Apple’s “new MacBook Pro includes a new slim touchscreen strip that sits just above the keyboard,” Lisa Eadicicco writes for TIME Magazine. ” This area, called the Touch Bar, is meant to replace the traditional row of function keys. Unlike regular keys, the Touch Bar can change the buttons it’s displaying depending on the app you’re using, or task you’re trying to get done. The new laptop also has Touch ID, enabling lightning-fast user profile switching and Apple’s Apple Pay payment service.”
“I briefly spent some time trying the new MacBook Pro after Apple unveiled it Thursday,” Eadicicco writes. “Based on that experience, I can say the Touch Bar is an inventive new way to get work done more quickly.”
“While using Safari, the Touch Bar will display your recently opened tabs, which you can jump between by tapping each individual tab or scroll through by sliding your finger across the strip. There’s no lag between your finger hitting the touch strip and the MacBook Pro’s reaction. Swiping through tabs in Safari felt fluid, and certainly much faster than clicking the trackpad or using traditional keyboard shortcuts,” Eadicicco writes. “Apple’s new Touch Bar might mean faster typing, too. As I typed in Messages, the Touch Bar offered autocomplete suggestions. While I drafted a document in Pages, it presented text formatting options. Between the Touch Bar and the MacBook Pro’s new, flatter keyboard, writing in macOS feels faster than ever before.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Multi-Touch in the right places, not the wrong, makes all the difference.
SEE ALSO:
Apple does touch right and, as usual, Microsoft does it wrong – October 28, 2016
IBT: Apple’s MacBook Pro Touch Bar is the coolest thing ever; will change the way we use laptops – October 28, 2016
Wired hands on with Apple’s New MacBook Pro: It’s a whole new kind of laptop – October 27, 2016
CNET on the new MacBook Pro: Apple’s amazing strip show reinvents the notebook – October 27, 2016
Hands on with Apple’s new MacBook Pro: Looks and feels so good it’s unreal – October 27, 2016
Apple debuts three new TV ads for all-new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar – October 27, 2016
Apple unveils groundbreaking new MacBook Pro with revolutionary Touch Bar and huge Force Touch trackpad – October 27, 2016
Touch Bar is genius! So where is the “new” keyboard with touch bar? I’d love to see, and buy, a wireless keyboard with a numeric pad on the right with touch bar. It’s like Apple want’s us Desktop users to abandon our Mac Pro’s and iMac’s and buy a lap top. What gives, Apple?
Not only is Apple encouraging us to give up our desktop systems to move to laptops, they’re somewhat encouraging developers to create Touch Bar functionality in their programs that can’t be mimicked on a non-touch-bar legacy Apple keyboard, or any third-party keyboard not made by Apple.
Pretty obnoxious move, Apple.
Yes I want to see how a thesis is written very quickly because of a touch toolbar. I think deadlines do a much better job.
Comments making a big deal about the fact the fact that only the new notebooks have a touchbar are pretty silly
apple has always introduced new technologies in their newest product lines and followed through with other products over time.
Look at TouchID, which started with the iPhone and later moved to the ipads, and the macbook pro; or apple pay which started on iphone and then moved to the watch and now to the macbook pros; Or pressure sensitive trackpads which started with the macbook and is now used with the macbook pros.
It’s prettty obvious that a standalone keyboard with touchBar will appear in the future.
The clone makers will quickly slap on a cheep version of a touch bar and smugly claim that they caught up to Apple.
The problem will be that there will be no software to use it with.
BTW, perhaps the most relevant example of a notebook-first feature, providing significantly more functionality, for which developers would write app specific code were MultiTouch TrackPads.
These also appeared afterwards on standalone keyboards, just in case you hadn’t noticed 🙂
How about a touch bar App for the iPad connected via Bluetooth. Please.
Well, man! I’m not buying a mac this year either. I’m tired of the best mac ever, I want the best computer ever, ever.
Let me set the design goals, fastest, latest, processor that performs at desktop performance speeds and specs, desktop performance graphic speeds and specs, user installable ram, base model 64 gigabytes, TB SSD, magSafe, usb, thunderbolt 4, 3d tracking pointer movement, that means move your hand in the air, free space, and cost for the top of the line base $1899. delivery date January 15, 2017.
That’s how you move forward. whether the processor is intel, amd, ibm, oracle, arm, it time to move much, much, much faster. State Of The Art: where is intel’s new memory scheme or AMDs, man!
10 gbps wireless. let’s go! compelling products!
yes, thunderbolt 4, 3 just feels wrong.