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After 1 year with the Touchbar

travelsheep

travelsheep

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 30, 2013
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I've used my MacBook Pro 2018 13" now almost exactly one year and I can say with confidence:

I see no use for the Touchbar, or any benefit over physical keys. In fact, sliding volume and brightness seems overly complicated on the TB. Responding to dialog boxes seems very slow and often requires multiple touches to get registered. I've used the Touchbar in the "interactive" mode for the entire year, but I'm thinking of switching back to a "fixed" buttons layout Touchbar, to mimic physical buttons.

Anybody has the same feelings? Any notion for the TB?
 
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travelsheep said:
I've used my MacBook Pro 2018 13" now almost exactly one year and I can say with confidence:

I see no use for the Touchbar, or any benefit over physical keys. In fact, sliding volume and brightness seems overly complicated on the TB. Responding to dialog boxes seems very slow and often requires multiple touches to get registered. I've used the Touchbar in the "interactive" mode for the entire year, but I'm thinking of switching back to a "fixed" buttons layout Touchbar, to mimic physical buttons.

Anybody has the same feelings? Any notion for the TB?
Click to expand...
Sorry to say the biggest benefit for me is the Emoji keyboard.

That being said, with the escape key coming back to future MacBooks, I'm not sure that the Touch Bar is necessarily a bad thing, either. It's just there.
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fousfous said:
Touch screen at the vertical is not goo.
and the touchbar does not do the same thing as the screen.
Click to expand...
Agreed. Right now, with the laptop on my lap, I would have to reach pretty far to actually use the touch screen on a large MacBook. To me, that's simply not a necessary or even positive user experience.
 
I've had it for over 3 years now and I still use it everyday. It hasn't been as widely adopted as I thought it might and the features are largely unchanged since 2016, but I still prefer it to static function keys. It's useful to have buttons to toggle Do Not Disturb and Night Shift right on the keyboard. Some of the contextual stuff is really good too, like for audio scrubbing and typing/emoji suggestions.

Where it really shines is in creative apps like Affinity Photo. Things like adjusting brush size on the fly is genuinely a lot easier with a Touch Bar than any other input method. I just wish Apple would now put it on products like the MacBook Air and Magic Keyboard so developers have a greater incentive to adopt it.
 
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I was one who struggled with its usage. My kids were overjoyed because they could use it for emojis, but for serious work, it was worthless (at least for me). I'd rather have function keys, real ones and while there was not one single reason for me to leave the Mac ecosystem, the touchbar was a factor.
 
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I have a 2018 15" MBP with the Touch Bar and was very excited to get it mainly because of the Touch Bar. I thought it was an awesome innovation. After 11 months of usage, I ONLY use it for Emojis and adjusting the volume. It's an inconvenience to me to use it for anything else since I have to hunch over and hover over the keyboard and hunt and peck for the input.

Still is very cool concept to me that it's basically an Apple Watch inside a MacBook, but I wish it was integrated better into the OS.
 
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Touch Bar is just rehearsal for Apple before they release other touchbar-like components like mechanical LCD keyboard keys and keyboard-integrated trackpad etc..
 
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travelsheep said:
I've used my MacBook Pro 2018 13" now almost exactly one year and I can say with confidence:

I see no use for the Touchbar, or any benefit over physical keys. In fact, sliding volume and brightness seems overly complicated on the TB. Responding to dialog boxes seems very slow and often requires multiple touches to get registered. I've used the Touchbar in the "interactive" mode for the entire year, but I'm thinking of switching back to a "fixed" buttons layout Touchbar, to mimic physical buttons.

Anybody has the same feelings? Any notion for the TB?
Click to expand...
I have the exact opposite feelings. I find it a useful addition and at least on my laptop it is very responsive..
 
It appears that Apple are trying to remove all mechanical switches - removal of Home button on phones, TouchBar on Macs. Perhaps they're trying to reduce the need for repairs.

I'm not sure I would be able to use a completely LCD/OLED keyboard due to lack of "feel" to know where the keys are and lack of key travel. Typing without looking at the keyboard is going to take me a lot of practice on an LCD/OLED keyboard.
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pcd213 said:
Hate it. Absolutely hate it. If the MacBook Air had a brighter screen and were more powerful, I would switch to that in a heartbeat because I just want a physical function row.
Click to expand...
Have you played with the new 2019 MacBook Air? I am typing on one right now and it's plenty bright.. better than the previous models.
 
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travelsheep said:
Anybody has the same feelings? Any notion for the TB?
Click to expand...
After now three years with the TouchBar, I agree.

It's just not particularly useful, in part because the majority of application developers haven't really figured out a good use for it. In most of applications, it just mirrors existing toolbars in a more clunky way. And there still are many applications (even popular ones) which don't use the TouchBar at all.
 
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revmacian said:
It appears that Apple are trying to remove all mechanical switches - removal of Home button on phones, TouchBar on Macs. Perhaps they're trying to reduce the need for repairs.

I'm not sure I would be able to use a completely LCD/OLED keyboard due to lack of "feel" to know where the keys are and lack of key travel. Typing without looking at the keyboard is going to take me a lot of practice on an LCD/OLED keyboard.
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Have you played with the new 2019 MacBook Air? I am typing on one right now and it's plenty bright.. better than the previous models.
Click to expand...
I previously owned a 2018 MBA and found that the brightness wasn't sufficient, and this was after they boosted it to 400 nits. Has the brightness increased on the 2019 model? I didn't think so...
 
I find it useful. In addition to the better volume and brithness controls, apps like PowerPoint, XCode, and adobe products use it. They show slide previews, effects, etc. And with tools like Better TB you can add you own customizations.

It has saved my bacon a few times when I had a brain locked up and could not remember which slides came next in the presentation. The tiny slide previews in the touchbar was enough to jar my memory.
 
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