MacBook Pro with OLED touchbar visualized in new concept renderings

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 30
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member

    This may be the first step toward a fully multitouch “keyboard”.



    I still prefer a 27”/42” touchscreen for a desktop, though.
    As I said before: this programmable strip is the testbed. Apple wants to see if people will go for it. If they do, then a full keyboard will turn up in a few years time. 

    Now's the time to get used to Apple keyboards, because very soon the travel will feel a lot like pressing down on one of their trackpads.
    edited June 2016
  • Reply 22 of 30
    Fixed.


    edited June 2016 spherictallest skilnolamacguy
  • Reply 23 of 30
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    What good is having any portion of the Menu Bar down there? You can’t see dropdown menus, so it would be useless. Spotlight and Notification Center maybe...
    mattinoz
  • Reply 24 of 30
    sphericspheric Posts: 2,544member
    czyzczyz said:
    Fixed.


    That's awesome. 
  • Reply 25 of 30
    mattinozmattinoz Posts: 2,299member
    Marvin said:

    The "fn" key also modifies other physical keys like turning backspace into delete, return into enter and arrows into page up/page down/home/end. Pressing the "fn" key will likely be hard-wired to turn the bar into a row of function keys.


    You can also use option/alt to modify the others keys as far as I can tell, so 'fn' really only applies to the function row and more importantly the system wanting to load all those keys with system function. So once you take that system function off the keys and open the space to the active app then the need for the 'fn' key is gone. 

    Mirroring the function in iOS that lets the developers to add functions that best suit their users to the keyboard is a much better starting point. 

    mattinoz said:
    I assumed invoking Siri would be the same as invoking spotlight search in terms of on screen UI, using this new bar means it's limited to certain hardware. 
    27" iMac Pro, Apple Pencil support and Vesa Mount (so I can attach to an old drawing board stand) would be killer.
    27 inch iMac Pro.  Apple Pencil support.  Der-rool.  Der-rool.

    Will a doubled in size, iPad Pro+ arrive first though?  *Imagines a 17 incher iPad Pro+.  Or a 20+ inch model on a dock able stand?

    Maybe the iPad Pro has given us a glimpse into a future 'Mac?'

    Lemon Bon Bon.

    They could go that way as well which would just as cool. Problem is the apps that would super useful have a fair bit of inertia when in comes to adopting new technologies. Mostly massive old code bases with some cross-platform dependancies just for good measure.  Either way they go from here those apps that cost much more than the computers we buy to run them need to come along.
  • Reply 26 of 30
    I get that it's just a rendering, but what is the point of duplicating the menu bar icons on the keyboard? Before anyone gets started about space-saving, let me point out that it's impossible to eliminate the menu bar completely because nearly every application uses it for contextual dropdowns. So the bar itself is going to be there one way or another.  Besides which, each of those icons launches a drop down menu of it's own, which would potentially still have to appear on the screen to navigate.  (Does anyone really want to wait for 40 different wifi networks to scroll past before selecting the one you need?)  Plus, if you're using your laptop in clamshell closed mode, you're right back to the classic setup, as you don't have access to the LED. 

    But I get that the menubar can get cluttered.  For anyone that wants to shrink the icons' footprint right now, Surtees Studios makes a nifty application called "Bartender" that'll do exactly that.  
  • Reply 27 of 30
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    I really like the idea of the dock icons showing up there.    A right click can have the menus popping up on the main screen while a normal click just brings up your apps.  Going this route isn't a jarring alteration to a Mac OS and gives every app all the screen real estate.   

    Another reason son to like this approach is that it prevents one of the uglies of the Mac user interface.   That is the tendency of the dock to pop up from hiding at the wrong time.   Very frustrating at times.   Yes I my dock is often hidden to maximize screen usage.   

    Interestimgly this his doesn't mean that other ideas suggested here couldn't be incorporated into the new OLED dock.  The clock for instance would work really well down there, as would the networks status icon.  Moving these to this new interface frees up a lot of room for the apps menu bar.   

    It it will be interesting to see what Apple actually foes with the bar if it even exists.   One problem is that you really don't want to change the default function of the "fn" hey.   I'm not sure how to best address that.   
    tallest skil
  • Reply 28 of 30
    danwellsdanwells Posts: 39member
    This will depend heavily on third party application support. Apple's own applications had better support it, and I'd be relatively certain that Microsoft won't in any meaningful way, since Office is essentially a straight Windows port. One big question is going to be Adobe - their very complex applications could make a lot of use of the OLED bar, and they're more Mac-oriented than Microsoft (they have something like a 40-50% Mac customer base to Microsoft's ~5%). They're unfortunately also pretty conservative about design. The second question will be the mess of small developers in the creative world... If Apple makes it easy to develop for, you could see a lot of smaller audio/video/photo software developers working with it.

    The second question is how widespread it becomes, and that will depend on how it spreads through the Mac line, which in turn depends on the cost. Every previous programmable interface like this has been very expensive (the Art Lebedev designs, which range from a few hundred dollars for a few buttons up to $1500 for a complete keyboard, have been all over this thread, and similar concepts have shown up in audio and video control surfaces). In order to get the third party support it needs, the control strip needs to be cheap enough that it moves throughout the Mac line, including the external keyboard (an additional peripheral that clipped to existing keyboards would make a lot of sense to anyone except Jony Ive)! The Magic Keyboard is already expensive - the price of a nice mechanical keyboard for a sleek-looking membrane model with no number pad. They'd have a hard time selling many people a $200+ keyboard, and they couldn't include it with iMacs without bumping the price up.  

    Adobe's not going to do anything with much it if it's MBP only - if it comes with a full refresh of the laptop line (except the 12" MacBook), that's interesting, especially if they also introduce an external keyboard and even more so if they are able to get the price down far enough to bundle that keyboard. If any Mac you buy except the Mini and the 12"MacBook has a touch strip (yes, I'm assuming they'd throw the keyboard in with a Mac Pro), plus you can retrofit one to any Mac that runs the latest OS, that's enough to interest folks...
    mattinoz
  • Reply 29 of 30
    bigmikebigmike Posts: 266member
    Hey Apple, while the bar is a neat idea, please don't forget to make the physical keyboard keys NOT touch the screen when closed, so we don't get the fatal key imprints permanently embedded in the screen. Please, just make it right this time. Thanks.
  • Reply 30 of 30
    ApplemosApplemos Posts: 15member
    bigmike said:
    Hey Apple, while the bar is a neat idea, please don't forget to make the physical keyboard keys NOT touch the screen when closed, so we don't get the fatal key imprints permanently embedded in the screen. Please, just make it right this time. Thanks.
    You know that you're not talking directly to Apple, right?

    OnT: If this would indeed be the next MBP I am definately buying one. My old laptop is from 2010, and its C2D-CPU is getting really slow. It's at the point now when I surf onto Facebook my computer wants to lie on its side andy die.
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