cambodia@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Replacing the function keys with a capacitive bar was the stupidest thing they have ever done. So silly that even Apple walked back on that design choice.
Any serious laptop buyer would rule out a laptop just for that. And any casual buyer looking to spend XPS money on a laptop is going to buy a MacBook.
Also Lenovo, who were the first ones to give than nonsense a whirl (X1 Carbon Gen 2, 2014).
Lenovo's was present for just that single generation. Apple kept it for 6 generations over 7 years. Dell 4 generations, 3 years.
Can't say I'll miss any of them.
It was dumb. Forced you to always look at your keyboard.
The touch bar worked well for me on a Macbook. Most of the hotkeys there use cmd+something instead of the f-keys, so I needed the f-keys with only a couple apps, namely Double Commander. But what’s better, there are apps to put custom controls into the touch bar. The most useful one for me was the button to hand off the Bluetooth headphones from the laptop to the phone (via a bash script of mine). Plus I could also have app-specific custom buttons.
I’m a fan of unusual control surfaces and this thing has had me salivating for years. Sadly they’re pretty difficult to procure so I haven’t had the chance of owning one (and probably realizing they’re not all that great irl)
The touch bar is pretty good if a) most everyday shortcuts you use are on the modifiers and the alphanumeric keyboard instead of the f-keys, and b) you can put custom controls in the touch bar. Both of these are true with Macbook: there’s a third-party app for controlling the touch bar. E.g. I’ve put in it a button to handoff the Bluetooth headphones from the laptop to the phone or the other way around.
My dream was to get an external one as an additional surface but when I looked it was almost impossible to find one. That was some years ago so the market may have cleared since.
I feel like it doesn’t have to be either or? I’d like a touch bar in addition to fn keys. Too bad nobody is making that option.
I don’t see anything wrong with touch bar+proper control keys either. There isn’t anything inherently bad about a touch bar in itself.
But replacing your function keys with a touch bar is a bad idea. It’s not standard.
Sticking to standards plus giving other alternative control methods are fine. Kind of like how Asus implements a numpad into the toucpad. I think it’s a gimmick but it doesn’t hurt anyone.
And the worst part is, Apple has a lot more influence over software on MacOS than Dell does over software on Windows. Meaning Apple was able to influence at least some (though not most by any measure) 3rd party developers to make the touchbar context aware. I somehow doubt Dell had any such luck, so it would’ve been even worse than the Apple touchbar which was already shit.
When I last bought an XPS 13, there was an option for Ubuntu. I agree that many people will choose a Macbook, but the XPS line has been decent. Perhaps someday they will discover the third OS option.
toynbee@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
My work gave me a Mac with this. I absolutely hated it - constantly triggering random things I didn’t want or need and apparently something about the wiring caused the physical keyboard to fail prematurely.
Fortunately we’ve moved on from those dark days. I still have to use a Mac, but at least there’s no touch bar.