RIP Touch Bar MacBooks

[maflynn]

A nice retrospective of Apple's failed touchbar MBP.

I remember being active in this sub-forum, and the hubub with the defective keyboard, people loving or hating the touchbar, the lack of ports.

My opinion with this class of machines - apple truly missed the mark, not sure why but by and large, folks just didn't fall in love with the changes. I know with Intel resting on their laurels didn't help matters and Luke mentions in the video but overall Apple tried to push changes through that were not well received.

 

[Corefile]

I worked at a Mac shop back then with a 2015 MBP. Some of the infra guys got the latest and shiniest gadgets but it was immediately apparent the keyboard keys would get stuck or stop if you dropped stuff on them. Other issues were lack of real ESC key which was the deal breaker. I also think these were USB-C only which meant dongles galore. Then the actual touchscreen just seemed like a solution in search of a problem. I held onto my 2015 MBP until the bitter end in 2019 then quit.

 

[maflynn]

hen the actual touchscreen just seemed like a solution in search of a problem.

I remember saying that ad nauseam here

 

[salamanderjuice]

I worked at a Mac shop back then with a 2015 MBP. Some of the infra guys got the latest and shiniest gadgets but it was immediately apparent the keyboard keys would get stuck or stop if you dropped stuff on them. Other issues were lack of real ESC key which was the deal breaker. I also think these were USB-C only which meant dongles galore. Then the actual touchscreen just seemed like a solution in search of a problem. I held onto my 2015 MBP until the bitter end in 2019 then quit.

I didn't mind the USB C only nature. The Touch Bar sucked though, at least for my use case. Added nothing and at one point I literally had to add a blank spacer to the Touch Bar to ensure I didn't tap anything by accident when hovering over delete.

A regular touch screen is far more useful and far more versatile.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Since it never made its way to Desktop Macs, it was doomed from the start IMO. Too many of us move back & forth between portables and desktop Macs.

 

[maflynn]

Since it never made its way to Desktop Macs, it was doomed from the start IMO

While the lack of a desktop keyboard was a large omission, I don't think that was the cause of its demise.

• Increased complexity, whether we're talking about taking our eyes off to make sure we're hitting F3, or needing to change the display to get to the function keys. There was no real added benefit
• Many of the items in the touchbar could be handled more effecicently with shortcuts or even the mouse
• Lack of adoption, apple hoped more companies would jump on board, but other then adobe, (and microsoft?), it really wasn't adopted.
• dedicated function keys, I recall you could set it so the function keys are displayed 100% but then what benefit is having that touchbar.
• Lack of an esc key

There were people who liked it, and for them that was a nice addition, but I think for the majority of Mac fans, they didn't and for the general consumer it seemed the general consensus was its just a gimmick

 

[theluggage]

There were people who liked it, and for them that was a nice addition

If it had been an addition, rather than a replacement for the function & escape keys it might have fared a bit better.

My opinion with this class of machines - apple truly missed the mark, not sure why but by and large, folks just didn't fall in love with the changes.

Seems like it was designed in an echo chamber, with nobody listening to critical voices.
It was also peak "the future is phones and tablets" time, and peak "thinner is better" time.

Really is a trifecta of misses.

Strike one: touchbar instead of function keys, because everybody needed a touch of iPad on their laptop.

Strike two: the butterfly keyboard, because thinner is better... even if it had worked reliably, the feel was too love it/hate it to have as the only keyboard option on Mac laptops. Really, really silly because the previous "chiclet" keyboard was a near-perfect (and much copied) compromise between thickness and feel (once you accept that you're not going to get a full-travel keyboard in an ultrabook). Even the later scissor mechanism in the Tragic Keyboard and later MacBooks is a shadow of the old Unibody/Aluminium keyboard. Probably costs 50c less to make, though :-(

Strike three: too much USB-C too soon. Replacing the two TB2/MiniDP ports on the old MBP with USB-C/TB3 ports would have been a good upgrade, worth buying new VGA/DisplayPort dongles for - if the MagSafe, HDMI,SD and USB-A ports had stayed. Removing them all overnight was just an expensive headache. I guess it created a demand for USB-C products, problem is 90% of those turned out to be adapters/docks that just brought back the so-called "legacy" ports...

 

[Fishrrman]

From the beginning, the touchbar seemed like a solution to a non-existent problem.
You just knew that it was destined to go the way of the butterfly keyboard...

 

[FreakinEurekan]

While the lack of a desktop keyboard was a large omission, I don't think that was the cause of its demise.
...

• Lack of adoption, apple hoped more companies would jump on board, but other then adobe, (and microsoft?), it really wasn't adopted.

Adoption is the final nail, but IMO the REASON it wasn't adopted is that it simply wasn't on desktop Macs, which is where a huge percentage of content creators work. I know it got some features for DJ use, which is commonly done from a portable. Beyond that I never heard much about it at all... I did have a 2019 model with the Touch Bar, but I mostly used it with an external keyboard anyway so barely ever looked at it.

 

[aries81]

I thought it was rather cool, but hardly ever used it.