I’m assuming from all available evidence that the Touch Bar is dead, so this probably is a moot discussion. The main evidence for that in my view is the fact that we never saw the TB on Apple’s subsequently-released keyboards. It makes no sense to develop muscle memory for the TB when using the laptop and then abandoning that whenever the laptop is attached to something (or when we are using another Mac), so it’s pretty obvious that Apple lost its enthusiasm for the TB some time ago.
In this as in most posts regarding the TB, it strikes me how far it is from reaching its potential with most people. I’m using the Golden Chaos modifications, and it’s *really* nice. Just getting to press one button and see my Dock in the TB has freed up a fair amount of screen space, and that’s the tip of the iceberg as to what this modification allows. I suspect the TB would be even better if Apple had moved quickly to provide for this sort of thing and robust customization. Finally, many people never realized that you could do things like adjusting the volume merely by holding your finger down and sliding — you didn’t need multiple clicks to do that (contrary to what was first reported by some outlets). That’s on Apple, too, since they didn’t make the effort to teach users how to use the thing.
In short, and irrespective of whether the TB might have been popular under different circumstances, it at this point amounts to a wasted opportunity by Apple.
