Apple weaned me off a good habit. Warning to all owners of Macbooks with Touch Bar

When I bought my MacBook Pro M1 in 2020 with a touch strip instead of a row of physical buttons on the keyboard, I was looking forward to how I would be able to rewind YouTube videos with my finger, edit photos with one-touch shortcuts, and literally juggle emoji in correspondence with colleagues and friends. by quickly selecting them on the Touch Bar screen.

Alas, for a year and a half I have never used this element of the MacBook. I tried to accustom myself, but to no avail: not a single case of using the touchbar made my work easier and did not save time. The only emotion I felt was annoyance, because when I opened different applications, the icons on the touch strip changed and I had to spend time learning why they were needed.

And since the beginning of 2023, I have got a MacBook Air M2, which has a touch atavism once more replaced with clear and convenient keys F1-F12. I was delighted, but then I realized one very unpleasant thing.

Now I don’t use those keys at all

The buttons are there, but the habits of using them are not.

Indeed, before the MacBook with the Touch Bar, I constantly reached for the buttons at the top of the keyboard with my fingers. It was so familiar and natural to control the sound, brightness and other settings of the laptop with their help!

Then there was a period with the MacBook Pro M1, during which you first had to constantly remember that there were no more buttons, and then teach you to control all the settings using the cursor.

And now, when I once more have a MacBook with the usual buttons, I understand that they are not that common.

Let’s say sound. You can simply stretch your finger and increase or decrease the volume. It doesn’t take time at all. What I do: I drag the cursor to the upper right corner of the screen, open the control panel and adjust the sound with the slider.

The exact same thing happens on YouTube. It is much more convenient to adjust the volume with the mouse than to re-accustom yourself to using physical buttons. And to open the list of installed applications, I bring the cursor to the top active corner of the screen. It’s more comfortable for me.

I even set up bookmarks on my Touch Strip in my MacBook Pro M1. But he never touched them with his finger.

I realized this relatively recently, when I accidentally saw that the top row of function buttons is absolutely clean and there are no traces of touch on any of them. While on the rest of the keyboard there are various marks from constant pressing, which I periodically remove with a microfiber cloth.

Everything would be fine, but the lack of the habit of using the function keys greatly increases the time it takes to perform the simplest actions. I mean, I spend many more seconds on inefficient movements, I get distracted more often, my productivity drops. You might think that this problem is far-fetched, but if you spend 18 hours a day on a laptop, you begin to notice a drop in work efficiency.

I usually observe the same effect when I periodically pick up a Windows laptop. There, the search for the Start button, for example, or closing the active window eats up precious time: out of habit, you drag the cursor to the upper left corner and only then to the right, in search of a red cross.

It turns out that MacBook with Touch Bar, for all its convenience, literally hurt me. Because of it, I can’t get used to using physical buttons once more and spend a lot of time on unnecessary cursor actions.

Probably, you just need to constantly keep in mind that there are buttons, just stretch your finger and turn down the volume in a human way. But so far I haven’t been able to.

And how are you, former owners of macbooks with a touchbar? Relearned back to physical keys?

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When I bought my MacBook Pro M1 in 2020 with a touch strip instead of a row of physical buttons on the keyboard, I was looking forward to how I would be able to rewind YouTube videos with my finger, edit photos with one-touch shortcuts, and literally juggle emoji in correspondence with colleagues and friends. by quickly selecting them on the Touch Bar screen. Alas,…

Mikk Seed

@mickmaster

I write regarding everything that is interesting and informative – gadgets, events, reports. I am fond of playing the drums, a music lover with experience.

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