Dramatic click bait IMO. You could really hack that touchbar to do some great productivity enhancements.
Also you don't need to remember which key does which
You can also show stuff like CI status, notifications for IMs, etc.
How is that any better or different than notifications that already exist on your system?
GitLab has web browser notifications that trigger on CI builds.
Literally every instant messaging service has notification systems that work on the OS.
What is the added benefit of putting it off of the main screen and on a small 1" tall screen where you have your hands?
And there isn't much you can do with the pretty graphics on the buttons that you couldn't already do with pretty graphics on the screen, especially in an era of touchscreens. The whole touchbar strikes me as a demo-feature; demos great, in practice, not especially useful.
They are visual. So you don't have to memorise any key combinations. Also they are context aware. This means you don't have to memorise all those key-context-application combinations.
It is multitouch. You cannot click at two different points on the screen with the touchpad. So this is an improvement over the current input mechanism.
Is touchbar better than touchscreens? Maybe or maybe not. Who knows now. But note that it is not placed on the screen. It is placed near the keyboard, where the other input mechanisms and your fingers normally are.
You don't need to "look down at the keyboard". In a laptop you are already looking there. It's already in your peripheral vision. And if you use an external monitor (but not an external keyboard), you simply don't have to use the touch bar.
I don't understand this negativity on HN. There will be many creative applications for this new input/output method. I'd rather see people brainstorming on all those new possibilities.