What Genius thought the Touch Bar on Macbook Pro was a good idea?

[britechguy]

I just encountered my first Macbook pro with this abomination yesterday, and, sadly, it's on the laptop (just purchased under 2 years ago) of someone who's losing their vision and where interaction with the function key row is not only necessary to toggle VoiceOver on/off, but for a number of commands as well. If you can't see the buttons (and that includes Esc on that row) it's well-nigh impossible to target them accurately.

The idea of a touch strip in place of hard keys likely being a durable option as well strikes me as, well, stupid. Breakage/failure waiting to happen is what it is.

At least I know that if I have blind or visually-impaired clients looking at Macs that I need to steer them away from models that have this type of function key setup.

Rant over.

 

[Blues]

That is sad to see development push changes that seem to neglect those with impairments. I used to sometimes find the changes for the impaired annoying but it was usually that accidently turning them on was something I had to deal with for end users I would say Microsoft's implementation has gotten better in that it is not as easy to accidentally enable and easier to turn back off.

 

[britechguy]

@Blues

What's most interesting, to me, is that Apple did this. They were, for many years, at the forefront of accessible design in their product lines. VoiceOver was available for as long as I can remember on every Mac and iPhone available (probably not at the very, very beginning, but it's been on all of them for many years now).

Needing a screen reader to read a key row that's so simple to keep as a real row of hard keys, well, . . .

 

[Blues]

It seems like modern UI is heading more for form over function when really there isn't a need to compromise function for form.

 

[NviGate Systems]

A Genius who saw too many Star Trek reruns and figured this was the place for the Tricorder's debut.

 

[300DDR]

I'm one of the few who loved the touch bar. Had so many awesome custom buttons and tools readily available using BetterTouchTool. After switching to a non-touch bar Mac, it took months to "undo" my muscle memory.

Note: You can also turn VoiceOver on or off using the Accessibility Options shortcut panel. To show it, press Option-Command-F5 or, if your Mac or Magic Keyboard has Touch ID, quickly press Touch ID three times. In the shortcut panel, press the Tab key until you hear the VoiceOver option, then press the Space bar.