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points by minimaxir 1 day ago | 0 comments

Their demo example for the touch interface is piano keys? That's a 2010 Scott Forstall level of skeuomorphism that doesn't translate well for a laptop screen because it's not convenient.

[–] AndroidKitKat 1 day ago

The hands are also almost in the exact same image Steve Jobs had on a slide during the iPad keynote showing touch on a laptop is not ergonomic. It's poetic, almost.

[–] gizajob 1 day ago

Soon, if they attach an alternator to Steve’s coffin, they’ll be able to run the Apple campus off it.

[–] btmiller 1 day ago

I think you’d need to attach it directly to Steve, rather than his coffin, if we’re following the allegory of the colloquialism to the letter ;)

[–] snowwrestler 1 day ago

Jobs routinely shit-talked product features and categories that Apple later went into, including both phones and tablets. People complained about it when he was alive, but now we’re asked to fondly recall how consistent he was?

[–] lysace 1 day ago

"We've done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn't work," Jobs said at the company's "Back to the Mac" event in 2010. "Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical. It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off," Jobs continued. "It doesn't work, it's ergonomically terrible."

https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/apple-intelligence/articles/ergono...

[–] solarpunk_enthu 1 day ago

Maybe users changed over the span of 16 years, while being daily exposed to touch screens? Remember, in 2010 the idea of using a finger was novel.

[–] threetonesun 1 day ago

Well my arms didn't get longer, that's for sure. Also MacOS and software made for MacOS doesn't optimize for touch targets unlike something that will be distributed on iOS/iPadOS.

[–] Keyframe 1 day ago

The phenomenon is called "Gorilla arm syndrome" so not sure what to think of when I read "maybe users changed" :)

[–] cedilla 1 day ago

Not that novel. The first ergonomics studies on touchscreens were done in the seventies. In 2010, touchscreens were already sophisticated technology and well established in many settings.

I got my first laptop with a digital pen and touchscreen in 2008 or so. They were rare back then, but nothing groundbreaking new. The touchscreen did suck though.

[–] chrisco255 1 day ago

I don't know why you got downvoted, it's true. A lot of screens were touch screen even in the 90s, but they were typically single-touch rather than multi-touch capacitive interfaces. They were used a lot (and still are) in Point of Sale terminals, for example, where an employee needs to stand and ring up sales.

[–] kps 1 day ago

It's not the finger, it's the arm. Remember light pens?

[–] benoau 1 day ago

That was looking at it as a usability problem.

Now it's a "how will you still need an iPad" problem, that they have solved perfectly because it's a usability problem.

[–] SirMaster 1 day ago

Their demo is also mobile app development using touchscreen for testing apps in the simulator.

[–] glaslong 1 day ago

This is the one thing I'm rather excited to use the touchscreen for. Would be genuinely useful to me right now. Beyond that though...... I can't see using Touch much.

I hope this sells well enough that they might later go the EXTRA step to a Pencil supported 360-hinged MBP.

I'm a hardcore iPad Pro + Pencil lover. And I'm very tired of carrying both a MacBook for the full OS + keyboard, PLUS a whole separate tablet for sketching, illustration, annotation, etc.

[–] nicoburns 1 day ago

Testing touchscreen experiences for other devices is the main thing I can imagine actually using this for.

[–] dsego 1 day ago

Pretty useless, it's easy to simulate touches and gestures already.

[–] iainmerrick 1 day ago

Not multi-touch gestures.

[–] dsego 1 day ago

I think there was a modifier key + click and drag to simulate a pinch, so at least some gestures can be simulated. But since one is developing for the mobile device, it makes sense to tether the device and send builds to test out on the target device itself.

[–] sllewe 1 day ago

Seems like a slim use case, no?

[–] Groxx 1 day ago

From past experience (not for quite a few years, but some at least): oh heck no. I loved simulating locally, but the deeply limited touch handling made it infeasible a lot of the time. The dev -> install -> run -> dev cycle is dramatically faster in the emulator, and you don't need to have multiple devices nearby if you're building custom UI for each size.

[–] freeone3000 1 day ago

Macbook Pros attempt to cater to every slim use case simultaneously, with the idea that if they can handle a use case someone else can’t, they’ll sell another laptop.

[–] hectdev 1 day ago

yea but if the company is footing the bill...

[–] xandrius 1 day ago

Yap, you can do that too

[–] Y-bar 1 day ago

I agree that a piano demo seems like a bad idea. But damn if I don’t daily long for the iOS 6 days where buttons and tappable areas were well defined and there were some fun and whimsy to the interface. As compared to the flat unintuitive desolate landscape of recent years. I would rather have a big animated cassette deck in my music player than the current overly polished full page advert I get every time I open the app. At least Forstall and his team cared enough.

[–] 72deluxe 18 hours ago

I believe that user interfaces have just got appallingly bad. Compare Windows 3.11 which came with a paper manual and had about 5 pages detailing scrollbars, buttons, menus and window controls. That is all you had to learn, and you could use the system through consistent usability.

This seems to have been universally abandoned so that user interface elements are hidden (scrollbars), buttons don't look like buttons, and you can "scroll" or move window contents even if there's nowhere for them to scroll to (like on an iPhone where you can "scroll" past the boundary and it comes back. It makes everything an exercise in frustration as you have to grope the user interface to discover if anything is usable.

I believe this is why some of the older generation have such difficulty with basic features on phones and tablets - nothing behaves consistently, and nothing looks like you should be able to press it.

[–] Slow_Hand 1 day ago

As a longtime laptop musician, using the QWERTY keyboard to play notes in the absence of a MIDI controller is infinitely preferable to this goofy demo.

Apple better have some better use examples than THAT.

[–] oefrha 1 day ago

Reminds me of that stupid DJ demo of the touch bar. Did any DJ actually use that in practice? Well if they do they better hold on to their now vintage MacBook.

[–] dabinat 1 day ago

Yeah, piano playing was a bad example. There’s a reason MIDI keyboard manufacturers try so hard to replicate the weighted feel of a real piano. Your fingers need feedback.

[–] Lio 1 day ago

An interesting aside here, there is no one, true style of action for keyboard instruments and no one, true type of feedback.

I have a good 88-note hammer action stage piano. I love it for acoustic pianos and it's OK for electric pianos (Rhodes, Wurlitzer) but it sucks a bit for organ, clavinet and synths.

I've seen people play Hammond really, really well on a weighted keybeds but it's much easier to just plug a second cheap(er) synth action controller in for organ parts.

I've never met anyone that really liked playing a tablet screen though. :P

[–] andrethegiant 1 day ago

Reminiscent of the DJ who performed a DJ set on the TouchBar...

[–] samatman 1 day ago

Yes it is. I mean, you’re not going to play Chopin on it, obviously. But for selecting notes into a DAW? Hella convenient.

Repliers: stop pretending you make music. You don’t and it shows. Producers are going to love this.

[–] dsego 1 day ago

How is it convenient? A pro workflow is not holding your arm with the finger up in the air trying to avoid accidental taps, when you can get a small 25 key akai midi controller for a 100 usd. And it's easy to carry around and comes with velocity-sensitive keys and pressure-sensitive pads.

[–] Lio 1 day ago

Yeah that's a much better use case. Now you mention it I could see it being useful for soft synths, mixing, arranging, effects, etc.

I don't think I'd every want to "play" on it except as a last resort but it could definitely be handy for other virtual interfaces.

Imagine a knob per function synth or a modular setup being able to go straight the control in question would be useful.

[–] officeplant 1 day ago

we have computer keyboard playing mode in nearly every DAW under the sun. It's useless