Chuq Von Rospach:
It seems to me Apple fell in love with the technology of the Touch Bar system, which if you dig into it a bit is a stunning piece of engineering, and expected all of us to fall in love with it as well. The problem is: Apple rarely sells things to us based on neat technology, it sells us based on the stories of how that technology will solve problems for us, and right now, the problems a Touch Bar solve for us that we care about being solved are few and far between.
Thoughtful piece on the Touch Bar. Resonates with me.
I doubt it. I can see daily on my old laptop all the problems it solves. If it takes another year or two to roll out to desktops, so what?
I’ve had at touchbar MBP since last December, and I’ve yet to find a real use for the touchbar (except for Touch ID, of course). Its cool tech, but I’m not sure that its useful tech.
Overall, this MBP gets a “C” grade from me. The screen is great, the trackpad is very good, and I like touch id. But the sticky key problem is incredibly annoying (not sure how Apple missed this during testing), the new cursor keys were a lousy form over function decision, and the “one connector for everything” decision is not working out – USB C is a shitty replacement for magsafe, and having a bunch of the different cables and devices that physically appear compatible but actually aren’t is dumb.
The main problem with the Touch Bar is that Apple has currently handicapped its use. As of now, anything the Touch Bar does must also simply accomplished with the on screen interface and your mouse. So what’s the point of using the Touch Bar? This is obviously because there are very few Touch Bar equipped Macs in the wild.
Once it’s more ubiquitous and available on desktops as well, I’m hoping they’ll remove the cuffs and allow devs to use it in interesting ways that can’t be duplicated with the mouse interface.
It’s a specialized tool at this point. Media content creators and editors see a lot of potential there. Video, stills, and audio production in Photoshop, FinalCut, etc., can find it useful if they give it a chance. Spreadsheet jockeys and word herders not so much I suspect. But give it some time.
It’s far from dead as the author implies. I do hope he’s right about Apple need to make it ubiquitous, but the components needed to make it work are rather expensive to put them in a keyboard for a desktop. Maybe it just needs to offload the processing to the main computer rather than built-in electronics?
I’ve only played with the Touch Bar at retail stores. I largely agree with Hrunga; it seems like a vertical, specialized solution that’s being touted as something more.
I see the potential utility of democratizing macro keys for more users by making them software-based, but if I were to buy a new MPB right now, I’d probably avoid this feature. That said, I’m looking forward to seeing how devs put it to more use within the next couple of years.
I knew as soon as I saw it during the keynote that it was a gimmick that no one asked for.
I think it’s short a bit of pressure sensitivity and maybe some haptics. Sliding on a slider is one thing, but tapping a virtual key should be another. But that should be doable for a company like Apple.
I just want it for context sensitive function keys.
As for cost, I don’t know. When you can get a tablet for a hundred bucks it seems like Apple should be able to drive the price lower. Give them time.
This was Apple’s answer to the chorus of people demanding “make a touchscreen Mac.” I think that part is pretty obvious.
Apple feels the Mac experience is defined by a vertical display plane, with a horizontal controls plane where all user input is accomplished. Hence the Touch Bar. A horizontal control panel that offers similar benefits of a touchscreen (software buttons/sliders/controls), but on the same plane as your keyboard and trackpad.
I at least applaud Apple for putting some actual thought into it and trying something new. Rather than slapping a touchscreen on a Macbook and calling it a day.
If you think Touch Bar is the end of the road of this approach by Apple, think again. You know Apple is going to continue to “pull on this string” and expand this idea even further, until whatever vision they have for touch-based input on a Mac is fulfilled.
Is there any hard research out there on Touch Bar usage? It is not remotely surprising to me that long-time Mac users are finding it difficult to fit the TB into their established habits and workflows, and since all of the popular Apple bloggers are long-time Mac users, I’m not suprised to see the blogosphere panning the Touch Bar.
But as someone who’s first Mac laptop was a Macbook Pro with Touch Bar, I’ve found it to be invaluable. As someone coming to the Mac fresh without any ingrained habits, muscle memory, or knowledge of shortcut keys beyond the basic ones, using the Touch Bar has been very natural. I’ve picked it up very naturally much like people picked up iOS’s touch interface very naturally. It’s visual and discoverable in a way that keyboard shortucts aren’t.
So my take is that it makes the Mac much more approachable to users coming from other platforms. Does that make it worth having on Apple’s “Pro” laptops, where the users are generally expected to be more tech savvy? I don’t know. But I found it helpful, and I’m a fairly sophisticated techy.
Needing yet another input device has not been high on my list of problems to solve. Between a keyboard and mouse (or Track Pad) I’m good. I bought a MBP with Touch Bar and returned it.
As I keep saying, the TouchBar isn’t aimed at power-users. Very little of Apple’s stuff is, even if it finds an audience there.
Microsoft Word provides a great example. You might know how to switch on bold text. You might know 10 ways to switch on bold. Mom and pop don’t, and having the word BOLD appear on the little screen above the keyboard is useful to them.
THIS is the kind of use cases people should be looking at. The TouchBar isn’t for people like us. It’s for the non-power-users.
Ah, you say, but the MacBook Pro is aimed at power-users by definition. Um, no it’s not. It’s aimed at “Pros” – pros who are photographers, DJs, video editors, and more. A pro is not necessarily a power user and, in my experience, the two circles of the Venn diagram actually intersect in only a tiny space. A lot of pro users are really dumb about how their computer works, and how to do things. The TouchBar again can be invaluable to them if used right.
So all this talk from “experts” about how the TouchBar is a failure… Don’t believe it. It’s a tantrum, and what they’re really saying is that it’s not useful for them. It never will be. It’s just not designed for them.
The actual risk here comes from Apple forgetting about the touchbar, because a really big issue with Apple right now is that they launch new technologies and then run off like excited toddlers to the next new thing they want to play with. Take force touch on the iPhone, for example. That should’ve been iterated upon, and made invaluable by now, but it’s still damned useless because it still does nearly exactly the same thing it did at launch. There are other examples.
I can wait.
The TB might not be intended solely for power users, but it’s certainly priced that way. At least for now. Mom and Pop will probably have to wait until this premium feature percolates down to the level of Mac they’re likely to buy.
Great point about the distinction between “pro users” and “power users.” I’m a perfect example. I am a professional software developer, but as I wrote in a comment below (http://disq.us/p/1lqe1aj), I’m new to the Mac platform, so I am not a Mac power user (yet, hopefully!).
The price difference isn’t solely due to the touch bar, though. it’s just that the TB only exists on higher end machines.
I was intrigued but bought the entry level MBP because it was the right machine for me at the right price. If it had a TB I’d have been fine with that. If the TB had been $100 more, I’d probably have tried it for the hell of it. But it was a $300 jump and I didn’t need the other things the jump brought me, so…
I’d miss Touch ID a lot if it were taken away. What keeps him from missing Touch ID is that he has an Apple Watch. I don’t have one. We’ll see if Series 3 entices me. Touch ID has been great. The Touch Bar I sometimes use and like. In Preview when I’m highlighting text and need different colors, the Touch Bar is nifty. I’m hoping it doesn’t languish.
I agree about the cursor keys. That frustrates me on a daily basis. USB-C is great, but I miss mag-safe. But if Apple changed the connector, then it wouldn’t be USB-C any more and people would be bitching about that. As it is, I can plug power into either side of my MBP, and that’s nice.
I don’t get how the touch bar isn’t made for power users but is only found on the ‘Pro’ laptop supposedly target directly at power users… I fail to see the mom and pop audience for a Pro device… iPad is for mom and pop… a light and thin MacBook is for mom and pop… The MBP is a Pro grade device (at leas it’s supposed to be) aimed directly at Pro’s AKA power users. Heck the marketing for this device and the use cases even presented on stage target pro’s 95% of the time…. So no, this wasn’t a feature for normal people. It was a gimmick foisted on pro’s who buy pro devices.
Function keys on macOS always felt like an afterthought to me. They have become so useless that most folks associate them with hardware controls (brightness, volume) and system features (e.g., mission control).
Touch Bar is an attempt to open it up to possibilities.
Several problems that Apple needs to solve:
THIS.
“Esc” is important, but functions were not.
Touch Bar has so much going for it, but while functions keys and the hand acrobatics needed to use them were always clunky… there was a baby in that bath water!!
The fact it added $300 to the price of an entry level MacBook Pro immediately soured me on it. Made me angry in fact. There is no way I would spend close to 2K for a base model 13″. I know they offered the “Escape”, but that had the 15-watt chips and limited I/O. Not an equivalent to the previous base model. I eventually went to the Apple store and tried the touch bar. I found it completely underwhelming. So much so, I would rather they removed it. I like the function keys and I really like a physical escape key. I am making do with my iPad and my old Air until they come up with something more enticing.
Apple should release a MacBook Pro with OLED screen that includes Touch Bar at the bottom.
I suspect that, once again, Apple is taking a technology to market before its use elsewhere. How much you want to bet that Touch Bar is gonna be across the bottom of the mooted bezel-free phone?
Thank you for your very thoughtful post. I like the “new user approachability” angle.
I think Apple wants to make Touchbar enabled keyboards, but are limited by Bluetooth bandwidth and lag. The Touchbar needs to receive live video, transmit touch data, and receive updates to the video in real time with no perceptible lag. Anything less is junk.
Bluetooth just can’t deliver that bandwidth and speed. Sure they could make it USB only but Apple has made a big deal about making devices and accessories wireless. A USB only keyboard would be an unacceptable step backwards.
The alternative would be a proprietary wireless technology with enough throughput and no lag. I bet they’re working on it, as well as backing development of better Bluetooth.
This applies to several conveniences, according to the HIG. A contextual (right-click) menu should offer commands that are accessible elsewhere. This hasn’t prevented right-clicking from becoming ubiquitous in every application.
Your comment is very insightful and goes well beyond the TouchBar issue.
The term “Pro” is definitely a problem label (for me) for just the reasons you point out.
I’ve been using Macs since 1984, much of that time for work-related things. I’m retired now but my skills and familiarity haven’t gone away (memory loss being what it is with age, I’m cringing in anticipation). I’ve always kept my Mac setup simple and over time I’ve learned to work ahead of my machine, even fast machines. It’s not me being some kind of genius, it’s repetition and being interested enough in the process to watch what I’m doing and work on making it simpler and faster.
But, not everyone is a “tinkerer” which one might use as another term for “power user.” These days most folks want an appliance.
I’m also a touch typist and a lot of what I do with my computers is writing. I look at the screen, not the keyboard. Do I look at the keyboard to hit a function key (currently an Apple wireless extended keyboard), yes, but it’s not as distracting as a constantly changing touchBar might be. Or, so I think.
Your last paragraph is also right on the money: Apple has come up with some great stuff but some of it gets left behind as they get focused on the next sexy/shiny object. It’s like they’re groping for the killer thing and if the latest thing doesn’t get enough traction in x amount of time they quietly move on, leaving it twisting in the wind.
Combine that with various related ideas: Apple is or seems to be getting out of the router business. Are they also going to dump Time Machine and push us all to cloud backup? Who knows. But, Time Machine is still built into MacOS and they still sell Time Capsules. Why didn’t they make the AirPod a mesh router? What’s the master plan? Is this all Eddie Cue trying to sell more iCloud usage to make money for his “area” at Apple?
There are numerous issues/ideas like this floating around, some of which are over the top, others reasonable to consider but it really does seem like pieces of Apple are throwing a lot of stuff at the wall to see what will stick and it’s up to us to try to psych what they’ll stick with and what they’ll drop.
I agree, the TouchBar hasn’t existed long enough to find its place in the world of Mac usage and as a user, it’s tough to know whether it’s worth experimenting with at this point and whether Apple will stick with it.
sure you did. nobody asked for the iphone, either. or airpods. or…
really? the presence of the TB offended you so much that you returned the entire tool? how strange.
he just explained that many creative pro users aren’t the same as sophisticated power users, yet use the pro hardware for their work.
“I’m an angry tech nerd. Roar!”
But you can right click on everything. You still need a Touch Bar Mac to use a Touch Bar.
Which is my point. The ubiquity of right click (it wasn’t always ubiquitous) has made it convenient and expected, despite the fact that it is just an alternative means to acccesss commands available elsewhere.
Many people don’t know the Magic a mouse or trackpad have a right-click (technically Control-click) option. Even my mom, always a Windows user never uses right-click, even though it’s been there since about it day 1.
As the feature becomes more common and is available for more macs it will gain support from developers and users will become accustomed to using it and will expect it. What will that take? Well obviously it needs to make its way to the MacBook, but I don’t expect to see that soon. More likely it will appear on desktop keyboards. But I doubt Bluetooth can handle the throughout and laglessness it requires.
If it’s only ever going to be an additional way to “right click” it’ll fail. There is almost nothing that can currently be done on the Touch Bar that isn’t achieved more quickly and easily with the standard interface. It’s slower to use as you have to take you eyes off your work to look at the Touch Bar as there is nothing tactile. You going to look down at your keyboard, review the tiny images, to change tabs in Safari? You going to look down at your keyboard and find the command for “Bold” rather than just pressing command-b? Photo scrubbing? Brightness change? Image rotation? All so much easier with the mouse and onscreen interface.
It’s offering no real value at the moment, is awkward to use, and forces people to give up a real ESC key and the function rows which could be used without looking at the keyboard. The right click to which you refer offers none of those limitations as your hand is often already on the mouse and you can right click in flow with your work.
Whatever though, you can think I’m full of shit since HIG applies the same types of limitations to right clicking. I think that’s a bad comparison, but what do I know. However, it’s odd that many people have actually returned their Touch Bar enabled MBP to get the standard keyboard back. This includes some very prominent Apple users who are usually the first to tout new Apple tech and UI enhancements. There are always exceptions, but generally people seem to either hate it or ignore it.
So my original belief still stands. Unless Apple opens it up to devs to do some really interesting and unique things, things that can’t be readily accomplished with a keyboard shortcut or via the onscreen interface, it’s going to be a flop. People need a reason to use it, and right now there isn’t one.
Then I don’t see the need to distinguish between “creative pro” and “power” for the purpose of this discussion.
“Mom and pop” are generally considered neither of those two, however.
Very true. Technology should aim at help solving problem, not to be cute.
Just make a touchscreen option.