Physical keys, period. People seem to not know that keyboard shortcuts have existed "forever" because they're faster than mousing about-- no need to look where you're pointing, or where to target on a touchscreen that lacks tactile feedback. They come with "muscle memory" and they don't change position based on context.

Learn keyboard shortcuts, and no one needs a touch bar.

Conversely, have a touch bar, and no one needs to learn keyboard shortcuts.

The touch bar works best for things accessed sufficiently infrequently that muscle memory won't be a thing.

If the touchbar works best for infrequently used actions then is it worth it to use so much of valuable keyboard real estate and sacrifice tactile feedback for infrequently used actions?

I think the touchbar is a cool idea and I loved that Apple explored it innovated. But I also think that ultimately it's not a good idea and good design. Particularly for the power users.

Those who use FCP, Logic X would beg to differ. It depends on use case, but not every power user is the same. Watch the video, look at their marketing, they're showing you who they think their pros are.

Are these industry pros just not talking about it? coz every review by any kind of pro i see on youtube talks about how worthless teh touch bar is as a con against a macbook

Then it has very limited value relative to its costs, one being function keys...

I live on the keyboard using vim/spacemacs, yet I almost never use the function keys. It's kinda annoying when I have to work with ncurses apps that insists on function keys (I am looking at you, htop).

Then again, I hardly ever use the touchbar either.

I tried to give this a good go. I remembered when I was the young kid thinking about all those old fogies who could not adapt to changing technologies, and now, I am the one yelling "get off the lawn!"

I never meant to imply they didn’t, but I never really used them because they weren’t very discoverable. With the Touch Bar I can tell just by looking at the “keys” what they do, whereas with fn-keys all I see is F1, F2, Fn... none of those tell me anything.

I can find out, sure, but my experience tells me I won’t, so for me the Touch bar is a win, simply from a discoverability standpoint.

My 2016 MBP has icon labels for each function you listed right on the F-key, except step debugging. Totally discoverable, just by looking, the exact same as the Touchbar. Those same icons have been in the same spot for the three other MBP's I've owned dating back to 2008.