rule, manage to repack even already known solutions so that they acquire additional value besides the logo in the form of a bitten apple, becoming what it is more convenient, more powerful, more perfect, thoughtful, simpler.
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It was all the more surprising to find oneself in the role of a grumpy when Apple announced this year a MacBook Pro with a touchbar. "But on my Lenovo X1 Carbon, this same touchbar is already two years old."
True, with two reservations: black and white and much less functional. My attitude towards him has evolved from “hate, why the hell ?!” to “used to, hardly notice”. After going through all five stages of adoption, I stopped at the thought that this is just another Chinese eccentricity — not the most, admittedly, among all their experiments with form factors and input methods. But humility does not mean agreement - so far I consider this the biggest drawback of a generally pretty good beech tree, so the touchpad on the MacBook has caused me the deepest bewilderment. But I was even more surprised when I realized that everyone likes the touchbar.
Tyoma Lebedev immediately saw in this an analogy with his Optimus Popularis keyboard. Early to rejoice: the touchbar is not moving towards the interactive keyboard in any way. If Apple wanted and could make the individual keys multifunctional better than Tyoma did, they would have done so - instead, they cut out a whole series of keys, replacing them with the same touchscreen, only a small one.
Increasing it will not work - only at the cost of replacing even more physical keys with touch keys. But this decision will not go so easily. It was easy to remove a number of function keys - most of the users still never knew how to use them and did not understand their purpose. Yes, and they are required not so often. But then the alphanumeric series go to eat them - we need a breakthrough in touch technology, which allows us to simulate the feeling of individual buttons by 100%. Without this, the touchbar will have nowhere to grow.
The appearance of the touchbar is an attempt to make the experience of the user more "sensory." But why not just make a touch screen, like those of Lenovo and other competitors?
There are two reasons for this:
Being just that rare user who loves hot keys, uses function keys, and practically doesn’t resort to the mouse / minimally uses the touchpad when typing, I mourn the loss of physical function keys is always one thing when the Chinese experiment. Another thing is when Apple sets the fashion that others may want to follow. If we make any of the traditional input elements more interactive, then, in my opinion, the touchpad would be much more suitable for this. There is nowhere else to do it, but more functional it is still possible.
While the touchbar is not a solution to the problem, but the ability to pull time until it is solved. If (or should you say “when”?) Apple still finds a way to make the touch input for convenience, speed and simplicity in no way inferior to a traditional physical keyboard, and replace it with a second touch screen, then it will be exactly a completely new technology, but not just an enlarged touch bar.
Actually, this half-heartedness in the touch bar seems to me to be its main problem: technically, all these magic possibilities of the touch bar are perfectly executed by the touch screen - with far more capabilities and without the need to adapt any applications to it. Yes, it would require a lot of work to completely redesign the MacOS interface in the direction of finger orientation.
The real problem touchbar will be for application developers. It is clear that Apple's own programs already know how to work with the touchbar. And what about third-party manufacturers? Will they immediately add functionality to control via the touchbar? Given the intermediate nature of the touchbar - it is unlikely.
“Microsoft” may add support for the touchbar in the “Office” - but I can imagine what kind of mat will be in Redmond: they have been struggling unsuccessfully for years to adapt their products to touch screens, and here there is a whole separate hemorrhoids with one small figure, made only because marketers Apple themselves entangled in the breeding of their products in different niches. So it is not a fact.
And it makes no sense for smaller companies to twitch: on the whole, the principles of input on the “Macs” have not changed, and there is not enough resources to adapt to each interface sneeze - even an apple one. After all, not all developers have a giant office in the form of a flying saucer in Cupertino.
It's easier to wait until Apple survives this stage and returns to the main road of progress. Which is now actually pretty obvious: no screen should be non-touch.
Lyrical digression: why should all screens be touch sensitive?
I surprisingly often have to deal with almost aggressive rejection of the idea of touch screens on laptops: “Why? I do not need it. Only the screen will be dirty. "
This, of course, is very strange. Firstly, if you don’t need it and you’re afraid of getting the screen dirty, just don’t use the touchscreen. At least in the case of traditional laptops, this is still not very necessary.
Secondly, the tablets also get dirty on the tablets - but no one calls for abandoning their use on this basis. Everything around us gets dirty, it is inevitable - people are generally quite dirty creatures: we sweat, we breathe, and even the dust itself around us is one-fifth made up of our skin’s scales.
Nevertheless, a person gradually gets used to the interactive surfaces around us: from tablets and smartphones to self-order racks at McDonalds and even terminals for buying a train ticket. It becomes so natural that a normal, non-interactive screen, at arm's length, begins to seem a strange anachronism. At least, having gotten used to the touch screen on my laptop, I often find myself on involuntary attempts to poke a finger at someone else’s laptop or, for example, to scroll something on the screen of an external monitor with my fingers.
Of course, the adaptation of desktop operating systems and programs for them for touch input is still below any criticism. In some cases, the software is far from touch input as a biker Surgeon from a Schengen visa: professional programs like “Photoshop” with its million small elements, upon clicking which opens another 1.5 million other small elements, to adapt to the touch will have to be redesigned from scratch.
But this does not mean the impossibility of this or even uselessness - rather, only the lack of incentive and the will to do it. And just then Apple’s resources, influence and experience would be ideal: it’s not the first time for them to reshape the industry, and the touchscreen MacBooks will be able to budge the stone that Microsoft has been completely unsuccessful about for four years without having to get the desktop The applications were equally comfortable to control from the keyboard and touch screen.
So if Apple fails to make the next generation of the MacBook a breakthrough in the field of touch keyboards, the transition to the touch screen looks like an almost inevitable next step. All other options are simply artificially tightening a completely unnecessary gap between mobile and stationary operating systems.
PS The cost of a new MacBook Pro in the US is from $ 1,499, in Russia from $ 119,990. When ordering from the United States, the total cost of the laptop with the shipment of " Mail and Com. " And taking into account the customs fee will be ~ 107 000₽. By tradition, the first order is a $ 5 discount on the supergeek promo code.
This is such a mandatory white noise that accompanies any Apple innovations, which is usually not worth attention, because companies actually, as a rule, manage to repack even already known solutions so that they acquire additional value besides the logo in the form of a bitten apple, becoming what it is more convenient, more powerful, more perfect, thoughtful, simpler.
')
It was all the more surprising to find oneself in the role of a grumpy when Apple announced this year a MacBook Pro with a touchbar. "But on my Lenovo X1 Carbon, this same touchbar is already two years old."
True, with two reservations: black and white and much less functional. My attitude towards him has evolved from “hate, why the hell ?!” to “used to, hardly notice”. After going through all five stages of adoption, I stopped at the thought that this is just another Chinese eccentricity — not the most, admittedly, among all their experiments with form factors and input methods. But humility does not mean agreement - so far I consider this the biggest drawback of a generally pretty good beech tree, so the touchpad on the MacBook has caused me the deepest bewilderment. But I was even more surprised when I realized that everyone likes the touchbar.
Tyoma Lebedev immediately saw in this an analogy with his Optimus Popularis keyboard. Early to rejoice: the touchbar is not moving towards the interactive keyboard in any way. If Apple wanted and could make the individual keys multifunctional better than Tyoma did, they would have done so - instead, they cut out a whole series of keys, replacing them with the same touchscreen, only a small one.
Increasing it will not work - only at the cost of replacing even more physical keys with touch keys. But this decision will not go so easily. It was easy to remove a number of function keys - most of the users still never knew how to use them and did not understand their purpose. Yes, and they are required not so often. But then the alphanumeric series go to eat them - we need a breakthrough in touch technology, which allows us to simulate the feeling of individual buttons by 100%. Without this, the touchbar will have nowhere to grow.
The appearance of the touchbar is an attempt to make the experience of the user more "sensory." But why not just make a touch screen, like those of Lenovo and other competitors?
There are two reasons for this:
- Convenience. The touch screen on a laptop is more of a pampering than a useful feature. Firstly, desktop OS and applications are mostly not adapted for finger input. Secondly, the laptop screen is in principle less adapted for finger poking than in the tablet simply because the micro oscillations of the laptop display are inevitable. And what is the accuracy of input here, if your display is trembling under your fingers? MacBooks are famous for finding a balance between the ease of opening the lid and the stability of the screen. But a user sticking a finger into the screen would have broken all this fragile harmony: the loops would have to be tightened more - and then, God forbid, would remind plebeian models of other brands that need to be held onto the base when opening the lid. At least, that’s how I would explain the reluctance to put touch screens on MacBooks in the place of Apple representatives. The real reason seems to me to be ...
- Marketing. A 13-inch touchscreen MacBook Pro would most likely have just finished selling a 13-inch touchscreen iPad Pro. Therefore, the new “MacBook” turned out to be the way it turned out: in Apple’s laptops, Apple can no longer ignore the given trend in sensory touch, but the fully touch screen of the laptop is the internal cannibalism of products and the unwillingness of MacOS to touch.
Being just that rare user who loves hot keys, uses function keys, and practically doesn’t resort to the mouse / minimally uses the touchpad when typing, I mourn the loss of physical function keys is always one thing when the Chinese experiment. Another thing is when Apple sets the fashion that others may want to follow. If we make any of the traditional input elements more interactive, then, in my opinion, the touchpad would be much more suitable for this. There is nowhere else to do it, but more functional it is still possible.
While the touchbar is not a solution to the problem, but the ability to pull time until it is solved. If (or should you say “when”?) Apple still finds a way to make the touch input for convenience, speed and simplicity in no way inferior to a traditional physical keyboard, and replace it with a second touch screen, then it will be exactly a completely new technology, but not just an enlarged touch bar.
Actually, this half-heartedness in the touch bar seems to me to be its main problem: technically, all these magic possibilities of the touch bar are perfectly executed by the touch screen - with far more capabilities and without the need to adapt any applications to it. Yes, it would require a lot of work to completely redesign the MacOS interface in the direction of finger orientation.
The real problem touchbar will be for application developers. It is clear that Apple's own programs already know how to work with the touchbar. And what about third-party manufacturers? Will they immediately add functionality to control via the touchbar? Given the intermediate nature of the touchbar - it is unlikely.
“Microsoft” may add support for the touchbar in the “Office” - but I can imagine what kind of mat will be in Redmond: they have been struggling unsuccessfully for years to adapt their products to touch screens, and here there is a whole separate hemorrhoids with one small figure, made only because marketers Apple themselves entangled in the breeding of their products in different niches. So it is not a fact.
And it makes no sense for smaller companies to twitch: on the whole, the principles of input on the “Macs” have not changed, and there is not enough resources to adapt to each interface sneeze - even an apple one. After all, not all developers have a giant office in the form of a flying saucer in Cupertino.
It's easier to wait until Apple survives this stage and returns to the main road of progress. Which is now actually pretty obvious: no screen should be non-touch.
Lyrical digression: why should all screens be touch sensitive?
I surprisingly often have to deal with almost aggressive rejection of the idea of touch screens on laptops: “Why? I do not need it. Only the screen will be dirty. "
This, of course, is very strange. Firstly, if you don’t need it and you’re afraid of getting the screen dirty, just don’t use the touchscreen. At least in the case of traditional laptops, this is still not very necessary.
Secondly, the tablets also get dirty on the tablets - but no one calls for abandoning their use on this basis. Everything around us gets dirty, it is inevitable - people are generally quite dirty creatures: we sweat, we breathe, and even the dust itself around us is one-fifth made up of our skin’s scales.
Nevertheless, a person gradually gets used to the interactive surfaces around us: from tablets and smartphones to self-order racks at McDonalds and even terminals for buying a train ticket. It becomes so natural that a normal, non-interactive screen, at arm's length, begins to seem a strange anachronism. At least, having gotten used to the touch screen on my laptop, I often find myself on involuntary attempts to poke a finger at someone else’s laptop or, for example, to scroll something on the screen of an external monitor with my fingers.
Of course, the adaptation of desktop operating systems and programs for them for touch input is still below any criticism. In some cases, the software is far from touch input as a biker Surgeon from a Schengen visa: professional programs like “Photoshop” with its million small elements, upon clicking which opens another 1.5 million other small elements, to adapt to the touch will have to be redesigned from scratch.
But this does not mean the impossibility of this or even uselessness - rather, only the lack of incentive and the will to do it. And just then Apple’s resources, influence and experience would be ideal: it’s not the first time for them to reshape the industry, and the touchscreen MacBooks will be able to budge the stone that Microsoft has been completely unsuccessful about for four years without having to get the desktop The applications were equally comfortable to control from the keyboard and touch screen.
So if Apple fails to make the next generation of the MacBook a breakthrough in the field of touch keyboards, the transition to the touch screen looks like an almost inevitable next step. All other options are simply artificially tightening a completely unnecessary gap between mobile and stationary operating systems.
PS The cost of a new MacBook Pro in the US is from $ 1,499, in Russia from $ 119,990. When ordering from the United States, the total cost of the laptop with the shipment of " Mail and Com. " And taking into account the customs fee will be ~ 107 000₽. By tradition, the first order is a $ 5 discount on the supergeek promo code.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/399669/
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