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It Looks Like Apple is Killing the Physical Esc and Power Keys On New MacBook Pro
Curious minds on the internet have uncovered an image file on their Mac, which was added by Apple in the latest macOS update. The image reveals a new laptop that fully fits the description of rumored MacBook Pro, which Apple is expected to launch on October 27. The laptop in the picture has what seems like a "contextual" OLED display (some are calling it Magic Toolbar display) on the top. What's interesting from that picture is that there's no physical Escape key or Power key to be found anywhere.
Editor's note: We usually tend to avoid covering leaks and rumors, but several readers pitched the story to us, and media outlets are also covering it now, which adds some credibility to the matter.
Editor's note: We usually tend to avoid covering leaks and rumors, but several readers pitched the story to us, and media outlets are also covering it now, which adds some credibility to the matter.
Last year I shopped for a new dev machine (laptop). I decided to be open minded and consider the latest Macbooks as well. There were a few things that completely ruled them out for me, one of the biggest being that the keyboard did not have Home, End, PgUp and PgDn. I realize that there are chording / key combinations to do some of those things, but I already use numerous key combinations with those keys (like navigating to the end of a line vs the end of a document, selecting from the cursor to the end of the document, etc). Any laptop that does not include those 4 keys are totally out of the question for me for development use. Removing the ESC key is obviously, in my mind, yet another step in the wrong direction.
The ironic thing is Macs are pushed as productivity machines for professionals. That is one of the reasons they are supposed to fetch a premium price is because they aren't just "home" machines for the masses. Which makes the stupidity even worse because professionals use advanced tools that use keyboards for more than just typing words.
In case anyone wondered, the other primary hardware issue that eliminated the Macbook was the lack of a touchscreen (necessary for web development these days to debug and test touch interfaces to be consumed on mobile devices).
Better known as 318230.
Ctrl+Anything is not ergonomic.
If you spend serious hours and days and weeks and months and years programming or doing IT admin, your hands will get damaged with the repeated stretches and twists needed to do Ctrl+whatever. You might say there are two-handed alternatives to the twisty-stretchy ones, but two handed gestures are prone to failure by reversed order of press.
These are all small details, yes, but ergonomic details make the difference when you have to do things thousands and thousands of times.
Esc is a single key action.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
It's well past time for UI to have different modes. Have one that's for ease of use. Have another for power and expert users.
"Power users" are the ones that have really got the shaft over the past 10+ years. It's distinct from (but broadly overlaps with) expert: the basic idea of a power user is someone who is fully taking advantage of the functionality that is built-into the app (including options in the config files or "advanced" tabs in a GUI), but doesn't want to built it him/herself (which includes but isn't limited to writing CLI scripts.) Some stuff I am probably an "expert" on, but most of the time I'm just a power user. I don't want to use a CLI to sort my photos. That's horrendous and clearly less functional. I'm sure emacs-dired or some old midnight commander clone would be functional enough, but I've never had the patience to sit down to get over that learning curve and configure it how I need it just to enable a few missing features.
But WHY THE HELL SHOULD I NEED TO MANUALLY ENABLE THOSE FEATURES TO BEGIN WITH? Linux has had like 20 years to make a good GUI file browser and they've failed utterly. Why the hell are permission issues with removable drives still a thing? Having to open a terminal window to launch "sudo nautilus/thunar/dolphin" in a separate window, without any of my customizations (so everything is invariably some big icon, enabling me to see like 7 files at a time) to fix some ridiculous a permission issue that should've never existed in the first place... are you fucking kidding me?[1] No, I am NOT going to open up a CLI as a workaround for bugs (yes, bugs) in your 15 year old actively-developed file browser, and fuck you very much for suggesting such a thing.
Why can't I tell at a glance where this folder is being mounted from? Why can't I tell at a glance what the filesystem is? Wait, what? You can't even tell these things even with rightclick-properties?? What is the POINT of having a "properties" or "details" if you're not going to even give me a hint about where the directory is physically located? When this sort of thing comes up I generally just give up and launch gparted, just to figure out what the hell I'm looking at. I'm sure there's an easier way, but the easiest way was obviously for my file browser to actually give me a few scraps of information about the goddamn files .
Why does this "places" view vs. "tree" view dichotomy still exist? It's senselessly crippled almost every single Linux file browser I've ever seen, to one extent or another. It renders pcmanfm unusable. It used to render thunar unusable, but they've fixed it now. Sort of. Still completely impossible to tell apart a lot of the entries in the left pane: 32GB removable drive, 32GB removable drive, 32GB removable drive, god fucking forbid you show me anything like a vendor name or a graphic representing used space or the file system or something. Dolphin is a bit better at it, as I recall, but I've never gotten around to getting Qt dark theming to work properly.
Why is there no "undo"?[2] Why the fuck can't I simply control-z to undo a partial file file move after I realize there's not enough space... wait just a goddamned second, WHY DID YOU EVEN BEGIN THE MOVE OPERATION WITHOUT FIRST CHECKING TO SEE IF I HAD ENOUGH SPACE?
Oh look, now there's a filename collision during my 2 TB copy, which you helpfully paused about 30 seconds into it (and I've been gone for an hour eating lunch, thinking you were busy finishing said goddamn copy operation.) Couldn't you have just keep going and ask me about duplicate filenames after you've copied all the other thousands of files that weren't duplicates?
Oh look, in addition to the file name being the same, the file size is also the same. Hmm. It says "resume_latest.odt". Well, is it the same file or isn't it? Why the hell aren't you telling me the goddamned modified date on the file? And why didn't you run a hash? Y