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Touch Bar should have been ADDED, not REPLACED

About 15-20 years ago companies started experimenting with the idea that every key on a keyboard could be a programmable screen. That way you could ship one keyboard for all languages and every app could display shortcuts on the keyboard. Sounds awesome.

The problem was that users type on keyboards all day long and that eventually causes these little programmable touch screens to damage and fail.

Keys still had to be mechanical because a full size keyboard with no moving parts is very tiring to type on and we need physical feedback to be able to touch type without many errors. Typing on a computer is very different behaviour from typing on a phone or tablet.

The Touchbar was conceived to address that problem by just having one touch screen strip for programmable shortcuts. As we have seen that was still an issue when the component fails.

It wasn't widely used anyway because using regular keyboard shortcuts is quicker thanks to the Command/ctrl key and muscle memory.

So it was better to get rid of it completely.
 
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The Touch Bar should be available as a separate accessory, a thin strip you can attach above the function key row using double-sided tape.
 
ILoveCalvinCool said:
The touch bar era was the absolute nadir of Macs for me. At that point, they were so expensive, so underpowered compared to all alternatives, and the pinnacle of the thinness fetish at all costs, that I thought I was going to be forced to go back to Windows. Fortunately they recovered and got rid of that nonsense and began to move in the direction of Apple Silicon. Otherwise I would be back on PCs at this point.
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Naturally, the Apple thinness craze is rumored to be making a comeback for the upcoming MacBook Pro redesign. Sad. Engineering compromises will be inevitable for those future models just as they were for the 2016-ish era, even if such compromises prove to be less drastic on AS hardware.
 
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An-apple-a-day said:
Naturally, the Apple thinness craze is rumored to be making a comeback for the upcoming MacBook Pro redesign. Sad.
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There’s no significant slimming down coming. As the computer power, GPU cores and memory requirements for AI goes up the MBP needs adequate cooling otherwise it’s not going to remain competitive against Nvidia laptop GPUs.

The die size of M SoC is going to get bigger. The M4 was a minor update compared to the M5.
 
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Going from a 2012 MacBook Air to a 2023 MacBook Pro means I’ve missed out on the Touch Bar. I’ve used it on a friend’s MacBook, and I’m sad I’ve missed out. It was a good idea, though the function keys probably should have been kept.
 
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Joe's kitchen said:
So MacBook's unpopular Touch Bar is completely gone....

I think it was unique gimmick with something potential and it should have been ADDED to the full keyboard, instead of REPLACING the physical keys.

What do you think?
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Have you ever typed on iPad?

Sure, on the bigger iPads, it's doable and acceptable. But it's not something I'd ever opt for except in a pinch.

The fact that Apple makes its own keyboards for iPad, and that the best ones are only compatible with iPads Pro is not a coincidence.

I see Apple innovating handsfree gesture controlled keyboard input before getting it's touch displays to match physical keyboards.

-It ain't happening as longs as you're tapping on a sheet of glass.
 
By far the biggest annoyance with the touch bar was the very “feature” AAPL touted as a virtue, namely that it changed depending on the app you were using it in. In creating the touch bar AAPL defied the concept it has been promulgating since Day 1 of the Mac—that the user interface should be predictable, readily discoverable, and easy to use.

The touch bar was none of these—except perhaps for the small number of users who found utility in the “quick access” to choices within a particular app or two. I personally couldn't be bothered learning where things were located and continued to use the menus I already had muscle memory for. I suspect most other users were the same.
 
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I finally replaced my Intel MBP this year. Been missing the Touch Bar every day.

I agree that keeping function keys and the Touch Bar would’ve probably satisfied most people. For those saying, “why pay for something you don’t want to use?” I had to pay for an SD card slot on my MBP that I’ll never use. If it’s that much of a problem for you, get a MacBook Air.

And it’s not like MacBook Pros got less expensive without the Touch Bar. Apple just removed hardware and kept more of your money.
 
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I mostly liked it on my 2018 13" MBP but hated the "soft" escape key that was way too easy to touch accidentally.
 
ApplesAreSweet&Sour said:
Have you ever typed on iPad?

Sure, on the bigger iPads, it's doable and acceptable. But it's not something I'd ever opt for except in a pinch.
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I have and I frequently do. In fact, I am typing this on an iPad mini propped on my chest while sitting on the couch with my feet on the coffee table, typing “hunt and peck” style (using only my index finger) on the iPad's keyboard.

If I were typing a long email or a five-page paper, it would be too clunky and slow—and in those cases I haul out my iPad Pro with Magic keyboard or my Mac. But for a few paragraphs, it works just fine.

And the advantage to typing this way is that I can sit in a relaxed position while typing, instead of having to sit upright while typing on a physical keyboard. Yes, I have tried propping the iPad Pro/Mac in a similar position but I find typing that way quite awkward.
 
Not having a physical escape key in the beginning doomed the experiment. By the time they fixed it with later models it was already too late. Also the fact that you couldn’t buy separately or get it on the external keyboard meant a vast majority of users never got one and developers weren’t going to invest in a niche feature.
 
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Touchbar had all the trappings of C-suite infighting. Group A managed to get it onto the hardware. But group B managed to make sure no Apple written software ever supported it. It reminds me of nothing so much as the infamous Google+, that went from the SSO for google to withdrawn from offering in less than 5 years.

I think it was beautiful! I had a plugin for Better Touch Pro that went a long way towards making it actually useful. That said I seldom actually pushed the buttons. On the other hand I virtually NEVER use the function keys and didn’t miss them in the slightest one single time.

Adding touchbar in addition to function keys would have required either the mouse pad to get smaller: which would have made a lot of users very angry, or making the case 12mm longer: which would have cost real money in retooling the assembly line. The retooling would have spiraled into the whole supply chain if they had to change the screen size to keep the edge to edge aesthetic.

Ultimately I liked it and it did delay my upgrade a little. But when I got my new work MacBook it drove home that I never actually use the built-in screen, keyboard, or mousepad. And I can’t say I really miss it. In the end Touchbar was a victim of politics and economics in equal measure.
 
I adore the touch bar and quite frankly find it crazy it isn’t in new laptops. I have an M1 Pro with it and I will be delaying replacing it many MANY years longer than I would have otherwise done due to not wanting to loose it. I would happily pay £100-£200 extra on top of a MacBook pro’s already overpriced fee to add it on.


Also, I’ve never used any add ons or mods, just as it comes and it is VERY useful and VERY cool.
 
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I liked the TouchBar and my current Mac laptop has it. But, I will also admit that it was a little gimmicky and I hardly ever used it, but also that there was room for improvement. The main issue, I think, is that it is not possible to use without looking at the keyboard (for the most part).

One way to solve that is to actually have physical buttons in which each has its own display that can change depending on what you want it to do or what the program assigns it for. The downside to this solution is that there are some kinds of "keys" that cannot function this way such as a video slider, volume slider, and that kind of "key" that requires a long key. But I think that would be the only downside.

For the most part, I think the downfall of the TouchBar is a result of the keys not begin physically delineated, and therefore no touch typing for those keys.
 
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The Touch Bar was a terrible idea to begin with, and Apple knows it. Having owned a MBP with Touch Bar, there were 3 obvious problems.

1. No tactile feedback. This made it difficult to know whether a button had been pressed successfully or whether you'd touched the surrounding area; because with the bar being so shallow, it was never as easy to press as a regular button.

2. Buggy and ill-conceived software. Problems with the interface plagued the Touch Bar since its inception, which is part of the reason why Apple reintroduced the physical Escape button. And the contextual design of the buttons where its own downfall, because these didn't make you any more productive. 99% of the time it was quicker to simply click on an on-screen button to perform an action within an app.

3. It wasn't a natural place to navigate. Physical keyboards work because when you learn to touch type because you don't need to constantly look at it, except for some back and forth viewing. But with the Touch Bar, you couldn't just press a button effortlessly, it took more time and thought with it being at the top of the keyboard and having to switch hand positions between the bar and trackpad, just to perform simple actions.

There are so many examples, but consider Apple's own PR when they allowed a 'DJ' to mix music with the Touch Bar. No musician in the world would even consider using this tiny touchscreen to do something when the 13"/15" screen above it does everything better. And this just about summed up the problem with the concept; Apple's attempt at reviving MacBook sales with a gimmick rather than addressing the main problem of the time, which was performance.
 
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Joe's kitchen said:
So MacBook's unpopular Touch Bar is completely gone....

I think it was unique gimmick with something potential and it should have been ADDED to the full keyboard, instead of REPLACING the physical keys.

What do you think?
Click to expand...

Within two days of replacing my Touchbar MBP with the M2 Max MDP, I had already forgotten it even existed. The "convenience" was far outweighed by its limited functionality, small footprint, and complete lack of tactile response compared to both the trackpad and the keyboard proper.
 
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I am Sampson said:
I adore the touch bar and quite frankly find it crazy it isn’t in new laptops. I have an M1 Pro with it and I will be delaying replacing it many MANY years longer than I would have otherwise done due to not wanting to loose it. I would happily pay £100-£200 extra on top of a MacBook pro’s already overpriced fee to add it on.


Also, I’ve never used any add ons or mods, just as it comes and it is VERY useful and VERY cool.
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That would place you squarely in a small minority of the Mac user base who actually likes the Touchbar. It had all the potential in the world, but its implementation and limitations are what killed it. Personally, I use the function keys more in one week than I would use the touchbar in one year, and I don't have to use third party applications like Better Touch Tool to make them usable.
 
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the keyboard were to go full Touch Bar with pressure sensitive touch and changing based on the application your using would've been a game changer
 
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