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When the Touch Bar is discussed the discussion often turns into "is the Touch Bar useful or not?" When the crux of the whole issue is that they removed a row of
by Someone1234 7y ago
When the Touch Bar is discussed the discussion often turns into "is the Touch Bar useful or not?" When the crux of the whole issue is that they removed a row of keys (F- keys and escape key), because the new oversized touchpad needed to be 10mm bigger.
If they had simply left all the keys, shrunk the touchpad, and added the Touch Bar above the keyboard, people who didn't like the Touch Bar would simply choose not to use it (or even shut it off) and people who loved it could continue to do so.
That's the issue. Not the Touch Bar itself's benefit, that's a red herring.
- makecheck 7y agoNot entirely true. - Touch Bar clearly factors into the cost. There is simply no way it is cheaper to have this when one could have just keys. - It adds brightness to peripheral vision. Even if you don’t use it, it is “there” as a distraction. - It is a great way to randomly trigger events by mistake. - This is a laptop with limited battery power, it is more efficient to have keys doing nothing than to have a touch screen.
- robert_tweed 7y agoWhile this is true, I am also put off by the increased attack surface of a proprietary embedded OS (watchOS) running in the touchbar, outside the control of the main OS and by extension, not under my control either. Given how much everyone around here hates similar things like UEFI and the Intel IME (with good reason), I'm surprised this one seems to slip under the radar. Probably because everyone is much more incensed about losing necessary physical keys. Classic misdirection.
- scarface74 7y agoThe T1 chip also serves as an authentication chip, a disk controller, and can be used for video encoding/decoding.
- robert_tweed 7y agoThat's kinda the problem. It's a secure enclave (potentially a good thing) but a far too complex one with too many responsibilities and capabilities. I am of the opinion that the secure enclave for fingerprint reading should be something that updates ideally never, and requires a hardware jumper to be set if one is absolutely necessary. Ideally I'd like the firmware to be open source too. Those are two related but different issues though.
- scarface74 7y agoIt’s not like the chip isn’t based on years of work. It based on the same technology and design that’s been in iPhones since 2013.