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On Windows you can hit ALT+Q and it will hotkey to 'Tell me' which solves 90% of my requests that I don't know the actually Hot Key for. I just tried it on my Mac and I can't figure out what the key command is to start it, but their is a menu item for it.

Is it cause you took the time to learn the touchbar but not Tell me, or do you actually think it's faster?

I feel like hotkeys are the fastest, then right click, then Tell me, then menu's where I know exactly where the item is is faster, and then the bar a distant last. But that's because I can never got comfortable looking down at my keyboard.
I think the best answer I can give you is to provide an example. I’m an attorney, and I do heavy annotations and commenting. So if I want to highlight something while doing redlines, or add a comment, no it’s not because I didn’t take the time to learn “tell me.” I can literally click the button I’m looking for that is directly in front of me. That’s a faster solution for me. I do a lot of the same stuff in Adobe and PowerPoint, it’s just accessible.... it’s faster.
 
I never saw a compelling case for the Touch Bar, but my son likes it a lot. It's possible I'm just an ossified coder still yearning for keyboards as good as the monsters that came with the IBM PC.

I think there's a good case for this being an option in future MacBook Pros. Most of the changes of the 2016 cohort weren't borne out by time. This one has at least half a following.
 
The touchbar excels at modeling gradual controls: volume, brightness, stuff like that. It can also be quite neat for selecting colors and shapes, tasks like that. Overall, it’s utility is limited, since most things can be done faster with key shortcuts and on-screen menus.

But on the other hand... Touch Bar might be of limited use, but it’s definitely more useful than real function keys. For multimedia control, it’s excellent. I really have difficulty understanding the point of the touchbar “haters”.
For me, it's that the touchbar registers a lot of unwanted key presses and makes it more difficult to use the laptop.

It seems like I accidently enable developer mode in a web browser several times per hour. It sometimes registers an action as an escape key when I did not press it. If I had not used Macs forever, I would have switched to a non-Apple laptop just for this reason alone.

You may say these are due to bad touch typing practices but I have never had these frustrations on any other keyboard.
 
For me, it's that the touchbar registers a lot of unwanted key presses and makes it more difficult to use the laptop.

This was a problem sometimes with the first-gen Touch Bar, but Apple fixed this in the new design, where the bar itself is slightly raised and a physical esc key is added. Accidental key presses haven’t happens to me once on my 16” or the M1 pro.
 
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Touch Bar can be very useful and will be moving above the physical function key and add haptic feedback for further improvement.
 
Haha. See your point, still easier on a real screen though.

as in, easier with a multi touch display's screen? sure, but how much would a MBP with an OLED HDR display and multi touch support cost?
 
The TouchBar idea itself is good, its the implementation by Apple that was not great. You need keys with with mini screens in them like a stremdeck, this gives proper feedback and still gives great customisation / contextual features. Having a flat bar with no haptic feedback was always going to fail.
 
What could possibly be the purpose behind that?
Avoiding the embarrassing situation where I want to present something at a prospective client, and they have HDMI and Ethernet, but I have neither. For networking, I can probably get away with tethering, but for using their projector, I'm now sweating profusely.
 
This was a problem sometimes with the first-gen Touch Bar, but Apple fixed this in the new design, where the bar itself is slightly raised and a physical esc key is added. Accidental key presses haven’t happens to me once on my 16” or the M1 pro.
That is good to know-- thanks for letting me know. I have the first gen (2016 13").

I don't have a problem with the idea of a touchbar if it doesn't register false key presses.
 
Well I like it. To the point that I am not sure I would even buy an Apple laptop without it. I’ll just hold on to the one I have instead.
 
Why not just have both a row of function keys, AND the touch bar? There's enough room on all of the current Macbook models to squeeze in the half-height function key row and the half-height size touch bar, while maintaining the same size keyboard and trackpad.
 
To be honest, Touch Bar is quite useful in some cases, e.g. Zoom, when I need to unmute I can just press unmute button in Touch Bar, instead of Shift + Cmd + A, or click to unmute, or a quick Emoji. Wish Apple keeps Touch Bar as an option and really don't want to see it's gone in future...
 
Magsafe is not a good idea... in my city the cafe does not always provide power point, so sometimes if I need to use my MacBook a bit long hours so I bring my power bank to charge my MacBook. Understand M1 MacBook provide much longer battery hours but I see more benefits of USB C than Magsafe
 
To be honest, Touch Bar is quite useful in some cases, e.g. Zoom, when I need to unmute I can just press unmute button in Touch Bar, instead of Shift + Cmd + A, or click to unmute, or a quick Emoji. Wish Apple keeps Touch Bar as an option and really don't want to see it's gone in future...
Yeah, I think they should keep it as an option (unless they have something better in mind 👀). I would definitely buy a MB without it but will miss some things like the screenshot -> clipboard shortcut (I know you can use the keyboard shortcut but the TB one is better).
 
Yeah, I think they should keep it as an option (unless they have something better in mind 👀). I would definitely buy a MB without it but will miss some things like the screenshot -> clipboard shortcut (I know you can use the keyboard shortcut but the TB one is better).

Having it as an option doesn't make much sense. It is either part of the lineup, or not. If you make Touch Bar optional, and an extra expense at that, it's obvious that nobody would buy it. It's also not how Apple operates. Rather then making things optional, just scrap it and move on.

An interesting experiment would be to leave the Touch Bar default as it's now and make function keys an an opt-in feature for $99 ;)
 
Having it as an option doesn't make much sense. It is either part of the lineup, or not. If you make Touch Bar optional, and an extra expense at that, it's obvious that nobody would buy it. It's also not how Apple operates. Rather then making things optional, just scrap it and move on.

An interesting experiment would be to leave the Touch Bar default as it's now and make function keys an an opt-in feature for $99 ;)
Not true, they offer options for sure. The people who really like it (the few that there may be) would go for it and then indeed Apple would kill it off due to lack of demand. Like I said before I have no interest in it but all for options where they’re valuable.

To give a recent example, Apple is more than happy to charge you an extra iPhone 12 Pro for the nano texture on a display that already costs an insane amount, which is only a recent example of practices like charging more for the matte finish when buying a MacBook back in the day. I agree entirely that there wouldn’t be the demand for the Touch Bar but to say Apple doesn’t allow options is wrong IMO.
 
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Avoiding the embarrassing situation where I want to present something at a prospective client, and they have HDMI and Ethernet, but I have neither. For networking, I can probably get away with tethering, but for using their projector, I'm now sweating profusely.
Which is why you bought a USB-c to HDMI adapter long before ever running into that situation.
 
Not true, they offer options for sure. [...] To give a recent example, Apple is more than happy to charge you an extra iPhone 12 Pro for the nano texture on a display that already costs an insane amount, which is only a recent example of practices like charging more for the matte finish when buying a MacBook back in the day.

Yep, they offer display finish options, just like they did in the past. You are instead talking about an option that would significantly alter the laptop's assembly and function. It is entirely unprecedented in the Apple land and I dare say, incompatible with the way Apple operates. They don't offer configurable packages. They offer curated packages that can be tweaked along limited scales (about fo storage, performance, color accuracy etc.). Offering something like the Touch Bar as an optional component would make zero economical sense.
 
Yep, they offer display finish options, just like they did in the past. You are instead talking about an option that would significantly alter the laptop's assembly and function. It is entirely unprecedented in the Apple land and I dare say, incompatible with the way Apple operates. They don't offer configurable packages. They offer curated packages that can be tweaked along limited scales (about fo storage, performance, color accuracy etc.). Offering something like the Touch Bar as an optional component would make zero economical sense.

Apologies, I misread your response so will update mine: I agree the two changes are quite different but I think the point still stands.
 
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I’d argue the Touch Bar also significantly alters the laptop’s functionality, but can agree to disagree here.

Of course it does, and that's why it is not offered an option, but instead as a standard feature of the MacBook Pro. It is one of the features that Apple currently uses to distinguish between it's "professional" and "consumer" laptop lines.
 
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