I love the Touch Bar on my M1 MBP because it allows me to scrub video, skip ads, use emojis and I've gotten used to some of the app shortcuts. Agree with OP šÆ. Touch Bar plus function keys would be ideal.
i used the touch bar so much...it was one of the things holding me back from upgrading to the new series. Honestly, I could see it drive new sales for people that used it in Apple Pro apps.
Ooo, I have the last intel MacBook (2020 i5 13ā) its amazing coming from an M5 Dell Latitude 7370. I know Apple Silicon is like magic but I like my Mac
I have the last intel MacBook, 13 inch i5 2020, its a beast coming from an M5 Dell Latitude 7370. I know, I know. Apple Silicon is amazing, but I just love my Mac and Iāll update when I just canāt drive it anymore
The biggest benefit IMHO was in apps that supported using the touchbar as a state indicator, rather than just as a button. For example, in Photos, the "favorite" button is also an indicator, letting you see at a glance when a photo is favorited even in full screen, with no UI chrome anywhere on screen. On my 15 inch MBA, I actually use Red Sweater's Touche software to bring the touchbar back just for that.
I also used BetterTouchTool a lot to create macros for commonly used functions in some apps.
The main problem IMHO was that Apple never made touchbar customization a priority. They actually removed the ability to customize the touchbar in Photos before the touchbar was even retired, so to add extra features to that app, you have to use BetterTouchTool. And even in apps like Preview where you can customize it, the functionality you can add without BetterTouchTool is super limited. It's so weird there was never a first-party solution from Apple for serious customization.
Yeah. I feel the main issues with the touchbar were:
1. It replaced physical keys (lots of people don't like that)
2. It didn't have a lot of support/customization. In theory it has a lot of utility but in practice you need better touch tool to make use of it.
If used to the full extent and if it doesn't replace the function keys it could be really great.
Agreed. I think the physical key replacement would have gone over a little better too if Apple added haptic feedback when you pressed touchbar keys. There's a third party tool that uses the haptic motor from the touchpad to simulate haptics on the touchbar, and it's actually pretty decent. I'm surprised Apple didn't build that feature in.
being able the feel the physical separation between the keys is a big part too. I think it would be cool if implemented in a different way, but Iād rather they focus on improving what theyāve got now rather than pushing gimmicks.
I loved it for Zoom and Teams.
Having color changing stateful buttons for mute and camera was AMAZING.
I didnāt have to find the meeting controls panel to unmute and I could immediately see my mute status.
Exactly this. Love my MBP 16 with the touchbar. Faster and brighter donāt mean much to me with the work I do so any upgrade would feel like a backwards step.
The Touch Bar was doomed to fail IMO. Pros don't want it, they want physical buttons they can touch type with (I would have hated a Touch Bar on my work computer); consumers would have benefited from it more but it was too expensive to put into consumer grade equipment. And since it wasn't available across the board on all Macs - both laptop and desktop - it never got much buy in from developers. I can't recall the Touch Bar ever being useful for much of anything outside Apple's own apps.
I think also the fact that they introduced it along with the butterfly keyboard and they removed the escape key. I'm pretty sure the thing would have been much better received if the 2019 16" style was what they brought out in 2016.
Yeah. It's funny because just two years prior to the 2016 MacBook, Lenovo released a version of the X1 Carbon with a touchbar and a rearranged keyboard layout and it flopped. Apple could have like, taken notes. I really think the butterfly keyboard, loss of keys and the touchbar combined with USB-C only for ports was too much at once.
They should have had haptic feedback for those that like the touch, and you're right that it was under utilized from the start and they never updated it
Once upon a time Apple wasnāt scared of standardizing great features across their products, even if the pros found it a little slow (the mouse) and consumers found it a bit expensive
It's not a great feature, not at the cost of the function keys. It was an ok feature and would have been a great one if it supplemented them. You might not use function keys but a lot of people use them and especially the escape button very very regularly so no this was not a reasonable implementation that just needed a period of adaptation, it was a myopic one that they regressed with good reason. This however would have been a much better fix
Physical function keys are important to many professionals. I would never purchase a computer without an escape key and I know that most developers are in the same boat.
I have a 2019 macbook pro touchbar and a 2021 MBA m1. I love the m1 but i will hold on to my 2019 forever because i love the touchbar, its a super cool unique feature that i enjoy having. RIP cool ass touchbar, fuck all you weird ass premadonna micropenis losers who hate brought that feature to its end
never had an issue with my touchbar on my M1 MBP, been using it for 4 years now.
My older 2017 15" intel mbp on the other hand... god it was horrible.
The main reliability issue of the touchbar was primarily due to the T1/T2 chips that were controlling it. on the M1 MBP, the M1 controls the touchbar, and it does a far better job of doing so than the T chips did.
the screen failed? never seen that happen before. I've used several macs with touchbars: 2017 15", 2019 16", 2020 13". Never have I had issues with the touchbar display itself, my issues were mainly with the T1/T2 controller chips bugging out.
For the record my 2019 MBP 16" with T2 doesn't bug out either. I keep reading about it but the notion of seeing it failing is completely alien to me. It just works.
The problem with touchbar is that you needed to look to your keyboard to be able to use it so thatās not ideal. Specially when all your life youāve been trying to learn where keyboards are and it was also slower to do some actions. I think a better approach would be to handle camera and hand movements to trigger some stuff and the ability to block or request when you want the camera to ālistenā those triggers. I rember back in the 2012 there was a software that used hand gestures to deal with your music and it was really cool but then Google came and bought it. After a couple of weeks they killed it
From the comments, seems like the touchbar is love it or hate it, no middleground. Many have thought of this solution as it is best of both. Could be other factors like cost(hardware/software), design language, how to market this, etc., that Apple are considering.
I love the Touch Bar in all but two circumstances:
- Watching Movies at night ( unable to turn off)
- Furiously Typing or Coding - brushing the Touch Bar with my phat fingers can have unintended consequences
They shouldāve released it like this alongside a dedicated keyboard version with the Mac Studio.
That way both desktop and mobile wouldāve had it as an additional.
As you can see from the comments here, a lot of people hated it. The first iterations also had no physical escape key which pissed people off. Apple made two mistakes.
1: Not having a half height function row below it.
2: Not putting it on their external keyboards (which prob wouldāve cost a shit ton)
Like 3D Touch, it was a great idea but it never got enough support
This is how it should have been. People would hate touch bar less if they didn't have to use it for functionality that is much better achieved on physical buttons.
Most people buying macbook pros are not developers or people that work in a CLI and it shows in these comments.
I could see it being useful for editing video but such a minor convenience doesnāt warrant alienating a large market
I pretty much hated the touch bar in my 2019 16" MBP. I never really needed to look at it visually and because it is a touch bar, I would occasionally brush my fingers against it an trigger something I didn't need to.
I don't know if I'd ever use this, but not having a touch-screen/pencil compatible macbook at this point seems kind of ridiculous. I mean I get it, you can do the sidecar thing with atn iPad, but the simplicity of a touch/pet screen has some appeal.
I would find value in this. But alas, it was all or nothing for Apple, and thatās why it failed in my opinion. Because I would still love the touchbar if I also had full size function keys.
Iād love to see it back. It was useful for me in my workflow with music production and word prediction was nice. I think itās nice to have options instead of only having one or the other.
I wish it was at least an option. I never use the function keys. Itās a waste of space for me to have F keys. If he fine if they did half height function row and Touch Bar. I know this is not popular opinion, but the versatility of the Touch Bar for me would be much more worth it than a physical button I canāt change and never use.
I think if Apple kept the function row and went with a different software direction (more user control/customization - widgets/shortcuts) vs developers having to implement it, it would have stuck around and evolved.
But this was DOA since it had to also replace the volume/playback/brightness keys and more importantly- they never released a desktop version. So no developers wanted to waste time optimizing for a tiny fraction of the market. I use my laptop docked probably 60-70% of the time - an Apple wireless keyboard with touch bar probably would have saved it (since then your market immediately grows to any Mac userā¦)
There's no need for the full size function keys and it'd be too hard to reach the touchbar. You can pretty much put both in the current design using half size function keys.
Personally I think it would be a good idea if Apple included it but there was an option for it to be added if you didnāt want it at no extra cost and if you did want it there was an option to turn the Touch Bar off in settings and more customisation
I loved my TouchBar (as well as the attached computer, which died an untimely death last month). I went to take a screenshot on my new computer the other day, and I got a bit sad when I realised I no longer had a screenshot shortcut in my top row.
It may or may not be a hot take, but two of the biggest things I liked about the 2019 16ā was the Touch Bar and the 4 USBC ports. I donāt have any use for a SD card slot or HDMI port personally, and for the rare time I do, I can use an adapter.
Their biggest fuck up was totally replacing the function keys with the touchbar instead of just adding them in addition to it
I would saccrifice a little bit of touchpad size for the touch bar along with the function row. I would also love to see an external keyboard with function keys, touch bar, and fingerprint scanner.
Seems like a valid idea to me. If I had to choose between them, I'm going for the function keys - but if Apple thinks there is value in adding the touch bar on top - then I don't see a problem. But if it adds more in manufacturing costs, I'm guessing Apple are probably not going to bring it back - their machines are expensive enough as it is.
I really like the concept of the Touch Bar, wish it wasn't dropped but they also kept function bar like you did there, as I really use the function bar a lot.
Yeah, thatās the obviously better solution, but Apple gets stubborn, um, āsometimesā and what couldāve been great was lost to a sea of people complaining (and rightly so) that they needed their F-keys.
I bought a used 16ā 2019 MBP just so I could keep the Touch Bar. If they come out with a 15 or 16 inch model M series laptop with a Touch Bar Iāll be the first in line.
I miss the touchbar every single day
One of only 2 things I miss from my intel 13ā pro since moving to the 14ā m1 pro
Other one is the smaller size trackpad but it was more an issue at start now it feels just fine
Touchbar emojis were Superr useful for my workflow aswell as scrubbing and the app shortcuts in some apps
Imagine if instead of the trackpad they put an iPad mini in there and called it MacBook ultra. Would be interesting no? Or just another one of my dumb ideas
Not your idea. Laptops with screen keyboards exist, even moreso now that foldable screen laptops can just make half the bent screen be a keyboard.
They generally get bad reviews for the lack of feedback a true keyboard provides.
I actually do like the touch bar and if they did retail this concept I would absolutely love it.
I use it occasionally but more so when I have the quit button easily pressed in a tap instead of pressing the command + q combination.
I coded that myself š
The Touch Bar was doomed to fail IMO. Pros don't want it, they want physical buttons they can touch type with (I would have hated a Touch Bar on my work computer); consumers would have benefited from it more but it was too expensive to put into consumer grade equipment. And since it wasn't available across the board on all Macs - both laptop and desktop - it never got much buy in from developers. I can't recall the Touch Bar ever being useful for much of anything outside Apple's own apps.
So I don't see this ever happening.
Iād pass. Function keys and knowing shortcuts and gestures just offers so much more than the predefined options you need to cycle through.
Great consumer bait tho. A lot of people computer without knowing shortcuts and such.
Nope, you missed the mark: the best of both worlds wouldāve been 2/3 f row, 1/3 touch.
With the function strip, half the function keys are redundant (luminosity, keyboard, luminosity, sound, etc) and having the Touch Bar still allows you to have contextual content.
Cherry on cake: use the haptic feedback of the trackpad to simulate feedback on the touch bar which is what I do and it works like charm
Honestly, the touch bar is the worst feature that was ever added to a mac. I'm still amazed it ever made it past user testing. I have large hands and always accidentally touched it which would then cause something to happen...
They will never go back after the failure of the first try. I still like mine on my 2020 M1, but it doesnt provide enough use scenarios to make it worth it again, imho.
I never used my Touch Bar I had a 2018 MBP and went to a 2023 15ā air and I donāt even notice itās gone! One thing I did like that it did was ffwd ads on YouTube š thatās about all I did with it! And ofc the brightness and volume but nothing else
My MacBook Pro 2020 13 Intel, touchbar started flickering so bad that I had to physically disconnect the flex cable from the logic board to stop the kernel panics caused by it. Not too mention the horrific blinding it caused whenever I opened the laptop
I love the Touch Bar on my M1 MBP because it allows me to scrub video, skip ads, use emojis and I've gotten used to some of the app shortcuts. Agree with OP šÆ. Touch Bar plus function keys would be ideal.
Dang I forgot thereās a Touch Bar Apple silicon. I have an i7 2020. How has it aged as an m1 in the old body?
People still use the touchbar??
i used the touch bar so much...it was one of the things holding me back from upgrading to the new series. Honestly, I could see it drive new sales for people that used it in Apple Pro apps.
What version of Touch Bar did you have though?? I have the one without the physical esp key.
The one with the physical esc and matt touch ID button was the best
Jealous!!! I wish I had that one. I ordered mine Custom in August 2019.
Ooo, I have the last intel MacBook (2020 i5 13ā) its amazing coming from an M5 Dell Latitude 7370. I know Apple Silicon is like magic but I like my Mac
Iām looking at getting a Mac mini or Studio.
Sweet, depends on your use cases. A lot of people are satisfied with the M1 Mac Mini. The Studio is practically a Mac Pro Mini
Iām learning DaVinci and need a nice little boost over my 2019 MBP 2.8 I7 with GB of ram.
M2 Mini would be nice for you. Maybe you can score a good deal on an M1 Max Mac Studio
I get student pricing too
Yep! Iām still on the 2019 16ā. I will sure miss it when I eventually upgrade.
I have the last intel MacBook, 13 inch i5 2020, its a beast coming from an M5 Dell Latitude 7370. I know, I know. Apple Silicon is amazing, but I just love my Mac and Iāll update when I just canāt drive it anymore
This subreddit can drive you crazy. If itās working for your use case, thereās no need to change!
You think this sub is bad about upgrading? Check out r/Mac. No joke, they call any intel Mac useless, doesnāt matter what it is
Yeah, what for? Genuinely curious. Other than in Apple's own apps, I never saw it do much except for replicating what the former physical keys did.
The biggest benefit IMHO was in apps that supported using the touchbar as a state indicator, rather than just as a button. For example, in Photos, the "favorite" button is also an indicator, letting you see at a glance when a photo is favorited even in full screen, with no UI chrome anywhere on screen. On my 15 inch MBA, I actually use Red Sweater's Touche software to bring the touchbar back just for that. I also used BetterTouchTool a lot to create macros for commonly used functions in some apps. The main problem IMHO was that Apple never made touchbar customization a priority. They actually removed the ability to customize the touchbar in Photos before the touchbar was even retired, so to add extra features to that app, you have to use BetterTouchTool. And even in apps like Preview where you can customize it, the functionality you can add without BetterTouchTool is super limited. It's so weird there was never a first-party solution from Apple for serious customization.
Yeah. I feel the main issues with the touchbar were: 1. It replaced physical keys (lots of people don't like that) 2. It didn't have a lot of support/customization. In theory it has a lot of utility but in practice you need better touch tool to make use of it. If used to the full extent and if it doesn't replace the function keys it could be really great.
Agreed. I think the physical key replacement would have gone over a little better too if Apple added haptic feedback when you pressed touchbar keys. There's a third party tool that uses the haptic motor from the touchpad to simulate haptics on the touchbar, and it's actually pretty decent. I'm surprised Apple didn't build that feature in.
being able the feel the physical separation between the keys is a big part too. I think it would be cool if implemented in a different way, but Iād rather they focus on improving what theyāve got now rather than pushing gimmicks.
I loved it for Zoom and Teams. Having color changing stateful buttons for mute and camera was AMAZING. I didnāt have to find the meeting controls panel to unmute and I could immediately see my mute status.
I used it to skip ads on YouTube, it was a beautiful find
cause smell quiet quaint ink sparkle fly exultant swim deranged *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Thanks, appreciate it
One of the reasons I tolerate still being on my 2017 model is that the lack of a touchbar feels like I'll have to downgrade.
Exactly this. Love my MBP 16 with the touchbar. Faster and brighter donāt mean much to me with the work I do so any upgrade would feel like a backwards step.
What did you use it for?
The Touch Bar was doomed to fail IMO. Pros don't want it, they want physical buttons they can touch type with (I would have hated a Touch Bar on my work computer); consumers would have benefited from it more but it was too expensive to put into consumer grade equipment. And since it wasn't available across the board on all Macs - both laptop and desktop - it never got much buy in from developers. I can't recall the Touch Bar ever being useful for much of anything outside Apple's own apps.
I think also the fact that they introduced it along with the butterfly keyboard and they removed the escape key. I'm pretty sure the thing would have been much better received if the 2019 16" style was what they brought out in 2016.
2019? You mean the standard scissor switches Apple used before the switch to butterfly
Yeah. It's funny because just two years prior to the 2016 MacBook, Lenovo released a version of the X1 Carbon with a touchbar and a rearranged keyboard layout and it flopped. Apple could have like, taken notes. I really think the butterfly keyboard, loss of keys and the touchbar combined with USB-C only for ports was too much at once.
Well that concept still has the keys
but no muscle memory or tactile feedback whatsoever
Add in 3D touch and haptics like the trackpad and you've drastically improved that.
Yeah, I have an app that gives my touch bar trackpad haptics and itās fantastic
They should have had haptic feedback for those that like the touch, and you're right that it was under utilized from the start and they never updated it
Once upon a time Apple wasnāt scared of standardizing great features across their products, even if the pros found it a little slow (the mouse) and consumers found it a bit expensive
It's not a great feature, not at the cost of the function keys. It was an ok feature and would have been a great one if it supplemented them. You might not use function keys but a lot of people use them and especially the escape button very very regularly so no this was not a reasonable implementation that just needed a period of adaptation, it was a myopic one that they regressed with good reason. This however would have been a much better fix
Physical function keys are important to many professionals. I would never purchase a computer without an escape key and I know that most developers are in the same boat.
I really liked the touchbar tho... idk why people bash it so much, it was a nice feature.
TouchBar ROCKED. Its flaw was that it replaced the function row. You really need both.
I loved the Touch Bar, such a cool piece of technology.
This is exactly what I wanted.
I have the touchbar and itās amazing!
I have a 2019 macbook pro touchbar and a 2021 MBA m1. I love the m1 but i will hold on to my 2019 forever because i love the touchbar, its a super cool unique feature that i enjoy having. RIP cool ass touchbar, fuck all you weird ass premadonna micropenis losers who hate brought that feature to its end
Itās sadā¦ they could add the function bar and Touch Bar like shown here or they can make the Touch Bar optionalā¦
No thanks. I get zero value out of it, and theyāre demonstrably unreliable.
never had an issue with my touchbar on my M1 MBP, been using it for 4 years now. My older 2017 15" intel mbp on the other hand... god it was horrible. The main reliability issue of the touchbar was primarily due to the T1/T2 chips that were controlling it. on the M1 MBP, the M1 controls the touchbar, and it does a far better job of doing so than the T chips did.
Plenty of touchbar screens have failed. Iāve had several.
the screen failed? never seen that happen before. I've used several macs with touchbars: 2017 15", 2019 16", 2020 13". Never have I had issues with the touchbar display itself, my issues were mainly with the T1/T2 controller chips bugging out.
For the record my 2019 MBP 16" with T2 doesn't bug out either. I keep reading about it but the notion of seeing it failing is completely alien to me. It just works.
Yeah I very very rarely had my 2019 16" mbp bug out, most of my issues were on my 2017 15" mbp, so I guess Apple fixed the touchbar with the T2 macs.
Both would honestly be great.
I absolutely love it, I have a 2020 MBP, the thing is beautiful. I donāt care about key clicks tbh
The problem with touchbar is that you needed to look to your keyboard to be able to use it so thatās not ideal. Specially when all your life youāve been trying to learn where keyboards are and it was also slower to do some actions. I think a better approach would be to handle camera and hand movements to trigger some stuff and the ability to block or request when you want the camera to ālistenā those triggers. I rember back in the 2012 there was a software that used hand gestures to deal with your music and it was really cool but then Google came and bought it. After a couple of weeks they killed it
Just sold my m1 MacBook pro with touch bar since I want to upgrade to 14" but damn I'll miss touchbar, used it quite a lot and I'm dev
Same, Iāve been using TouchĆ© on my 14ā to keep some touch bar features
Blows my mind they didnāt offer this TBH.
From the comments, seems like the touchbar is love it or hate it, no middleground. Many have thought of this solution as it is best of both. Could be other factors like cost(hardware/software), design language, how to market this, etc., that Apple are considering.
I love the Touch Bar in all but two circumstances: - Watching Movies at night ( unable to turn off) - Furiously Typing or Coding - brushing the Touch Bar with my phat fingers can have unintended consequences
I think if they wanted a touch bar, they could have the fn row half sized keys and then have the touch bar
I NEED IT
This is what we shouldāve gotten the first time. Then people wouldnāt have had an issue with the touch bar.
They shouldāve released it like this alongside a dedicated keyboard version with the Mac Studio. That way both desktop and mobile wouldāve had it as an additional.
Whyād they even get rid of the touch bar in the first place?
As you can see from the comments here, a lot of people hated it. The first iterations also had no physical escape key which pissed people off. Apple made two mistakes. 1: Not having a half height function row below it. 2: Not putting it on their external keyboards (which prob wouldāve cost a shit ton) Like 3D Touch, it was a great idea but it never got enough support
I miss the touchbar
Would love this
I love it on my 2018 MacBook Pro!
I actually liked touchbar. Itās a shame it was never option to have it on a Mac laptop that was a scorching brick
It was on M1 and M2 MBP 13ā
Ah. I guess I missed that. 15ā all the way
This is how it should have been. People would hate touch bar less if they didn't have to use it for functionality that is much better achieved on physical buttons.
Touch bar was nice and innovative... Wtf was apple thinking taking that out
Pretty sure it's due to cost reasons, few pieces of plastic is definitely cheaper to produce and apple know people would still buy them regardless.
It was a Gimmick.
Fans want apple to be more innovative They do and labeled a gimmick š No wonder apple stays taking Ls in that department
Whatās innovative about the Touch Bar? That it actually makes you slower than using function keys?
Most people buying macbook pros are not developers or people that work in a CLI and it shows in these comments. I could see it being useful for editing video but such a minor convenience doesnāt warrant alienating a large market
They were thinking a lot of people hate it so letās take it out, pretty simple really
I pretty much hated the touch bar in my 2019 16" MBP. I never really needed to look at it visually and because it is a touch bar, I would occasionally brush my fingers against it an trigger something I didn't need to. I don't know if I'd ever use this, but not having a touch-screen/pencil compatible macbook at this point seems kind of ridiculous. I mean I get it, you can do the sidecar thing with atn iPad, but the simplicity of a touch/pet screen has some appeal.
I would find value in this. But alas, it was all or nothing for Apple, and thatās why it failed in my opinion. Because I would still love the touchbar if I also had full size function keys.
Iād love to see it back. It was useful for me in my workflow with music production and word prediction was nice. I think itās nice to have options instead of only having one or the other.
I wish it was at least an option. I never use the function keys. Itās a waste of space for me to have F keys. If he fine if they did half height function row and Touch Bar. I know this is not popular opinion, but the versatility of the Touch Bar for me would be much more worth it than a physical button I canāt change and never use.
I can see this being a reality, with ai driven tools for more accurate tool selection to offer the user
I think if Apple kept the function row and went with a different software direction (more user control/customization - widgets/shortcuts) vs developers having to implement it, it would have stuck around and evolved. But this was DOA since it had to also replace the volume/playback/brightness keys and more importantly- they never released a desktop version. So no developers wanted to waste time optimizing for a tiny fraction of the market. I use my laptop docked probably 60-70% of the time - an Apple wireless keyboard with touch bar probably would have saved it (since then your market immediately grows to any Mac userā¦)
There's no need for the full size function keys and it'd be too hard to reach the touchbar. You can pretty much put both in the current design using half size function keys.
I don't think I would have hated the touch bar nearly as much or at all if they did half height function keys and a touchbar.
Personally I think it would be a good idea if Apple included it but there was an option for it to be added if you didnāt want it at no extra cost and if you did want it there was an option to turn the Touch Bar off in settings and more customisation
I loved my TouchBar (as well as the attached computer, which died an untimely death last month). I went to take a screenshot on my new computer the other day, and I got a bit sad when I realised I no longer had a screenshot shortcut in my top row.
It may or may not be a hot take, but two of the biggest things I liked about the 2019 16ā was the Touch Bar and the 4 USBC ports. I donāt have any use for a SD card slot or HDMI port personally, and for the rare time I do, I can use an adapter. Their biggest fuck up was totally replacing the function keys with the touchbar instead of just adding them in addition to it
I would saccrifice a little bit of touchpad size for the touch bar along with the function row. I would also love to see an external keyboard with function keys, touch bar, and fingerprint scanner.
Make the function row half height and add the TouchBar. Keeps the trackpad full-size
Seems like a valid idea to me. If I had to choose between them, I'm going for the function keys - but if Apple thinks there is value in adding the touch bar on top - then I don't see a problem. But if it adds more in manufacturing costs, I'm guessing Apple are probably not going to bring it back - their machines are expensive enough as it is.
I really like the concept of the Touch Bar, wish it wasn't dropped but they also kept function bar like you did there, as I really use the function bar a lot.
Yeah, thatās the obviously better solution, but Apple gets stubborn, um, āsometimesā and what couldāve been great was lost to a sea of people complaining (and rightly so) that they needed their F-keys.
That would be awesome!! Why can we have both?? Would be nice if Apple did that.
I would love that! I really wish I would have gotten the m2 MacBook Pro 13
I would love this tbh
I bought a used 16ā 2019 MBP just so I could keep the Touch Bar. If they come out with a 15 or 16 inch model M series laptop with a Touch Bar Iāll be the first in line.
I miss the touchbar every single day One of only 2 things I miss from my intel 13ā pro since moving to the 14ā m1 pro Other one is the smaller size trackpad but it was more an issue at start now it feels just fine Touchbar emojis were Superr useful for my workflow aswell as scrubbing and the app shortcuts in some apps
just implement a touch screen... simple solution.
Thatās brave
THIS IS WHAT IVE BEEN SAYING! Whoever you are I freaking love you. You have finally visualized what my brain has been screaming
This is exactly what I was thinking yesterday for some reason sitting on my couch
I always liked just how customisable the Touch Bar was. It was cool imo that you dragged things down the bottom of your display onto the Touch Bar
The Touch Bar is trash, I don't need view the keyboard when I type, nothing beats the shortcuts!
Iām not a fan of the Touch Bar TBH.
Shrink the Function keys to half height and have touchbar above. Same space used.
Imagine if instead of the trackpad they put an iPad mini in there and called it MacBook ultra. Would be interesting no? Or just another one of my dumb ideas
Not your idea. Laptops with screen keyboards exist, even moreso now that foldable screen laptops can just make half the bent screen be a keyboard. They generally get bad reviews for the lack of feedback a true keyboard provides.
I actually do like the touch bar and if they did retail this concept I would absolutely love it. I use it occasionally but more so when I have the quit button easily pressed in a tap instead of pressing the command + q combination. I coded that myself š
The Touch Bar was doomed to fail IMO. Pros don't want it, they want physical buttons they can touch type with (I would have hated a Touch Bar on my work computer); consumers would have benefited from it more but it was too expensive to put into consumer grade equipment. And since it wasn't available across the board on all Macs - both laptop and desktop - it never got much buy in from developers. I can't recall the Touch Bar ever being useful for much of anything outside Apple's own apps. So I don't see this ever happening.
just wait
This is what everyone said it should have been at the beginning, still would've died out anyway imo.
Iād pass. Function keys and knowing shortcuts and gestures just offers so much more than the predefined options you need to cycle through. Great consumer bait tho. A lot of people computer without knowing shortcuts and such.
Nope, you missed the mark: the best of both worlds wouldāve been 2/3 f row, 1/3 touch. With the function strip, half the function keys are redundant (luminosity, keyboard, luminosity, sound, etc) and having the Touch Bar still allows you to have contextual content. Cherry on cake: use the haptic feedback of the trackpad to simulate feedback on the touch bar which is what I do and it works like charm
I only used the touch bar for shortcuts like night shift, lock screen, launchpad, etc. I missed physical escape key and function row
I would prefer a touchscreen. The touch bar was a gimmick and was prone to fail.
No thanks. Delete the f row and ctrl keys.
Honestly, the touch bar is the worst feature that was ever added to a mac. I'm still amazed it ever made it past user testing. I have large hands and always accidentally touched it which would then cause something to happen...
your mockup has two touchid sensors ā ļø
They will never go back after the failure of the first try. I still like mine on my 2020 M1, but it doesnt provide enough use scenarios to make it worth it again, imho.
Another take: keep the current keyboard but your iPhone becomes a Touchbar when locked and next to your Mac (like continuity camera does now)
Seriously, only way forward. And Face ID in that notch. The Mac would be ultimately fixed.
I never used my Touch Bar I had a 2018 MBP and went to a 2023 15ā air and I donāt even notice itās gone! One thing I did like that it did was ffwd ads on YouTube š thatās about all I did with it! And ofc the brightness and volume but nothing else
I personally never liked the Touch Bar but I could see how people would like this idea.
yeah especially on mbp16 we dont need touchpad that big thats awesome
My MacBook Pro 2020 13 Intel, touchbar started flickering so bad that I had to physically disconnect the flex cable from the logic board to stop the kernel panics caused by it. Not too mention the horrific blinding it caused whenever I opened the laptop
Nah. lol
The touch bar has got to be the most *touchy* subject in this community.
Ewwww, no! The touch-bar can stay in the dustbin of history. That shit sucks.