Apple is being run more and more by marketers, rather than by techies.
As a developer, I don't want to see "emojis" on my keyboard, but I do want to be able to plug in any device I need in that exact moment, without looking for a right dongle.
Apple needs to stop sacrificing usability for "looks".
Agreed. The venn diagram of people that can afford the pro and those that care about emojis is likely rather slim.
However, watching the photoshop demo I could see the value. Honestly though, I think an add on accessory the size of a trackpad would be better. Unfortunately, that would sell in numbers so small that software support would be non-existent. So, this is a compromise solution that doesn't have Apple's usual boldness to it, rather a lacklustre add on that will deliver lacklustre results (to both sales and usefulness).
I don't know, I see emoji infiltrating my tools more and more. For example, I had to submit a PR to Yarn [1] to add a flag to disable the terrible things. GitHub uses emoji to indicate the type of commit [2].
I hate it.
Edit: I mean GitHub the company, not the product. Atom is maintained by GitHub.
It's nice how these emoji in [2] do not offer any advantage at all. In fact, they're worse than the appropriate words ("bump", "fix") because I can't Ctrl-F for them.
I really do not understand the attraction to it. It makes things harder to read and understand. It can destroy terminal formatting. They're harder to type on physical keyboards.
I don't often use emoji unironically in my personal life, but in computing tools it should be anathema.
Emojis: I'm with you. This seems dumb but I'm optimistic that people will find clever ways to use the screen. Even if it's just pushing away moronic "toast" style notifications off the important real-estate.
USB / dongles: In two years, almost all peripherals will be USB-C and C-to-A adapters will be tiny and cheap. USB-C will be the new Thunderbolt and it'll end up being more convenient. I'm looking forward to sharing displays with ultraportable Windows machines and chromebooks using USB-C.
In two years.... so not Today? Because they replaced the USB-A ports today... and not in their 2018 MBP.
Besides, the old peripherals won't disappear within the next few year and most of the world can't easily switch to type-C anyways - since they literally have no money to buy modern technology.
USB 2/3 is "good enough" for too many things to fade away. Any notebook should have 1 type-A port for convenience.
As a developer, I don't want to see "emojis" on my keyboard, but I do want to be able to plug in any device I need in that exact moment, without looking for a right dongle.
Apple needs to stop sacrificing usability for "looks".