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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.
Just joking. Of course we'll all just have to change our key bindings.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm imagining that the "make things better by simplifying" can only go so far. I'm not saying we've definitively reached such a point with Macs, but they keep learning that some of these "refinements" are mistakes, like not being able to right-click. Is trying to reduce vectors of interaction for their devices really their entire legacy?
Mac is definitely the "simpler" brand, and draws a lot of users from that brand. I just wonder if it's not a long-term shoot-yourself-in-the-foot to limit yourself so (both for their users and for the company itself).
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Please try to link to a site that does not obtrusively ask for money when you want to see the story. I'm sure there are other sites that have the same coverage without ruining my experience.
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It takes courage to not Escape.
Thanks to Apple, we will at last purge the filthy vi heathens. Let the thousand-year reign of emacs begin!
I think the Apple Watch is an early Beta of this future product.
Lenovo did this with their X1 Carbon a while back too. What is the obsession with removing functionality? Sure, Mac users probably don't use the Escape key too much, let alone the function keys. However, Esc has always been the equivalent of Cancel on MacOS and Windows dialog boxes, and terminal-based applications still use it.
I don't know - I guess I feel old. Yes, hipster apps don't use control keys on luddite keyboards. Apps! But, removing a functional item for purely aesthetic purposes -- which I guarantee is the reason Apple is doing this -- seems to me like a bad precedent to set. People who use their computers for actual work like the idea of a full keyboard, and removing keys from an already-sparse MacBook Pro keyboard doesn't seem like a good way to attract this class of user. You already have to use a combination to get home, end, pgup and pgdn on Mac keyboards, for example.
All 2 of them?
*ducks
Please tell me they atleast still have the PrtScn/SysRq and Pause/Break buttons!
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... but we will if we can't get enough wild speculation and laughable hyperbole to fill the front page.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No. We just won't be using macbooks for development any more. Shame really. I'm waiting for someone to make the ultimate linux-based software development laptop now. And it would be nice if it had some of the design cohesion and just-works features of apple products.
Before someone rants, of course developers use many other editor tools, but proper support of the terminal and vi is essential for a serious server-software (back end software, or IT admin) development box.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
You never turn off your devices. You will be constantly be consuming monetized content.
Including the surf noise it plays while you're sleeping.
Someone who wants to turn it off must, obviously, be deviant and need intervention.
I once had a laptop with a "touchscreen" for volumn, power, etc and within a year that shit the bed. Never went back to anything that remotely looked like a touchscreen keyboard.
Not defending Apple. Can't stand to use them myself. Can barely stand Windows most days but that's because I like knowing what's going on under the hood. I understand what those little things mean and how to use them to my advantage to make my work easier. That's not the case for everyone.
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. It's not a matter of safety. It's a matter of different use cases. I am hobbled with certain files hidden from the UI. I am hobbled when I have to constantly confirm dialogs that shouldn't have needed confirmation. I'm looking at you, Excel. Yes, I wanted that file in a comma delimited format. Yes I want to quit because I already saved and told you I didn't want to change the format last time. Yes I am certain that I want to quit my quitting and not change the format.
Apple listened to consumer concerns that complained that escape key had negative connotations and often triggered traumatic memories of entrapment and escape and male dominance. Therefore, to show its progressive stance ESC and Power keys were permanently removed. Instead, they were replaced with a single Sympathy key that does nothing.
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.
It seems in the mad rush to monetize everything and everyone developers and designers have been forced to foreswear anything resembling common sense.
As we have seen over the decades, Microsoft slowly but surely hid basic functionality from the user through every iteration of its operating system. I have a W95 machine where I can get to things faster than I can on my W7 machine, and substantially faster than on my dad's W10 machine.
For its part Apple has liked to see itself at the vanguard of elegant computing, specifically the design of a computer. As we are all aware, nothing is let out the door of Apple which hasn't been dissected to the nth degree.
While its operating system works, its flaws and quirks are just as numerous and like Microsoft, with each iteration they further disassociate the person from the OS, thinking they are making things easier. As the decision to remove the headphone jack from the iPhone showed, nothing is simpler when you remove basic functionality.
Now comes their latest foray into the schizzle: no ESC key or power button. Nothing physical at least. Only some vague, wispy area to touch which one hopes will do what they want but will, as time and experience has shown, fail at every given opportunity.
As the last two stalwarts slug it out for eyeballs, Linux plods along, years behind in functionality but always with the same mantra, "This year will be the year of Linux on the desktop!", as if saying the same thing over and over will make it true. Sorry, you are not Dorothy and you do not have a pair of red shoes.
We arrive now at the beginning of the end for computing. Where once people could do what they wanted with what they purchased, where getting something done was held above what shade of font to place against a white background, now we must overcome the need to show how clever we are through our brilliance of design which lacks anything resembling ease of use.
Within the next decade we will see how our vain attempts to design the most perfect machine will thwart the progress we so ruefully wish for. As is always the case, the more complicated a machine the more easily its performance can be degraded through simple acts. As the most recent attacks on high profile web sites have shown, thanks to the very technologies we claim will make our lives easier, we are now progressing to an age where we have made it much easier for those who wish to subvert or destroy that which is built.
All because developers and designers are more interested in eye candy than functionality, reliability and simplicity.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Ctrl-alt-del is really there to lock your screen, log in, change password, change user and maybe start the task manager.
Oh wait, you're not on domain-joined machine?
It feels like Apple just missed being able to be the king of platforms for network admins too.
Just as they got their OS truly ready for Linux and UNIX users to jump-in, they removed some of the page navigation keys. Many users put up with it anyway. Then they started downsizing on the ports. Many users put up with that too even when they had to now use a dongle to connect to a friggin' Ethernet jack.
Now they're getting rid of the vast majority of physical ports, so no more console access, and they're now cutting-bone, not merely flesh, by removing the Escape key, a key used all the damn time by a lot of us.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
As soon as they make sure it doesn't accidentally emit enough heat to warm your hands and that the Apple logo emits enough light to clearly see it at all times without accidentally providing useful vision in low light situations, it'll be ready for production.
There is considerable concern in the engineering department that it is still heavy enough to hold paper down.
I've always used the CAPSLOCK as a CONTROL key, just where the good lord always intended it to be. Making this the escape seems a bit blasphemic.
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Ctrl+Shift+Esc for instant task manager.
Oh wait esc keys aren't hip anymore. Never mind.
Could be worse. My last job issued me a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon where the F-keys were on a touch LCD or e-ink bar. Said Lenovo had the tilde key moved under the enter key, and had no capslock key (instead, the page up/down buttons were moved to the capslock key's location.) Reach for the escape key, there go your F-keys until you tap that area again, due to it being the FN toggle.
I just hope Apple's offering isn't as bad... I really don't want to have to bring along a Bluetooth keyboard just so I can type without fumbling.
I think one of the problems with Apple keyboards has been the ursurping of the function keys. I guess we don’t use function keys, but it took a little getting used to the fact that F3 doesn’t mean F3 unless you hold down the Fn key at the same time. And then every new Mac seems to change what the keys mean. If instead there were a row at the top of the keyboard that’s touch sensitive and which can change labels for all of those keys, that would actually make things a lot easier. Hold down Fn, and then all the labels change to F#. Leave Fn up, and they present whatever set of hotkeys you want to configure them to be! Sounds cool to me. Presumably, the left-most one will be Esc by default. Apple keeps adding features to Terminal.app, which I suspect is because their own developers use the terminal a lot, so that functionality doesn’t suffer bitrot but actually improves a little over time. I’m not sure what they’re going to do about the power button, but I was never bothered by the old style where there was a gray button flush with the chassis maybe they’ll bring that back.
Now, what I still think is crazy is the removal of the audio jack. That’s GOT to be getting Apple mountains of feedback from people complaining that they can’t listen and charge at the same time. We’ll see what impact that has when iPhone 8 comes out.
Not exactly. They send a software signal, then after some time, they hard power off the system. Try pressing and holding it for a bit.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Capslock is control. It was where God put the control key on the first keyboard. The collective of fallen angels known as IBM moved this key in order to confuse mankind.
Ctrl-E goes to the end of the line, Ctrl-A to the beginning. Thank you Emacs.
Shift-Command-DownArrow Selects from the current cursor position to the end of the document... Shift-DownArrow adds to the selection a line at a time.
I've never missed any of the keys you mention as a developer, because the Mac has a number of keyboard modifiers (ctrl-option-command-shift) and they almost always do an excellent and intuitive job being stacked. I cannot think of anything the four keys you mentioned do that I cannot do easily with keystroke commands, and on OS X almost any document dealing with text will have those keystrokes work the same way.
The ironic thing is Macs are pushed as productivity machines for professionals.
Hey Alanis, thats not ironic - they are far more useful systems for professionals because between hardware and software they are more reliable and consistent.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know you were joking but in Emacs the magic gateway to commands is M-x - which stands for meta-x. Yes Esc-x works, but you can also use Option-x in Aquamacs...
Sadly it seems like the terminal version of Emacs does rely only on Esc to get to M-x, Option-x inserts some special character. I hope they fix that default but it can be re-bound as needed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I wholeheartedly agree. I've been a Mac user for a decade, and I bought my first Mac (a Core Duo MacBook) because of its well-polished Unix operating system out of the box. I loved my MacBook. Its RAM and hard disk were easily accessible and upgradeable; I originally bought mine with 512 MB RAM and upgraded it to 2GB a few years later. I also upgraded its hard drive twice; once to expand its capacity, and again when that drive failed.
Unfortunately for me and many other power users, sometime after the iPhone came out and became successful, Apple started changing from a computer company to a consumer electronics company, and with this transition Apple started actively making decisions that have been frustrating to us power users. Upgrade cycles have become very lengthy, and Macs have also increasingly become difficult, if not impossible, to upgrade to the point that even the Mac Mini featured soldered components. I thought about switching back to PCs in 2013 when my MacBook was long in the tooth, but I didn't want to move to Linux or Windows 8, so I held my nose and bought a MacBook Air, making sure to max out on RAM and get more storage than the default.
Now I'm facing the same decision given that my MacBook Air's AppleCare expired recently and I'm due for another laptop upgrade. On one hand, I still believe OS X is the best desktop operating system out there. Linux, in my opinion, is still rather inconvenient at times, and I find Windows an annoying operating system to use. On the other hand, Apple has shown repeatedly over the past four years or so that it doesn't care about power users and other highly-technical users. Based on what's being leaked, this upcoming keynote appears to be my final straw with Apple. What's the point of having a wonderful desktop OS if the hardware you're forced to use is dumbed-down, compromised, and non-upgradeable?
It would be nice if either Apple offered licenses to run OS X on non-Mac hardware or if a team would work on a Linux desktop that meets the needs of disaffected Mac power users. But I'm no longer going to wait for Apple to change direction and release my dream product: an updated 2006 MacBook or MacBook Pro.
I remap mine to Control. As God intended.
Is there really a key on that keyboard that says "Rubout"? Does that bind directly to youporn?