I got a touchbar (2016) because that's what was offered at work. The build quality (especially the keyboard) is noticeably worse than previous Apple notebooks I've used.

The 2016 keyboards weren't as good.

I kinda like my mid-2017 keyboard. It takes getting used to, and is a bit louder than the external or my older 2013 MBP keyboard, but it's quite nice.

The trackpad sensitivity is annoying though. I had to turn off tap-to-click which I'd been used to for decades.

The last Mac keyboard I thought was great was the Titanium PowerBook (the Aluminum was ever so slightly squishier). The polycarbonate MacBooks got a decent membrane keyboard, while the Unibody MacBook Pros got a pretty terrible keyboard throughout their whole run. The touchbar keyboard is less squishy than the Unibody one (good), but it's way too noisy, the layout sucks, and it only took me a couple weeks before some keys stopped working reliably. Unless the 2017 touchbar keyboard brings back the proper amount of key travel I can't imagine it's much better than the 2016 keyboard.

Funny thing is that I sat down with my boss to troubleshoot some stuff today and he was cursing up a storm about the touchbar keyboard (usually he docks the thing and uses an external keyboard). I've largely gotten used to it, but still haven't memorized the location of the navigation / modifier keys. It's like the iPhone 6/7 -- I've gotten used to the camera hump but it still drives me nuts every single time I put the phone down.

I got the touchbar because it was required for the screensize/processor combo I wanted. I don't hate it, but it's a gimmick more than anything.

There's nothing low-quality about the touchbar on my mac. It works as expected with the added benefit of flexibility.

People just like to knock on the #1 guy. It's easy and gets clicks.

If you like it, great. But the idea that people are just criticizing to knock on the #1 guy is a sloppy story. There are reasons for disliking the touchbar, particularly as a replacement for a row of keys. The tactile feedback from keys is missing. And the "flexibility" has its own problems -- for example, consider changing the audio volume with keys vs with the touchbar. With keys it's easy as pie to silence or incrementally change the volume without even interrupting your visual attention. The new interaction with the UI that requires a shift of your visual attention. You can't tap on a spot repeatedly for a few quick steps, because the UI transforms into a slider, which you have to reorient on, find the correct spot and drag around. Yeah, if I wanted to change the sound volume that way, I already had an option for it with the touchpad that's been there for decades and isn't any less conveniently located than the new touchbar.

And in general that's the case. It's been easy to have point-and-slide control over arbitrary UI laptop elements as long as there've been touchpads. The difference between a touchscreen and touchpad is marginal. At some margins -- particularly the operation of pocket computers with a form factor about the size of a laptop touchpad -- that's been tremendously useful, but I don't see any evidence that anyone's come up with something that genuinely matters for laptops yet.

In my experience, you rarely have to reorient on the slider, because touch-and-drag is a valid gesture on the volume and brightness sliders. i.e., you don't have to tap, find slider, touch-and-drag, you can just directly touch-and-drag the button. Doesn't work for very large changes due to where the buttons are, but it hits 90% of my use cases in a cleaner way than the old buttons did.

I do have to flick my eyes down to find the button, but it doesn't bother me---fully understand it might bother others, though.

Honestly if they had kept the function row and put the Touch Bar above it instead of replacing it… I’m sure people would complain tons but I don’t think they would’ve had anywhere near the problems they’ve had.

I guess I never got around to memorizing the location of the f-keys since I had to look down to use them as well. Having a dedicated position to change often-changing settings is more useful than a trackpad, which I’m assuming you mean that you just change the volume with a mouse in the system bar.

With both the screen brightness and the volume I change them with quick taps to the keys, repeated if necessary. And for whatever reason, they were never hard for me to locate. I'd guess that's partly because they're just 1-2 keys in on both sides. I also suspect peripheral vision helps... I can't "read" symbols on keys (or a touchbar) with PV, but I can absolutely perceive key shapes and so without changing focus I know where they are.

Once I get farther into the row of function keys, I don't have as much of a memory for them. I'd guess that's at least partly because I don't use the key backlight and playback controls as much (auto key backlighting works very well for me, to the point where I almost never adjust it manually, and the playback controls don't work with much software other than iTunes which I've been avoiding for years now). Maybe mostly that, as in the past I've definitely had a "tap without looking" relationship with F5 for reload (now apparently mentally mapped to cmd-R).

"Having a dedicated position to change often-changing settings is more useful" is pretty much the whole point of function keys, except they do a better job of it than the touchbar does, and quite likely a better job than the touchbar can.

Lots of people also just don’t like the touch bar. I had one and found it useless and annoying. Previously one-touch things like adjusting the audio volume became multi-press affairs. I constantly bumped the touch bar when using the number keys, which was really fun when entering a phone number in Chrome, because it would throw me into the search bar.

I would not call the touch bar low quality. I would call it useless.

On a related note, the massive trackpad was the first one Apple has produced that bugged me. It got stuck in “drag” mode frequently because my palm would register as a touch point. It also didn’t always register clicks on the right edge. Still better than almost all other trackpads I’ve used.

Disclosure: I work at Microsoft. Was testing the latest MacBook Pro for my own use.

Changing volume and brightness is a one touch-slide affair with extra control, i can change the setting way quicker than repeated key presses.

Haven’t had a problem with the massive trackpad either.

It’s not a brag. It would feel unethical to criticize a competitor’s product without disclosing the obvious conflict of interest.

The Surface isn't a competitor. Zzzing!

But seriously, I agree and approve of your disclosure.