[jimmy1]

I'm adding onto this -- I have a 2017 edition of the MBP for work, and I have a faulty keyboard. I hated it. "The touchbar is stupid", I proclaimed.

I recently bought a 2018 edition for the wife because she has always expressed a desire of owning one of her own (my work always provided me with a mac). The keyboard is much improved.

Additionally, watching a "normal" user interact with a Mac and a touchbar, versus me, a developer was eye opening, and I suddenly realized there is a lot more to the puzzle we are so blind to. She loves it. Sure, it is an "emoji bar" when she is in iMessage, but she also loves the scrolling functionality it provides in Photos.

I still don't see much use for it personally, but I am no longer a rapid opponent of it as I once was. There's always been extra ports and features on other laptops I've used in the past, and I never seemed so critical of those as well. Maybe I bought into the mob mentality? Going back to my wife, her work provided her with a Thinkpad Yoga. It has a touch screen, and a stylus. Ok touch screens I am not the biggest fan of, but I happen to think the stylus is cool! I am sure there were many users of the previous Thinkpads at her company that were going "What!? A stupid stylus? Who needs this!" I realized I was doing the same thing with the new MBP.

Touchbar or not, it is still the most quality, aesthetically pleasing, well built laptop I use, and it still remains miles beyond any PC I ever used as well, Inspirons, XPSes, Surfaces included.

[Retra]

I don't think people would be complaining nearly as much if they simply added the touchbar above the existing keys rather than replacing them. Or left the esc and power keys while putting the touchbar in between them. Lots of things they could have done.

[jimmy1]

The replacing the existing keys is a good point. I don't feel the pain of the ESC key since I remap caps lock to it, I always thought "Function" keys were relics of a bygone era, (and unergonomic to use), and the little black doodad functions just as well as a power button as any other one I have ever used.

[rbanffy]

For me, father of a 6yo daughter, the "emoji bar" is worth every penny.

Thinking about it, I've spent almost half of my career on computers that didn't have function keys (even though they usually had ESC as a physical one).