Maybe an OLED Strip Could Bring QuickType to the Mac ⇥ loumiranda.com

Lou Miranda has an intriguing idea for how the rumoured OLED strip on the new MacBook Pros could be utilized:

By having an OLED touch screen instead of function keys, Apple can bring the API that supports inputAccessoryView to the Mac (helping developers create apps that work identically on iOS and OS X).

While you’re in the Finder in OS X, the OLED touch bar will display things like volume & brightness & media playback controls. When you’re in Pages, it’ll display buttons for bold, italic, font, text size, etc. (and maybe a generic button to bring up media playback, too). When you’re in FCP X, the OLED touch bar will display options for editing video.

His ideas are similar to what I wrote yesterday, but I wasn’t considering it in the style of the QuickType bar that appears above the keyboard on iOS. But I’m still not convinced that I’ll like all of my keyboard functions changing with each application. Perhaps there’s a way to “lock” certain widgets.