“The new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar has been out for a few weeks so you’ve probably seen the early reviews and know all the initial takes,” Zac Hall writes for 9to5Mac. “My own machine (base 15-inch with upgraded 1TB SSD) arrived three weeks ago as my new work computer, giving me plenty of real-world use with it. My main observation from time spent using the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is that early impressions don’t necessarily last.”
“Take the new Touch Bar for example. I believe it should be judged as being either more or less useful than the physical function row of keys that it replaces,” Hall writes. “Personally, I don’t rely on the function keys much beyond play/pause toggling and adjusting volume, but my very first thought when using the Touch Bar was that the virtual keys offer the same or possibly less control without benefit. Then I discovered the ‘tap and drag’ behavior of volume and brightness controls. You can tap the virtual volume button to activate a slider or you can tap and drag left or right in one quick motion. Any time Touch Bar uses this tap and drag gesture, it feels good. I hope we see more of this as Touch Bar implementation becomes more defined.”
“MagSafe is replaced by USB-C. This has downsides, but being able to charge from either the left or right side of my MacBook Pro is a benefit that I’m appreciating daily,” Hall writes. “Your own experience may vary, but this has been a mostly painless transition for me. My biggest complaint on a day-to-day basis is having to pull out the SD Card reader now when I want to import photos and video. It’s definitely a setback but not one worth using an older machine over.”
Much more in the full review here.
MacDailyNews Take: Personally, the 15-inch is a bit much for our road needs (we have 27-inch iMacs on our desks) so we really can’t wait for the next-gen MacBook with Touch Bar models we’ve hoping to see sooner than later.
The touch and drag is nice, especially because when you first tap on the volume “button,” your finger is NOT on the slider. The Touch Bar is smart enough to recognize this and will slide accordingly, so there’s no need to tap then move your finger to the slider. It’s very intuitive, thankfully.
It only took me 3-minutes to determine the 2016 Macbook Pro was about as “professional” as a pig rolling around in the mud!
I truly believe Cook is destroying Apple intentionally, because not even he could be this incompetent purely by happenstance.
Touch Bar: Pipeline Timmy’s answer to the 1974 Baldwin Fun Machine.
“But, Myron, it lights up and flashes to the music!”
Botvinnik: Trump’s answer to Pinnochio. “Why yes Boty, you too can sing and dance my puppet friend. And your nose will grow…you’ll see”
Touch Bar, as useful as Force Touch: nice to have sometimes, but not necessary.
You can get a MagSafe USB-C charging cords. Most smart cameras have Wireless transfer or you can use Wireless SD Cards.
So I should ditch my two Nikon camera bodies, total cost over $3500, because Apple decided to make the MBPro thinner?
Or maybe throw away the cards I already have and get wireless SD card and put up with the slow transfer times.
I am not interested.
Not used one but I can see it only being useful if developers keep it simple and don’t confuse people by allowing loads of stuff that doesn’t make sense or make things easier. It’s the same with everything, if there’s to many options you forget they exist and don’t use them.
In much the same way as having things in the menu bar can be useful, having too many or things that aren’t really served by it hinders you.
Apple Watch, it’s not suited to overly complex functions, and when I first got it there were dozens of apps installed. I’ve got rid of most of them because it was too cluttered and most didn’t offer any genuine advantage over just getting my phone out.
K.I.S.S.
It goes back to the old saying we had several decades ago…
“Functionality should increase exponentially, but complexity should increase less than logarithmically.”
(That is, if the item has 1,000 times the functionality, it should be less than three times as complex.)
Apple seemed to follow this old rule up until the past few years. Not so any longer. Apple often does not increase true functionality (and sometimes takes away functionality), but when it does complexity seems to scale almost linearly with functionality.
Tim has zero imagination leading to zero advances in technology for the once great company that wowed us all with unimaginable advances in technology. Useful and advanced technology. Not tweaking what we already have and then charging more to get it. Nothing imaginative about the “touch bar.” The rest is a step backward with this “innovation.” NOT!
Also … where are the new iMacs? I await the disappointment that is bond to come with them whenever they show up.
Tim Cook is a disaster.
Buy the Griffin Breaksafe USB-C cable and you have “MagSafe” functionality back, its great, something Apple SHOULD HAVE thought of.
http://griffintechnology.com/us/products/power/charging-cables/breaksafe-magnetic-usb-c-power-cable
“Um… bad news, TIm. It seems Microsoft already used “The Ribbon.”