The life and death of the touch bar: revisiting the MacBook Pro
A good read. I still have a 2013 Macbook Pro for personal/school usuage and a 5k iMac at work. The Touch-bar looks shiny, but I’m not super-enthusiastic about it, especially with how much more it makes the laptop. Honestly, if I were to upgrade my laptop and could save $200–300 by skipping on the Touchbar on the 15" Macbook Pro I don’t think I would get it. I rarely look at my keyboard as-is and have a tendancy to memorize keyboard shortcuts. I am so used to switching between MacOS and Windows on the same machine via VMWare Fusion that I do not know what problem that Touch-bar would really solve for me. I much rather have a touch-screen Mac even if MacOS isn’t 100% optimized for touch, like the Chromebook Pixel was back when it was a thing.
So what’s the future of the Touch Bar? I don’t know. I’m not sure Apple does, either. I was fascinated that when Apple released the iMacs earlier this year not one word was mentioned about the Touch Bar or TouchID and support for them via an updated keyboard or trackpad was nowhere to be found. I’m taking that as an indication that after the lackluster response to this with the laptop releases, they’ve gone back to the drawing board a bit before rolling it out further.
