> I just have no use for a touchbar

I find this very narrow-minded. You can't imagine a single thing that a programmable tactile interface would bring over keys (that you probably can't reliably touch-type either, fn keys are far)?

I never looked at my keyboard either. I still don't, I look at my touchbar from time to time to do things that would take me longer to do if I had to move a cursor (checking the time, my next calendar event, controlling music amongst a dozen things)

> I still don't, I look at my touchbar from time to time to do things that would take me longer to do if I had to move a cursor (checking the time, my next calendar event, controlling music amongst a dozen things)

Moving the mouse doesn't really bother me, and there are a million ways to wire functionality to keyboard expressions or in-UI functionality. I do miss my hardware volume, prev track, next track, play/pause functionality exactly because I could use them easily without shifting focus at all, even to my keyboard.

OTOH I'm not holding my breath for Apple to meet my needs, they aren't that kind of company.

I agree that there are probably some cool uses for the touch bar if you put some thought in to tailoring it to your work flow, but it is not a tactile interface. Keys are a tactile interface. You can't discern anything from the touchbar by touch, its a flat piece of glass.

Personally, I've never spent any time trying to customize the touch bar because I am never using my laptop without an external keyboard, because of how fuckin' terrible the built in one is. So happy they added some travel back to the keys. I have put off buying a new laptop for years because of how much I hate that stupid keyboard.

I mean, you can always use more screen. On my touchbar I display the time, battery, weather. I also have a script to start a timer and display the time remaining on it (or the output of any script, really). It saves some screen estate. It's nice!

Also there are actions you can program on the touchbar that don't require looking at it. For instance I set it up so that sliding two fingers anywhere on the touchbar changes the volume.

Personally I find more screen real estate doesn’t do anything for my productivity, which is rarely mechanically limited.