With Touchbar, Apple Is Grasping At Straws (Opinion)

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Touch bar[yawn], might possibly be annoying even. Surely, an expensive modification with the potential to be a point of failure. I don't know about IOS but I rarely access the function keys on my PC.
 
Function keys are frequently used for gamers and such. It would not play well in the PCMR world if a manufacturer would drop those keys. I honestly think Apple will lose a lot of sale because of this gimmick. All the people who can't disconnect completely from Windows because of the lack of content, apps and games on OSX, the ones dual booting to Windows.
 
I thought it was funny when they were like, "hey look I can now press this button and have it do this function" when there is literally the same button on the screen in the running app itself. So now I have to take my hands off the trackpad or keyboard and track down this button.

Seems so pointless to me. We already have keyboard shortcuts plus using a mouse/trackpad is so fast already.
 
Maybe it's just me but I'm not overly fond of touch pads in general. Whether placed in the center like this one or off to the side like a track pad. The surface feels for lack of better words, nasty.

It drives me nuts and it's the touch sensation equivalent of fingernails across a chalkboard. At least touch sensitive cell screens are glossy and smooth, not finely textured like rubbing a fingertip across dry paper. I'd much rather use a mouse and move my wrist while only tapping with my fingertips than having to rub my fingers over a dry surface like that.

Good chance that I'm completely alone on this and it's some weird personal quirk. Just, no, no thanks. I'm good. lol
 
While I don't think they're going to lose many sales because of this, I don't think they're going to convince anyone who wasn't already in the market for a Macbook. Actually, if anything they'll scare more people away with the increased price than with any feature.

If you wanted a Macbook before, you're still going to want one now. If you didn't want one before, nothing about this is going to change your mind.
 
This news is a little late. Microsoft's new Surface products takes this announcement and sucker punches it in the gut. Microsoft didn't even need to use impressive hardware to do it too. The touch bar might have been cool last week. We would remember all those other cool LCD touch bars released on PCs and how useful they can be. But now... The surface dial just seems like a better tool.
 
Touch bar is Apple solution for something Microsoft failed to achieve with Windows 8, 8.1 and Windows 10.
 
I have a couple of macs here at Casa De Bassplayer and I like them a lot.

But there was nothing compelling about what Apple showed today. The systems were incremental upgrades to existing models, for the most part. And not a peep about a new Mac Pro.
 
you jumped the shark at:

"Arguably, you could credit Apple’s beautiful, reliable machines with pushing the entire laptop computing market forward."
 
I've got a MacBook Pro... it's a great machine and while I'm not as enamored of OSX (apps seem less stable then recent Windows releases on modern hardware, and I've run into 'apps locking the os' situations that I've not seen on Windows in 10 years), I absolutely think the user experience is better than my Windows laptop (which is a more expensive machine). However... I don't see the touch bar as a big innovation... and I do see the loss of critical ports as a huge problem. Given the sort of work I do with these machines (plugging in lots of stuff), the new MBP is just not an option for me, much like the new iPhone. As much as I like Apple products, they seem to be dead set on pushing me away as a customer.
 
They keep trying to make things thinner and thinner. That's great and all, but i'd rather have thicker with better battery life and far more ports. Give me a fill size XQD/SD slot and several USB 3.0 ports, and keep the mag power connector. This is after all, a "PROFESSIONAL" laptop, which you would want people to use for work. Take away the ports on the regular macbooks.

As for the $500 touchbar upgrade, no thanks. I think the take rate will be dismal, mark my words and look at the sales numbers in 2018.
 
like it or not...this is an awesome idea....can't wait untill someone develops the code to dysplay system stats in the bar....it would be awesome....critical system info at a glance,...cpu temp, speed, mem usage fan speed etc....fun stuff
 


which is exactly the kind of data Apple doesn't want you to know - so they're forcing an (expensive!) feature whose limited use cases don't even target their main customer base.

An ultraflat tactile customizable keyboard with haptic feedback would have been an amazing input revolution. This... Is not.
 
Apple is always looking for opportunities to replace older or lesser used elements with more flexible, future-oriented features. The only reason I ever use the function buttons on my macbook is to take a screenshot, or use the alternate functions set to them (adjust screen brightness, volume, play/pause, etc.) Replacing the whole line of keys with an input device that is meant to be as malleable as possible for devs seems like a great idea. I can't see any downside to this. It also falls in line with apple's belief that a lot of people don't want to get fingerprints and smudges all over a laptop screen - something I value as I like to watch/edit a whole ton of content and like to limit the amount of time that I would spend with a microfiber cloth on this display.
 
I hate touch interfaces with a passion. Loathe the damned things. There's no way to give a positive command to a touch interface; all one can do is make suggestions, because the interface is always guessing. Keyboard and TrackPoint are still leagues ahead of even the "best' touch interfaces.
 
Given that users may be forced to unlock their devices by the use of their fingerprints, anyone with any information that requires security should NEVER use their fingerprints to unlock a device.

This makes the toolbar's one and only one usage a big zero.

Removing all of the other connectors helps me out. I now know that I'll never buy an Apple product and I don't have to waste my time even giving it a seconds worth of time to think it over.
 
Apple has never been a "great innovator", at least not any time during the memory of anyone under the age of 50. What Apple has done well, at times very well, is take what is there already and either make it better or combine it with something else in an unexpected (and not always useful) way. At their best, they were "The Matrix" of computer companies. And even that hasn't been the case since they lost Jobs. Now they are quite content to rely on the insularity and elitism of their userbase to allow them to get away with packaging old technology as "innovation", and it works, as long as it looks pretty. They're the epitome of style over substance.
 
If a starcraft pro can hit 400 APM, command entire armies, and still manage to keep it up for 10 hours a day without a touch bar, i'm pretty sure the average pc user can hit alt/ctrl/shift+key shortcuts for whatever it is they are doing.
 
Good piece bashing it as I would no anything Apple but the feature isn't that bad. The placement is the only issue as you have said, it breaks the typing flow.
They could sacrifice the height of the touchpad and put the touchscreen above it so it could be pressed by a thumb, similar on how we do on the spacebar.
 
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