For those who HATE touchbar

[1196403]

I personally love the touchbar. Yes it gets buggy with every subsequent Mac OS update and eventually gets better. But the fact that it exists helps me with my work. I’m a researcher who has to get through many articles a day. Being able to highlight different parts of a page but just selecting a text and tapping on the highlight color I want saves me a great deal of time, and it’s enjoyable to me. Why the hate for touchbar? I like sliding the volume or the track of the song I’m listening to right there on the keyboard.
we all have our own ways of using the MacBook, but I’m reading some people not wanting to buy the new MBP because of the touchbar. I’m curious as to why it receives so much hate.

 

[maflynn]

Why the hate for touchbar?

Not for nothing but we seem to be having this conversation over and over. My point is that its still a component that is divisive in the community.

Ok, my $.02, these are just my personal opinions
The touchbar is a solution in search of a problem. With more and more windows machines embracing touchscreen, it's my belief apple was wanting/needing something but refused to go down the touchscreen path, so instead, they opted for this

What I don't like: You have to take your eyes off the screen, with the mouse and/or keyboard shortcuts you stay focused on your work. Granted in a handful of situations, such as scrubbing through a video it can be useful but for the most part its not.

Loss of the function keys, Schiller made it a point to say how old, outdated and useless the function keys are, but they're not. I use them every day, all day long. Its not the same things as altering the TB to show the function keys because of the lack of tactile feedback. I have to look down to find the F5 image, instead of just hitting the F5 key.

Lack of support, we're moving into 4 years of TB, and only the MBP has it, many developers will want to develop for the lowest common developer, that provides functionality for the majority instead of one small niche and so its largely an unsupported product

Yes, the Touchbar has its fans, and many people take full advantage of it, but that in no way reduces the fact its pretty much reviled by a large sector of people, and it hasn't worked out to the extent that apple hoped for (this is my observation not fact)

 

[1196403]

Not for nothing but we seem to be having this conversation over and over. My point is that its still a component that is divisive in the community.

Ok, my $.02, these are just my personal opinions
The touchbar is a solution in search of a problem. With more and more windows machines embracing touchscreen, it's my belief apple was wanting/needing something but refused to go down the touchscreen path, so instead, they opted for this

What I don't like: You have to take your eyes off the screen, with the mouse and/or keyboard shortcuts you stay focused on your work. Granted in a handful of situations, such as scrubbing through a video it can be useful but for the most part its not.

Loss of the function keys, Schiller made it a point to say how old, outdated and useless the function keys are, but they're not. I use them every day, all day long. Its not the same things as altering the TB to show the function keys because of the lack of tactile feedback. I have to look down to find the F5 image, instead of just hitting the F5 key.

Lack of support, we're moving into 4 years of TB, and only the MBP has it, many developers will want to develop for the lowest common developer, that provides functionality for the majority instead of one small niche and so its largely an unsupported product

Yes, the Touchbar has its fans, and many people take full advantage of it, but that in no way reduces the fact its pretty much reviled by a large sector of people, and it hasn't worked out to the extent that apple hoped for (this is my observation not fact)

This is a good point, thank you

 

[Strelok]

The biggest problem is that it’s not good from an ergonomic point of view because there is no real feedback when you press it. I have a 60% keyboard that has 3 programmable layers, and I use the right Shift key to access one of them on the fly. That is a better method than the touchbar in my opinion, although it does require a bit more time to get used to the various layers, but once you learn it you don’t have to keep looking down or dealing with a different key feel.
For the casual user (80-90%+) it’s probably fine.

 

[maflynn]

For the casual user (80-90%+) it’s probably fine.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say the casual user, probably barely uses it. When I had a MBP, it was not really used much by my family when they use the laptop. I'm not saying people by and large hate it, but rather just don't use it

 

[1196403]

Maybe the next generation will have Taptic feedback on the touchbar?

 

[poorcody]

Maybe the next generation will have Taptic feedback on the touchbar?

There are third-party applications that will activate the touch pad's haptic feedback when you press Touchbar buttons (e.g. BetterTouchTool). I use it and it works well.

 

[The Mercurian]

Your poll is flawed - you need an option for don't mind particularly either way which is my category.

 

[CarbonCycles]

For the casual user (i.e., someone who does minimal to no coding), it serves its purpose.

As someone who actually writes codes/scripts for a living, it's an abysmal failure...the lack of a physical esc key and the gimmicky menus detract from my workflow.

 

[1196403]

Your poll is flawed - you need an option for don't mind particularly either way which is my category.

Fixed. Thank you for the suggestion.

 

[iMi]

I personally really like the touch bar and find it useful. It‘s basic functionality is to replace the static controls with adaptable once that respond to the applications you’re using. So, I don’t think it’s an attempt to offset touchscreen functionality.

The ONLY complaint I have is the lack of physical esc key (which has been rectified with the latest MacBook Pro). The reason is simple. Lack of the esc key hinders productivity for me as I use to to tab through open apps and it has become such a habit on the iMac. That really bugged me, but otherwise, I really like it.

 

[Paapaa]

Useless and bad ergonomics. I really wished there were maybe 3-4" wide touchbar and the rest would be traditional physical buttons (with OLED caps?). Physical buttons allows you to keep on watching the monitor, not the keyboard. Or a vertical touchbar at the right side of the keyboard with just physical buttons above the numeric keys.

I find very little use for touchbar. Mostly I use it for volume and brightness slider, but I didn't mind tapping the volume/brightness buttons on older macs.

I feel this is a solution for a problem nobody really had.

 

[Murgatroyd314]

It's not perfect, but from my point of view, it's much better than the old-style function keys that I never used. I hardly ever use its program-specific elements, but I love having the touch-and-slide volume and brightness controls, along with the single most useful thing it offers: a single-touch switch between keyboard layouts, since I need to type in both English and Japanese on a regular basis.

Also, Touch Bar Piano is fun to play around with from time to time.