Former Apple Employee Thinks Touch Bar Shouldn't Be Forced on Users Who Want Highest-End MacBook Pro

[MacTbone]

Keyword "Former".

I disagree with him. I may not have went with the touchbar if I had the choice, but I would have been disappointed a fair bit simply because the touchbar is a huge timesaver and feels a lot nicer for volume and brightness. It saved me about 10-15 minutes on a single project in pages. It's great!

 

[Michael MP2]

it is a gimmick no one asked for

Can't beat this

 

[Miguel Cunha]

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?

I think they won't!
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I do not like the touch bar on my MBP15 and I dislike touch screens on laptops. Maybe I am just old.

I do find touch bar to be really handy, in my workflow, to alternate between general F keys, app specific functions and macOS functionalities.

It's a pity Apple bloats the price because of it (and eventually Touch ID, which is useless to me, just as it is Face ID).

About touch screens, I just hate them, specially on little devices like smartphones. Besides, no matter how clean your hands are, they get dirty constantly affecting their response. I've always been fan of stylus pens.

Maybe I'm the old fashioned one.

 

[bernuli]

I think the touch bar should have gone right side of the screen running top to bottom. Would be really nice for scrolling web pages or documents while the laptop is in your lap. While at a desk, I go right to the trackpad, but when in a plane or car and laptopping, the trackpad is an uncomfortable reach.

 

[laz232]

Rospach is opining that his Apple Watch does some of those things literally counterpoints his argument.

“You shouldn’t be forced to buy an Apple Watch!”



I think the Touch Bar is amazing. Hell, just for scrubbing through YouTube videos it’s a joy.

Scrolling through youtube - that's some gosh darned pro-level shizzle right there! Who needs tactile feedback of function keys (and an escape key) used for work when I could get some good-bottomed-slide scrolling of youtube vidyas?

 

[dukebound85]

that is one of many reasons why I do have a spare MacBook Pro (Early 2015) still shrinkwrapped on my shelf...

That's........rather odd

 

[bernuli]

that is one of many reasons why I do have a spare MacBook Pro (Early 2015) still shrinkwrapped on my shelf...

Me too. When the current MBP was released I bought a spare 2015. So far it seems like that will be the last MacBook Pro I buy.

I just hope the Lithium Ion battery is ok when I finally put it in service.

 

[Naimfan]

I find the touchbar to be an active hindrance in my workflows.

Simply a frippery.

 

[splitpea]

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?

Except you can't not use it, because they got rid of the regular old function keys.

 

[Bacillus]

The TouchBar is a great sucess, as Phil uses it every day.

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

it is a gimmick no one asked for

I know your comment is over 20 weeks old, and you're right as far as people not asking for it. However, since I've seen it in action, I kind of want it now. I kind of wish they had the iMac keyboard with it built in.

BTW: Congrats on the 100, err... 101 (I gave you one as well) upvotes on a 200 comment thread!

 

[v.r]

Well, I think the roots of angry comments lies in increased price... as that looked like Apple was forcing people to pay more for 'gimmicky feature'.

Personally, I found touch bar to be useful in apps like FCPX... not like I would miss it, but something that helped.

TouchID on other hand, is still very confusing for me: a lot of times I would want to unlock laptop it require my password... in other cases, it's just not working when I want to switch users... so, I like the idea but hate the implementation. Would prefer FaceID instead of TouchID in my laptop.

 

[Cape Dave]

Totally 100% useless. There was no problem that needed solving.

 

[akselsoft]

I have to say --- I only got the Touch Bar because the store didn't have the configuration I wanted without it. Now that I've got it -- it's not as bad as I thought it would be and I'm starting to use it more than I thought I would.

The best feature for me is the TouchID which I'm always using. So YES, it's an expensive add-on for an already high-priced line BUT so was having to buy an external SmartDrive when Apple got rid of the CD drive (well that wasn't AS expensive but the premise is the same).

Now. ...if they could fix the sticky keyboard on all the models, that would be better.

 

[danckwerts]

Chuq Von Rospach seems rather naïve to me. Producing one variant with the Touch Bar and one without would probably make both more expensive. I haven't used a Touch Bar myself so I can't comment on whether they're any good or not.

 

[StoneJack]

It really isn't, because turn signals didn't replace something else (that was useful). A better analogy would be something that actually happened to me recently: Honda replacing the rotary volume dial with a touch-screen slider in the new Civics. Theoretically they can say it's a win because they've eliminated a moving part, perhaps the readout of the volume can be more accurate since it's a numeric value, and maybe it saves a little space. But usability-wise, it's a disaster and is actually dangerous because it's not easy to use without looking at the screen. I want my rotary volume dial back.

Does Honda have volume buttons on the steering wheel? My 2006 had it and it was safe to operate the volume from the steering wheel.

 

[HiRez]

Does Honda have volume buttons on the steering wheel? My 2006 had it and it was safe to operate the volume from the steering wheel.

There's a volume control on the steering wheel, but it's also a slider, which to me at least is still awkward to operate and be accurate with. Buttons would be better.

 

[jhwalker]

I almost never used the dedicated "function" buttons on my "old" 2011 MacBook Pro, and I never use the TouchBar on my new 2017 MacBook Pro.

I would much have preferred a maxed-out MBP with buttons instead of TouchBar, though :/

 

[StoneJack]

There's a volume control on the steering wheel, but it's also a slider, which to me at least is still awkward to operate and be accurate with. Buttons would be better.

well, at least you can just use steering wheel buttons.
However, when I was thinking about a new CarPlay radio, I was searching exclusively for models with volume button, so I understand it.

 

[j1334]

I tend to agree, I find it more distracting then useful. I'd like to see a row of mono-tone OLED physical buttons, that were more static (but still contextually changable to some degree) and FaceID instead of TouchID on the next model. They would also need to fix the keyboard (which has known issues) and reduce the size of the trackpad somewhat. A high-end desktop replacement model with 32Gb of RAM would be great, even if it were larger and more power hungry. Dare to dream.

 

[throAU]

Keyword "Former".

I disagree with him. I may not have went with the touchbar if I had the choice, but I would have been disappointed a fair bit simply because the touchbar is a huge timesaver and feels a lot nicer for volume and brightness. It saved me about 10-15 minutes on a single project in pages. It's great!

Meanwhile plenty of people hate the touchbar because trading tactile physical keys for an emoji bar (particularly the escape key) is a bad trade for many.

 

[sog1927]

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?

I'd be perfectly happy just to "not use it" if they hadn't taken away the ESC key in the process of giving it to me. I'm a software developer - the two main editors used by Unix programmers (vi and emacs) make heavy use of the ESC key. I'll bet if you took an unbiased poll of Apple's own developers they'd agree with me.

It's not the addition of something I'm not interested in using that bothers me - it's the loss of something I use literally hundreds of times a day that I object to. Don't they do any usability testing?
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It's probably a couple dollars in parts. I can just about garuntee you if Apple made another model without it it would be almost the same price, and no one would buy the non touch bar high end model.

I would pay extra for a laptop with a physical escape key. In fact, I'd buy 10 of them (one for each member of the group that reports to me).
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To someone who spends a huge amount of time in Vim, this is an enormous downside. If they had a physical Escape key at one end, Touch ID at the other, and the Touch Bar in between, I'd be all for that. But they won't do that because it isn't as pretty. Which is disheartening. I need to be able to easily hit the Escape key with 100% reliability, without looking, and it's a huge plus if you can rest your finger on it without pressing it. None of those hold true for the virtual Escape key. Sigh. Apple makes the best Unix laptops, but they're trying hard not to.

I wish I could like this comment more than once.

 

[aknabi]

I'm an iOS dev that works with many other iOS devs and *every single* iOS dev I know *hates* the TB... while in heavy coding you end up brushing against it and causing either an unwanted Xcode or some other action, ***** up your workflow and wasting time... and there's never a case where it's really helped or provided a better experience. The creatives we work with have the same impression (though I can't say how many percentage-wise in that community have the same opinion).

If they can make it even a neutral case let alone a real UX benefit (rather than a workflow disruptor) then great... if not give us real pros the option to bail on a gimmick just to have a cooler emoji keyboard than Windows (a feature that's key for the new Apple power users - Kardashian wannabes and fashionistas)

 

[MobiusStrip]

The "touch bar" is embarrassing junk. First, it deletes a dozen keys we actually used. Second, it can't be configured to replace them, because it's not palpable and you have to stare down at it to use it. We learned to type for a reason, and that reason is to NOT LOOK AT THE KEYBOARD.

And, after all this, Apple still petulantly refuses to put a real Delete key on its keyboards. Seriously, WTF is wrong with this company? Every other manufacturer manages to put a Delete key on even their smallest keyboards, but Apple only gives you a Backspace key that's mislabeled "delete." You know, I don't backspace files off my desktop. I don't backspace E-mails out of my In box. Or anything else.

So I figure, well, at least I should be able to turn this moronic "touch bar" into one big Delete key finally, right? NOPE. You can't add Delete to the touch bar, even as an option.

Up yours, Jony Ive. You're a pompous hack.

 

[joeswamp]

The lack of a physical escape key means that large numbers of people (including me) simply cannot buy a machine with a touchbar, period. It's amazing that a company this big could mess up their product line so quickly.