I got one of the MBP with the touchbar this year after holding out for many years (changed jobs so had to change laptop). Man it is so much hard to do the volume changes, and there has so far for me been zero benefit.

Not what you're looking for, but I'll mention it anyways just in case:

It's possible to set the default touch bar display to only ever show the expanded control strip (System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard > Touch Bar shows: Expanded Control Strip). In that mode you tap volume up and down instead of using a volume slider.

Again, I know you're looking for physical keys (aren't we all) but it's better than nothing.

I've been using the MacBook Pro 16 (with a physical esc key plus a touch bar) and I think it's a pretty good compromise between me who wants physical keys and apple who wants to push the touch bar.

The other thing that kept happening to me: I would accidentally tap the brightness button when reaching for ESC. For that, you can "Customize Control Strip..." and remove individual buttons, so that there's a big gap on the touch bar near the ESC key so that stray taps near ESC don't change the brightness.

I realise I'm an outlier here but I actually have grown to like the touchbar.

It's often unused, yes, but when I fire up Rider for my day job it automatically flicks to the row of function keys and back depending on which app has focus and it fits quite nicely for me between work and entertainment (I like having the video progress bar if I'm watching something on the laptop). Maybe I'm just strange but the non-tactile function keys didn't really bother me much either.

In any case, I could live without it, which is probably not a roaring endorsement in any case, but I'd rather have it than not.

I like it as well, especially in applications like CLion/IntelliJ which have tons of keybindings I keep forgetting because they are different between Linux and macOS. The context-sensitive touch bar is actually very useful in these applications for things like rebuilding, changing targets, stepping through the debugger etc. without having to use the mouse.

There's a lot of things to complain about with Apple products, but if you ask me there's been enough touch bar bashing by now and people should just get over it. It's pretty useful in some situations, and IMO no real downsides, especially now that the esc key is a real physical key again. Why all the hate?

Physical F keys are still useful so why not both?

If you hold Fn you get the traditional row of function keys, which seems like a pretty good tradeoff. And if you really hate that, you can simply configure the touch bar to always display them, in which case literally the only downside is that they are not physical keys anymore. Do people really touch-type the function keys so heavily that this becomes a an actual annoyance and not just an ideological one?

Adding an extra row of physical keys that do the same thing as the row of virtual function keys, at the expense of trackpad size and possibly ergonomic (harder to reach the touch bar) doesn't make a lot of sense IMO.

You can’t hit them without looking at the bar, because you have nothing to index your fingers on.

The touchbar is the second worst thing Apple has ever done in the history of the Mac, following closely on that abomination of a “keyboard” they used from 2016-2019.

I liked the keyboard too.

And if you ask me, It has not been enough touch bar bashing...

I’ve opted to buy a 2015 Mac Book Pro this year, it might be easier to get over apple than the touch bar even...

The only time that there would be enough touch bar bashing is when Apple listens and give users an option to have function keys instead.

Pretty sure they just did. The MacBook Air is virtually identical now save for the absence of a fan and the Touch Bar.

My guess - that you couldn't get a Macbook without the TouchBar. I'd like to be able to choose between a Macbook with or without a TouchBar, but with otherwise entirely identical specs.

I've been holding out on upgrading my 2013 MBP (mostly out of frugality) to a newer version, mostly due to the butterfly keys and the TouchBar.

Yup, me too. Especially when debugging in Xcode, the TouchBar shows a bunch of useful functions.

Those are f keys on a regular keyboard, and a few million of us have developed the muscle memory to use them over the say last thirty years that they’ve been assigned to those f keys in most IDEs.

I’m with you: I enjoy the TouchBar, and it’s genuinely useful for some apps I use

This is one option, but it still suffers from my main complaint about the touch bar -- it's way too easy to accidentally activate something. Therefore, I have my touch bar set to activate only while I'm holding down the FN key.

I will not remove that safety key until they make the touch bar pressure sensitive so that "buttons" on it only activate with a similar amount of force that was required to activate the tactile buttons they replaced. Until then, I consider it a failed design improvement.

I need my ESC, so I'm glad it's there. As for the rest of the keys on the top row, I was not in the habit of using them except in vim, where I hooked them up to some macros I had written. For them, I kind of like the touchbar now, because I have the fake keys labelled with sensible names. (No more trying to remember that I have to hit F3 to do such-and-such.)

I've also found the touchbar pretty useful in zoom calls, because my zoom client shows keys for common actions.

All in all, I think a physical escape key plus the touchbar is a slight win. I would not pay more for it, but I have reversed my previous opinion that I'd pay more not to have it.

I suspect these new machines are going to be quite nice, although I won't buy one for a while since I purchased a mbp a few months ago.

I don't understand why they don't put the physical keys AND the touchbar in. There is so much space on the 16" model they could easily fit it in and shrink the obscenely large trackpad just a touch.

I think that the trackpad needs to be bigger. Doing gestures is much easier with a big pad.

Especially on the 16 there is no excuse, they could really have a function key row and a touch bar :( more than enough space for them.

I ordered my 13" touchbar MBP with the UK keyboard layout. Adds an extra key to the right of left shift (mapped to tilde), letting me remap the key that is normally tilde on a US keyboard to ESC.

I've been really happy with the following mod for the last couple years of TouchBar usage:

https://community.folivora.ai/t/goldenchaos-btt-the-complete...

Fully customizable while being much better for muscle memory by giving you exactly what you want where you want it, gives you icon-shortcuts to script, and still allows you to have as much dynamic functionality / information as you like. So, for example, mine looks roughly like this:

- Fullscreen

- Bck/[play|pause]/Fwd

- CURRENTLY_PLAYING_SONG

- AirDrop

- ConfigMenu

- Emoticons

- (Un)Caffeinate

- (Dis)connectBluetoothHeadphones

- (Dis)connectMicrophone

- (Un)muteVol

- VolDown

- VolUp

- ScreenDim

- ScreenBright

- Date

- Time

- Weather

- Battery%

CURRENTLY_PLAYING_SONG playing shows the album cover, song name, and artist, but only shows up if there IS something playing. Same with AirDrop, which shows up only if there's something that I could AirDrop to, and then gives me a set of options of who to AirDrop to. The Emoticon menu opens an emoticon submenu on the TouchBar with most-recently-used first.

That all fits fine into the main touchbar, with other dynamic touchbars available modally (ie, holding CMD shows touchable icons of all the stuff in my Dock (my Dock is entirely turned off)), CTRL shows LOCK AIRPLAY DO_NOT_DISTURB FLUX KEYBOARD_DIM/BRIGHT, etc. ALT shows me various window snap locations.

Edit: BetterTouchTool also replaced a bunch of other tools for me. Gives you the same kind of tools for scripting eg Keyboard macros, Mouse macros, remote-control via iPhone/Watch etc with a lot of reasonable defaults.

I've heard a lot of complaints about the touchbar. The loss of tactile feedback is a fair one, and admittedly removing the escape key was a terrible idea. I recently upgraded to a machine with a touchbar, learned quickly why the default settings are pretty bad, and then quickly found BTT and set it up. The touchbar is not a revolutionary innovation, but it definitely improves functionality in some cases, and it's fun to mess with. Oh, and a button to "toggle mic in zoom" actually solves a real problem.

The people who complain about the touchbar functionality must not be putting any effort at all into it. I customize so many other things on my system, regardless of the OS. Why would a new hardware feature be any different?

I didn't know about this GoldenChaos thing though, thanks for that.

> The people who complain about the touchbar functionality must not be putting any effort at all into it.

I would say that people who complain about uselessness of F-keys must not have put any at all effort into using them.

Upon getting my MBP 2016, I spent numerous months trying to make the TouchBar useful; from customizing the contents where apps allowed it, to BTT.

What it came down to is that things worthy a keyboard shortcut are things I want to be able to do fast, reliably, and instinctively. I don't want to search for the button on the TouchBar – I'm using the keyboard, it needs to be as natural as typing, without the need to look down at it. I have a screen already, I don't need another one on my keyboard.

I firmly believe TouchBar can't even come close to the same realm of usefulness as F-keys, much less being worth the price hike it imposes. Function keys are twelve, tactile, solid, free, reliable(1) buttons for keyboard shortcuts; TouchBar is a touchscreen that sometimes(2) works.

> a button to "toggle mic in zoom" actually solves a real problem

I haven't used Zoom, but if it's a decent-ish Mac app, it either already has a keyboard shortcut to toggle microphone, or you can set one in Keyboard Shortcuts, in System Preferences.

(1) as far as anything is reliable on the butterfly keyboards.

(2) same story as butterfly keyboard – if it's even slightly sporadic, it is a shitty input device.

That's fair. Personally, I used the tactile function keys for exactly six things (brightness up/down, volume up/down, mute, play/pause). Those six functions are now available on my touchbar. They're no longer tactile, which, yes, is a minor inconvenience. I wouldn't use a touchscreen for touch-typing code, of course. But for a handful of buttons way off the home row, it doesn't affect me much.

In exchange, I get to add other buttons which can also display customizable state. Yes, zoom has a global shortcut to toggle the mic. The problem is, the mic state is not visible on your screen unless the zoom window is visible. This is a frustrating design flaw IMO, which really should be addressed in some consistent way across every phone/video app. But, it's not, and so I need to pay attention to my mic state. My touchbar button toggles the mic, and displays the current mic status. I would imagine that every phone/video chat app is similar.

I don't understand how Apple missed the boat so completely on haptic feedback for touchbar, considering their mastery of it on trackpads and touch screens.

I use this app alongside BTT; it attempts to supplement haptic feedback via the trackpad haptics. It's no where near as good as a real haptic solution would be but does provide some tactile feedback when pressing buttons https://www.haptictouchbar.com/

I have a haptic touchbar and I’m pretty sure it was enabled via OOTB with GoldenChaos on BTT, but maybe not.

Did you notice you can hold and slide to change volume? You don’t need to hit the volume slider where it appears. Same with brightness. Totally undiscoverable gesture.

Yup - I love this feature but I'd guess based on people I've shown it to that no more than 20% of users are aware of it.

Exactly this. I tried so hard to like it (since I paid for it), but I have found 0 good uses cases for it.

I would assume that macOS sends at least some basic usage data for the touch bar back to Apple HQ. I wonder how often it is actually used... and I would love the hear the responsible product manager defend it.

Same situation, my trusty 2012 rMBP finally gave up the ghost and I had to get a new one with this icky touch bar. It's useless to me and makes it harder to do everything. My main complaint is that I am constantly bumping it when I type, leading to unexpected changes in volume and brightness.

Oh yeah I forgot that. I keep hitting the chrome back button in the touch bar all the time. In the beginning I was not sure what was happening then I realized it was the touch bar.

My problem with the touchbar is that I tap it accidentally while typing all the time. It needs to be like another centimeter away from the keys.

Or use the same haptic feedback as the touchpad.

Haptics plus requiring a bit of pressure to register a press, just like the trackpad.

Which it can via https://github.com/niw/HapticKey

That's actually one of the things I like better on the touchbar. Just press down on the volume icon and slide.

I continue to be disappointed about the lack of haptics though. It's such a strange thing to not have when they've proven to know how to make very convincing haptic feedback. It works very well in both the Apple Watch and the MacBook's trackpad.

You CAN configure it to show the old-style mute/down/up with the touch bar, so you are not relegated to the ultra-shitty slider. No replacement for a tactile switch, but at least you are not stuck with the default arrangement.

Easiest way is to press and hold the Touch Bar on the volume control button and slide your finger left or right–that way you barely need to look at the Touch Bar.

You can use the touchbar to skip commercials on Youtube in Safari.

I love it.

Instead of press and hold, it's press, hold, and drag. Definitely annoying when it freezes, but when it's working it doesn't seem that much different.

The main difference is that I need to look down at the keyboard to operate the touchbar. With the keys I can rely on muscle memory.

Also I think every device which makes sound should have a physical mute control. The worst is when I want to mute, and the touchbar freezes, and I have to go turn the volume down with the mouse.

I intentionally took a performance hit by moving from a Pro to an Air almost entirely for this reason (although the low power and light weight are pleasant benefits). I'm glad that the new Air still has F-keys with Touch ID; but I'm flabbergasted that they're still not making the Touchbar optional for the Pro series, given how polarizing it's been, and the underwhelming adoption of new Touchbar functionality by third-party developers.

They brought back the escape key which is what really matters.

Honestly, I think it's only polarizing here and among some developers.

I mean if you think about other professions that use Macbook Pro they don't need it either. Are video professionals using it to scrub through video? Nope. For any audio professional it's useless. No one who is serious about their profession would use it.

I’m serious about my profession and I use it daily. Wonder what that says about me.

Please tell me what it can do that hot keys and just generally knowing a program can't do? I'm honestly interested.

I'd be curious to know what portion of their user base for the Pro series are developers. Anecdotally, quite a lot of devs seems to use Macs; but I have no idea what that fraction is, relative to the rest of their market.

The touchbar is probably why I'm probably getting the Air for my next upgrade, and not a Pro.

Honestly, the idea of a soft keyboard is a great one, particularly one as well integrated into the OS as the Touch Bar is. However, while I have a Mac with the Touch Bar, I never ever ever ever use it intentionally, as I spend 90% of my time on the computer using an external keyboard.

Just put that control panel at the bottom of the screen. It would still be close enough, and it would be out of the way of my accidental touches.

My daughter loves it. It's her emoji keyboard

As someone using a hackintosh considering a real Macbook, what's so wrong about it?

There are loads of rants out there that are easy to find, but personally it's mostly: you can't use it without looking at it to make sure the buttons are what you think they are (nearly always context-sensitive, often surprising when it decides it's a new context), and where you think they are (can't go by feel, so you need to visually re-calibrate constantly). Button size and positioning varies widely, and nearly all of them have a keyboard shortcut already that doesn't require hand movement or eyes (or at worst previously had an F-key that never moved).

The main exception being things like controlling a progress bar (mouse works fine for me, though it's a neat demo), or changing system brightness/volume with a flick or drag (which is the one thing I find truly better... but I'd happily trade it back for a fn toggle and F keys). But that's so rarely useful.

When I watch non-HN type people use it, they like it. They never used Fn keys in the first place.

I just hated the lack of ESC key (which they brought back, though my Mac is older). I have no muscle memory for any other key in that row.

I think the touchbar was my favorite part of my old MBP, specifically because of the contextual buttons that are always changing.

I'd probably pay a little extra to get one on future non-Mac laptops, but not too much extra.

Yeah, most people I know almost never use F keys (except perhaps F1 for help). They leave it on the media-keys mode... which is the same as the touchbar's default values, but without needing to know what mode it's in.

With the physical media keys, if they want to mute, it's always the same button. Pause music, always the same button. They're great in a way that the touchbar completely destroys.

(and yes, I know you can change this setting, but if we're assuming non-techy-users we also generally have to assume default settings.)

Honestly, I hardly ever used the function keys either. As a result the Touch Bar doesn't really bother me -- but neither does it seem the slightest bit useful for the most part.

Lot of non-hn people also type while looking at the keyboard and some with single finger from both hands.

It's just not useful. The context-aware stuff is too unpredictable, and I'm never looking at the keyboard anyway so I have never learned it. So the touchbar ends up being just a replacement for the volume and brightness keys, but a slow and non-tactile version of them

For me at least (and I'd imagine most of the other folks who hate it) - I had the key layout memorized. If I wanted to volume up/down/mute I could do it without taking my eyes off the screen. With the touchbar ANYTHING I wanted to do required me to change my focus to the touchbar - for the benefit of...?

I'm sure someone somewhere finds it amazing, but I have no time for it.

To me it's no different than volume controls in a car. I've been in a cadillac with a touchbar for volume, and a new ram truck with a volume knob - there's absolutely no room for debate in my opinion. One of these allows me to instantly change the volume 100% up or down without taking my eyes off the road. The other requires hoping I get my finger in just the right spot from muscle memory and swipe enough times since there's 0 tactile feedback.

For me it hides the things I use all the time (media and volume controls) to make room for application specific controls that I never use.

If it was more customisable I wouldn't mind it, but the apparant inability to force it to show me the things I actually want is annoying.

I can imagine there are some people for whom the application specific buttons are useful, but for me they are not worth it for what they displace.

Not sure if it's helpful for you but you can customize the behavior by going to your System Prefs > keyboard settings and toggling "Touch bar shows:".

I did this on like day 2 of having my MBP for what sounds like the same reason you want to. The setting I have turned on is "Expanded control strip" and I never see any application-specific controls, only volume, brightness, etc.

Omg, thank you. Somehow I'd missed that setting.

Check out BetterTouchTool if customization is holding you back.

FYI you can customize it, and force it to always display certain controls.

I had the exact same frustrations as you. Took me 10 mins digging into settings to figure it out. Now I have my touchbar constantly displaying all of the controls that are buttons on the Air (ie a completely over-engineered solution to get the same result)

The latency on the touch bat is terrible. Perhaps 1/2 second to update when you switch apps, for example!

It doesn't provide tactile feedback.

https://www.haptictouchbar.com/ is a great app I use, provides haptic feedback for the touch bar.

Try https://github.com/niw/HapticKey

They do such a good job on the iPhone with this that it is quite mystifying why not.

In addition to what everybody else said, because the touch at is flat and flush with the body chassis, I find it’s very easy to accidentally press when you press a key in the row below. Eg, accidentally summoning Siri when pressing backspace, muting the audio when pressing “=“. And then you’re forced to look down and find the mute “button” to fix it.

No haptic feedback, mainly. A lot better with a real escape key, but still.

hahaha 2 times Air user, touchbar is a big NO.

Air doesn't have a fan, so if you want consistent performance, you have to buy the touchbar.

Maybe some kind of clip-on, thin, third party cooling solutions will become a thing?

so true! i hate the touchbar. if i would have to change my laptop today, i'd buy air just because i hate the touchbar.

I think it’s good actually