
Former Apple Employee: Touch Bar Shouldn't Be Forced on High End Users - doener
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/08/28/15-inch-macbook-pro-no-touch-bar-wish/
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thedailymail
I'm not a power user or anything, but the touch bar feels like a downgrade to
me. The context-sensitive display has sat there unused for months, while
important buttons I use multiple times daily, like those for brightness and
volume adjustments, now require the use of two-step touch-and-slide actions
instead of my preferred key-mashing. I guess it's a matter of personal
preference, but given the cost of the product it'd be great to be able to opt
out.

~~~
jorvi
Not only that, up till 2016 all the 'peripheral' parts (screen, battery, ports
etc.) on MacBook Pros had been equal. Wether you sprung for the €1300 or €2200
13" MacBook Pro, externally you'd get the more-or-less the same experience,
with the performance delta usually within 15%. The 'gimp'book changed that.
Now, if you spring for the base model you get two Thunderbolt ports less, a
worse battery, and a ULV instead of a full-blown processor.

~~~
maxsilver
> Now, if you spring for the base model you get a worse battery

Except you _don 't_ get a worse battery, that's the crazy part. The
base/cheaper model gets the _better_ battery than the expensive model.

The lower-end 13-inch base MacBook Pro gets a 54.5w/hr battery, and only
drives one screen. The higher-end 13-inch touchbar MacBook Pro only gets a
49.2w/hr battery, and has to drive two screens. -
[https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/](https://www.apple.com/macbook-
pro/specs/) Presumably the TouchBar takes up enough space that they had to
reduce the battery size to compensate.

So, not only do you have a touch bar you (probably) don't want, wasting
battery life you'd rather keep, you also have smaller total battery capacity
too. The lineup goes out of it's way to double-punish the more expensive
product.

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lathiat
The TouchBar would have much better potential if they integrated a Taptic
engine, and better again if it was a taptic engine which gave you feedback
when you were over a button you could press (which is quite possible, some of
the initial taptic research could make you feel sensations - from memory
something like waves or water?)

And then required force to execute the button - "force touch" / "3d touch" \-
not an accidental tap.

I really hope they iterate to have at that, at which point it would be much
better.

~~~
btlr
That would be an ideal implementation, though I wonder if part of the reason
it hasn't happened is similar to the reason that the Taptic Engine hasn't been
implemented on iPads, which if I understand correctly is the difficulty
associated with scaling to larger screen sizes.

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rongenre
The lack of a substantial spec bump (all I really wanted was more memory and
CPU) made me ditch my work Macbook Pro for a linux laptop.

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dingo_bat
It's not being forced on anybody. You can buy the model with the function
keys. You can also buy another laptop from another manufacturer.

~~~
manyxcxi
While true, if you need OS X for your work, you're stuck.

I don't need OS X, but I prefer it for work for two reasons:

1) Developing on *nix like OSes is far more ergonomic to me than on Windows

2) OS X, in my opinion, hits a sweet spot of polish / "just works" and letting
me do my power user things. It's not flawless by any metric, but it mostly
stays out of my way.

I run Fedora on another laptop and Ubuntu on my older MBP, so technically the
majority of my OSes are NOT OS X, while the majority of my hardware is.

I'll take the trackpad on my 2009 MBP over the trackpads I've felt on brand
new Lenovos and Dells, and I can't recall a laptop keyboard as useful as the
pre2016 MBP.

That being said, if my option is to be limited to half the memory of
competitors and to change my entire world to USB-C, having to replace my
Cinema Display, etc. when I upgrade my laptop in a year or two, it might be
the excuse to go find a different manufacturer.

My biggest hesitation is finding very new models that work very well with my
preferred distros.

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sigjuice
Apple should sell non-TouchBar versions of everything for Touchbar prices.
Users can get what they like and Apple can make more money off Fn keys.

