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I honestly hope the Touch Bar doesn't survive longer than one generation of MacBooks. I believe the whole thing is a gimmick (a well intentioned gimmick) meant

I honestly hope the Touch Bar doesn't survive longer than one generation of MacBooks. I believe the whole thing is a gimmick (a well intentioned gimmick) meant to drive forward one thing, Apple Pay on the MacBook. Most likely it's internally perceived as a situation where the end justifies the means, if Apple Pay is widely adopted on the MacBook this will look like a genius decision down the line and make a ridiculous amount of money in the long-term. If not, blame the Touch Bar. Apple should have done a full touch input screen on the MacBook. It might not have been perfect, but it would have been lauded as revolutionary by the mainstream media. By not doing it they have now given their competitors the chance to grab that market. When Apple does eventually make a full touch input screen MacBook, Apple Pay will be a part of it. The Touch Bar is just a stepping stone to get to that point, but it's a step they should have skipped.

georgespencer 10y ago
> I honestly hope the Touch Bar doesn't survive longer than one generation of MacBooks. Have you used it?
- leetrout 10y ago
  > Have you used it? This. This x 1000. Everyone is complaining without any hands on experience. The "magic mouse" is one of my least favorite pieces of tech to come from Apple (I use a trusty Logitech) and I do 95% or more of my work with an external mechanical keyboard. I wouldn't even notice the change and I think a lot of people wouldn't, either. The track pad is lightyears beyond anything I've had from Lenovo (can't speak for HP) and has to be the One Killer Feature™ that would make me ^happily pick a brand new MBP. They really should support more ram though...
  - rbanffy 10y ago
    > can't speak for HP HP, Acer, Dell... Nothing comes close.
  - gordon_freeman 10y ago
    > The track pad is lightyears beyond anything I've had from Lenovo This. If I want to pick one feature on Macbook (Base/Air/Pro) hardware side (Obviously I can not live without macOS because of its Unix-like nature plus all the major supported 3rd party softwares) then that would be Macbook's touchpad. It's absolutely irreplaceable and lightyears ahead in scrolling experience than any other damn laptop.
mcphage 10y ago
The Apple Pay fingerprint scanner is attached to the (still physical) power button, so it really doesn't have anything to do with the Touch Bar.
- walterbell 10y ago
  Both Apple Pay scanner and Touch Bar display run on a separate ARM processor.
  - mcphage 10y ago
    Sure, but even if they ditch the bar I don't see them ditching Apple Pay.
    - walterbell 10y ago
      They would need at least a portion of the bar to display the Apple Pay recipient. I guess they could make the bar screen smaller and restore function keys.
      - mcphage 10y ago
        They could just display the recipient on the screen, like they do currently without the Touch Bar.
  - matt-attack 10y ago
    Which must explain why they're only available as a pair. I would have been tempted to buy the non-Touch Bar 13", but it lacks Touch ID which seems really nice. Though I'm not sure I'd want to trust FileVault (i.e. full disk encryption) to a fingerprint, since a fingerprint it can be coerced.
    - serge2k 10y ago
      Does it do that? I would have hoped password on boot, fingerprint when bringing back from sleep or locked screen.
usaphp 10y ago
Have you actually used the touch bar?
nilkn 10y ago
I think the Touch Bar has potential, to be honest. The main selling point is that it offers apps a way to make previously hidden functionality much more discoverable. The traditional row of function keys is flexible and simple, but it also places a lot of demands on the user -- it's up to you to research what each key does in all possible contexts and to commit that to memory. The odds are very high that there exists at least one context in which some function key performs a function that would be useful to you but you weren't aware of it. The Touch Bar could be a remedy to this situation. That said, I haven't used it and don't want to sing its praises too early. But I also don't want to wish it dead on arrival.
- tiglionabbit 10y ago
  Macbooks don't have a row of "function keys" though. They have a row of keys that do very specific things in the OS: * Adjust screen brightness (x2) * Adjust volume and mute (x3) * Adjust keyboard brightness (x2) * Power button (x1) * Play/pause and next/previous (x3) * Rearrange the desktop windows (x2) So, if you launch an app that uses the touch bar, will you lose the ability to adjust the brightness and volume?
  - glhaynes 10y ago
    No, a portion of the bar (the "Control Strip") is always reserved for system stuff and can be expanded to full width with a tap.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - tdb7893 10y ago
    The only one of those I use regularly is volume. As long as they have an easy way to change volume I think the touchbar is a good thing
  - DashRattlesnake 10y ago
    > Macbooks don't have a row of "function keys" though. They have a row of keys that do very specific things in the OS If you look closely, those keys have things like "F1", "F2", etc. written on them. They're function keys.
laurentdc 10y ago
Maybe it's just me, but I dislike any sort of touch input on a laptop besides the regular trackpad. The Touch Bar seems distracting since I don't really understand why one should look down and search for what to press instead of simply using a keyboard shortcut via muscle memory. But I have yet to try one and I understand that for stuff like a video editing timeline overview it may be suited - it's an additional display showing information afterall. On the other hand, a full screen touch input like the dell XPS feels like the least ergonomic thing. How are you supposed to interact with it? Holding your arms up extended to the screen? [0] [0] http://i.dell.com/sites/imagecontent/products/PublishingImages/xps-15-9530/laptop-xps-15-love-pdp-module-1.jpg http://i.dell.com/sites/imagecontent/products/PublishingImag...
- froo 10y ago
  > I don't really understand why one should look down and search for what to press instead of simply using a keyboard shortcut via muscle memory. From a personal perspective, I agree. I think we generally forget though, we are vastly in the minority and this technology is designed for the layman Basically my litmus test for this stuff is "would my technologically illiterate mum use and understand this. Will it enrich her computing experience". If yes, it's not a dumb idea. We'll see how the market reacts though
- SBArbeit 10y ago
  If you've never used a Windows touch screen PC, I can imagine that you can't imagine why you'd want a touch screen. If you have, then you know that after a day or so, you just start reaching for the screen intuitively, and it's a rude reminder of the bad old days when it's not a touch screen. This is what Apple missed: none of them use a touch screen, none of them bother to check out Windows, so they can't imagine how important it can be. The Touch Bar is a poor substitute for it, and calling any laptop "premium" in 2016 without full touch is marketing, not reality.
  - basch 10y ago
    >This is what Apple missed: none of them use a touch screen Some Apple employees might use iPads or iPhones.
MrScruff 10y ago
> Apple should have done a full touch input screen on the MacBook. It might not have been perfect, but it would have been lauded as revolutionary by the mainstream media. By not doing it they have now given their competitors the chance to grab that market. What makes you think they would do this? The arguments they've made about MacOS fundamentally not working well with touch input make complete sense to me. iOS was designed for touch input, MacOS was designed for pointer input. I think they could have added the fingerprint sensor without adding touch bar if they had wanted to - they're not the same hardware.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
finchisko 10y ago
>Apple should have done a full touch input screen on the MacBook why repeat somebody's else mistakes?
- mangeletti 10y ago
  Exactly. I don't want fingerprints all over my screen, there isn't much real value in a touchscreen laptop for 80% of users, and their tablets already cover those bases (especially with the advent of the iPad Pro).
ookblah 10y ago
i would agree except why bundle touchbar at all with the touch id/apple pay? and why remove it from the base macbook pro. i figure if touch id was a priority they would make a huge effort to update the mac line with a touch id sensor at a bare minimum. as it stands now the decision making seems fragmented and unfocused.
rbanffy 10y ago
> Apple should have done a full touch input screen on the MacBook. And make you move your hands off the keyboard area? No, thanks.
Someone 10y ago
I think is somewhat of a gimmick, too, but withhold my judgment until I've tried it or at least have heard from many people that it indeed is No escape key. Less touch space than a Surface Studio. Lame. I suspect that the missing physical escape key will not be much of a problem because, from what I have read, the left and right edges of the TouchBar have a fairly fixed layout, so muscle memory will work there. Also, those who really need haptic cues to find the key will learn to slide in their finger from the left end or use the number keys to find where the TouchBar starts without having to specifically look at it. Also, I don't think Apple would add such an expensive piece of kit (I doubt the price difference is mostly margin. Can you buy LCD panels of that size or were they specially made for them? How hard is it to make such a thing robust? A thin stroke of glass breaks easier than a full screen) if they thought it to be a UI nightmare. But since I know so little details of this, that's mostly guessing.
- mangeletti 10y ago
  The only thing I have to say, to play devils advocate, is that I wish they would've made it so that the escape key was in the very very left when it is there, so that I wouldn't have to learn a new offset location The only thing I have to say, to play devils advocate, is that I wish they would've made it so that the escape key was in the very very left when it is there, so that I wouldn't have to learn a new offset location. I'm assuming the location is offset by about the width of one key, based on the pictures I've seen.
- kingbruce90 10y ago
  You can remap Caps Lock to Esc from the keyboard preferences pane in the latest Sierra update.
beamatronic 10y ago
If we're going to do gimmicks, let's see some useful gimmicks. As Don Draper said on Mad Men, if you don't like what's being said, change the conversation. - Built in LTE modems on all devices - 1 TB RAM optional - 4k Touch Screen - Two Day Battery
- vlozko 10y ago
  All for a price tag of $6k for an 8lb machine that no one would buy.
wlesieutre 10y ago
> I believe the whole thing is a gimmick (a well intentioned gimmick) meant to drive forward one thing, Apple Pay on the MacBook If that's the case, wouldn't it have been a lot easier to replace only the power button in the top-right corner rather than creating a whole interface device to replace the function keys?
jgeerts 10y ago
I'm growing tired of people saying that they want a full touch screen. Good luck holding your arms up 8 hours a day while sitting. Every new thing that Apple does gets a lot of negative attention, remember the launch of the iPad? It was being mocked and laughed at but now everyone seems to have a tablet. Remember this? https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/400/1*9tNGJOMAcFprbQrUFpDteg.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/400/1*9tNGJOMAcFprbQrUFp... Another argument I saw is "they force users to look down at their keyboard". I still have to meet the first user who uses the function rows blindly, besides the esc key it wasn't that useful and everyone was looking down at the keyboard to find the right keys already. It intrigues me and I would like to try it out.
- pmontra 10y ago
  Why would you use the touchscreen for a full 8 hours expecially on a large desktop monitor? It's ok to use it sometimes on a laptop, where the screen is close to the hands and much lower than the shoulders. I tried and sometimes I was using the trackpad, sometimes the screen.
- Uhhrrr 10y ago
  I have a Lenovo Yoga with touch screen and it's frequently easier to just touch the screen than guide the mouse over. It is convenient enough that I probably will never go back (willingly). It doesn't mean that I'm pointing 8 hours a day. Most of the time I'm just typing.
outworlder 10y ago
I have not used the Touch Bar, yet I agree that's a gimmick. The problem is that it needs software support. Which means adoption. And that's a problem, since it is only rolling out in the newest MBPs. Had the entire line been refreshed, developers would at least count on it being there and could justify allocating resources supporting it. Also, what's the external keyboard for, now? I disagree that Macbooks need touch screens. Touchscreen ergonomics are terrible, unless you change the form factor.
- glhaynes 10y ago
  It's easy in Xcode to pop up a simulation of the Touch Bar for Macs that don't have them. Obviously not as good as the real thing, but I expect we'll see at least basic Touch Bar use become a standard feature very rapidly.
rayiner 10y ago
Pretty much nobody has been able to turn touch into a "must have" on the PC. Microsoft has tried valiantly, but it's shipping a million Surface devices per quarter versus five million Macs and 10 million iPads.

georgespencer 10y ago

> I honestly hope the Touch Bar doesn't survive longer than one generation of MacBooks. Have you used it?

leetrout 10y ago
> Have you used it? This. This x 1000. Everyone is complaining without any hands on experience. The "magic mouse" is one of my least favorite pieces of tech to come from Apple (I use a trusty Logitech) and I do 95% or more of my work with an external mechanical keyboard. I wouldn't even notice the change and I think a lot of people wouldn't, either. The track pad is lightyears beyond anything I've had from Lenovo (can't speak for HP) and has to be the One Killer Feature™ that would make me ^happily pick a brand new MBP. They really should support more ram though...
- rbanffy 10y ago
  > can't speak for HP HP, Acer, Dell... Nothing comes close.
- gordon_freeman 10y ago
  > The track pad is lightyears beyond anything I've had from Lenovo This. If I want to pick one feature on Macbook (Base/Air/Pro) hardware side (Obviously I can not live without macOS because of its Unix-like nature plus all the major supported 3rd party softwares) then that would be Macbook's touchpad. It's absolutely irreplaceable and lightyears ahead in scrolling experience than any other damn laptop.

mcphage 10y ago

The Apple Pay fingerprint scanner is attached to the (still physical) power button, so it really doesn't have anything to do with the Touch Bar.

walterbell 10y ago
Both Apple Pay scanner and Touch Bar display run on a separate ARM processor.
- mcphage 10y ago
  Sure, but even if they ditch the bar I don't see them ditching Apple Pay.
  - walterbell 10y ago
    They would need at least a portion of the bar to display the Apple Pay recipient. I guess they could make the bar screen smaller and restore function keys.
    - mcphage 10y ago
      They could just display the recipient on the screen, like they do currently without the Touch Bar.
- matt-attack 10y ago
  Which must explain why they're only available as a pair. I would have been tempted to buy the non-Touch Bar 13", but it lacks Touch ID which seems really nice. Though I'm not sure I'd want to trust FileVault (i.e. full disk encryption) to a fingerprint, since a fingerprint it can be coerced.
  - serge2k 10y ago
    Does it do that? I would have hoped password on boot, fingerprint when bringing back from sleep or locked screen.

usaphp 10y ago

Have you actually used the touch bar?

nilkn 10y ago

I think the Touch Bar has potential, to be honest. The main selling point is that it offers apps a way to make previously hidden functionality much more discoverable. The traditional row of function keys is flexible and simple, but it also places a lot of demands on the user -- it's up to you to research what each key does in all possible contexts and to commit that to memory. The odds are very high that there exists at least one context in which some function key performs a function that would be useful to you but you weren't aware of it. The Touch Bar could be a remedy to this situation. That said, I haven't used it and don't want to sing its praises too early. But I also don't want to wish it dead on arrival.

tiglionabbit 10y ago
Macbooks don't have a row of "function keys" though. They have a row of keys that do very specific things in the OS: * Adjust screen brightness (x2) * Adjust volume and mute (x3) * Adjust keyboard brightness (x2) * Power button (x1) * Play/pause and next/previous (x3) * Rearrange the desktop windows (x2) So, if you launch an app that uses the touch bar, will you lose the ability to adjust the brightness and volume?
- glhaynes 10y ago
  No, a portion of the bar (the "Control Strip") is always reserved for system stuff and can be expanded to full width with a tap.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- tdb7893 10y ago
  The only one of those I use regularly is volume. As long as they have an easy way to change volume I think the touchbar is a good thing
- DashRattlesnake 10y ago
  > Macbooks don't have a row of "function keys" though. They have a row of keys that do very specific things in the OS If you look closely, those keys have things like "F1", "F2", etc. written on them. They're function keys.

laurentdc 10y ago

Maybe it's just me, but I dislike any sort of touch input on a laptop besides the regular trackpad. The Touch Bar seems distracting since I don't really understand why one should look down and search for what to press instead of simply using a keyboard shortcut via muscle memory. But I have yet to try one and I understand that for stuff like a video editing timeline overview it may be suited - it's an additional display showing information afterall. On the other hand, a full screen touch input like the dell XPS feels like the least ergonomic thing. How are you supposed to interact with it? Holding your arms up extended to the screen? [0] [0] http://i.dell.com/sites/imagecontent/products/PublishingImages/xps-15-9530/laptop-xps-15-love-pdp-module-1.jpg http://i.dell.com/sites/imagecontent/products/PublishingImag...

froo 10y ago
> I don't really understand why one should look down and search for what to press instead of simply using a keyboard shortcut via muscle memory. From a personal perspective, I agree. I think we generally forget though, we are vastly in the minority and this technology is designed for the layman Basically my litmus test for this stuff is "would my technologically illiterate mum use and understand this. Will it enrich her computing experience". If yes, it's not a dumb idea. We'll see how the market reacts though
SBArbeit 10y ago
If you've never used a Windows touch screen PC, I can imagine that you can't imagine why you'd want a touch screen. If you have, then you know that after a day or so, you just start reaching for the screen intuitively, and it's a rude reminder of the bad old days when it's not a touch screen. This is what Apple missed: none of them use a touch screen, none of them bother to check out Windows, so they can't imagine how important it can be. The Touch Bar is a poor substitute for it, and calling any laptop "premium" in 2016 without full touch is marketing, not reality.
- basch 10y ago
  >This is what Apple missed: none of them use a touch screen Some Apple employees might use iPads or iPhones.

MrScruff 10y ago

> Apple should have done a full touch input screen on the MacBook. It might not have been perfect, but it would have been lauded as revolutionary by the mainstream media. By not doing it they have now given their competitors the chance to grab that market. What makes you think they would do this? The arguments they've made about MacOS fundamentally not working well with touch input make complete sense to me. iOS was designed for touch input, MacOS was designed for pointer input. I think they could have added the fingerprint sensor without adding touch bar if they had wanted to - they're not the same hardware.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

finchisko 10y ago

>Apple should have done a full touch input screen on the MacBook why repeat somebody's else mistakes?

mangeletti 10y ago
Exactly. I don't want fingerprints all over my screen, there isn't much real value in a touchscreen laptop for 80% of users, and their tablets already cover those bases (especially with the advent of the iPad Pro).

ookblah 10y ago

i would agree except why bundle touchbar at all with the touch id/apple pay? and why remove it from the base macbook pro. i figure if touch id was a priority they would make a huge effort to update the mac line with a touch id sensor at a bare minimum. as it stands now the decision making seems fragmented and unfocused.

rbanffy 10y ago

> Apple should have done a full touch input screen on the MacBook. And make you move your hands off the keyboard area? No, thanks.

Someone 10y ago

I think is somewhat of a gimmick, too, but withhold my judgment until I've tried it or at least have heard from many people that it indeed is No escape key. Less touch space than a Surface Studio. Lame. I suspect that the missing physical escape key will not be much of a problem because, from what I have read, the left and right edges of the TouchBar have a fairly fixed layout, so muscle memory will work there. Also, those who really need haptic cues to find the key will learn to slide in their finger from the left end or use the number keys to find where the TouchBar starts without having to specifically look at it. Also, I don't think Apple would add such an expensive piece of kit (I doubt the price difference is mostly margin. Can you buy LCD panels of that size or were they specially made for them? How hard is it to make such a thing robust? A thin stroke of glass breaks easier than a full screen) if they thought it to be a UI nightmare. But since I know so little details of this, that's mostly guessing.

mangeletti 10y ago
The only thing I have to say, to play devils advocate, is that I wish they would've made it so that the escape key was in the very very left when it is there, so that I wouldn't have to learn a new offset location The only thing I have to say, to play devils advocate, is that I wish they would've made it so that the escape key was in the very very left when it is there, so that I wouldn't have to learn a new offset location. I'm assuming the location is offset by about the width of one key, based on the pictures I've seen.
kingbruce90 10y ago
You can remap Caps Lock to Esc from the keyboard preferences pane in the latest Sierra update.

beamatronic 10y ago

If we're going to do gimmicks, let's see some useful gimmicks. As Don Draper said on Mad Men, if you don't like what's being said, change the conversation. - Built in LTE modems on all devices - 1 TB RAM optional - 4k Touch Screen - Two Day Battery

vlozko 10y ago
All for a price tag of $6k for an 8lb machine that no one would buy.

wlesieutre 10y ago

> I believe the whole thing is a gimmick (a well intentioned gimmick) meant to drive forward one thing, Apple Pay on the MacBook If that's the case, wouldn't it have been a lot easier to replace only the power button in the top-right corner rather than creating a whole interface device to replace the function keys?

jgeerts 10y ago

I'm growing tired of people saying that they want a full touch screen. Good luck holding your arms up 8 hours a day while sitting. Every new thing that Apple does gets a lot of negative attention, remember the launch of the iPad? It was being mocked and laughed at but now everyone seems to have a tablet. Remember this? https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/400/1*9tNGJOMAcFprbQrUFpDteg.jpeg https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/400/1*9tNGJOMAcFprbQrUFp... Another argument I saw is "they force users to look down at their keyboard". I still have to meet the first user who uses the function rows blindly, besides the esc key it wasn't that useful and everyone was looking down at the keyboard to find the right keys already. It intrigues me and I would like to try it out.

pmontra 10y ago
Why would you use the touchscreen for a full 8 hours expecially on a large desktop monitor? It's ok to use it sometimes on a laptop, where the screen is close to the hands and much lower than the shoulders. I tried and sometimes I was using the trackpad, sometimes the screen.
Uhhrrr 10y ago
I have a Lenovo Yoga with touch screen and it's frequently easier to just touch the screen than guide the mouse over. It is convenient enough that I probably will never go back (willingly). It doesn't mean that I'm pointing 8 hours a day. Most of the time I'm just typing.

outworlder 10y ago

I have not used the Touch Bar, yet I agree that's a gimmick. The problem is that it needs software support. Which means adoption. And that's a problem, since it is only rolling out in the newest MBPs. Had the entire line been refreshed, developers would at least count on it being there and could justify allocating resources supporting it. Also, what's the external keyboard for, now? I disagree that Macbooks need touch screens. Touchscreen ergonomics are terrible, unless you change the form factor.

glhaynes 10y ago
It's easy in Xcode to pop up a simulation of the Touch Bar for Macs that don't have them. Obviously not as good as the real thing, but I expect we'll see at least basic Touch Bar use become a standard feature very rapidly.

rayiner 10y ago

Pretty much nobody has been able to turn touch into a "must have" on the PC. Microsoft has tried valiantly, but it's shipping a million Surface devices per quarter versus five million Macs and 10 million iPads.