The main complaint was not about the touchbar itself, but about removal of F-keys to accommodate it.

It not only removed the F-keys, but it was not as responsive as a keyboard and a misplaced finger did something you may not want. Personally I HATED the thing.

And the escape key became a virtual thing...

I liked the touch bar for some things, but I deeply hated it, add to this the butterfly keyboard, and you got yourself the perfect storm...

> the escape key became a virtual thing

Yeah I could see that being annoying.

On my MBP M1, the Esc key is physical one sitting in the same place as normal; top left. On the top right is the power / Touch ID button. And filling the space between them is the Touch Bar.

And I think the reason I like the Touch Bar is because being able to slide the screen brightness and the speaker volume up and down on it is both pretty quick and precise. Much more comfortable than only having volume up / down and screen brightness up / down buttons. And I can’t really think of anything that I am missing physical Fn buttons for in anything of what I am doing on the machine. Even booting into recovery mode does not involve use of any Fn keys. Just press and hold the power button when powering the machine on and keep holding it pressed until it goes to startup options.

Adjust brightness/sound: I can do that very easy and precisely without a touch bar. There's a button in the top right corner that has a slider. Both take about the same amount of time/movement to do.

My main gripe is that some of the buttons move around depending on which app you have focused.

Exactly! To this day i’m not sure why we can’t have both, would be a nice addon option. Telegram emotes and stickers show up beautifully there. I love having a built in open deck bar I can put my own shortcuts on

I agree. The only issue with the touch bar was its placement. It should have been put above the function keys and not close to where accidental touch could reach it. If they can manage a bezel-free screen they should just figure out how to wedge it in that gap somehow. But then I think they should do a MacBook Magic version where they slap screens on every key, the trackpad, and the Apple on the back just to see what people do with it.

And the first iteration did not have a physical Esc key (which they brought back later).

The first iteration of the touch bar didn't have a physical escape key. I'm not even a VI user but that was my main complaint. I barely use function keys so I was ok with them being virtual (they showed up when I was in the terminal). But I did love adding a custom screenshot button to it and I loved the way the volume and brightness controls worked.

I tend to rest my left hand on the keyboard while reading, etc. Sometimes my fingers move up to the touch bar and that causes some sort of action I didn't intend. That's very annoying. All the other buttons on the keyboard act buttons you have to press.

The top of the keyboard is literally the worst location I can think there to be a short, long touchscreen.

Maybe it's not a problem for people with tiny hands but I'm bordering on, "palm a basketball" size.

I didn't like it for the same reasons people dislike touch controls in cars. The selection and placement of buttons is constantly changing, and I have to take my eyes off the screen to see what I can do on the TB at the time. I had an MBP with one for 5 years and barely ever used any of the features. The only thing I really found useful was the scroll bar for videos, which is useful on abysmal video players like Instagram which otherwise don't have that function.

I'm seconding this. I am on my M2, and the lack of the touch bar is one of the reasons I am holding off on upgrading it. The keyboard goes the path of all apple keyboards, but right now I prefer it to no touchbar.