r/mac • u/Recent-Bat-9234 • 19h ago
Discussion Magic Keyboard with touchbar concept both sizes??
Imagine if they made the magic keyboard with the touchbar ABOVE the function keys and also backlit keys as well
Function 13 would be Eject key
On the one with the NUMBER PAD:
This Concept can also connect to 3 devices at once
Function keys 14-16 would be the device switcher
Function 14 would be Device 1
Function 15 would Be device 2
Function 16 would be Device 3
The apple logo key in the top right would be the touch id Sensor button
The button to the left of the touch bar above the ESC key would be the touch bars on and off button
51
12
u/iphones2g- MacBook Pro (2020, 13" M1, Debian Linux) 19h ago
I would actually like that. The touchbar was a very cool idea but the way it was implemented kinda made it suck. (No physical function keys) But this would fix that.
0
u/MegaSpaceBar 18h ago
Actually function keys pops up once you press the fn key which is very normal for small form factor keyboards in laptops.
3
u/iphones2g- MacBook Pro (2020, 13" M1, Debian Linux) 18h ago
True, on my M1 I set it up so it always shows the function keys. I just miss the tactile feedback.
7
u/sircastor 18h ago
I don't think the touchbar was ever a concept that worked for me, but my wife loved it. I think keeping the function keys might have been the way to do it, but I also think that for most people the function keys were only useful as media keys - hence why Apple explored replacing them rather than supplementing.
5
u/DankeBrutus M4 Mac mini | M1 MacBook Pro 18h ago
The TouchBar starts working for me the second any media starts playing. If I need small increments, like in YouTube, then the arrow keys for 5 seconds or J & L for 10 seconds still works. But if I want large adjustments it feels much more natural to use my finger on the timeline. The same goes for songs in Apple Music.
There are also some nice aesthetic things with the TouchBar. IINA uses the frames of the video playing to colour the timeline, Safari has little previews of your tabs, and you can customize what functions are in the TouchBar so different people can have different layouts outside of apps. But the TouchBar is basically abandonware at this point. Apple had the opportunity to fit half-height function keys and the TouchBar in their MacBook Pro redesign and decided to standardize the keyboards across desktop Macs, the MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro. I think that was ultimately the better choice.
2
1
3
u/Active-Drive-7749 18h ago
hard pass without TouchID
-7
u/Recent-Bat-9234 18h ago
Ai was used to edit the photo so the security lock key would be where the touch id sensor
3
u/No_Advisor_6867 17h ago
I know many people were against the Touch Bar, but I LOOOOVED it so much. I miss it every time I open Photoshop or any other well supported app. It was so intuitive. I wish Apple brought it back at least as an optional upgrade, because I'd 100% go for it. Unfortunately, it's very unlikely they ever will :/
1
u/ghostchihuahua 16h ago
I’d like it if it were higher and more open, easily customizable out of the box, one more row would open a lot of possibilities for many of us.
10
u/besthuman 18h ago
Nope.
Touchbar was always a bad idea for the same reason touch screens in cars are a bad idea — you loose tactile interaction.
Touch is a great user interface, however it only works when you are touching a thing you are looking at.
A keyboard is meant to be used without being looked at, you look at a screen and your fingers find the keys without looking. You can't do that with a touchscreen.
19
u/czmax 18h ago
stop trying to make Touch Bar happen!
21
u/rtfmplease 18h ago
the mistake wasn't the touch bar, the mistake was getting rid of the fn buttons
7
1
u/hokanst 11h ago edited 11h ago
Touch typing and touch sensitive areas (like the touchbar) that can't be felt by touch (without being triggered) are NOT a good combination.
Having a dedicated keyboard for touch typing or a dedicated touch screen (that you have to look at), are fine on their own, but combining them puts them at odds with each other rather than enhancing each other.
0
u/mailslot MacBook Pro 17h ago
The mistake is needing to look at your hands to read the Touch Bar. You’re not supposed to look at your keyboard. Ever. It’s a shitty location for a display.
Anybody that knows how to type properly is going to find the Touch Bar slow, clunky, and useless.
3
u/Tronsler 16h ago
Dont you look at ur hands anyways for media keys?
0
u/mailslot MacBook Pro 16h ago
No. I don’t even have markings on my external keyboard. The key caps all blank… except the media keys, lol, but I don’t look at them either.
1
u/rtfmplease 13h ago
I can see your point here, although I don't necessarily agree entirely.
I remember thinking it would be cool for there to be another set of Fn keys above, but with LED / LCD displays on them, honestly just to be used for learning the layout.
1
u/mailslot MacBook Pro 13h ago
That’s an expensive and overly complicated keyboard tutorial, IMO.
Don’t they still make application specific keyboard overlays? Those were really popular in the 1980s on DOS before graphical menu bars became common on PCs.
5
u/jeffyboy526 18h ago
When it was announced I could not wait to get it. Within a month I stopped using it and wanted my buttons back. It died for a reason.
1
u/qaf0v4vc0lj6 Mac mini M2 Pro 18h ago
No. Apple will go bankrupt after their decision to discontinue Touch Bar. Mark my words.
2
2
u/dsuzuki63 15h ago
If you use an iPad in sidecar mode, you can activate touch bar on the screen.
Secondly, if Apple brought back the Touch Bar, they wouldn’t keep the function row. That section would be covered by the Touch Bar.
2
1
u/incompetent-banana Mac Studio M1 Max 64 GB, MacBook Pro i9 18h ago
I like the touchbar on my 2019 MBP. But I think it should sit either above or below the function keys.
1
u/l---l-_-l---l 18h ago
These mfs can't even make one with backlight yet. Give them 30 years for this
1
1
u/ThisSiteCanBlowMe 18h ago
Not doing it for me. The two don't gel together. Unless you make the keyboard black.
1
1
u/krakenLackenGirly22 18h ago
I would buy this if
- They leave the F keys be.
- They give me a vertical PgUp, PgDn, End, Home above my arrow keys (like Nuphy Air 75 v2)
1
1
1
1
1
u/beanie_0 MacBook Pro M4 15h ago
I think this would have been such a better idea than just adding it to MacBooks and hoping people would use it.
1
1
u/rtkane 14h ago
My wife bought me something similar to the touchbar that's a standalone device. It's pretty neat and very configurable. I need to spend some more time messing with it, though.
Flexbar: https://www.eniacelec.com/products/flexbar
1
u/Upbeat-Positive8484 12h ago
Add a third fn, Home, Page Up and Plus key and it might actually be a hit!
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/mac4112 18h ago edited 18h ago
Touchbar was the embodiment of a good idea with (very) bad execution.
If they had kept all the regular function keys it would have been much better received. I ESPECIALLY loved it for FCP. Having all my shortcuts and timeline scrubbing right there was amazing and I still miss it. You could also “hack” some sites by skipping ads, using full screen that otherwise didn’t support it and so forth.
Better touch tool helped a lot too and it was what should have been there out of the box but this was essentially the dark age of MacBooks so it’s not surprising they fucked it up.
I think if they offered it as a separate product like this it might do okay. If you don’t like it anyways then it’s no big deal, just don’t buy it, but at least this lets the people who did like it be able to again but with necessary improvements.
1
u/jeffyboy526 18h ago
I would argue it was a solution to a non problem.
2
u/mac4112 18h ago edited 15h ago
You could say the same thing about a lot of things Apple does, but part of what makes their products resonate with people is that very concept.
The main complaint people have with the touchbar is that it outright replaced the function keys rather than being an add-on. Having both would solve this issue and still provide the functionality it already did (plus third party software) for those of us that actually used it.
And if you don’t then It isn’t any different than just not using any other baked in feature, be it software or hardware, if you don’t actually need it. Like not everyone uses SD cards either, and not everyone utilizes or even notices 120hz, but at least it’s there if you do.
1
u/RogueHeroAkatsuki 18h ago
I would much rather welcome good mechanical keyboard than with touchbar gimmick.
Main problem with touchbar was always that in contrast to name - you need to look at it. Only times when I look on keyboard is when I position my hands on as I cant really feel those small bumps on 'F' and 'J'. I would rather click FN+F11 to volume up than use touchbar.
1
u/jeremyw013 MacBook Air 17h ago
that's why there's physical function keys. why is everyone that's hating on this post just completely ignoring that absolutely no physical keys are lost in this concept. it's only ADDING a touch bar. you can still use it just the same as any other magic keyboard.
0
u/RogueHeroAkatsuki 17h ago
Actually I noticed that and my point stays valid. Its less comfortable to use touchbar than shortcut or just click with mouse. For majority of those functions on screens I know shortcut... or I have no idea which function is assigned to icon.
On phones touch keyboard works because you see whole screen. I dont need to constantly look up and down.
1
u/jeremyw013 MacBook Air 17h ago
then don’t use the touchbar. absolutely zero functionality is lost.
0
u/RogueHeroAkatsuki 17h ago
Except battery will be draining many times faster... Yeah, makes sense to buy wireless keyboard with battery drainer like this. Thanks.
1
u/jeremyw013 MacBook Air 17h ago
love how you just completely moved the goalposts
0
u/RogueHeroAkatsuki 17h ago
LMAO. I didnt move goalposts, I only explained to you that there is almost zero added usability for huge battery drain.
Love you, peace and EOT
1
u/jeremyw013 MacBook Air 17h ago
just because you don’t use something doesn’t mean it’s useless. “bring touchbar back” posts wouldn’t be so popular if no one used them. not everyone revolves around you, buddy.
1
1
u/alexjk2004 MacBook Pro 2h ago
you seriously couldn’t get a picture of a macbook touchbar and edit it onto a picture of a magic keyboard?
1
0
u/user_breathless 18h ago
Man I love Touch Bar. I bought a second-hand M2 for it. Autocorrect, media scrubbing and ad skipping and I’ve never once had the need to use F keys
2
u/leoprieto 17h ago
agreed, no clue why you get downvoted and surprised there are very few fans of the touchbar.
i was a big fan, scrubbing in FCP or quickly switching slides in Keynote while giving a presentation or even a quick emoji when sending a message. wish they actually made something like this mockup!
2
u/user_breathless 17h ago
Yeah I don’t get why people are fine with the iPhone being a full touchscreen but Apple put a touchscreen strip on the Mac and people complain
0
0
u/Webbadeth 18h ago
I’ve said it before, the only people I’ve ever known to like the touch bar are people who had it on their first Mac. Sure, there are a lot of ways to do the same thing on a computer, but none of those ways are easier or more efficient on a touch bar.
0
u/CourteX64 MacBook Pro 14" M4 8h ago
Was it really so hard to just draw a keyboard? It’s just a bunch of squares
-1
u/Saymon_K_Luftwaffe 18h ago
It doesn’t make sense for them to be above...
They had to replace the function keys, effectively! By the way, this is TouchBar’s mission, in the first place.
And no, looking down doesn’t hurt.
-1
-1
-1
u/MonsieurVox 18h ago
I really, really disliked the Touch Bar. Even if the function keys were present, the experience of the Touch Bar was clunky and unintuitive. It felt forced.
It's Apple's MO to invent a problem and sell a solution that ends up being better than the alternative (removing the headphone jack then selling AirPods for example), but the Touch Bar was just bad in my experience.
That series of MacBook was the weakest Apple has ever had in my opinion (at least in recent history). Virtually zero I/O (without dongle hell), no MagSafe, butterfly keyboard fiasco, and a Touch Bar that just wasn't well thought-out or useful.
It's a cool mockup, to be clear, but there's essentially no scenario where Apple could integrate a Touch Bar and have it be "good" in my opinion.
110
u/TH3_OG_JUJUBE MacBook Pro 18h ago
I’m not gonna lie these looks absolutely horrendous ohhhhhh AI was used that’s why there’s all these random misshapen keys.