I've read a TON of pushback on HN about the new touch bar. After reading this article it dawned on me -- the reason I hate the touch bar is because it isn't tactile. Instead of feeling for the volume up/mute/lightness up/down buttons, I'll have to stick my face into my keyboard to know what I'm pressing.
My solution would be allowing individual pressable physical keys to be changed via LED display, so that I can still feel them, but developers can modify what that key means. Yeah this would disable "sliding" which I don't care about.. is anyone with me on this? I hate having to look at things.
I like the idea of having physical keys having their own screens but I definitely still like sliding as well. It's extremely useful for scrubbing through video, photo albums, photo adjustment sliders, etc.
I agree, touch feedback from a physical button is important. We lost that with touchscreens, I remember I used to be able to text without looking at my phone, not even at the screen, I used to be sure I pressed the correct buttons because of the feedback they give.
The same applies to music on my phone, I was able to change songs without checking on the screen where the "next" button is. I was an advocate of smartphones with hidden physical keyboards, but they didn't seem to catch up, not even with last blackberry's attempt, because they're not "cool" I guess...
There's a bunch of external keyboards that do this already. AFAIK, none of them have proved to be particularly popular or have a lot of developer support.
As a side note, I don't think I've ever pressed volume up/down or brightness up/down without looking at the keyboard first. I simply don't press them often enough to have muscle memory for their location, and every keyboard I use puts them in slightly different places anyway.
To each their own, but I use esc heavily in vim, and brightness & volume are one in from each edge on all mac keyboards that I'm aware of, so they are easy to hit without looking. Lack of tactile buttons is going to be a huge pain in the ass.
Maybe for new software, but if you're constantly using the same application you'll remember where the main functions are. And that's where you really need it (applications that you regularly use)
My solution would be allowing individual pressable physical keys to be changed via LED display, so that I can still feel them, but developers can modify what that key means. Yeah this would disable "sliding" which I don't care about.. is anyone with me on this? I hate having to look at things.