...the Surface line, especially the Studio, is eating Apple's lunch. ...I hope Apple takes a few clues from Redmond. ...you can still learn from others.
Maybe the Surface line is eating Apple’s discarded lunch leftovers.
I think it was poorly thought out and there were better options but I have nothing against it for what it is.
My issue is that it gets forced on the user as there is no 15" model without it and it is expensive to implement. Of course, all things equal save for the option of the TB, many would probably skip the option completely to save a lot of money that has little added value.
I have to wonder if they really did any thorough research on user preferences/usage habits or if this was pushed through simply as a way to stand out on the market and increase margins.
I haven't used one, however.
That said, my first reaction to using one in store was that it was simply too thin and very difficult to distinguish the icons when you had previously had your eyes fixed on the screen.
I would have preferred the option to link an iPad to the laptop and have TB options handled from there. Bigger icons and not on a thin strip.
Apple, give option to customers for 13"/15" Macbook Pro without touch bar/strip. If you want touch kind functionality than make it whole screen touch and not just a strip with not much usage.
I would suggest to all to use Apple feedback page and tell them simply without emotions why you use it or don't or how would you like to use it.
It's quite new radical change and even I haven't chance to use it mire then minute in one store I can say from other experiences that it could take me long time to change my habits even it would be beneficial for me. I sometimes do not use even Spotlight to find file or app even it's fastest way on Mac.
Bigfest mistake from Appke could be that professionals will welcome this the most. But they would probably welcome more normal keyboard with Oled buttons. But nobody was able to commercially made one. Neither Apple.
Maybe touch bar with physical Escape button could be option or better let people order Macbook with or without it.
They added a feature that we don’t really need (touch bar) and removed all the features that we actually need (usb, sd card reader, MagSafe power plug etc) and still have the nerve to call it a “pro” while requiring dongles for everything to actually use it.
when it came time to buy another one I bought another 2015 brand new so I wouldn’t have to carry around dongles. Hoping they return to their senses before this one gets too old because I don’t want to leave mac but mac has left me.
My 2012 15 incher is still my go to machine. To me still the pinnacle of Mac laptops. Dreading the day when she dies. At that point, hoping the 2015 one is still available.
You have to assume Apple will be keeping statistics about how many 2015ers are being sold. And if it's a sizeable number, that should hopefully send a message about what we think of their crippled Jony Ive thin-at-all-cost design direction.
Touch bar is worse than useless; it's a hindrance. 1) Adjusting the brightness and volume is too slow (two step process vs earlier one). 2) Siri button is too close to the fingerprint reader, making it very easy to activate by accident (my company uses the fingerprint button for authentication). 3) Keys and functionality are extremely unpredictable from app to app. I just don't have the attention span to look at that (note to apple: my eyes are at the monitor, not at the keyboard... people don't look at the keyboard while typing). 4) I have big hands. Resting your hands on keyboard became impossible after the touch bar. I kept hitting random, accidental keys for a long time.
The best thing about touchbar is you can revert the keys' functionality to old fn keys! Yes, just turn the thing partially off and get some relief. That's about it.
The most horrible (maybe the only genuinely bad) Apple innovation for a long time.
Is the touch bar a "Gimmick" as claimed by the video? NO! Apple doesn't do "gimmicks". Apple designs innovative features that contribute to make things better for their users. But, that doesn't mean that Apple is perfect and that every new feature performs as hoped. But neither does that make those failed features are "gimmicks".
With Touchbar, Apple was responding to 2 things:
1) Touch screens -- which they didn't want to do because they suck.
2) To add the flexibility provided by a display rather than hard keys.
It sounded like a good idea to solve two problems. But, it just didn't work in practice.
Touch bar is worse than useless; it's a hindrance. 1) Adjusting the brightness and volume is too slow (two step process vs earlier one).
There is a one-step way to do it. Instead of tapping the volume button and then moving over to the slider and adjusting it, just press the brightness button and keep your finger down and move it left and right where it is, the slider will work even though your finger is not on it.
The Touch Bar is a more customizable version of the function keys. I've never understood why tech blogs think it's controversial to provide a version of the MBP with that type of feature. Is it controversial that the standard function keys exist without being heavily used by everyone?
GokhanAppleİnsider said: 2) Siri button is too close to the fingerprint reader, making it very easy to activate by accident (my company uses the fingerprint button for authentication).
You can rearrange anything on the Touch Bar to wherever you want. That's part of the point of having it in the first place: customization.
[...] I think it could really be a great tool for audio editing
If you were creating a Touch Bar for audio editing, what controls would you include? What functions would you have it perform? How do you imagine it being used?
I've been using the 15-inch MBP with Touch Bar for around 9 months now, and have found the Touch Bar pretty useless. I find that I use it mostly for brightness and sound, and some function key use but it's a lot slower and less productive than the traditional keys it replaced. Sure, there's an ESC key on the touch bar, but it's slower and because it's touch, you can't rest your finger on it to press it over and over without activating it. Remapping is a solution, but removing the functionality of a different key to have the functionality of every other keyboard on the planet, illustrates the failures of the current touch bar and overall keyboard design. There's also no touch feedback and the keys change so you have to stop and look down to use it, making it a lot less productive throughout a day of use, as well as more tiring, which the current keyboard also causes (without mentioning all the accidental presses). Keyboard shortcuts and the trackpad are quicker, more useful, and can do everything the touch bar does without ever looking away from the screen, so the touch bar ends up as dead space that actually removes functionality and practicality.
Is there potential for something similar to the touch bar? Yes, but with a different implementation in my opinion. Is it useful for beginners and iOS switchers? Probably. But for most seasoned Mac users and Pros? Probably not. Would a touch screen be better as this review suggests? Perhaps, especially under certain circumstances and with iOS apps. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an intense internal debate at Apple about this and they went with the cheaper "happy medium". I wish they would have given us the option of having the top of the line with a "normal" keyboard though (without going into the keyboard keys debate which is an entirely different problem which they're finally beginning to accept). Maybe they have a killer implementation in mind for the future, but we'll have to wait and see, with no other choice currently for 15 inch MBP users.
Just pondering...
P.S. For those annoyed by the Siri button's accidental presses, remember, not only can you remove it in settings, but you can also fill that space with "dead" spaces so you don't accidentally press anything on the TB every time you use the delete key. It removed the annoyance, though you're still stuck with the accidental presses on every other key, even if it's less prevalent than the right corner Siri button.
I like the Touch Bar.[...] it has Touch ID, which is very useful.
That's a common misconception. The Touch ID is NOT part of the Touch Bar. It's a separate component. Touch ID can be included on a Mac without the Touch Bar.
If you want tactile keys, then why are you using an iPhone which has no physical keyboard? I don't see you complaining about that.
Maybe I haven't mentioned that the virtual keyboard is one of two or three key reasons I don't like using an iPad and choose to use a laptop instead. The lack of tactile feedback is one of my objections, but what I find most disruptive is the lack of predictability. Going from laptop to laptop, the keys are always in the same general location. Going from my iPhone to my wife's 12.9" iPad Pro to my Grandson's iPad mini, the punctuation keys are all in different places. It's a major slower downer.
For those of us who actually went and tried out the Touch Bar before we bought a £3,000 laptop, we bought it for a reason, based on use. If you went out and bought a Touch Bar MBP without trying it out first, is that how you normally spend that much money?
Three responses:
1. I had high hopes for the Touch Bar. I think the concept is basically a good one. It just hasn't delivered. I've had this machine for a year-and-a-half, and the Touch Bar isn't any more useful now than it was the day I bought it. I expected to give it time to catch on. I did, and it hasn't.
2. I thought I would use it more than I actually do. It didn't occur to me at the time that one has to be looking at the Touch Bar for it to do any good. Since my eyes are on the screen and not the keyboard, I find using the Touch Bar counter-intuitive.
3. I didn't have any choice but to get the Touch Bar. Apple doesn't make a 15" or quad-core laptop that doesn't include it.
1) Touch screens -- which they didn't want to do because they suck.
Touch screens absolutely do NOT suck. Touchscreens are AWESOME!
There are so many useful applications for this method of interaction that software suppliers are offering free "companion" apps on iPad to allow users to perform functions Apple apparently thinks they don't need. That's a reasonable workaround, but it'd be a helluvalot easier if I didn't have to jump between devices and could just touch the screen I'm already focussed on.
After a couple years of working every day with a machine that offers touch in addition to mouse and keyboard, I consider it a "must have" and feel like my Mac is crippled without it.
Article title suggests the touch bar serves no useful purpose, yet it says with A Better Touch software, it can become quite useful.. so then it's not a problem with the hardware, just software. Hope the OLED display will have good longevity, as it may be die much sooner than the main screen.
Wonder when Apple will have the touchpad be a secondary screen like what Razr, Asus are trying out?
Because Apple never looks backwards, I expect the Touch Bar is a test version of a fully haptic touch keyboard. Apple can't go touchscreen because it would look like they have fallen behind Microsoft. And they can't get rid of the butterfly keys and go back to scissor keys because that would admit their new keyboards are flawed. So a likely path forward is a large touchpad where the keyboard used to be. Maybe the entire flat surface will be touchpad, merging the keyboard and trackpad. Jony will be excited because it can get thinner. Wafer thin alu-min-eeeum. I can hear it already. Watch the fil-um. If it's well implemented, it might actually be a good thing.
Comments
My issue is that it gets forced on the user as there is no 15" model without it and it is expensive to implement. Of course, all things equal save for the option of the TB, many would probably skip the option completely to save a lot of money that has little added value.
I have to wonder if they really did any thorough research on user preferences/usage habits or if this was pushed through simply as a way to stand out on the market and increase margins.
I haven't used one, however.
That said, my first reaction to using one in store was that it was simply too thin and very difficult to distinguish the icons when you had previously had your eyes fixed on the screen.
I would have preferred the option to link an iPad to the laptop and have TB options handled from there. Bigger icons and not on a thin strip.
It's quite new radical change and even I haven't chance to use it mire then minute in one store I can say from other experiences that it could take me long time to change my habits even it would be beneficial for me.
I sometimes do not use even Spotlight to find file or app even it's fastest way on Mac.
Bigfest mistake from Appke could be that professionals will welcome this the most. But they would probably welcome more normal keyboard with Oled buttons.
But nobody was able to commercially made one. Neither Apple.
Maybe touch bar with physical Escape button could be option or better let people order Macbook with or without it.
We will see soon which way Appke will choose.
when it came time to buy another one I bought another 2015 brand new so I wouldn’t have to carry around dongles. Hoping they return to their senses before this one gets too old because I don’t want to leave mac but mac has left me.
You have to assume Apple will be keeping statistics about how many 2015ers are being sold. And if it's a sizeable number, that should hopefully send a message about what we think of their crippled Jony Ive thin-at-all-cost design direction.
1) Adjusting the brightness and volume is too slow (two step process vs earlier one).
2) Siri button is too close to the fingerprint reader, making it very easy to activate by accident (my company uses the fingerprint button for authentication).
3) Keys and functionality are extremely unpredictable from app to app. I just don't have the attention span to look at that (note to apple: my eyes are at the monitor, not at the keyboard... people don't look at the keyboard while typing).
4) I have big hands. Resting your hands on keyboard became impossible after the touch bar. I kept hitting random, accidental keys for a long time.
The best thing about touchbar is you can revert the keys' functionality to old fn keys! Yes, just turn the thing partially off and get some relief. That's about it.
The most horrible (maybe the only genuinely bad) Apple innovation for a long time.
NO! Apple doesn't do "gimmicks". Apple designs innovative features that contribute to make things better for their users. But, that doesn't mean that Apple is perfect and that every new feature performs as hoped. But neither does that make those failed features are "gimmicks".
With Touchbar, Apple was responding to 2 things:
Reality it is time for Apple to go full touchscreen. That is the bottom line
I've been using the 15-inch MBP with Touch Bar for around 9 months now, and have found the Touch Bar pretty useless. I find that I use it mostly for brightness and sound, and some function key use but it's a lot slower and less productive than the traditional keys it replaced. Sure, there's an ESC key on the touch bar, but it's slower and because it's touch, you can't rest your finger on it to press it over and over without activating it. Remapping is a solution, but removing the functionality of a different key to have the functionality of every other keyboard on the planet, illustrates the failures of the current touch bar and overall keyboard design. There's also no touch feedback and the keys change so you have to stop and look down to use it, making it a lot less productive throughout a day of use, as well as more tiring, which the current keyboard also causes (without mentioning all the accidental presses). Keyboard shortcuts and the trackpad are quicker, more useful, and can do everything the touch bar does without ever looking away from the screen, so the touch bar ends up as dead space that actually removes functionality and practicality.
Is there potential for something similar to the touch bar? Yes, but with a different implementation in my opinion. Is it useful for beginners and iOS switchers? Probably. But for most seasoned Mac users and Pros? Probably not. Would a touch screen be better as this review suggests? Perhaps, especially under certain circumstances and with iOS apps. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an intense internal debate at Apple about this and they went with the cheaper "happy medium". I wish they would have given us the option of having the top of the line with a "normal" keyboard though (without going into the keyboard keys debate which is an entirely different problem which they're finally beginning to accept). Maybe they have a killer implementation in mind for the future, but we'll have to wait and see, with no other choice currently for 15 inch MBP users.
Just pondering...
P.S. For those annoyed by the Siri button's accidental presses, remember, not only can you remove it in settings, but you can also fill that space with "dead" spaces so you don't accidentally press anything on the TB every time you use the delete key. It removed the annoyance, though you're still stuck with the accidental presses on every other key, even if it's less prevalent than the right corner Siri button.
That's a common misconception. The Touch ID is NOT part of the Touch Bar. It's a separate component. Touch ID can be included on a Mac without the Touch Bar.
1. I had high hopes for the Touch Bar. I think the concept is basically a good one. It just hasn't delivered. I've had this machine for a year-and-a-half, and the Touch Bar isn't any more useful now than it was the day I bought it. I expected to give it time to catch on. I did, and it hasn't.
2. I thought I would use it more than I actually do. It didn't occur to me at the time that one has to be looking at the Touch Bar for it to do any good. Since my eyes are on the screen and not the keyboard, I find using the Touch Bar counter-intuitive.
3. I didn't have any choice but to get the Touch Bar. Apple doesn't make a 15" or quad-core laptop that doesn't include it.
There are so many useful applications for this method of interaction that software suppliers are offering free "companion" apps on iPad to allow users to perform functions Apple apparently thinks they don't need. That's a reasonable workaround, but it'd be a helluvalot easier if I didn't have to jump between devices and could just touch the screen I'm already focussed on.
After a couple years of working every day with a machine that offers touch in addition to mouse and keyboard, I consider it a "must have" and feel like my Mac is crippled without it.
Hope the OLED display will have good longevity, as it may be die much sooner than the main screen.
Wonder when Apple will have the touchpad be a secondary screen like what Razr, Asus are trying out?