I've Changed My Mind About the Touchbar...

[TPadden]

Not all touchscreens also have digitizers that allow the use of a stylus... plenty of touchscreen Windows laptops won't be able to do what you posted.

Agreed, but none of the MBP's with Touchbar can. OK, I agree touchbar is great for what it does.

 

[TheRealAlex]

I was pretty skeptical about the touchbar on the new MBPs. Seemed like a gimmick to me.

After actually using the new machine for a few solid days now I'm seeing what Apple has done with it in Xcode. I think this touchbar will be pretty useful once adopted.

So far other than XCode I'm noticing it's pretty useful for scrubbing video and audio. It's also very useful for the tap and slide controls like volume and brightness.

My take is that it's a lot better than I originally thought. Actually, it's pretty amazing.

Yeah what about a touch screen. Apple needs to wake up.

 

[xmonkey]

Agreed, but none of the MBP's with Touchbar can. OK, I agree touchbar is great for what it does.

I'm just trying to point out that you were extolling the virtues of touchscreens, when really it seems like you're posting examples of how great a stylus is instead. I think they're great too and it's why I have the Pencil and an iPad Pro (and a Wacom too), but I definitely don't think that's a good feature to build into the current MBP screen. Unless your laptop is a 2-in-1 that can fold over itself, I don't think having to reach to the screen over the keyboard in front of you is great UX.

Now what would be pretty nice is if Apple had Pencil support on the giant trackpad so you could use that instead of the screen (like how a Wacom works). I think this could happen down the line in a future revision.

 

[thesaint024]

See if you can do this on a non-touchscreen with Office .........

Super neato! Remind me again what it is you do, what computer you have, and how scribbling will make my work more productive on my MBP?
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I'm just trying to point out that you were extolling the virtues of touchscreens, when really it seems like you're posting examples of how great a stylus is instead. I think they're great too and it's why I have the Pencil and an iPad Pro (and a Wacom too), but I definitely don't think that's a good feature to build into the current MBP screen. Unless your laptop is a 2-in-1 that can fold over itself, I don't think having to reach to the screen over the keyboard in front of you is great UX.

Now what would be pretty nice is if Apple had Pencil support on the giant trackpad so you could use that instead of the screen (like how a Wacom works). I think this could happen down the line in a future revision.

Agree, clear applications for this stuff, just not for people like me who use Office on a laptop. Why someone would insist I need to do this without any comprehensible answers as to how they do is beyond me. Not saying MS can't get there, they've just been trying for 5-10 years now and still it's not more productive. They made Office too optimized for a keyboard maybe? A 2 in 1 that had battery and was lightweight is a good start, but still doesn't make Office better, @jerryk 's meeting note taking example excepted.

 

[philosopherdog]

Yeah what about a touch screen. Apple needs to wake up.

I agree with them on this one. I don't think anyone can build one of these that isn't seriously a compromise machine. Look at the Surface book for example. It's slow, expensive and really neither a good tablet nor a good laptop. Apple wants to avoid making a surface. Until battery technology really improves I doubt we'll see Apple go in this direction. It might make a bit more sense on a desktop machine, but I think it's a really limited market. Not worth it for Apple to take engineers who can make much more profitable devices than the odd pro user who might find an iMac with a touch screen and some funky stand useful. I'm sure Apple's keeping an eye on that market. I bet it's so small and the devices really aren't that exciting at the end of the day. I can't see them venturing in this direction for the foreseeable future. Whenever I think of a lot of these touch screen portable laptops I think of the 90's when there were all those crappy tablet type devices. They weren't that great then and I don't think they're all that much better today.