Accommodating the new touch bar

[yosimiti]

The new Macbook Pro's are out today. Just wondering if there are plans for Scrivener having special features for the touch bar. It would be interesting to see what you guys come up with.

[KB]

The plan is:

1. Wait for the thing to actually be released (Julia - wife and fellow L&L bod - has one on order, but it won't be here for a few weeks).

2. Once it arrives, look at the new NSTouchBar API from Apple to see what makes sense.

So I won't be able to say anything about it for another month or so at the earliest, and support will be 3.0 and above only. The possibilities look pretty cool, though.

[Jordi Mora]

The plan is:

1. Wait for the thing to actually be released (Julia - wife and fellow L&L bod - has one on order, but it won't be here for a few weeks).

I hope your order was pre-paid. I tried out an iMac at the week-end and liked it a lot (but thought I'd just think about it for a few days) - this morning I find that it now costs £400 more than yesterday. This is an across the board "Brexit" readjustment of Apple prices.

[brookter]

[

I hope your order was pre-paid. I tried out an iMac at the week-end and liked it a lot (but thought I'd just think about it for a few days) - this morning I find that it now costs £400 more than yesterday. This is an across the board "Brexit" readjustment of Apple prices.

John Lewis have 3 models left at the old prices, but hurry...

[Jordi Mora]

John Lewis have 3 models left at the old prices, but hurry...

Thanks - I just looked. There are three of the 21.5" left but the 27" models are all suddenly "out of stock".

Oh well ...

[brookter]

Oh well...

They did have some in at 11am, because I was very tempted.

I've got a 2011 27" top of the range iMac which I was thinking of getting round to changing. I was waiting till yesterday to see if they'd release a new model, which of course they didn't, so I was going to wait a bit longer (my old one is still fast enough to be getting on with), but then I saw the price increase across the range.

So I've spent the morning wondering whether to pop down to John Lewis, but obviously I've dithered too long... I'll definitely wait till this one falls over now. Who knows, perhaps when we get to 2017 we'll find out that Season 2016 was just a bad dream and we'll go back to sensible exchange rates...

[Briar Kit]

Don't want to have to look down at the keyboard.

Don't want something at the edge of my vision flickering away as I swap between apps, let alone in colour. Hope the touch bar can be locked so that it doesn't change from app to app.

Not sure if I want to upgrade, despite my Macs being old (from 2008).

…

[yosimiti]

Every advancement in technology comes with its benefits and problems. I think the best option we could have for the touch bar is the option to choose what we'd like to have on the touch bar and what we don't. For those of us who want nothing, we should have that option. For those who want everything, we should have that option as well.

[derick]

@ Briar Kit just get the model with conventional function keys, announced at the same event.

[gr]

Don't want something at the edge of my vision flickering away as I swap between apps, let alone in colour. Hope the touch bar can be locked so that it doesn't change from app to app.

I like the idea of the thing, but I had the same reaction to the demos.
Some of the examples we saw were pretty sick with bright color.

Who knows, maybe there are some good controls for it -- or will be as the thing settles in. Seems like the OS already has all the system software mojo in place for such nuance -- since it is already applied to the laptop screen and/or your device screens. The extra I would dream of is some color saturation control and a relative brightness control to adjust its amount of brightness relative to whatever the screen is doing.

[Briar Kit]

@ Briar Kit just get the model with conventional function keys, announced at the same event.

That’s a limited device with a 13" screen. Would prefer a 15" model, but unsure about the Touch Bar being a distraction.

…

[Briar Kit]

Don't want something at the edge of my vision flickering away as I swap between apps, let alone in colour. Hope the touch bar can be locked so that it doesn't change from app to app.

I like the idea of the thing, but I had the same reaction to the demos.
Some of the examples we saw were pretty sick with bright color.

Who knows, maybe there are some good controls for it -- or will be as the thing settles in. Seems like the OS already has all the system software mojo in place for such nuance -- since it is already applied to the laptop screen and/or your device screens. The extra I would dream of is some color saturation control and a relative brightness control to adjust its amount of brightness relative to whatever the screen is doing.

Absolutely. I want a 15" screen, but I don't want a distracting multi-coloured Touch Bar changing when it wants to change. If it is possible to lock the thing down, that will be fine. Brightness and colour controls would also help.

…

[Siren]

this morning I find that it now costs £400 more than yesterday. This is an across the board "Brexit" readjustment of Apple prices.

I'm a bit gutted. I (naively) had hoped for a price decrease on the old models, if a new model were announced. I feel rather silly, in retrospect.

[charlie.stross]

I'm a bit gutted. I (naively) had hoped for a price decrease on the old models, if a new model were announced.

Off-topic digression: the price rise is entirely down to post-Brexit-referendum currency instability. Eight months ago there were 1.55 US dollars to the pound sterling; today sterling is worth roughly $1.21, and Morgan Stanley apparently think it's still overvalued. Apple had to put up their prices or they'd be selling the new Macs for about 20% less in the UK than in the USA (after taking VAT into account).

It would probably be a good idea to budget for your new Mac before May pulls the trigger on Article 50 -- I expect sterling to drop again, and price adjustments to follow rapidly. (Much to my annoyance she's announced that she'll do so in March, but the current financial year ends on April 5th and for tax reasons I want my next Macbook to show up on the FY2017 budget -- it's a claimable business expense for me.)

Anyway, digression over. Back to the subject at hand:

Would a good starting point for Touch Bar support for Scrivener on macOS be to investigate transplanting the on-screen keyboard shortcuts from Scriv for iOS?

[yosimiti]

I think having options to choose what you want overrules everything else (as mentioned).