Thoughts on the TouchBar after a Week
I have been using the Touch Bar for about a week now and it has been growing on me. Its not a life-changing piece of hardware, but after using it full-time on my laptop for a week I think I would rather have it than now. The really sold me was the ability to switch between different multimedia apps like iTunes, Pocketcasts, and Youtube videos without having to switch over to the apps themselves. It sounds dumb, it keeps my hands on the keyboard and away from the larger trackpad. Also, the text suggestions are neat from time to time, but I really use the Emoji bar more than I’m willing to admit 🙃 I like how dynamic it is over a traditional row of function keys and most of the third party apps I use support it now.
Apps like Fantastical , Bear, Pocketcasts, and 1Password all support it in one form or another. I do with the Touch Bar had some haptic feedback, especially with registering feedback on sliders, but I have been happy to discover the detection space for the escape (esc) key is wider than the Touch Bar advertises. That was a concern of mine and so far I’ve found its taken a little bit of adjustment, but I’m fine with it. I like the other features of the Touch Bar enough to deal with it. I also discovered you can re-map the function keyboard key to have the Touch Bar switch into the traditional function buttons on the Mac instead of the legacy function keys. I find that useful. I may switch it back, but its nice having the choice. That’s something I could not easily do with a physical keyboard without having to memorize the keyboard changes. So, overall, I think its a nice touch like the bigger trackpad or the 4x Thunderbolt ports. I would not rush out and buy the Touch Bar MacBook Pro if your current MacBook Pro is working, but I have enjoyed the Touch Bar a lot more than I thought I would. For me, it was the small thing of being able to easily control my multimedia apps without having to use the mouse and use TouchID with 1Password to have it autofill my passwords. Its not a life-changing upgrade, but overall I think its a nice touch. I’m becoming a fan of it.
