[OS X TeX] New MacBook Pro

[Herbert Schulz]

> On Oct 31, 2016, at 6:13 AM, Vamos, Peter <P.Vamos at exeter.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> I’ve been waiting for this for some time but now not so sure that I’ll upgrade.(I have MacBook Pro Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012 but only with a 256 GB SSD which I now find is too small.) Here are a couple of (possibly rhetorical) questions.
> 
> 1) Touch Bar. Is there anyone on this list, apart from Dick of course, who had some experience/knowledge of this? Would TeXShop be able to use it? Would it be any useful for TeXShop? Will Dick give us a default set for this or will it be up to us to customize it? 

Howdy,

My 2015 13" Retina MacBook Pro is way too new for me to even think about changing but here's the view of a rather old-fashioned, long term Mac user. 

I have the Function Keys set up as ... Function Keys; System Preferences->Keyboard->Keyboard has ``Use all F1, ...'' keys checked. On the rare occasion I need adjust brightness, volume, etc., I just press the fn key. The nice thing about using the keys as their namesake is that I can assign Macros to them (along with the Cmd key of course). I also can easily use the F5 key (along with BibDesk) to fill in \cite commands.

> 
> 2) I am somewhat dismayed by the number of adapters I might need. For example presentation/projection. I currently use the Thunderport 2 -> VGA adapter. It sems that I will need a Thunderport 3/USB-C -> Thunderport 2  adapter anyway so could I just daisychain this with my existing Thunderport 2 -> VGA adapter?
> 

Before buying the MacBook Pro mentioned above I considered getting the 12" MacBook (which has quite a beautiful screen) but was put off by having to spend quite a bit on USB-C adapters to go to VGA, USB, Ethernet, etc.

> 3) Talking of presentations with Keynote. Using an external monitor with my laptop at home Presenter Display works OK, monitor connected via HDMI. I have yet to succed showing Presenter Display on my laptop outside, using my VGA adapter. So I fall back on mirroring. Admittedly I invariably have very little time experimenting with set-up, local hosts/organizers usually very reluctant to allow a Mac anyway.
> 
> Any comments, advice etc welcome.
> 
> Peter

I have to admit that I have always disliked ``slide presentations'' (when I was teaching I used the blackboard --- like I said I was very old fashioned). The TeXShop WorkShops I've given at TUG conferences all simply used a projector with VGA input and the Mac was simply Mirrored so it was  a live display of TeXShop.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
(herbs at wideopenwest dot com)