Ulysses' Companions' Odyssey (provisional app review)

Posted by 22111
Apr 19, 2022 at 11:23 PM

I forgot the additions over there:

Yes, I could have added the “touch, not key” problem,
« Reply #2 on: May 08, 2017, 03:15 PM »
but left it out for 2 reasons: It may be taken for even more Apple hating, and I must say I have been quite impressed by screen reactivity of the iPads, while I regularly have problems with screen reactivity of other touchscreens (photocopiers and so on). I do not like touchscreens at all, but nowadays, for tiny devices, they have become unavoidable - I said it here, I’d so much prefer that HP mini pc of some years ago which now can only be had for outrageous prices, used - but, if touchscreen, then the variety of modern iPads (and I suppose, IPhones) is very, very good (real typing is possible without frequent typos / need to type a character twice).

When I played around with those Macs and the touch-bar, my main problem I immediately felt was my finger hiding the symbol/lettering, and thus the felt need to “first read, then move the finger” while my impulse was to not do it at the same time (it all was new for me), but nevertheless to do it with some overlap: begin the finger movement shortly after begin of reading, and that clearly wasn’t possible.

And I remember a very strong point now against the touch-board which I had missed above:

In order to read the symbols/lettering, I had to bow my head; that’s probably not an additional problem for people who type with 2 fingers; I type with 10 and stare at the screen. So a symbol/lettering list on the bottom of the screen, for me, would come without or just very light bowing of my head, while here, with the info at the height of the keys, I had to bow my head very sensibly each time, and that was very inconvenient, and time-consuming, too.

Also, the touch-board wasn’t tilted in my direction (45, 30 or just 20 degrees), but it was totally flat, and that was very unpleasant for reading; for typing, I would have preferred a tilt, too (shorter reaching out for the fingers, over the number keys in-between).

Technically, it’s possible to read from the screen and to read from the touch-board, but to roll my eyes down so far had been just more unpleasant, thus the bowing of my head.

Btw, it’s of interest that Apple didn’t implement the touch-board, additionally, for more rarely-used commands, above a line of traditional F-keys, since it’s for more rarely-used (context-or-not) commands that symbols/lettering are so much more needed. Of course, that would have put the touch-board out of immediate finger reach for (frequent) text-expand use, which obviously was the reason why they did away with the F-keys.

I’d prefer TWO ranges of F-keys, but that’s because my F-keys aren’t context-sensitive in any application, and thus I’d so much need more of them. And it’s probably also true that if applications had smartly-devised context-sensitive F-keys, most of the time, 12 of them were amply enough.

Whatever, it’s Apple again where the “research” in context-sensitivity is now made, by trial-and-error of all the application developers trying to make their software “touch-board ready”, and again, the Windows world is left behind, and that’s annoying, all the more so since it’s a multiple-occasion déjà vu.

It’s them again who take now the most out of, develop fully and optimize a 30-or-more-year-old DOS invention, while, as described above, every Windows computer could do it as well as, and better than, MacBooks (since they come without F-keys now).

The touch-board being flat, they can and probably will change that; also, it’s in color - but modern screens are in color too, and both the Apple touch-board and the general/Windows screen symbols/lettering for current F-key assignment could make big use of this: Smart coloring of it all (which is different from coloring optimized for “prettiness” or something) could enormously help with scope/context and kind of function, and thus with immediate, intuitive recognition and thus speeding up F-key pressing without the need to read / consciously check.
. Re: Apple does it again - this time, they re-invent the context-sensitive F-key
« Reply #5 on: May 10, 2017, 01:42 PM »
Being a cat lover myself, I didn’t know about the NyanCat yet, thank you, f0dder!

You are right, the Escape key is now incorporated into the Touch-Bar, I hadn’t paid attention.

I feel with Apple users; Apple has a tendency to not ask their (high-paying) customers, but to decide for them, treating them for children, and that’s certainly very upsetting (the mouse comes to mind, which I had mentioned above, then the little things around the iPhone/iPad (wasn’t it them who replaced the battery with an internal one? then the absence of possible external memory (memory card, usb stick), then the earphones connector; did I leave out any?).

As I explained above, I welcome the idea of the re-introduction of the context-sensitive F-key - by taking away the physical F-keys, they now enforce the development of this concept.

I understand that many users aren’t happy with it but this could bring real progress.

I very much hope, for Mac users, that the developers will be smart enough to adapt the concept to “older” Macs (incl. the 2016 generation), with physical F-keys (I showed above that the Touch-Bar is not necessary for it, so “Touch-Bar readiness” could perfectly work on the F-key Macs, too), and I also hope that they do it 2-ways:

Leave it all as it is now, and just display, among other things, 12 F-keys in the Touch-Bar which function exactly as do the traditional, physical ones up to now, AND do some real research into context-sensitivity and offer that, by application-wide option/toggle, also both for F-key Macs and for the Touch-Bar variety.

Thus, for both hardware variants, there would be both function-trigger paradigms, and user could chose the concept they prefer - this time, what Apple has done is NOT enforcing context-sensitivity, they just took away the physical keys, but they cannot prevent developers from also offering the traditional F-key operation.

My guess would be though that very soon, developers will excel in smart “contexting”, and users will be quite happy about it, thus my complain above that, again, Windows users will be left behind.

Not necessarily, Tuxman, as far as the hardware side is concerned; as for software updates, yes, but more and more software is available upon subscription only anyway, isn’t it?

(Tuxman had said,
“You broke it!”
“No, we, uh, re-invented it!”
“TAKE MY MONEY!”
Apple customers… :huh:)