> The people who complain about the touchbar functionality must not be putting any effort at all into it.
I would say that people who complain about uselessness of F-keys must not have put any at all effort into using them.
Upon getting my MBP 2016, I spent numerous months trying to make the TouchBar useful; from customizing the contents where apps allowed it, to BTT.
What it came down to is that things worthy a keyboard shortcut are things I want to be able to do fast, reliably, and instinctively. I don't want to search for the button on the TouchBar – I'm using the keyboard, it needs to be as natural as typing, without the need to look down at it. I have a screen already, I don't need another one on my keyboard.
I firmly believe TouchBar can't even come close to the same realm of usefulness as F-keys, much less being worth the price hike it imposes. Function keys are twelve, tactile, solid, free, reliable(1) buttons for keyboard shortcuts; TouchBar is a touchscreen that sometimes(2) works.
> a button to "toggle mic in zoom" actually solves a real problem
I haven't used Zoom, but if it's a decent-ish Mac app, it either already has a keyboard shortcut to toggle microphone, or you can set one in Keyboard Shortcuts, in System Preferences.
(1) as far as anything is reliable on the butterfly keyboards.
(2) same story as butterfly keyboard – if it's even slightly sporadic, it is a shitty input device.
That's fair. Personally, I used the tactile function keys for exactly six things (brightness up/down, volume up/down, mute, play/pause). Those six functions are now available on my touchbar. They're no longer tactile, which, yes, is a minor inconvenience. I wouldn't use a touchscreen for touch-typing code, of course. But for a handful of buttons way off the home row, it doesn't affect me much.
In exchange, I get to add other buttons which can also display customizable state. Yes, zoom has a global shortcut to toggle the mic. The problem is, the mic state is not visible on your screen unless the zoom window is visible. This is a frustrating design flaw IMO, which really should be addressed in some consistent way across every phone/video app. But, it's not, and so I need to pay attention to my mic state. My touchbar button toggles the mic, and displays the current mic status. I would imagine that every phone/video chat app is similar.
I would say that people who complain about uselessness of F-keys must not have put any at all effort into using them.
Upon getting my MBP 2016, I spent numerous months trying to make the TouchBar useful; from customizing the contents where apps allowed it, to BTT.
What it came down to is that things worthy a keyboard shortcut are things I want to be able to do fast, reliably, and instinctively. I don't want to search for the button on the TouchBar – I'm using the keyboard, it needs to be as natural as typing, without the need to look down at it. I have a screen already, I don't need another one on my keyboard.
I firmly believe TouchBar can't even come close to the same realm of usefulness as F-keys, much less being worth the price hike it imposes. Function keys are twelve, tactile, solid, free, reliable(1) buttons for keyboard shortcuts; TouchBar is a touchscreen that sometimes(2) works.
> a button to "toggle mic in zoom" actually solves a real problem
I haven't used Zoom, but if it's a decent-ish Mac app, it either already has a keyboard shortcut to toggle microphone, or you can set one in Keyboard Shortcuts, in System Preferences.
(1) as far as anything is reliable on the butterfly keyboards.
(2) same story as butterfly keyboard – if it's even slightly sporadic, it is a shitty input device.