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What a Moaning Murtle — don’t use it.
The problem is that taking away the physical keys can be annoying for some things (e.g. using the vi editor without a real escape key). It's also way too easy to accidentally touch the bar while typing.
Does he really think Apple would lower the price if they didn’t have a Touch Bar?
I hope they would. But even if they didn't I'd choose the non-touch version if it was available in an otherwise equivalent configuration.
 
Who the heck cares what a former employee thinks? I turned down a job offer from Apple years ago. Should my complaining blog posts have some special elevated status?
 
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This guy doesn't sound all that familiar with hardware design. It's not like Apple can just "add on" the Touch Bar to their existing wireless desktop keyboards without some design/performance challenges in the mix.
 
Incorrect. 13" non TocuhBar has been discontinued and now there is only a 15" MacBook Pro Mid 2015 without the touch bar from $1999
13" Fn key MBP still showing in the online Apple Store as of right now.
 
I think th TouchBar is a great idea that can improve the laptop experience. MacBook Pros will always be expensive. Might as well come with flashy features if the price is going to be high.

Additionally, I will never be buying the Apple Watch (as with many others), so a lot of this guy's point is geared to a select group of people.
 
And in other news... a former Mercedes-Benz employee thinks that automatic gear transmission shouldn't be forced on users who want highest-end Mercedes-Benz :rolleyes:

He is quoted as saying:
The current line forces users to pay for the G-Tronic gearbox on the higher end vehicles whether they want it or not, and that's a cost users shouldn't need to pay for a niche technology with a limited future. So Mercedes needs to either roll the G-Tronic gearbox out to the entire line and convince us we want it, or roll it back and offer more vehicle options without it.
 
For me, my workflow in editing has improved significantly from the Touch Bar. It's a "gimmick" I find useful. Much like 3D Touch. It improves man-machine interface.

For the wife, doing her science work is more streamlined because the Touch Bar is pretty good at providing the right shortcuts without having to move the cursor or drill through menu hierarchy.

I think from Apple's point of view, that function row has been a pain to design because it's changed a few times with updates to macOS. Spaces. Launchpad. Siri. Some use them. Some don't. Fixing them into plastic isn't great for future-proofing. Making it dynamic by iPhone-fying it allows them to add whatever changes down the road.
 
Idgaf about whether or not the TouchBar remains. However, this Next thought would make the bar pretty much irrelevant.

Make the screen a multi-touch screen! Gasp! :eek:

My father is in his 60s. He's not very computer savvy...at all. But he gets along with his Windows computers ok. This weekend he was trying to reserve a flight on my Mac and got super frustrated that he couldn't just touch the screen; though he kept trying over and over and then cursing at the computer.

It's fine Apple wants to differentiate the Mac and iPad, but reserving Touch to a bar and not the full screen is not the way to do it. Both the Mac and iPad can exist together with touch screens.

I understand macOS isn't built for touch, but that's fixable and can be improved over time. Why continue to put all that effort into a gimmick that is useful only for a subset of a niche audience?
 
Getting any Apple laptop, especially one with at least 500 GB HD, is too expensive. I'd rather have a platter drive and the pricing those came with.
 
For me I wonder why the touch bar / touch ID isn't part of the new wireless keyboard for 2017 iMacs ? Anything really stopping Apple from doing this ? why limit it to a laptop ?

I played with one at Best Buy and it seemed neat but not needed . I wish it had haptic feedback
 
it is a gimmick no one asked for
Touch bar is a clever idea to test. The key is that it's tied to a mini-iOS implementation chip. Which means Apple "could" go full disk encryption per iPhones along with Activation Lock and all the other things. That's why there's zero removable SSD or RAM on these models.

I don't know about how I feel about my PC that locked down. Apple has done OK with iOS so far, but that's a bit much power to not abuse. On the other hand, with prying eyes everywhere, having a laptop where the data self destructs if the hardware is tampered with trying to skirt passwords isnt a bad thing.

Technically you can do this right now on a modern PC with TCM and OPAL SSDs but it's cumbersome and tricky to setup.. even harder to recover.
 
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I never used the F keys on my old MacBook Pro except for skipping tracks. And now I occasionally use the Touch Bar. So it's a nice to have for me. Of course, I have to agree that it doesn't add much to the existing functionality of the original F keys, just more visualised. ☺️ I think there is quite a lot of potential to it.
 
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I'm a web designer, and I have to say I use the touch ID with 1password all day it's fantastic.

And... It stops there. My laptop is on a stand so I never use the features on it and rarely use it when it's on my lap.
 
Why so much media attention for 1 former employee?
I'm sure I can find 100 people with the opposite opinion of his.

Because that one former employee is refuting the idea of the Touch Bar, which some think is the tell all or demise of the Touch Bar because of what one person thinks. It's not.
 
What a Moaning Murtle — don’t use it. Does he really think Apple would lower the price if they didn’t have a Touch Bar?

They do it with the 13" MBP: There's one with Touch Bar and one without, that sells for a lower price.
 
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