
MacBook Pro with Touch Bar review: a touch of the future - tambourine_man
http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/14/13616404/apple-macbook-pro-touch-bar-review-2016-13-inch-15-inch-laptop
======
AdventurerSen
I didn't want to make a new thread. Appleinsider's review is a lot more in-
depth.

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/11/14/review-apples-
late...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/11/14/review-apples-
late-2016-15-macbook-pro-with-touch-bar)

~~~
Ralfp
Ars's one with benchmarks:

[http://arstechnica.co.uk/apple/2016/11/macbook-pro-touch-
bar...](http://arstechnica.co.uk/apple/2016/11/macbook-pro-touch-
bar-13-15-inch-touch-bar-review/)

------
59nadir
There's nothing in this review that convinces me that the touch bar is
improving anything. If anything, paragraphs like these convince me it's at
best on par with just regular keys:

> you no longer have one-touch access to brightness and volume adjustments;
> instead, you need to tap the button and then dial in your changes on a
> slider that pops up beside — not beneath — your finger. I’d be annoyed by
> that, but fortunately you can move the slider without actually touching it,
> by keeping your finger held down on the bar. It’s surprisingly inelegant, in
> that you end up controlling a slider that you aren’t actually touching. But
> it is efficient, and I got used to the new control scheme within a day, able
> to operate it by muscle memory the same I would a physical key.

They don't seem to have integrated this themselves, even. Why introduce
something that you can't even use reasonably yourselves?

~~~
WayneBro
The touch bar is the type of gimmick that Apple loves though, because that's
what sells hardware.

When OS X was released, the Dock was that gimmick. It added "curb appeal" and
demoability according to Bruce Tognazzini, an ex-Apple employee who wrote the
first five editions of the Apple Human Interface Guidelines -
[http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html](http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html)

~~~
ihuman
> The touch bar is the type of gimmick

Sorry if this comes off as rude, but what's the difference on HN between a
gimmick and a feature? In dictionaries, it says that a gimmick is a feature
that exists to get attention. However, doesn't that describe most new features
in technology?

~~~
WayneBro
I think you explained it perfectly. A gimmick is a feature to get attention.
It's not an indispensable future. It's not a necessarily very useful feature.
It's just there to get attention.

------
robert_tweed
One thing I got from this review is that the touchbar brings keyboard
shortcuts to people who wouldn't normally bother to learn keyboard shortcuts.

I personally won't buy one because I've very picky about my keyboards (the
squashed arrow keys are as much of a problem for me as the missing escape
key). But for average users, I think Apple has managed another UX win here.

I just wish they had made the bar a bit smaller and kept the physical ESC key.
I'm not a VIM user so don't care about frequency of use. My biggest issue is
how do you CMD+ALT+ESC if an app crashes, locking up the touch bar?

~~~
rahoulb
From what I read, the touch bar is a separate system, with its own processor
and running watchOS - effectively a remote display - so an app crash shouldn't
affect it.

~~~
robert_tweed
I would certainly _guess_ that the OS gets pre-emptive access to it in much
the same way as it can trap system key interrupts before they go to
applications, but I'm still wary until there's a lot more information
available on this. Another case is what if the app decides to replace the ESC
key altogether? If that's prohibited somehow then what's the advantage of
removing the physical key?

TBH, a separate OS sounds like one more thing to go wrong, which is also
worse, not reassuring. I'm also not keen on the idea of someone remotely
rooting my touch bar - also not a problem I currently have to worry about.

~~~
rahoulb
Just read the Ars review - it looks like the bar is divided into three, with
only the middle area fully under app control (the left hand area showing
dialogue box controls or escape). It does say that the bar slows down under
heavy load though.

~~~
robert_tweed
Hm, so what happens when an application locks up with a dialog open? Sounds
like you may need to CMD+TAB first to get the ESC key back, which is at best
going to be a nuisance (and I'm not sure exactly which OSX shortcuts are non-
maskable in the way that CTRL+ALT+DEL is in Windows).

------
tbrock
Fine, it has a new keyboard thing that you may or may not like, we are going
to buy it anyway. But how does the verge not address what everyone really
cares about: the CPU!

The MacBook without the touchbar has a MacBook Air class CPU while the one
with a touchbar is in another class.

How do the non touchbar models compare with the previous air models and how do
the touchbar models compare with the previous pro generation?

If the CPU is mostly the same performance wise as the last generation you are
better off going for a refurb of the last gen if you don't care about the
keyboard thing or having the new new.

~~~
Matthias247
As far as I have seen in some benchmarks the new non-touchbar model (with the
lower TDP CPU) is as about the same speed as my last-gen (2015) MBP 13" with
the 28W TDP CPU.

So it's a lower speed CPU class but due to the newer CPU generation the
performance is the same.

You can see it in a positive way: It didn't get slower

Or in the negative way: You get an actually worse CPU class for more money
than the previous gen was.

~~~
tbrock
Since the non-touchbar model has the MacBook Air class CPU and your 2015 MPB
has the higher voltage pro class CPU I'd say that's quite an improvement.

This years "MacBook Air" like model is as powerful as last years MacBook Pro?
Money should be flying out of our wallets.

------
pawadu
Lets not forget, it is also a touch of the past:
[http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/connecting...](http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/connecting/ds_bn_6530b.pdf)

(not claiming the two are similar in some way, just following the idea back to
where it was born)

I remember when this laptop was being sold I considered it since was "small"
for that time, but ended up buying something else since I didn't like the
touch panel below the screen.

~~~
cptskippy
This is like the Creative Nomad vs the iPod. HP was first to market with
everything that's in the new MBP but it's incredibly unpolished and downright
cumbersome to the point that it's hard to tell that these products do mostly
the same thing. This how Apple captures the market, when they release a
product it's so polished and functional, and they commit 100% to it that it
almost always succeeds. HP and others don't spend much time if any refining
ideas, they just throw sh*t against the wall and hope it sticks.

~~~
pawadu
Again, I am not trying to compare the two. Just to provide some history,
something tech journalists are seemingly very bad at.

~~~
cptskippy
I think it's a great observation about journalism and an an apt comparison.

Apple rarely invents something new but they can consistently take the same box
of Lego everyone plays with and build something much cooler.

------
alessioalex
My potential issue with the Touch Bar is that I never look at the keyboard
when I type, so if I need to adjust the volume / screen brightness I would
have to change my behavior.

~~~
mangeletti
I never look at my keyboard when I type, either.

I do, however, always look at my keyboard when I adjust the screen brightness
or volume, or control iTunes (pause, next, previous).

The one exception to this is ESC, and I use it gratuitously.

~~~
raverbashing
So, I guess you lose iTunes control keys while another app has control of the
Touch Bar? Or maybe some controls can be global? This is a big issue in media
apps

~~~
pilif
The controls are global. You can try it out with the Touch Bar simulator in
the current XCode.

------
rayiner
I think the touchbar is the way to go for desktops and laptops. You can
imagine Apple rolling out a touch bar enabled desktop keyboard. But touch
screens are totally impractical for use when your computer is docked, which
means you can't really incorporate them into your workflow.

The battery life point is really depressing. Every MacBook since the original
has been improving on that front and this is such a huge regression. If I
wanted just 5-6 hours of battery life I'd buy a PC.

------
guitarbill
> I have little doubt that in a couple years, the technology Apple has been
> waiting for will arrive and this vision, or something closer to it, will be
> complete. Apple just released this machine too soon, or was too aggressive
> in the decisions it made.

This summary makes sense to me. Luckily, I put 8GB of RAM in my Macbook Air
five years ago, and it'll probably do another year.

That said, does anybody use a Macbook for development? If I need to use
dongles anyway, I think I could live with one port.

~~~
phaedrus
In fact I do use a 12" Macbook for development (C++). It does alright;
certainly no worse than the 2011 13" Air it replaced. I should mention the
CLion IDE makes it get hot and drains the battery unless you turn off certain
IDE features. Code::Blocks does fine on it performance-wise, but initially the
UI was too fuzzy to read due to incompatibility with Retina display. I can't
remember if that's fixed in the latest version or if I found a work-around. I
haven't tried to use XCode. My favorite thing about it is that the taller
aspect ratio of the screen reminds me of older 4:3 monitors and IMO is a
better layout for programming.

Edit: I have yet to plug anything into the single USB-C port except the
charger. I don't own any dongles. I just use WiFi and bluetooth.

------
mtw
One major let-down for me in macbook pros is the lack of a nvidia GPU. You
can't do serious machine learning on those laptops. I actually had to buy a
previous-gen macbook pro

I'm not sure what to do if I had to get a new laptop. On one hand, I have a
few iOS projects, and on the other hand, it's always nice to run locally and
quickly a few deep learning algos.

The limited connections are also a let down

~~~
terhechte
There're some external GPU enclosures with Mac-Compatible Nvidia cards that
connect via USB-3. None of that is officially supported, and it is expensive,
but based on cursory searches I did, it seems to work for people. It's still
expensive and can only be used when you're at a desk, but those are imho fair
compromises.

Now, I'd love for Apple to release an official external GPU (like Blazer did
with the Blazer Stealth) but I highly doubt they'd do it.

[https://bizon-tech.com/us/bizonbox2s-egpu.html/](https://bizon-
tech.com/us/bizonbox2s-egpu.html/)

------
mafro
Steve (quite probably imo) wouldn't have allowed this to happen!

    
    
      I have little doubt that in a couple years, the technology
      Apple has been waiting for will arrive and this vision, or
      something closer to it, will be complete. Apple just
      released this machine too soon, or was too aggressive in
      the decisions it made.

~~~
wh0rth
While I agree with you here, I do think that using Steve Jobs as a consistent
counterpoint to new Apple developments isn't always useful. Sometimes we
forget that Steve was behind the Lisa and the original Apple TV. And the Magic
Mouse original.

~~~
StRoy
I'm not old enough (and certainly wasn't in a household wealthy enough to
afford it at the time) to know what's going on with the Lisa, but there was
nothing with the Apple Tv, or Magic Mouse. For those products, we're simply
not the audience. I know plenty of casual mac users who were doing fine with
those things. People in tech circles love to go on about Apple's mouse
deficiencies but from my experience around casual computer users, PC users
too, is that most people barely know about the second mouse button and the
very concept of a "context menu" is alien to them. I keep having to remind my
stepfather how to do things like copy and pasting in some apps because he
always forgets about the context menu and even remembering something as simple
as Ctrl+C + Ctrl+V is something he's not willing to do for a reason I can't
even fathom myself, it literally makes no sense to me, it's just how it is.

So, from my point of view, Apple insistence on mostly forgetting about
secondary functions on mouses is the right thing. The Magic mouse doesn't have
a middle click? Most people don't even know how to right click. The only thing
a mouse for casual users needs to do right, is left click and scrolling and
the magic mouse has perfect touch scrolling. For the same reason Apple has
hidden functionality like Cut&Paste from the finder. You need to hold the
option key to activate the "move item". Apple wants you to drag&drop instead.
The "default" in Apple land has always been to serve the need of the common,
not the expert. So there's no traditional CTRL+X CTRL+V. Instead you need to
do CMD+C as if you were copying, then CMD+OPT+V to "move". Everything advanced
tends to be hidden into OPT key. It also changes the behavior of various menus
to show things Apple doesn't want to show to the commons.

The touchbar is actually a very, very clever thing, we're just not the
audience once again. I firmly believe it will never have much use among
professionals who have nothing against learning many keyboard shortcut
combinations or who even do things like customizing them (Karabiner to the
rescue!). The touchbar is for people who didn't even use the mouse right
click, and who don't understand concepts like context menu that change based
on, gasp, context. It's actually going to be a boon for these people. Even
exposing basic functionality like copy paste is going to help average users be
slightly more productive with their devices.

The only issue is the MBP audience having a lot of techies and audio/visual
professionals. The touchbar would be more sensible on something like the iMac
and Macbook.

------
mrgreenfur
Cons: "Touchbar needs time to grow." What the hell is growing?

~~~
chris11
Well, I think it probably needs more applications to use it.

------
liminal
I'm using a touchscreen Windows laptop and can't imagine going back to non-
touch. Windows bit the bullet and reworked their UI for touch. It cost them
some time, but it seems like they are in a much better position now in that
regard, than Apple.

------
sz4kerto
All the use cases they show would be much more intuitive on a touchscreen.

------
HelloYouPerson
This reminded me of this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFsOUbZ0Lr0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFsOUbZ0Lr0)

------
blauditore
It looks like Apple is trying to find an alternative to touchscreens just
because Steve Jobs once said they're bad.

For me, touchscreens are perfectly useful on laptops, since directly tapping
something is much quicker than moving my hand to the trackpad, locating the
cursor, moving it around and finally clicking something.

~~~
intoverflow2
Think it's more a case that a Surface-like MacBook Pro would completely
cannibalise the iPad Pro and Cook is more fond of the iPad Pro than the Mac
line.

The touchbar as a design decision makes a lot more sense when the brief is
"Add touch to the Macbook Pro line... but under no circumstances step on the
toes of the iPad Pro"

~~~
slantyyz
As far as I can tell, Apple has never been afraid of cannibalization within
their product lines - I've always admired them for that.

~~~
intoverflow2
Yeah just this time iPad Pro was the one supposed to be doing the
cannibalising but it never materialised

