'The MacBook Pro's One-Year-Old Signature Feature Touch Bar Has No Future, But Users Are Required To Pay a Premium For It' (chuqui.com)

Chuq Von Rospach, a former Apple employee and commentator, has criticized the MacBook-maker to force consumers to pay extra for the Touch Bar -- a signature feature of the last year's MacBook Pro lineup -- in order to have the highest-end MacBook Pro currently available. He writes: The current [MacBook Pro] line forces users to pay for the Touch Bar on the higher end devices whether they want it or not, and that's a cost users shouldn't need to pay for a niche technology without a future. So Apple needs to either roll the Touch Bar out to the entire line and convince us we want it, or roll it back and offer more laptop options without it. [...] So what's the future of the Touch Bar? I don't know. I'm not sure Apple does, either. I was fascinated that when Apple released the iMacs earlier this year not one word was mentioned about the Touch Bar or Touch ID and support for them via an updated keyboard or trackpad was nowhere to be found. I'm taking that as an indication that after the lackluster response to this with the laptop releases, they've gone back to the drawing board a bit before rolling it out further.

Comments

Re:Not just the touch bar

[Misagon]

The MBP 2016 keyboard with "butterfly" scissor switches also have wider keys with smaller gaps between them - and smaller gaps also make many typists press two keys at once more often by mistake.

Key spacing, key gaps, curvature, travel to actuation -- all those measurements that classic keyboards have, they were not grabbed out of thin air. They were developed after many studies of actual typists back in the typewriter era.

Re: Nothing has really changed...

[gfxguy]

I was offered a Mac mini at work a few years ago. Since I didn't have to give up anything (my existing Linux and Windows workstations), I gave it a go.... a good, solid go. Not an hour or two, but a month. I simply didn't like it. I didn't like the windowing, the lack of mouse acceleration that I couldn't just change, a lot of windowing issues like borders, from where you could resize. Some things couldn't be changed, and the things that were fixable (like acceleration) were either crazily stupid, or you could buy something to do tweaks. And that's the thing about apple users - they just keep paying, and in that case, for features they had in older versions of the OS.

So it really comes down to perhaps being more difficult, but extremely customizable (like Linux... which, while difficult, also has vastly more helpful resources on the net... and also really only difficult if you want to customize the UI because of so many options), to really rigid and easier to use because of it (MacOS), with Windows somewhere in the middle. I simply didn't like it. I don't berate other people's personal choices, though... some people like it, so it's great we have choice.

Now, as far as TFS goes, "So Apple needs to either roll the Touch Bar out to the entire line and convince us we want it, or roll it back and offer more laptop options without it" is just ridiculous. Apple doesn't need to do jack. People that want it, buy it, unwanted features and all. That's what life is like, and if Apple is happy with sales, they don't need some ex-wife telling them how to run the company.