I bought one when it was announced. I desperately needed to replace my 13', 128G MBA (couldn't change the disk).
My major concern about the touch bar is that it really makes things worse. I second the author opinion.
I use Spotify a lot. Before, on my MBA, I could change the volume or hit play/pause with one key tap, straightforward and easy.
Now I have to hit the tiny expand arrow to display these keys and then hit play/pause etc.
It could get even worse because Spotify added their own touch bar buttons when you use the mac native app.
But the dynamic display is different depending on whether the app is the front or in the background.
When in the background it becomes a shortcut you have to click to make a different set of keys appear. You get lost very easily, plus it becomes redundant with Apple native play/pause keys... So I'm always confused when I just want to hit pause/play.
From the settings, if I'd like to fall back to the always on standard set of function keys then I lose the dynamic app keys. Which is weird. The OS should be clever enough to expand the function keys when nothing else is available instead of a black unused zone and a tiny shortcut zone on the right.
The esc key (as mentioned in the article) is really hard to reach most of the times because you have to quit the current display (cross) before it becomes available. Why not keep it always on the left ?
It feels like the touch bar hasn't been thought through very much. It needs some more work... The good news is that it's mostly software improvements so let's hope Apple / App developers can fix that quickly.
I had the same issue with Spotify, so I switched the Touch Bar to only showing my customized layout at all times, regardless of which app is backgrounded.
This effectively makes the touch bar a useless feature, but at least I can customize the button mapping and always know the buttons will be where I expect them to be.
I am surprised more people haven't pointed this out. It is actually pretty nice, since I can slam in so many more macro keys to my touch bar for actions than the fn keys allowed me to have. Not saying the laptop is the best (I have many annoyances with it too), but I have been able to customize the touch bar for my workflow pretty well. Especially with BetterTouchTool.
Agree. Touchbar is like a re-incarnation of what function keys were originally, when the only people who used computers were programmers who would be writing their own functions for those keys. Of course they fell to disuse. Now they are having new life breathed in to them.
except 1) esc isn't a function key (right? right...?) 2) the buttons are (as one commenter here pointed out) too easy to hit accidentally and to hard to hit intentionally.
I've done this also. I have found it buggy though. About once a day the volume and brightness section stops responding until I do a restart of the machine. I assume this will be fixed in an upcoming update.
I have had the same issue. Buttons seem to just disappear on the touch bar randomly. If you press on them, they reappear again. Definitely some bugs with it.
As others have noted, you can press and drag on the volume icon to change the volume without two presses.
You can also remove the Siri icon and add a Play/Stop icon to the default icons on the right. Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Customise Control Strip. You can then move your cursor down off the screen onto the Touchbar, drag Siri out of the way, then drag a Play/Stop icon down into the Control Strip.
Then it will always be there even if the control strip is contracted rather than expanded.
I don't like the Touch Bar, but I've grown to hate it less. However it does register unintentional presses regularly. And no, I'm not "using it wrong".
However it does register unintentional presses regularly.
I concur with this. iTunes has on several occasions simply begun playing without me even touching the keyboard.
After a few weeks with the new MacBook the Touchbar is really the only thing I vehemently dislike about it. I especially dislike that it wants to display the Siri icon despite Siri being disabled on the machine.
I don't like the Touch Bar, but I've grown to hate it less. However it does register unintentional presses regularly. And no, I'm not "using it wrong".
If these are truly unintentional touches, as in, you were not touching the bar at all and it registered a key press, then you probably have a hardware issue. I just replaced a machine that would self press the touch bar on the right side when putting any sort of pressure (like resting your palms) to the right of the track pad.
I don't have a hardware issue, it's just very easy to brush the touchbar and set off a button when you didn't intentionally press it. If you overshoot one of the keys on the top row slightly you can end up pressing one of the touchbar buttons.
Maybe they should have come up with a way of requiring a press to active buttons on the touchbar.
Agreed! The bar is incredibly sensitive. I run it in customised mode and often when hitting backspace I'll brush against the bar and activate something.
It got so frustrating that I gave up and added loads of whitespace to the far right side of the bar. It looks weird having a big chunk of empty space there, but it has dramatically reduced my accidental activations.
At this point though, almost two months in, I'm just apathetic towards the bar. I tried to get used to the 'app contexts' but it felt too forced for me. So now it's just a function bar with a bad UX. I rebound Caps to escape and got used to it because the touch escape, even with the extended hitbox, feels extremely unpleasant to use.
I'm hoping someone figures out a way to run an app that takes over the bar even when not in focus. I'd quite like, for example, to have a mini version of iStat Menus on it, the currently playing track, or some other cute widget.
I know the above is not how Apple intend the touch bar to be used (as a second screen), but I'd sure find it more useful than what it does now!
I know it's probably not going to solve your issues with the Touch Bar (I seem to be in the minority that love it), but you can change the volume without expanding the the other function keys just by tapping and dragging the volume key. You basically drag left and right and, as long as your start position was over the volume key, you'll get a slider that reacts no matter where your finger is.
Quick tip: if you press and hold on volume or brightness, and start sliding immediately, you can get more immediate feedback. Don't tap then slide; tap and hold and slide at the same time :)
Yes I noticed it and that's great but it doesn't give you audio play/pause shortcut. It doesn't work on the expand arrow for example (that's an idea for Apple !).
I have to make compromises if I want the play/pause control then I'll loose the brightness or volume because the shortcuts are limited to 4 max even if the touch bar is mostly unused black space on the left most of the time.
Weren't you just complaining that you'd rather not have the touch bar and would rather have the default keys? It sounds like you're looking for a scenario that's not possible. Either you have fully dynamic keys or you have the option to customize the entire row. I don't really see a way you could have both.
I'm curious: You probably found the Touchbar section in System Preferences where you can customize the buttons - can you improve the situation for Spotify there, or not? What do you wish it did / was able to do? (Decent chance of both Apple and Spotify people reading here)
You can't customize the app buttons unless it allows you to which is not the case with Spotify.
1/ display the same touch bar UI when the app is in the front or background otherwise it's confusing.
2/ keep the spotify controls visible when using chrome for example (chrome doesn't have any touch bar controls yet). Right now I have to click the newly added spotify shortcut all the time. Maybe a way to decide which app should be displayed when the space is unused would help (in the OS settings).
I like the song play progress bar, it would be even better with the current and next artist/song names and covers.
I haven't played with it yet, but it looks like as long as the thing you want to do has a hotkey you can use this to make touchbar button to do it whenever you are in that particular app.
It's pretty great, actually. You can also set it to run AppleScripts, which can call the shell. I have set up buttons in the touch bar for common tasks such as zipping an archive without .DS_Store crud in Finder, and for AirMail I have a button that creates a folder based on the subject line of the open email thread and saves attachments there. I have no idea how the Touch Bar is supposed to be useful by default, but I'm finding it quite nice with some work.
My major concern about the touch bar is that it really makes things worse. I second the author opinion.
I use Spotify a lot. Before, on my MBA, I could change the volume or hit play/pause with one key tap, straightforward and easy.
Now I have to hit the tiny expand arrow to display these keys and then hit play/pause etc.
It could get even worse because Spotify added their own touch bar buttons when you use the mac native app. But the dynamic display is different depending on whether the app is the front or in the background. When in the background it becomes a shortcut you have to click to make a different set of keys appear. You get lost very easily, plus it becomes redundant with Apple native play/pause keys... So I'm always confused when I just want to hit pause/play.
From the settings, if I'd like to fall back to the always on standard set of function keys then I lose the dynamic app keys. Which is weird. The OS should be clever enough to expand the function keys when nothing else is available instead of a black unused zone and a tiny shortcut zone on the right.
The esc key (as mentioned in the article) is really hard to reach most of the times because you have to quit the current display (cross) before it becomes available. Why not keep it always on the left ?
It feels like the touch bar hasn't been thought through very much. It needs some more work... The good news is that it's mostly software improvements so let's hope Apple / App developers can fix that quickly.