12 thoughts on “The little things”

1. As a Touch Bar MBP user, I tried to use it and was excited at the beginning, but over time found it to be less and less useful. This sounds like a similar initial impression; I’d love to better understand what % of users still find the touch bar useful months and years in, and I’d love to better understand whether Apple considers it critical technology, since they still haven’t rolled it out to any other Mac.

   tl;dr: since it’s not on my Mac Pro, I can’t consistently use it, and that compounds its diminished utility.

   Compare that to Apple Watch auto-unlock. That makes me smile at least a few times a week, several years in. I love that feature.

2. I’ve noticed the little things more when you see others suffer without them. Apple removes the headphone jack? Lightning has always supported audio+power. Others copy that move and go USB-C only? Some adapters work, some don’t, some only supply limited power. People mock the Apple dongles but at least you know they work. I set up single plug audio+power in my car ten years ago and still use the same system today with a Lightning adapter. That seems an impossible feat for an Android phone.

3. It is the little things. The other day I told a Windows user to drag an attachment from an email to another area. He tried and could not do it. Had to save attachment to desktop first.

4. My Apple Watch unlock hardly ever works. I don’t know if I’m missing something obvious, but it seems to know it is nearby, doesn’t unlock, then prompts for a password, so it is actually making it take longer to log in than before.

5. Which Mac are you using?

   On my Mac Pro, the success rate can vary from 0% to 100% depending on where I place the machine. If it is at all obscured by the monitor, it almost never works.

   It could also be a messed-up configuration in the OS. I’ve seen this once or twice.

   As usual with Apple, these things tend to be /too/ magical for easy debugging.

6. I’m on a current gen iMac (the smaller one). The setting is enabled. It seems to work after a reboot, but then eventually stops working.

7. Not that it’s statistically significant, but one Apple dongle I needed last winter, a T3 to T2 adapter, failed to work for a video hookup between an iMac and an external monitor. Glad I had a Monoprice alternative.

8. That works. It’s sort of a corollary to my inclination to wait until new features have had a year or two to settle in.

9. Hmm, I ran into a similar issue with my home iMac (3-year-old Retina 27″), but don’t use it enough to have seen how consistent this occurs (it’s mostly my wife’s computer at this point).

   My guess is something in the OS needs to be cleaned. Our iMac has sleep/wake issues, so my plan is to reinstall it fresh with Mojave when it comes out and see if it resolves it.

10. I would be interested in knowing how many people have put off buying a new MacBook Pro because they want a high end one and don’t want a touch bar. Or, put another way, if Apple sold all levels of MacBook pro with and without touchbar would the models without touchbar sell enough to be meaningful?

    I’m one of the folks I talk about, I do not want a touchbar and would buy a new high end machine without it if they offered it.

11. While I haven’t put it off (I have no money! 🙂 ), I need and would love a new laptop but I have no intention of buying one with that stupid TouchBar.

12. I’m fairly sure that capability is on someone’s “macOS capabilities” list at Redmond.