> where it's a super-useful ultra-flexible slider/picker that works far better than a trackpad or mouse for that purpose.

You know what else does that? A touch screen. Apple seems to be okay with it for the phones/pads. It would also be cheaper (since it's just an overlay on the glass). And the touch area would be the size of the screen that you're looking at, rather than a narrow strip you have to shift your eyes to.

As a professional photographer, there is no way I'd want to be processing images using a fingerprint marked screen.

You can choose not to touch your screen. Also plenty of people are editing images and videos on iPhones and iPads this very minute.

Apple has a trackpad the size of a small screen, it’s also the best trackpad on the market by far. No need for a touch screen - I’ve owned them and find them utterly useless and annoying to try to keep clean.

Apple should make the touch bar larger like Asus had done: https://mashable.com/article/asus-zenbook-pro-duo-dual-scree...

Couldn't they make everyone happy by keeping both a physical ESC key and the touch bar?

Yeah; to me this is the thing that is so strange: removing the function keys? OK, I get it. I used to use the function keys a lot 25 years ago, but I think I haven't used them once in over a decade (note: I mean "as function keys", as opposed to "as media control keys"). But removing the escape key? That key is still being used by a lot of people and software, and I don't just mean us console editor people :/.

I'm happy about it, if only because it finally got me to adopt mapping CAPS to Esc, which is glorious.

I'm not happy about it, because I have Caps mapped to control, and last I checked, you can't map the bottom-left ctrl key to Esc. I actually don't have a MacBook anymore because of this.

You can do that. That’s how I have mine set up currently.

System Preferences->Keyboard->Modifiers

You can swap Control to Espace there (probably the same place you mapped Caps to Control???)

But where do you have ctrl mapped to?

My 3-week old last gen butterfly keyboard's Caps lock is starting to fail...

But I want physical volume buttons, too! (The Touch Bar volume buttons aren't available at all when video is in full screen mode.)

I don't understand why it isn't an optional feature.

OTOH a huge part of the creative market vastly prefers using desktop machines for better performance. Even if you connect a bigger monitor to a MBP you are most likely going to use an external keyboard.

And I've posted before, but the applications that actually have good integrations for that already have better integrations with an iPad. Logic Remote beats the heck out of Logic On A Touch Bar and is pretty much square in the same spendy-bracket.

Those professionals use desktops, not the fanless, battery powered, port-less, glue and solder mess that is the current Macbook lineup.

No? Most all of my friends are graphics pros, and they largely prefer working on their laptop when possible.

My little hobby circle is audio, and the touchbar is almost universally loved there too.

Interesting! I have a friend who does audio engineering and soundtracks for film studios here in Toronto. Him and his coworkers swear by the old cheese graters. They're all contractors so they're responsible for maintaining their own equipment. And since their work is very seasonal, purchasing new equipment is not always an option when you don't know when your next contract is coming.

Edit: asked him about the touch bar, he says he doesn't want to change his workflow to use something new when he's got all this audio equipment that works fine.

I probably shouldn't name names without consulting them, but two of the bigger graphic design firms in Australia (bigger by half the products you see in a day are done by them) that I know fairly well are pretty much all Macbooks.

The CEO and team leads also get iMacs for the office, but extensively use the laptops. There is exactly one tower in each office - the render farm.