I've had the Touch Bar model twice now (long story). Each time I switched back to a 2015 model after about two weeks.
The missing Escape key is annoying. The lack of tactile feedback makes it awkward for touch typists who expect some kind of feedback to sense that their press reached the right place. Remapping to Caps Lock requires a long muscle memory retraining period that is not helped by the fact that external keyboards still have an Esc key, moving your training progress backwards (unless you pry it off or something).
The new keyboard is not very nice to type on, but the worst aspect of it is that it is extremely loud. I didn't experience any key failures myself, but I have a colleague who did. (And of course he encountered the classic problem: What do you do when the laptop you absolutely rely on for work is in the shop for 7+ day's to fix a single key?)
Also, the new arrow key layout is very bad for touch typists like myself. I frequently had to look down at the keyboard and see that my fingers weren't finding the right arrow key. The old pyramid layout of the four arrow keys was much more friendly.
The Touch Bar is literally useless to me as a touch typist who is used to not looking at the keyboard. One of the first things that annoyed me was that the contents of the Touch Bar changes depending on the app, so in order to use it without glancing down you have to remember the exact widget placement for each app. So I pretty quickly switched to the "extended" control bar that always has the same layout. But that basically just gives you the functionality of a pre-Touch-Bar Mac.
I frequently found myself accidentally touching the Touch Bar, often because I rest my hands in a splayed position across the keyboard. My fingertips would end up resting on the Touch Bar and cause surprising things to happen.
Another annoyance is the fact that if you do want to invest in using the Touch Bar efficiently, you can't use the Mac with an external keyboard. In my home office I have an external screen and "dock" my MacBook there and run it with a closed lid and a wireless Apple keyboard. No Touch Bar there.
I don't mind all the other problems so much -- USB-C, no MagSafe, trackpad that is too big (yet another case of accidental touches), etc. -- but I'd pay a lot of money to get rid of the Touch Bar.
The missing Escape key is annoying. The lack of tactile feedback makes it awkward for touch typists who expect some kind of feedback to sense that their press reached the right place. Remapping to Caps Lock requires a long muscle memory retraining period that is not helped by the fact that external keyboards still have an Esc key, moving your training progress backwards (unless you pry it off or something).
The new keyboard is not very nice to type on, but the worst aspect of it is that it is extremely loud. I didn't experience any key failures myself, but I have a colleague who did. (And of course he encountered the classic problem: What do you do when the laptop you absolutely rely on for work is in the shop for 7+ day's to fix a single key?)
Also, the new arrow key layout is very bad for touch typists like myself. I frequently had to look down at the keyboard and see that my fingers weren't finding the right arrow key. The old pyramid layout of the four arrow keys was much more friendly.
The Touch Bar is literally useless to me as a touch typist who is used to not looking at the keyboard. One of the first things that annoyed me was that the contents of the Touch Bar changes depending on the app, so in order to use it without glancing down you have to remember the exact widget placement for each app. So I pretty quickly switched to the "extended" control bar that always has the same layout. But that basically just gives you the functionality of a pre-Touch-Bar Mac.
I frequently found myself accidentally touching the Touch Bar, often because I rest my hands in a splayed position across the keyboard. My fingertips would end up resting on the Touch Bar and cause surprising things to happen.
Another annoyance is the fact that if you do want to invest in using the Touch Bar efficiently, you can't use the Mac with an external keyboard. In my home office I have an external screen and "dock" my MacBook there and run it with a closed lid and a wireless Apple keyboard. No Touch Bar there.
I don't mind all the other problems so much -- USB-C, no MagSafe, trackpad that is too big (yet another case of accidental touches), etc. -- but I'd pay a lot of money to get rid of the Touch Bar.