[anbop]

The problem is most heavy computer users set themselves up with a proper ergonomic setup, i.e. external keyboard. And by not building the touch bar into external keyboards, they killed the entire concept of the Touch Bar, because any "pro" application has to assume that you may or may not have a touch bar and can't put essential functionality there. Which limits the Touch Bar to proper first-class support primarily in Apple first-party apps.

[dividedbyzero]

I guess the actual, underlying problem is, the Touchbar is bad UX for a bunch of software engineers, but pretty great for most everyone else. Think about it – you lose some keys you never really had a use for anyway except as media keys, and you get almost analogue-ish volume and brightness controls, apps can give you context-dependent options that are really discoverable (which F-keys totally aren't) and can adapt to your feature use patterns and be a lot richer than static bindings on 12 keys. As a musician, you get a neat little slider – no replacement for a proper external controller, but it's always there when needed, and it can change its behavior dependent on the context. As a photographer, you get a multi-function slider in post that feels (to me) a lot more precise than any touchpad acrobatics I'm capable of. Plus, and most importantly by a long way, it makes emoji really usable on MacOS, and emoji are super, super important stuff, it's hard to overstate their value. Text-based communication loses a lot of emotional cues, that's really hard to get used to if you're used to mostly in-person communication or at least voice, and in my experience keeps causing small (or not-so-small) misunderstandings and microdose vitriol even among people who have been doing this for ages and ages, been socialized in it, aren't too keen on lots of face-to-face, and detest emoji with a passion. Those are things that make the Touchbar a pretty neat feature for lots and lots of people, even given its many "legitimate" issues (it tends to micro-freeze for some people, it isn't as precise as it could be, lots of apps use it in not-well-thought-out ways, it's very hard to use blindly, ...) But not having F-keys is so disruptive to a lot of deeply-ingrained software development muscle memory and UI conventions transplanted from other OSes and other decades that I guess it just wouldn't fly with this crowd in pretty much any shape and form factor.

[ajmurmann]

How does it help with emoji? I've found CMD+Ctrl+space to already work really well.

[pier25]

> but pretty great for most everyone else

Honestly I think most people would rather save $200-300 than have the touchbar.

If you look at the average mac user, not pros but regular office people, they use stuff like Launchpad and rarely use keyboard shortcuts. You'd be surprised how many macOS users don't even use Spotlight for instance.

[StillBored]

The problem with function keys vs touchbar could have been fixed by embedding a small lcd in each key, or in a border above them. Its not like mac's have a shortage of vertical keyboard space given how much they waste on the trackpad.

That way you keep people happy who aren't looking down at the keys, and you give new users/etc nice graphics to help describe what the buttons do.

[dkonofalski]

This is basically a repackaged "no true Scotsman" fallacy. We're talking about a laptop here. Most people that bought a laptop are using it because they need something portable and self-contained. On top of that, the Touch Bar isn't meant for "essential" functionality just like the F-keys were never meant for essential functionality. They were meant to be shortcuts for commonly used functions.

I use an external keyboard with the Touch Bar all the time. Pretending like you have to use one or the other is disingenuous.

[mamon]

Touch bar is stupid idea because it is so narrow,and located in such place that it is hard to see it clearly due to the angle. If they really wanted to add touch capabilities to MacBook they should have put touch display in place of TouchPad, like Asus did: https://www.engadget.com/2018-06-05-asus-zenbook-pro-15-scre...