...but you cant do that with a regular keyboard, nor phone, nor other OS. How would it know if the app is non focused which app you're commanding without taking more processing power for independent 'quick keys',and from all the new electron apps we already know how efficient they are with memory usage.
Precisely. So what does the touch bar add, if not new capability?
So now I have a touchbar that I can't do anything with that I couldn't already do before it.
Well having shortcuts to stuff that you don't want to have to trackpad up to and click every time, or remember keyboard chords for. Same purpose as function keys, but without the memorization necessary to use them.
So it's a minor ergonomic improvement, at best. Hardly anything to write home about. When it launched it was marketed as something revolutionary.
To the context it was used. Apple apps take full advantage of the touchbar. Adobe is finally doing the same. Not all pros are the same and you can turn off its override features in the system preferences. Not all revolutions are immediate.
I laughed when they showed the music professional using the touchbar to scrub through audio/video. like any pro is using anything less than a whole another macro keyboard to handle that issue
This is interesting. I don't have a touchbar model (yet) so I'm unfamiliar with the API. But it seems to me like the best way to utilize it would be to allow the user to reserve some fraction of it for global shortcuts/controls/macros, and the rest for the in focus app.
Or how about a modifier key (e.g. Cmd/Super) to make the Touch Bar display global hotkeys rather than local hotkeys? I think it already somewhat does this. But it could also display any applicable Services, which (through making Services in Automator) would cover the macro use-case.
The right-hand side of the Touch Bar is already the "control strip", which is systemwide, and it has a < at the left of the control strip that expands it to the whole Touch Bar. You can even set that to be the default if you don't like the context-specific softkeys and just want the systemwide ones.
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Maybe I've just had a limited, poor experience with it, but from the apps I've used these functions are only available on the touchbar when the app is focused... which has the controls anyway.
I was using Skype for Business and it had the audio controls in the touch bar, and also on the screen about 1.5" inches above the touchbar. I wanted to mute and unmute when I had the app in the background, but I couldn't. Useless.