For years, I’ve said Apple should’ve put the Touch Bar above the function row, not replaced it. I think that one tweak would’ve made it a hit. Now, someone’s done it with the Flexbar, a standalone plug-in accessory I, frankly, wouldn’t buy—but it’s nice to see the idea in action.

(Via The Verge)

@jarrod P.S. Not that anyone cares about this specific example, but this is how I help myself with spellings and capitalizations that I just can’t seem to remember.

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@jarrod And ‘Text Replacement’ gets its own xtr shortcut to quickly jump into that Settings screen.

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@jarrod Yup agree

@jarrod Good point, but I also wonder if something with screens under physical keys would be better too. https://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/mini-six/

@jarrod I do something similar! There’s a specific spelling of a word that is valid in some contexts in Norwegian but I frequently used wrong so I made it a shortcut to “ARE_YOU_SURE?“

@torb A la Stream Deck? I hear those are quite popular too. But so far I’ve resisted in favor of keyboard shortcuts.

@torb Haha nice one!

@jarrod Ah, yeah, that’s a more contempoary example.

@jarrod Oh my… I want one!!!

@jarrod My big thing with HID/IO is that we’d ought to add support *standardised* support for rotary encoders (with display).

*Any time* you have a numeric value in a software tool you ought to be able to control it by turning a knob.

I use Tangent Element Knob and when I edit RAW photos I never have the software GUI sliders visible and I just turn the knobs I’ve set up.It’s a very efficient and intuitive way to work. I wish I could use it in other apps as well.

@torb I imagine this would be hard to build into a laptop, but you’re right: tactile controls are pretty great.