The problems with the new macbook "pro" seem to keep on growing. I am really surprised that Apple did not find the connecting to external display issue in internal testing.
Maybe all this was possible before but I never knew about any of it. If that's the case that's another strength of the touch bar -- I had no issue discovering this functionality this time.
Lenovo did name it "Adaptive Keyboard" and obviously wanted it to change depending on context, but without 3rd party software support it's not going to offer much. You get layouts for F-keys, home, web browsing, and Skype:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/w/images/4/47/LAdapKey-001.png
And as far as I can tell, it's just "buttons that move around," without any more flexible UIs like the sliders/scrubbers that Apple is pitching. You're making the "no tactile feedback" compromise that everyone hates, and not actually getting much for it.
Use acceptance was miserable because it wasn't actually useful.
It is as if they asked ipad users to design the macbook.
I think that's a decent mental model for what we are seeing here. These macbooks make perfect sense if you look at them from the point of view of an ipad/iphone user.
Apparently the "$3000 facebook machine" market is much bigger than the "finally, a unix workstation that doesn't suck" market.
In an post release interview Jony Ive implied that the touch bar was the first step in a new paradigm.
Imagine the Photoshop toolbar being available on your iPad's touch screen, while you're editing a photo on your Mac. Or playing a video game while using your iPhone for controls.