back to article Why Apple's adaptive Touch Bar will flop

Apple has ignored a page of very recent history by introducing its "Touch Bar", Lenovo reminded us on Thursday. Last week Apple replaced physical hardware function keys on its new laptops with a touch sensitive OLED strip, the "Touch Bar". This isn't an original idea, and it has failed spectacularly when introduced to the …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Apples and Lemons?

    I can't see Lenovo's flaky implementation being relevant to what Apple offers...

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Apples and Lemons?

      Yep, Lenovo didn't have control over the OS as Apple do, they didn't have a suite of their own applications, and they didn't have enough market share to interest 3rd party developers.

      All of the above were factors against Lenovo, before we even consider whether their hardware implementation was any good or not.

      1. Kristian Walsh Silver badge

        Re: Apples and Lemons?

        Yes, and Lenovo doesn't have a subset of its customer base that accepts anything Lenovo does, and rationalises Lenovo's dumb mistakes as being nothing more than their own inability to deal with "progress".

        And this is really is a stupid, awful idea, and it's bad on more than one level. Superficially, it forces users to divert their visual attention from the screen down to the keyboard, because it removes the ability to find the Fn keys by touch. But that's not why it's a disaster for people who actually do work with their computers.

        It's a disaster for users of all kinds because it removes the bloody Escape key. Does nobody in Apple's "design" group use Adobe Creative Suite anymore? Or Excel? Or vim? Or XCode? Have they never needed to force-quit an application? (Command+Shift+Escape, and it's the only way to restart Finder when it hangs). A surprising number of Mac software dialogs also dismiss with "Cancel" when you press Escape. It's something that you pick up over a decade of using an OS.

        Escape has a specific meaning on Macs: it means "exit this mode, cancel". It's as much an essential command key as Backspace, Return ("confirm") or Tab ("go to next").

        The only commonly-used Mac application I can think of that doesn't map Escape to a function is.... Safari.

        So there you go. Apple thinks that its customers will only ever use the web browser. And that's probably true of the floods of vacuous tech-bloggers who'll treat us to articles proclaiming how nobody needs the escape key anyway just because they didn't...

        1. danR2

          Re: Apples and Lemons?

          Kristian Walsh

          As almost an exclusively Mac user for some 25 years, I this comment could hardly be more pertinent.

        2. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Re: Apples and Lemons?

          You can set the function keys to be always on. This might not help the people who are used to finding them by touch, but I dare say their finger will be fall pretty close to the right area of the bar - you hands will already know where they are from typing on the conventional keyboard. That's some users.

          Another set of users will find the touchstrip a far more versatile HID device than a row of F keys. For many tasks - such as adjusting volume, or some other variable - it will be faster than using keys and consume less attention.

          I'm a Windows CAD user. Your argument does seem to be that because the touchbar might detract from your work flow, those people it benefits don't do 'real work'. No, they are not idiots, they just use their computer for different tasks to you, often audio, video and photo editing work long associated with Macs.

          >Does nobody in Apple's "design" group use Adobe Creative Suite anymore?

          Adobe showed off their support for the touchstrip at its release. During much of the Adobe presentation, the virtual Esc was present in the normal place, and only disappeared when the touchstrip was being used as a slider. It appears that the virtual Esc key returned when the demonstrator tapped the touchbar. The video is here:

          http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/adobe-photoshop-touch-bar-update-apple-macbook-pro/

          1. Kristian Walsh Silver badge

            Re: Apples and Lemons?

            Your argument does seem to be that because the touchbar might detract from your work flow, those people it benefits don't do 'real work'.

            No, my argument does not seem to be that at all. I'll re-state it for you here: by replacing a proven useful interface with one of dubious and as yet unproven use, Apple is losing sight of what people who use their equipment need. Maybe the touch thing is useful, but surely the amazing design skills of Dieter Rams Jonathan Ive could have found a visually harmonious way to accommodate a touch bar and the escape key -- tossing the existing functionality is laziness at best, form-over-function at worst.

            "Nobody needs [feature] anyway" is the cry of the Apple apologist, but I've never been in that camp - my needs are representative of me alone; I've no right to tell other people what they should and should not need.

            True, I've bought my share of Apple computers over the years, but I've never felt the need to use the receipts for them as some kind of identity card. In the twenty years I've used Macs, I've spent a lot of time avoiding tedious arguments about why I wasn't using Windows (or Linux), and yes, I occasionally suggested Macs to people I thought might find them useful too, but I'm not going to buy an Apple product that doesn't meet my needs just out of some misplaced need to belong.

            I'm well aware that I'm not Apple's customer anymore - their product decisions made that clear to me. I was wondering if they'd make something that would change my mind on that, but the only two personal computing products that have made me look twice at them have both been from Microsoft: Surface Book last year, and the Studio last week (I'd love the latter, but I only do illustration as a hobby these days, and can't justify the price on that basis).

            The irony of "boring old Microsoft" leading the way in personal computing hardware is not lost on this ex-Apple employee.

          2. dave 93

            Re: Apples and Lemons?

            As the Touch Bar is actually a separate computer running it's own OS, it might be 'divorced from reality' when macOS apps misbehave, and vice versa. Interesting times...

        3. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

          Re: Apples and Lemons?

          The Escape key needs to come back, and probably will. But apart from that I don't see the issues.

          Can you honestly say you can use unlit F-keys in a dark room?

          I certainly can't. I'd prefer the OLED strip for that.

          Daylight: Depends on how bright the OLED is, but phone users seem happy enough (I prefer IPS LCD personally).

          Don't know if they added haptic feedback, but that would be nice for that strip.

          I like the idea of keys that adapt to the foreground app, as long as some can be set aside as static.

          1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

            Re: Apples and Lemons?

            Can you honestly say you can use unlit F-keys in a dark room?

            Yes, because there's a source of light right above the things. If this is dark then the likelihood of me needing to press any function key, let alone a specific one, is quite low.

            1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

              Re: Apples and Lemons?

              What? So you DO look at the keys then?

              My whole point..

              1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

                Re: Apples and Lemons?

                What? So you DO look at the keys then?

                My whole point..

                If it's dark and I have to find the bloody thing I'll be looking for the laptop itself and not just the keys :)

                I don't know if I'm alone on this but I can can touch type happily on a normal keyboard with a normal set of keys however when it comes to hitting function keys I tend to look at what I'm doing because firstly they're not normal keys to press (and function keys are aligned differently on many keyboards) and secondly because function keys tend to have rather more "interesting" functions therefore I'd much rather that I pressed the correct one first time. Even though the Escape key is generally in the top left of a keyboard it's action is often more dramatic than just a normal key press therefore I'm likely to find myself looking at the keyboard to check this one as well.

                My pet hates: Laptops which swap the bloody Fn and Ctrl keys around (Lenovo) and particularly those laptops that decide that in order to use the normal function of a function key that we have to press the bloody Fn modifer key to do so. Because I'm really going to want to put my laptop into hibernate with the single press of a key. Idiots. I have the same level of hate to the idiot keyboard manufacturers who put power keys onto keyboards as well... usually just where the Insert, Home and Page Up keys should be.

          2. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

            Re: Apples and Lemons?

            "Can you honestly say you can use unlit F-keys in a dark room?"

            As they are arranged in groups of four - yes, pretty easy.

        4. dave 93

          Re: Apples and Lemons?

          You have to use the TouchID button to escape. To legally confirm that you chose that option.

    2. big_D Silver badge

      Re: Apples and Lemons?

      I need physical keys. I do a lot of translation work, Office, Adobe CS and support an ERP system. They rely heavily on function keys.

      Even on PCs, it is annoying that on many newer devices and keyboards, I need to use a "function shift" key + function key to get the key to react "normally".

      If I need Shift + Ctrl + F5, on my laptop I need to press Fn + Shift + Ctrl + F5... As they are used so extensively, any keyboard that does away with the function keys is a non-starter for me.

      It is possible to hunt through ribbons or menus to find the relevant option, but it is a lot slower and breaks the workflow as you need to take your hands away from the keyboard.

    3. rreed2000

      Re: Apples and Lemons?

      True. But his point about Apple not listening to end users is spot-on. There is no bidirectional exchange going on there. Apple decides and we are expected to acquiesce. We're tethered to the AppStore, we get an interface that is increasing iOS-like, we get thinner and thinner even if pro users keep saying that smaller isn't what they're after, we get the interfaces Apple decides we need, despite howls from the user community.

      If Apple runs into rough waters ahead, it won't be because of Lenovo or Google or Microsoft. It will be because Apple won't give users what they want/need.

  2. Neill Mitchell

    Worth $300 /400 extra?

    Is the touch bar that much of an advantage over physical function keys considering it how much it adds onto the cost of the device? That's one expensive touch screen!

    I like the tactile feedback of a physical switch when doing things like muting sound, changing screen brightness etc. No way would I get used to a touch ESC key.

    Seems a bit of an expensive solution looking for a problem to an old luddite like me.

    1. AMBxx Silver badge

      Re: Worth $300 /400 extra?

      I used to like the cardboard strips that came with DOS software! Physical feedback and proper labelling.

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: Worth $300 /400 extra?

        I remember flight simulators that came with a cardboard keyboard template! These days you can get gaming keyboards with programmable RGB back-lighting - as well as gaming keypads and complicated-looking joysticks.

        1. ThomH

          Re: Worth $300 /400 extra?

          The BBC Micro had a little plastic pocket built into the keyboard above the F keys to house keyboard overlays.

          But, no, it's not worth $300 extra. But it's also not the only additional thing you get for your $300. You also get a decent bump in baseline processing — from 2.0 Ghz to 2.9Ghz — and a couple of extra Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports.

          1. JeffyPoooh
            Pint

            Re: Worth $300 /400 extra?

            Someone named ThomH (<- uppercase H) should know how to spell GHz.

            :-)

    2. Random Handle

      Re: Worth $300 /400 extra?

      >I like the tactile feedback of a physical switch when doing things like muting sound, changing screen brightness etc.

      Definitely - I recently splodged almost a £100 on a mechanical keyboard (actually a 'gaming keyboard', though I don't play games). Most productive money I've spent in ages - I'm old enough to remember proper keyboards, but I'd somehow got used to the crap that gets peddled as quality these days.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Worth $300 /400 extra?

        I've been using my original Saitek Eclipse keyboard for over 10 years now. Gaming keyboards are amazing. As a side note, I picked up a real bargain on it's replacement for when it eventually dies.

        The local market was selling high end keyboards for £10. I picked up a Cooler Master CMStorm Ultimate Quick Fire with Cherry MX Browns, the reason for the price? Italian keyboard layout.

        However, as I touch-type and they use QWERTY layout, despite the different positioning and use of symbols accents etc, the key layout maps exactly the same as my current keyboard and maps perfectly to the English language settings in the OS.

    3. Doug Petrosky 1

      Re: Worth $300 /400 extra?

      The touch bar is expensive so why lie!

      The difference in cost between touch bar enabled and non touch bar is $300. Not $300 - $400, why would you even imply that. But even $300 is a bit inaccurate because that is not all you get for your $300.

      You go from 2.0Ghz to 2.9Ghz CPU

      1866mhz to 2133Mhz memory

      Iris 540 to iris 550 graphics

      2 USB C to 4 USB C ports

      Putting this in dollars and cents terms Apple charges $100 to go from 2.9 to 3.5ghz so who knows the actual cost is.

      1. Neill Mitchell

        Re: Worth $300 /400 extra?

        Isn't the 15" model $400 extra to get the touch panel? That's why I said it. I didn't consciously lie.

        Granted, the internal spec of the touch bar machines is higher, but the point is if you want the touch bar you have to pay the extra. You have no choice. You can't pick and choose components at purchase time like, say, Dell.

        This is the problem with Apple kit. If you want the 2TB SSD or example, you have to pay a huge amount more because that model has all manner of other higher spec components as well, which you might not even need. You can't just add the bigger SSD by itself.

        Say this was Dell, you might be able to add just the Touch Panel as a $100 extra. You just can't do that with Apple's pricing scheme. It starts getting very expensive very quickly with you paying for bits you don't want to get the ones you do.

      2. commonsense

        Re: Worth $300 /400 extra?

        Or could it be that the old tech hasn't been reduced to a price relevant to November 2016, and so the $300 looks better than it really is?

    4. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Worth $300 /400 extra?

      >Is the touch bar that much of an advantage over physical function keys considering it how much it adds onto the cost of the device?

      It really depends upon the application. On my desk now I have all manner of human input devices - a camera with scroll wheel (relative), D-pad, two jog switches (relative), four absolute dials or sliders, a two-level shutter button.

      A mouse with many buttons and a scrollwheel which also moves left and right.

      A joystick I found second hand but haven't found a use for yet - 3 analogue axis, analogue throttle, little hat and many buttons. Tempted to waste a few hours making it control my laptop's volume and media.

      My car stereo has a proper knob for the volume. When I encounter car stereos which use two buttons for volume control, it makes me want to seek out the person responsible and shout at them.

      A cheap Wacom digitiser, gathering dust. Tried to turn it into a MIDI controller, but Windows had other ideas. A friend has a bigger, pricier one, and swears by it for CAD work.

    5. Captain DaFt

      Re: Worth $300 /400 extra?

      "Is the touch bar that much of an advantage over physical function keys considering it how much it adds onto the cost of the device?"

      You have it back to front. By charging more for laptops with the touchbar, it gives the touchbar an air of luxury, and thus seen as progressive by consumers.

      If it succeeds, then watch the the next generation of Apples eschew keys all together, replacing all those expensive to design to be reliable keys with a cheap, mass produced capacitive touch screen.

      Other features: No USB, firewire, or even power jacks!

      The new line will be seamless, and inductively recharged.

      After all, anything you could possibly want to do on your foldaslab will be available as a quick download the Apple Store™, right?*

      * Then El Reg will cover the bun fight as Apple sues Nintendo for ripping off their IP with the DS, DSi, and 3DS.

      PS: This is snark, nothing else. Buuut,.. if it comes true, you read it here first!

  3. Dazed and Confused
    Joke

    Wasn't accepted?

    Ah that's because it was before you copied it from Apple.

  4. David Lawton

    Microsoft also did the Tablet 15 years ago and failed, yet Apple was successful with the iPad. So the fact it did not work for Lenovo means nothing.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      The MS Tablet failed because Bill G insisted it had to run Windows when the hardware of the time was clearly not up to it. If the iPad worked, it is because Apple wisely decided it should have an OS that worked with the hardware.

      Apples and Oranges, again.

      1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

        And what does the surface run?

        Windows and it can work as a tablet.

        IMHO, it failed back then because the underlying H/W was not really good enough to work as a tablet.

        MS was dependent upon Intel and still is.

        Apple has complete control of the H/W and O/S.

        One was a hodge-podge that didn't work together and the other was engineered to work together.

        MS has learned a lot in the meantime yet their dabble with an ARM device was a failure. That said, the Surface and the legacy Intel X86 seems to run pretty well within bounds.

        1. John 104

          Re: And what does the surface run?

          @Steve Davies 3

          Apple has complete control of the H/W and O/S.

          Uh, no, they don't. They are using off the shelf bits like everyone else does. They just get to customize how they package these bits. Like everyone else does...

          Control over the OS, and how it works with the hardware, yes. But anyone can buy these bits and put them on a platform.

          1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

            Re: And what does the surface run?

            ...anyone can buy these bits and put them on a platform.

            Apple designs its own SoCs and nobody else has access to those. Yes, the instruction set is the same, but the hardware certainly isn't.

          2. ThomH

            Re: And what does the surface run?

            Apple doesn't use entirely off-the-shelf components even if the custom parts tend to be minor; a good recent example is the display controller in the 5k iMac. A more relevant example is that the touch bar MacBook Pros contain a small ARM processor running something derived from iOS to maintain the bar, which is a spin-off of the homegrown iPhone processors of recent years, which go quite a bit further than being mere respins of one of the reference cores.

            It's not a huge amount of exclusive silicon, but it's not nothing.

          3. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

            Re: And what does the surface run?

            "They just get to customize how they package these bits. Like everyone else does..."

            Well, no.

            Lenovo can't tell MS to change Visual Studio and create guidelines for programmers of WIndows apps.

            So, massive difference.

      2. tin 2

        Which I'm pretty sure was the point being made!

      3. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

        "The MS Tablet failed because Bill G insisted it had to run Windows when the hardware of the time was clearly not up to it. If the iPad worked, it is because Apple wisely decided it should have an OS that worked with the hardware."

        And how is different to Lenovo doing some half-arsed solution, and Apple doing it the right way?

        Seems like an identical scenario to me.

      4. Nick Ryan Silver badge

        The windows tablets of 15+ years ago (or whenever it was) generally weren't bad systems overall, although I only got to use a few of them.

        The key downsides were the price and the rather less than stellar touch screen experience which was stylus driven only which also lagged in time behind presses and the rather poor handwriting recognition - it was inaccurate and slow therefore it was easier to use the on screen keyboard instead.

        The main and simultaneous advantage and disadvantage was that it ran a largely standard OS and applications and while some worked with what was effectively a single button mouse, many didn't.

  5. tokyo-octopus

    Posting from a 2011 MacBook Pro which is holding up fine, apart from the "retina" screens on newer models I haven't seen anything which would encourage me to upgrade (and for me "retina" is nice-to-havem, not must-have).

    Touch bar - pointless gimmick, I'm one of life's ESC users, moreover yet another set of ports incompatible with anything I have, meaning lots of dongles... no thanks. Yes I do use the SD card slot a lot. Next laptop will run Linux, fortunately I'm not particularly invested in Apple stuff

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      >Touch bar - pointless gimmick, I'm one of life's ESC users,

      Fair enough, that's your use-case. Will you concede that Photoshop users can benefit from context-sensitive virtual sliders? Not only Photoshop, but many an application in video, photo and music.

      I'm not a Mac user, so I'll keep on using keys or extra mouse buttons to modify the scroll wheel. I hear that some more modern Windows PCs actually have decent trackpads, but mine dates from the era when PC trackpads are just horrible - barely good enough to get you by when you've forgotten to pack your Logitech mouse.

      Yep, like you I find my ageing laptop still up to the task! :)

      1. Aitor 1

        Photoshop work on a laptop?

        You don't have a proper monitor? I don't have the best eyesight.. but yours must be impressive.

        And also, most ppl don't look at the keyboard.. they look at what they are doing... so the bar just distracts.

  6. bazza Silver badge

    Flawed Market Analysis

    Say, just for one minute, that the new Macs were fantastic in every way apart from this touch panel, then maybe we'd put up with it and Apple would deem it a commercial success (even though we all hate it).

    The risk is that Apple identify it as the sole reason why no one is liking the new Macs, drop it, and then make everything else even worse than it is at the moment. That might be terminal for Mac in general; if Apple cannot identify the reason they're not selling they may falsely conclude that a Mac (of any design) won't sell in the future, and give up.

    It's kinda the same in the PC world. MS think Win10 is ace, it isn't, so we're not buying PCs. Our old Win7 boxes are fine, so we buy nothing. Cue lots of talk about the terminal trajectory of the PC market...

    Someone somewhere is going to have to make a usable, affordable PC class computer. We're not going to develop and write everything from this point onwards on mobile phones.

    1. Michael Sanders

      Re: Flawed Market Analysis

      Thank-you so much for posting that. First I had to wait for the PC to catch up to where the Mac was originally. Then I watched the PC stagnate while we all waited for phones to catch up to where the PC was.

    2. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Flawed Market Analysis

      Apple's bottom line suggests they are smarter than you give them credit for. Do not mistake what they say in public (which is always well stage-managed) for the inevitable conversations that Apple have had internally.

      You say that 'no one is liking the new Macs', but at the moment their pre-orders are high. Now, you and I might both suspect that is in part because of the long over-due CPU upgrades. In addition, I suspect that Apple have waited until now to bump the specs because they want to maximise adoption of USB-C over USB A, DisplayPort, HDMI etc, and adoption of the touch strip. Both the port selection and touchstrip will be better in the long run with 3rd party support, so it is a good strategic decision for Apple to draw people in with the long-awaited CPU/GPU upgrades and thus create a larger pool (a critical mass) of touchstrip/USB users. This interpretation might be incorrect, but it is plausible.

      Make no mistake - Apple employ a lot of very bright analysts, and supply them with expensive-to-aquire data to work on.

      >Someone somewhere is going to have to make a usable, affordable PC class computer.

      That's never been Apple's game, yet here they still are. Windows laptops have come ion leaps and bounds in the last decade. A £300 laptop only feels cheap and slow in comparison with its pricier peers - taken on its own merits, it does all the simple tasks without much fuss.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You really do get the feeling

    It's Jony Ive running the company now, not Tim Cook. Functionality takes a back seat; "design" is everything. Cook needs to put that dog back on a leash before it's bitten everyone.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: You really do get the feeling

      Product Design is what Ive does, and as a discipline it is concerned with how things are used - function. The 'use' of a laptop doesn't just cover the times it is being typed on, but also how it feels to carry around, what you do when it goes wrong, everything. Cook was never an arbiter of product design, but was very competent at managing supply chains.

      Product design, like engineering, is about compromise. More battery means more weight. It doesn't follow that there is one 'correct' balance of battery and weight. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

      The Macbooks are good screens and keyboards in a lightweight package (the reason for a laptop's existence) with good enough CPU/GPUs for most tasks. They also expose their PCIe lanes to any bit of kit you want to plug into them. It's not an unreasonable approach, given they'd never be able to produce a variant which suits every user 'out of the box'.

      You might remember how adamant Jobs was about not including BluRay support on any Mac. His logic was that Joe Punter would soon be streaming movies (or watching BluRay on a big TV through a games console), and the smaller group of people who really needed to burn Blu-ray discs would just attach their own drive.

  8. Dan 55 Silver badge

    They haven't snuffed out the Air line

    They've snuffed out the Pro line and renamed Air to Pro .

    However Lenovo's problem was that nothing would have used the touch bar apart from Lenovo's bloatware. Apple's already made changes to the OS and their apps to make them use the touch bar and the API is in Xcode for everyone else to use.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Apple apparently forgot to make the screen touch. You still need a proper computer running Windows for that.

    Can't see why anyone sane would want one of these when you could get a far more capable Surface Pro or Dell XPS 13 for similar dosh....

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      >Apple apparently forgot to make the screen touch.

      They didn't forget - they just reckoned nobody wanted to be holding their arms out in front of them.

      Where Apple do make a touchscreen computer, they think its more important that it be light than it is able to run applications designed for mouse and keyboard - hence the iPad.

      Adobe make iPad apps that provide tool palettes for Photoshop on OSX - so hybrid touch interfaces for OSX do exist if a productivity application will benefit from it. This is on top of established support for Wacom stylus tablets.

      Obviously, this requires you buy both a Mac and an iPad, but Apple don't mind that.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I use OSX with my Cintiq. Cintiq's are a touch screen with accurate stylus. Generally used by artiistic types, CAD/CAM types, etc.

        Many OSX (and Windows, etc) applications have in-depth support for them. But, they're used a bit differently than a "laptop screen you could draw on". Though, someone would probably be able to make that work.

        1. Dave 126 Silver badge

          >Many OSX (and Windows, etc) applications have in-depth support for them. But, they're used a bit differently than a "laptop screen you could draw on". Though, someone would probably be able to make that work.

          In addition to their digitisers, Cintiq have made stylus-driven monitors - and indeed ARM and x86 tablets with stylus-driven screens - for quite a few years now. They were always a bit pricey, but the market appeared to be steady if small.

          Today the state of the art is such that the apparent distance between the screen's surface and the pixels is smaller - just as we have seen in phone screens - which reduces parallax errors.

          But yeah, for sure, many people are happy to use a plain digitiser as a mouse substitute or complement.

    2. hplasm
      Gimp

      A proper computer running Windows-

      is a new oxymoron.

  10. Black Plague
    Trollface

    Comparing them to Lenovo? Really?

    Lenovo still can't make a laptop touchpad that isn't total sh*t and you were expecting they'd blaze a trail with their adaptive function keys.

    Ignoring the fanbois, Apple at least has a long history of putting a lot of thought and care into hardware usability and experience.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Comparing them to Lenovo? Really?

      Agreed - I'm on my second, and last, Lenovo. The best thing about them is the keyboard. The rest is underwhelming.

      Ironically I just opted for a Macbook rather than downgrading to Windows 10. A decision I might not have made had I seen the lack of connectivity and Escape keys in future replacement options beforehand.

  11. Nate Amsden

    Never been an apple customer

    But I do feel for those pros getting burned. What's worse is apple literally has more money in the bank than any other tech company so has resources to build a product that fills the niche of power users. I didn't pay attention to the event, seeing the macbook air get canned in this article is the first I've heard of that.

    For whatever reason last night I was bored and spent some time reading comments on arstechinca about the new pros. Lotsa upset people who waited years for a lackluster update.

    I recently upgraded my laptop after 5 years. It was a massive upgrade for me whether cpu or ram or gpu or storage or screen

    Went from a 2011 era Toshiba Tecra A11 dual core i7 8GB 1600x900 Nvidia video with 512Mb and samsung 850 pro 512G(5.6 pounds), all the way to Lenovo P50 quad core i7 with 16G (upgradable to 64, don't see going past 16G for a long time), nvidia video with 8G a 1Tb samsung 850 pro *and* DUAL samsung 950 pro 512G (total 3 SSD and 2TB). Oh and 4k display (but due to windows 7 remote desktop and vsphere client being unusable in 4k I run at 1080p, works fine for me).

    I fussed about with 4k for a week or two but don't see much benefit even if all my apps worked right. It just made everything smaller forcing me to increase things like fonts etc to compensate. I'm sure perhaps for media it is great, but for system andmin stuff I do it has little value (I do use 16 virtual desktops with edge flipping which provides far more value). I do not use external monitors either (never have).

    But hey 4k is there for me waiting if I ever change my mind, same with 4 memory slots that can take me to 64G of ram.

    New laptop weighs the same more or less same physical size. Old laptop was $2300 new one all in about $3500(company paid for everything but the dual 950 pros).

    Both laptops stay in linux mint 17 99% of the time and dual boot windows 7 if needed for games, also run windows 7 in vmware for some work related tasks. ( you can probably guess how I feel about windows 10 despite knowing it surely handles 4k better than win7)

    I'd guesstimate battery life in linux around 3 hrs. Which is fine it stays plugged in 99.876% of the time. Only complaint for travel is the power brick is more than double the size of the toshiba. I think the P50 tops out at 200W, though with normal usage with a kill a watt meter I saw about 55w total.

    1. John 104

      Re: Never been an apple customer

      @Nate Amsden

      There is the problem with Apple users and disappointment. If you are waiting for the next must have thing from Apple to judge your upgrade, you are a fool. If your needs are met with current spec, what is the requirement that you upgrade? Other than more horsepower I don't see it. Waiting for Apple to sell you the next thing you didn't know you needed just makes you a iTard.

    2. Yves Kurisaki

      Re: Never been an apple customer

      Were you going to make a point or are you under the impression anyone gives a flying f**k about your laptop and what specs it has?

      Because, you know, I just bought a new gas cooker. 7 Burners / Zones, 4 Cavities, Conventional Main Cavity Type, Dimensions - H90 x W100 x D60. Great energy rating. It combines traditional design and modern features to really give my kitchen the wow factor. This full gas model boasts powerful cooking and puts you in complete control of the temperature at all times. Both conventional ovens boast a 51 litre capacity and there’s also a dedicated grill, perfect if you’re looking for a healthy alternative to frying. The 7 burner gas hob with wok burner offers plenty of space for your pans, whether they’re large or small. The main cavity has catalytic liners on its sides to make cleaning the oven that bit easier. My previous cooker only had 5 burners (that's two less) and had a lower energy rating. I haven't seen much difference yet in my gas bills, but I haven't been cooking that much lately, so maybe that's the reason. It's a grey one, although I would have preferred maroon, which fits in better with the rest of the kitchen. I'm upgrading it with WiFi and USB and the aim is to hook it up to Alexa and have it prepare my breakfast eggs before I get downstairs in the morning.

      Should i go for three eggs or two? My cholesterol is slightly on the high side, so maybe two is enough?

      1. Craig 2
        Trollface

        Re: Never been an apple customer

        Damn, that sounds a nice cooker. What model is it?

        Oh, and don't sweat the amount of eggs, they're all good cholesterol now!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Never been an apple customer

      The Lenovo is more deserving of a "pro" moniker, but is better described as a luggable. The power brick itself adds an extra 1.3 pounds and bulk. Your use cases must differ from mine.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yes, but ...

    ... they didn't have the tight integration with the operating system that Apple has.

    Various companies tried and tried with tablets and failed, but Apple cracked it.

    My point is that just because someone else tried and failed previously, doesn't mean someone else can't try the same thing with a different implementation and succeed.

  13. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. arthoss

      Re: It could go either way.

      Its.

  14. ekithump

    Been there, done that, didn't work.

    I have a 2nd gen Lenovo X1 Carbon that also has the crappy adaptive strip instead of proper function keys, and it sucks donkey balls, and I leave it set to display F keys all the time.

    The first thing I thought when I saw the Apple announcement was /sarc "Oh, that's new - Apple introducing something pointless and unoriginal again claiming it's their idea". But, as happened with tablets, now it's Apple doing it I'm sure everyone will think it's a wonderfully innovative idea. /sarc

    To be fair though, if it's implemented properly by the software manufacturers, rather than by the hardware manufacturer, it could work. However, so much software makes use of function keys, it seems arbitrary to change something just for a niche of users with MacBooks.

    This smacks of change for change's sake to me, rather than something game changing and, you know, useful.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Been there, done that, didn't work.

      >To be fair though, if it's implemented properly by the software manufacturers, rather than by the hardware manufacturer, it could work.

      It seems Apple have got a few devs on board - Adobe, representing photoediting, Da Vinci representing video work and some music software. This is on top of the software Apple themselves make for internet, office tasks, photos, email etc

      >However, so much software makes use of function keys, it seems arbitrary to change something just for a niche of users with MacBooks.

      Here's the thing: by default, Apple's function keys haven't been function keys for years. They perform the functions that on a Windows PC normally require the 'Fn' button to be held down, such as screen brightness, volume, mute, media controls. They can be made function keys, but that is not the default OSX behaviour.

      1. Kristian Walsh Silver badge

        Re: Been there, done that, didn't work.

        You're right about function keys, but nobody is complaining about losing the function keys. Macs never had these keys originally, so a lot of Mac software never used them. As far as I can remember, the Macintosh was ten years old before every model shipped with a keyboard that had function-keys on it.

        What existing customers are complaining about, and apologists are ignoring, is the removal of the Escape key, something which is widely used in lots of existing software. Removing this key irritates users and hinders productivity, and forces you to upgrade software to work around the deficiency. You mention Adobe, but there's still a lot of Adobe CS users who bought their software outright, and don't want to go to the subscription Creative Cloud for financial reasons, so the argument that newer software will work around this just doesn't wash.

        (Yes, the original Macintosh and Mac Plus keyboards didn't have Escape keys either, but every other Mac keyboard did, even if it was in a bloody stupid place like on the old MacII keyboards)

        1. Dan 55 Silver badge

          Re: Been there, done that, didn't work.

          If your app is not touch bar aware the OS will give it a standard set of esc + function keys on the touch bar, or so I am lead to believe.

          1. Dave 126 Silver badge

            Re: Been there, done that, didn't work.

            In the Adobe presentation during the new Macbook announcement, the virtual Esc key was present and correct, except for when the Adobe rep was actively using the bar as a virtual slider. It appears that after using the slider, she tapped the left of the touchbar to reinstate the virtual Esc key.

            It would appear that the 'grammer' has been retained.

            The video of the presentation will explain it more clearly.

  15. SuccessCase

    Apple's implementation will succeed. It's not about the concept so much as the execution and the tight relationship between OS and Applications on a Mac and the fact Apple carry weight with developers, where Lenovo do not will mean this will have a far better and more useful level of integration. It's almost the perfect example of where Apple are better positioned than their competitors in computer hardware. This will be like comparing the Archos Jukebox and the iPod.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      In addition to better software support, the Apple touchbar has more capable hardware - it has ten points of multi-touch, and can be used as a slider or video scrubber. To compare it to Lenovo's virtual buttons is like comparing a scroll wheel to cursor keys.

  16. Chad H.

    The Touchscreen was more or less a flop before the iPhone (anyone remember those criminal windows mobile devices that HTC used to make on a white-label basis for networks?), and the tablet form factor was dead before the iPad (Anyone else remember the Windows XP devices?).

    Just because someone else tried and failed doesn't mean Apple will, they have a record of taking ideas that the market wasn't ready for yet, or that others couldn't polish enough to make succeed, and creating a new category out of it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      I just found...

      Your picture of that first iPhone: http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_p800-pictures-326.php

      Apple were the first to market on one or two features. They got in the market at just the right time, when the size, power and accuracy of the parts all fitted into a phone. Software was one thing, but previously the hardware could barely cope with the most basic layouts. Once the processors caught up, then the world opened up to the idea of a smart phone.

      But for those with the money, patience and big pockets, the smart phones existed before Apple, or even Google, came along to the party.

      1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

        Re: I just found...

        "Apple were the first to market on one or two features. They got in the market at just the right time, when the size, power and accuracy of the parts all fitted into a phone. Software was one thing, but previously the hardware could barely cope with the most basic layouts. Once the processors caught up, then the world opened up to the idea of a smart phone."

        No, no, no, no..

        You got it backwards. Apple actually used the available technology much better than in the other pathetic attempts by its then rivals. They didn't settle for crap solutions that mostly appealed to geeks (such as myself).

        Software developers for Nokia, Samsung, Palm etc were not playing in the same division, and neither were their designers, if they even had any. And they knew it as soon as they got hold of the iPhone.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: I just found...

          They saw a market no one else did. I'll give you that. Those types of GUI existed before, but not on touch.

          There seems to have been an idea that touch screen was for business was for spreadsheets. Then apple made the touch device for consumers, and bam... the rest is history.

  17. Rainer

    Reminds me

    Industry-comments on the original iPhone.

    Like Palm's Ed Colligan:

    "PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in"

    The "We've tried it before and couldn't make it work, so nobody can"-comment is so absurd and so overused, that you can hardly believe anybody making it these days.

    I admit, I rarely use the F-Keys on my Apple BT-Keyboard at home (or on my Linux workstation here at work). So why have them at all?

    ESC I need for vi(m), though.

    People have ridiculed Apple for having had an "Eject" button on the keyboard long after having stopped fitting removable drives in their computers.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Reminds me

      It's for ejecting the portemonnaie...

    2. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Reminds me

      >The "We've tried it before and couldn't make it work, so nobody can"-comment is so absurd and so overused, that you can hardly believe anybody making it these days.

      Aye. I'm tempted to go through the Reg forum archives and see who here thought the iPad would be a flop upon its release - there were quite a few commentards who said it would. It would be even more fun if this process could be automated and suitable icons placed next to our handles!

  18. Darryl

    Why stop there? Replace the whole keyboard with OLED so that everybody has to stare at the keyboard all the time, instead of that annoying muscle memory.

  19. Ilsa Loving

    Hopefully Apple will listen...

    Hopefully Apple will listen, once their sales collapse so hard that they carve a hole in their basement. Who in their right mind would pay such a ludicrous amount of money for such a breathtakingly gimped machine.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Hopefully Apple will listen...

      once their sales collapse so hard that they carve a hole in their basement.>

      They enjoying a lot of pre-orders, though much of that must be ascribed to the over-due CPU upgrades. However, I really don't think their sales will collapse. Let's agree to disagree until this time next year, Lisa :)

  20. Tim 8

    Quality of implementation isn't a factor?

    "No one liked it when we did it, so no one will like your version either"

    I'd never heard of lenovo's, so I had to find it on youtube. Functionally theirs look like keys that changed labels. I assume Apple's will have gesture-like actions. But I think it's a false to project your own failures on to all subsequent attempts.

    1. Tessier-Ashpool

      Re: Quality of implementation isn't a factor?

      Your assumption is correct. It's a 'multitouch' device.

  21. Wensleydale Cheese
    Alert

    There's an elephant in the room

    Having just read a chunk of the roundup linked at the end of the article, it seems a lot of developers are feeling ignored.

    Ignore the developers at your peril, Apple, for they are the ones who keep the iOS ecosystem alive.

  22. Ilsa Loving

    It's not JUST the toolbar

    It's not JUST the toolbar that's a problem. It's the entire implementation of the stupid laptop. No Magsafe power. No ethernet port. No HDMI port. No USB2/3 ports. No SD card slot. This machine is effectively useless unless you also carry a rats nest of adapters to connect everything. And the damn thing is completely unupgradable. Everything is either soldered to the mainboard or is some proprietary crap that you can't interchange with something else.

    Hell, you can't even plug in your shiny new iPhone 7 into it without an adapter!

    And just to take the piss even further, they jacked up the prices ludicrously. There's no f__king way I'm going to drop 3 grand on this POS. The idea that this laptop is a "Pro" anything is laughable. Only the truly gullable would buy this thing.

    1. TRT Silver badge

      Re: It's not JUST the toolbar

      Given the usage scenario, Magsafe would seem to be an essential. It's a great little technology. Love it.

      1. Dave 126 Silver badge

        Re: It's not JUST the toolbar

        I have a Dell with a barrel connector for power - I've seen friend's Dells fail in this area.

        Magsafe is nice, but its benefits aren't as useful as they used to be - simply because batteries last longer, people are less likely to be charging their laptops as they use them. I'm not saying this doesn't happen - it just doesn't happen as much as it used to.

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: It's not JUST the toolbar

      HDMI had to go because Intel dropped it from Skylake. The rest could have stayed.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's not JUST the toolbar

      I was going to downvote you, because it's obvious in 3 years time when the TB3/USB type C devices are everywhere, this will be a nice laptop.

      Then I remembered, it's still 3 years before that will be so. And will this hardware last that long? I probably will, but why spend the extra now, when you can wait it out, and get an even better one in 3 years time?

      Such a intermediate cycle, needed an intermediate device, with both types of connector, then next years/or after going 100% Thunderbolt (with what, half an hours design work? ;) ), so have an upvote!

      1. Aitor 1

        Re: It's not JUST the toolbar

        Yes and no.

        They will offer you a type D usb connector in 4 years.. and if none exist, then "mightyport" or whatever.

        So if you wait 3 years.. you might miss the new standard.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: It's not JUST the toolbar

          How? I don't think that Apple do change connectors that often. It's just changing it so early and so completely with no intermediate device. If last years had 1 TB3/USB C and then they did this, people would understand. It's the "cut of your leg or nothing" attitude, the same as with the headphone connector, that is so jarring to consumers.

          It worked for the Macbook Air (curring CD), because it's an Apple ecosystem, and people were practically onto streaming content for audio anyhow, and it was not selling its self as a dvd player. :P

    4. N2

      Re: It's not JUST the toolbar

      Agreed,

      What a pile o shite these new Mac Book not very Pro things have become

      To me the 'Pro' moniker also means you get RAM, HDD & battery you can change in the field.

  23. ecarlseen

    Many good reasons why it might fail, but this is not one of them.

    Apple has been traditionally good at making major changes stick - dropping the floppy drive, dropping optical media, dropping wired networking on laptops, etc. Their track record here indicates that this will probably not be a problem. It's not like the function keys are no longer accessible at all - they can be turned back on (albeit in a touch form) for apps that need them. Since Fn keys aren't mashed on constantly this will probably not be a big deal.

    Personally, I think the touch bar is a big step forward. Over the years UIs have been going away from shortcut keys and becoming extremely mouse / touchpad-centric. This hurts power users that want fast keyboard access to commands, because taking your hands off of the keyboard slows you down. The touch bar presents an opportunity for a UI middle-ground here - fast, efficient access to functions while maintaining the accessibility of not having to memorize keys.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Many good reasons why it might fail, but this is not one of them.

      Indeed, good point about the middle ground.

      Keyboards have this too - beginners might use the mouse to navigate to File > Save, intermediate users might Alt-F > S, power users might just Ctr-S. Nutters might configure their system to take an imaged backup every 10 minutes and never manually save a document!

      I used to use Photoshop a lot, but only ever bothered learning a few of the keyboard shortcuts. Half the time I would be looking for ways of adjusting linear values more quickly... since there are only so many combos of alt, shift and ctrl I can be arsed to remember, a touchbar looks ideal. Adobe know this - they released an iPad app a few years ago which places OSX Photoshop tool palettes on the tablet.

    2. Wensleydale Cheese

      Re: Many good reasons why it might fail, but this is not one of them.

      "The touch bar presents an opportunity for a UI middle-ground here"

      What went through my mind when I saw the Touch Bar presentation:

      1. It neatly skips around the arm-ache problem associated with a touch screen mounted above a keyboard. Your hands don't have to leave the keyboard.

      2. I drew a comparison with the capacitive keyboard on the Blackberry Passport. With touch sensitive phone screens I have a tendency to select something by mistake as I'm scrolling. This isn't a problem when using the keyboard to scroll.

      The Touch Bar could be a meeting of those two worlds.

      The devil is in the detail of course. It's easy to imagine the Touch Bar being visually distracting, and if the icons used are as indistinguishable from each other or as meaningless as in some apps out there, it'll be back to square one.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Stupid reasoning

    There are two assumptions here. One, because Lenovo users didn't like their implementation, Mac users won't like Apple's implementation. I don't know anything about how Lenovo did theirs, but pretty sure it wasn't identical to how Apple has done it. Think about this: Apple didn't sell the first touchscreen phone, but a couple previous attempts failed utterly in the market. Should Apple have decided to stick a Blackberry like keyboard on it because the market showed it to be successful and touchscreens to be unnecessful?

    Second, it assumes the typical user gives a fuck about the function keys. HE DOES NOT. Most people wouldn't miss them if you dropped them entirely, most of those who did would be OK with it if you added a "function" modifier ala control & alt that used the top row of keys as stand-ins. Some Windows power users use function keys instead of selecting menus with a mouse, and vi users need Esc a lot, but those are hardly majority users - and Mac buyers probably have a pretty small overlap with Windows power users and vi users. Much less so than Lenovo users, to be sure.

  25. Yves Kurisaki

    Oh dear Apple

    I'm a seasoned MacOS/iOS user, but I think Apple are losing the plot lately. The new home button on the iPhone 7 is a pain, and this new MacBook Pro touch bar looks like a major mistake. People are creatures of habit, and changing a part of your keyboard layout doesn't sound like a bright idea to me.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oh dear Apple

      The home button change is IMHO incremental on their way to the iPhone 8 next year, which rumor has it will be all display, with the home button/fingerprint sensor under that display. This gives them time to work out how best to get the haptics working to make it feel as "button like" as possible for something that doesn't actually depress.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Oh dear Apple

        Will it not take 2 or 3 years to get the designs and hardware and manufacturing for a fingerprint scanner under the screen?

        (Goes off to Google "under display finger print scanner" to see if Apple are designing it from scratch or just copying it from a competitor...)

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Windows Bootcamp Blue Screen Touchbar

    I can see the 'Courage" ticker tape scrolling touchbar, becoming installable malware within days of the macbook's release. So many Apple users will just see 'Courage' scrolling as a feature.

    Windows Bootcamp Users will be just be stuck with a blue Oled touchbar screen (no Windows drivers), to make them feel at home.

  27. stu 4

    FCPX

    This started a long time ago - when they killed FCS3 and replaced it (no upgrade path for those of us that had forked out 700 quid for FCS3 by the way) with FCPX - a godawful nightmare.

    6 years later it's not bad - but STILL lacks professional features FCP7 had like motion integration.

    Basically with that one move they showed they didn't give a toss about the pro market.

    They did it again killing aperture and 'replacing' it with fisherprice photos, and now they are doing it to the pro line.

    Combine that with the last true release of performance/APIs/pro features that came with snow leopard - every other OS update since has been web2.0 social toss I have to spend ages turning off or blocking.

    I'd love to blame it all on Ives/Cook - but it started when Jobs was still at the helm.

    sad. I still have a house full of macs - but they are running the oldest OS I can get away with (yosemite). It's only the alternative (windows) being so utterly utterly toss and unthinkable that keeps me in the apple universe.

  28. eddiejp

    Not the same thing. I hope...

    [boring, but real-world...]

    I used Lenovo's "version" of Touch Bar briefly and it wasn't good. But then, it wasn't smart. It was (I think) 3 sets of e-buttons and a physical button that let you scroll between the 3 button sets. There may have been some response to active applications (can't remember), but I do remember getting annoyed that the F keys weren't there when I needed them. Also, I quite often brushed the touch bar with my sleeve when pointing at the screen, which was seriously annoying.

    I haven't seen or played with the Apple version, but I suspect it's much better designed (more intelligent) than Lenovo's.

  29. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    What the grumblers are failing to realize is...

    Apple will be introducing a lovely optional external 'Esc' key in two versions.

    The first will be a wireless version for $599 (same number in UKP of course). It'll use a perfectly normal 26.74 volts 434 Hz power adapter, with a perfectly common 26 pin connector for charging. Next year they'll change to 25 pins.

    The other will be USB cabled, and will require four dongles in series to connect to the laptop. It'll be just $499.

    So there's really nothing to complain about.

    Except that the 'Esc' key driver software will quietly mutter "sucker" with each use.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What the grumblers are failing to realize is...

      I must admit this made me chuckle. Then I remembered that on Saturday I had installed a new iMac for a customer and it has a new 'Magic Mouse'

      It's so magic it has no door to access the batteries.

      So it must be rechargeable.

      Right. I give it to the client and say "When this stops working you have to recharge it"

      He says "How?"

      I say "you plug it in"

      He says "Where?"

      I leave him puzzling.

      I cannot believe that an Englishman would design a rechargeable device that has its power connector on the underneath. What on earth was he taking at the time?

      Strangely, the client decided to keep his older mouse and put the new one back in its little sachet and back in the box.

      Can't think for the the life of me why!

  30. Enigman

    It's all so the hipsters sitting in Starbucks who get a new Mac can look down on those without a Touch Bar. "Oh, yours doesn't have a Touch Bar? That's so 2015..." How else could they differentiate that someone has the latest iDevice as Ive probably won't allow a ticker on the lid flashing "Has the latest Mac Pro..."

  31. heynownow

    replicating Fn keys on an OLED strip is dumb, thats why Lenovo failed. However it's quite a nifty feature while using Apple's reboots of their pro apps (fcpx, motion and Logic)

  32. Fihart

    That reminds me.

    The new Apple adaptive keys remind me of the 1980s Apricot computer. Keyboard had programmable keys with LCD labelling that could change with whatever program was running. In practice wasn't used much.

    Also had built in calculator that worked independently of the computer -- the same LCD displayed results which I think could also be sent to the CRT to add figures to documents etc.

    Not surprising if, as I recall, the manufacturer ACT was originally an accountancy firm.

  33. 404

    Wait. A thought has occurred...

    What do Apple sysadmins use to work on stuff?

    I'm serious. I use damn near every port on my CF-53 toughbook troubleshooting this that or the other from week to week. Even the serial port gets used on older Cisco gear. What do they do when the web interface stops working? Turn it off and on again?

    Is there such a thing as an Apple/MacOS admin?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wait. A thought has occurred...

      Ehh.. ssh in a very nice terminal window, presumably.

  34. Darling Petunia

    lionel_ritchey@yahoo.com

    Agreed that the touch-bar will fade. Fortunately, my 2012 MBP will carry on.

    The new 'base' MBP, with actual function keys, is OK, but a 'big deal' to me is the loss of the magnetic power cord.

  35. Nimby
    FAIL

    Prepare to be Apple-simulated. Resistance is fruit-ile.

    There's a lot that I could say ... but I won't. Instead I will jump to the one thing that I do not get: Why REPLACE the top F-key strip? They could have just put their touchy-no-feely strip anywhere and KEPT the F-keys. That would have made sense to me. And been useful. Plenty of 3rd party keyboards do this to add extra features, buttons, etc. On the top. On the left. Wherever. And that works just fine.

    I hate it when someone has the "bright" idea to take away my physical keys. (Or just as bad, to MOVE them.) Stop messing with my physical keys already! I have decades of muscle memory to a long-established layout. Mess with it and I instantly have an 80% drop in interest in your product.

    Not to mention, you can't FEEL if you fat-fingered a flat surface. Welcome to Hunt And Peck By Design. Why is everyone lately so obsessed with bringing everything in the minus column of smartphones to my computer? It's not innovation. It's annoying!

  36. Halfmad

    Not saying it won't fail, but it's arguably a more complete implementation.

    Look I'll never buy one, I'm not rich enough or frankly stupid enough to do so, but Apple using this makes far more sense than Lenovo especially as Apple already use fingerprint authentication on iPhones. A user moving from one to the other would be more use to having biometrics used.

  37. dave 93
    Boffin

    Two computers for the price of one

    The Touch Bar is a separate, on-board computer running watchOS that 'talks' to the Macbook Pro running macOS, The possibilities are actually quite interesting - low-power watchOS, which is fairly capable for messaging etc. could run for literally months on a Macbook battery.

  38. dave 93

    Er, you appear to be mistaken, again...

    Surprising news, but the Reg's Apple hatred prevents them from reporting that the new Macbook Pro, yes the one with only USB-C, touchbar and high sticker price is killing it, and has accumulated more revenue than any other laptop this year in five days!

    https://intelligence.slice.com/apples-macbook-pro-launch/

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