I'll take faceid over a fingerprint scanner.

I'll take the logo being a fingerprint scanner, so I can use it when my laptop is closed and hooked to a big external monitor on my desk.

That would be pretty awkward for anyone who uses their laptop while it’s open, which is the majority.

Pretty sure the majority use are people in cubicles with the machines connected to external peripherals and closed.

This is a great demonstration of the inadequacies of anecdata. No, I am pretty sure the _majority_ of MBP users do not in fact use it with the screen closed, connected to external devices, in cubicles. If you're going to do that, why even have a laptop?

I don't doubt your observation - I merely point out that you are in a bubble. The vast majority of MBP users I have observed use it open. As you would expect.

I've actually never seen anyone use a MacBook with it closed.

For a start you've lost a useful screen. And the thermal performance must be awful.

The exhaust on MBPs is positioned such that it blows out the bottom of the screen’s hinge when closed.

I have two 27” monitors in my office, and using the MBP’s screen just does not feel useful to me... and yes, I have tried using it on more than one occasion.

Anecdotally this is very wrong.

I work remote and don’t have an external monitor a lot of time.

When I do my laptop stays open as a secondary screen.

When I’m at HQ most people have the setup above.

My wife has no external monitor. My entire non tech friend group has pros and don’t use them connected to any peripherals.

That describes my office.

Primary display is a 27” or 32” 4k monitor w/ standing desks.

Most hate the butterfly keyboard. Lots of mechanical USBs.

Some like the touchbar. Not our blind developer.

I think of them as Mac Minis, before the recent line upgrade.

Exactly. I’m pretty sure the most common Mac OS user is still in media or marketing. People who demand the fanciest, largest displays and printers. They’re not going to tie themselves down to a laptop display unless that’s just how things are done there.

> I’m pretty sure the most common Mac OS user is still in media or marketing.

I see hardly ever see any developer using anything other than macOS (it's not called 'Mac OS'). I don't think the majority are in some niche like marketing or media.

Not everyone can afford a Mac: I suspect the people you see are skewed towards the relatively well-off.

They normally get them provided by their employer.

It also is not comfortable, nor ergonomic (using the laptop without external peripherals).

My company has over 200 of them, and it's rare to see one closed, so your dead wrong. I drive 2 27" 4K screens with mine, and leave the laptop open as a third screen.

Anecdata, I know, but upwards of 75% of the people I've worked with in the last 5 year who used Mac laptops either used them standalone or with a monitor as a second screen.

And I’ve worked at places where everyone above a certain pay grade or closeness to the C-levels gets Mac pros and the nicest displays x2-3. I’m sure there are more corporate machines out there than home use because that’s where the money is in IT. Edit-though I could be wrong.

MacBook Pro≠Mac Pro.

I don't know why you are being downvoted. You bring up a legitimate issue, although I'm not sure if your solution is very good.

Faceid is very nice on a laptop. I have “login with face” on my SurfaceBook and it’s very convenient

I'd like it if they added a lightning port also. I can't always use bluetooth headphones, and that way I don't have to carry around two sets of corded headphones; I could just use the lightning headphones I have for my phone.

Word on the street is that lightning's going away anyway. No sense for both lightning and USB-C. Next iPhone probably the last with lightning - if it's not gone already.

Ah I never made that connection. That would be good news if USB-C headphones could plug into both.

With the extra space maybe include the touchbar above a row of physical function keys?

I want more of this thinking. Make the most of the space available instead of shrinking form factor like the xps line. Ie go for a 16” class chassis and fit the largest, bezel-free display in there they can. Instead of fitting the smallest machine around a 16” display. I realize his is how they’ll do it, and it’s annoying.

I think, similarly, a touch bar in addition to a full keyboard would be useful.

I have a 2013 MacBook Pro so I haven’t tried the Touchbar.

With the exception of the ESC key, with I use a lot, I’m not sure I’d miss the rest of the function keys. The idea of a touchbar seems like it could work if done right.

Did Apple do something wrong or it just doesn’t work in practice?

I recently went from a 2015 MBP to a 2018 MBP with Touchbar. There is a utility called BetterTouchTool (https://folivora.ai/) that adds lots of great features to the Touchbar and made it worthwhile.

The Touchbar is a good idea, though it's not a killer feature - mostly because of issues with Apple's software support for it (same story as Force Touch). The biggest issues with it are the lack of a physical Esc key (a mistake, especially because the virtual Esc key is broken in some apps), lack of tactile/haptic feedback (BTT actually has an option to shake the force trackpad as a haptic feedback substitute), and poor customization support (you can show app-specific keys or "control strip" keys, but can't mix the two - there are artificial limitations to what's available created by Apple's idiosyncracies).

Here’s hoping that Apple will do what they did in the Air 2018 to the new mbp 19.

I like it - I have it show the function keys in the few apps I know the keyboard shortcuts for, and the app specific buttons in other apps.

I makes it nicer to adjust system settings (brightness, etc) and has helped me with new shortcuts in several apps that I use regularly but not daily.

Biggest con is the escape key, I mapped Caps Lock to esc and haven’t looked back. 2nd biggest is that you have to look at the touchbar to hit the “keys”, but I was never able to touch type function keys on laptops anyway so that doesn’t affect me.

The biggest problem with the touchbar for me, which can't be solved I think, is that you can accidentally graze a button and trigger something without realising what you've done. I do this constantly by accident and I can only stop it by severely slowing down my typing.

I had this issue too and used BetterTouchBar to remove all buttons except for a big ESC in the upper left. (I show the system Touch Bar if I hit the fn key, so I can still control brightness and volume.) Unfortunately BTB is buggy and occasionally stops hiding buttons, but it’s the best solution I’ve found so far.

The Escape key is on the Touchbar and you do get used to it.

The problem with Touchbar is the tooling. Get something like BetterTouchTool and it changes everything. You can customise buttons for each app and each button can link to a menu item or perform a sequence of commands.

I had few hopes for the Touch Bar to be actually useful when it was announced. So far it hasn’t been any more useful than physical function keys, and I do miss physical button for volume up/down/mute. It was kinda nice to scroll through a video timeline or media library.

In the end, I don’t mind it being there, but it’s not useful enough to swap physical buttons for. It might be different if they add haptic feedback and Force Touch.

Though, I’ve been running Catalina for some development work, and have found Touch Bar to make a lot of sense in Sidecar context (where you cannot use finger to navigate around, but it shows the Touch Bar at the bottom, so it sort of become the primary navigation for touch)

If you want to use a function key then you may be out of luck. But you definitely have to take your eyes off the screen and hunt and peck for the right option. It’s a net negative for a power user.

I think better functionality and UX could be achieved with iPod, iPhone or iPad integration.

Use it as a touchscreen numpad / macro interface with context changed around the ‘focused’ application running on OS X.

Come up w cutesy mounts for desk, traveling, etc.

Or, get rid of the mechanical keyboard and touchpad, and make the entire bottom half a lower fidelity touchscreen.

I personally like the touchbar and I always map the Esc key to my Caps Lock key anyway, so the touchbar Esc key has never been an issue for me.

There is tons of space to the sides of the trackpad.

Mostly thinking for the fingerprint reader. Don't use the rest of my touchbar.

And please be three times as thick, with excellent cooling, and huge dual removable modular batteries, and a pony while I'm at it.