Does the loss of these keys (including the escape key) hurt VO users enough to make the new controls not worth it? Is the Touch Bar faster than hotkeys and/or does it offer items not available via hotkeys? If you have a Touch Bar Mac, can you do anything to get around relying on the function keys? How It Works With VoiceOver In Finder, you get viewing options, search, and more Mail offers buttons to reply, forward, switch to favorite mailboxes, etc you get the idea. The idea is to offer a row of contextually appropriate controls instead of a static row of keys most users rarely need. It sits above the numbers on the keyboard, with a TouchID/power button on the right side above the delete key, just where the power button is on the Air. This is a strip of screen as thick as the row of keys it replaces. One big feature of the 2016 MacBook Pro is the addition of the Touch Bar. Like most anything else, you get used to it and forget to even worry about it after a short time. The only thing to get used to is how the up and down arrows are squeezed between the normal-sized left and right arrows, but that's a minor point to me. Keep an open mind, and I don't think this keyboard should be a concern for potential buyers, even VO users. Better than any other? Probably not, but neither is it any worse. So far-just four days in, and only able to use this machine in the evenings due to work-I am no worse on this keyboard than any other and find it no less comfortable. Already, I find I'm getting used to the feel, and I suspect that before long I'll be comfortable with this keyboard.
If I type more lightly, the travel doesn't feel so foreign. They travel (that is, move down) less than any other keyboard I've ever used, but I'm learning to simply give them less push. This gives me more room to type, rather than the keys being the same size but squeezed closer together.
While the keys are indeed closer together, they feel larger under my fingers, as though the empty space between them had been filled with extra plastic to type on. The automatic spell checker in macOS is very good, and over the years, I've come to rely on it to fix my typos and reversals, but it doesn't have to kick in that often on this machine. I'm typing faster than usual, or at least I feel like I am, and am making no more mistakes than normal. So far, I have to say that I kind of like this keyboard. To truly test myself, though, I determined to use the 2016 Pro keyboard for this entire review, not typing or editing a single character outside of this computer, and not connecting an external keyboard. But with so many keyboard types in my life, I've come to find that I can type relatively well on pretty much anything I try, if I have to. Coming to the new Pro, with its keys that don't travel very far and that feel oddly spaced at first, made me nervous. The Air, of course, has the same kind of keyboard as all of Apple's recent laptops (save the Retina MacBooks) up until this new Pro series. At home I use a $15 USB keyboard connected to my Mini, meaning mushier keys with less response than my mechanical ones. At work, I use a mechanical keyboard (blue switches, in case you're wondering). How is it if you can't see the keys, though? Can you type on it for a long time?įirst, my experience with keyboards is all over the place. This MacBook uses the same keyboard found in the 2016 Retina MacBooks: a second-generation "butterfly" keyboard, meant to be as thin and space-saving as possible while still being usable for typing. How's the keyboard? Is the Touch Bar a help or a hinderance? Does the new, larger trackpad matter? In short, is the Touch Bar Pro a machine VO users should consider, or are they better off sticking to the 2015 models? The Keyboard Instead, I'll be talking about the everyday usage from a VoiceOver user's perspective. Since we all know that the new Pros are fast and powerful, I won't be focusing on those aspects as much here. The drive is quick, VO is as responsive as I've ever seen it, the speakers are better, and on and on it goes. All that to say that this MBP is the newest Apple computer, by four years, I have ever owned, and its next oldest cousin is hardly able to hold a candle to it.
Apple 2016 macbook pro touch bar mac#
I also have a Mac Mini from 2011, which I've since upgraded with more ram and a solid state drive to make it faster. I have only owned one other Apple laptop in the past: an 11-inch Air with just 64GB of storage, from 2012. It has 512GB of storage, 8GB of ram, the Touch Bar in place of function keys, and the low end of the available processors (a still-respectable 2.9GhZ Core i5). On November 21, 2016, I picked up my new MacBook Pro from Best Buy.