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As much as I love the engineering behind the touch bar I never saw a good reason for it.

I think context switching buttons is poor UX, you shouldn't need to look at the keyboard when you're using it.

I miss the days I could quickly adjust the volume or brightness of my MacBook with the touch of a physical key who's position doesn't move (navigating a touchscreen for these controls is wholly unnecessary).

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The touchbar makes more sense if you don't consider it a modal part of the keyboard, but rather a touchable part of the screen. Like the bottom screen of a Nintendo DS.

Well then put it there and give me my escape and FN keys back!

I've played some of the popular DS games on a smartphone with a minuscule second screen and I barely touched it. Most of its uses felt forced

What engineering? It's a screen with icons on it. Nothing special technically. Could be done with an Arduino if you were so inclined.

I think what they meant was that the touch bar is essentially a whole separate computer with its own ARM chip, running a modified version of WatchOS, communicating with the MBP.

Okay so it is over-engineered. Usually that's a bad thing.

It's existence is one of the clearest examples of over-engineering existing. However, fitting a multi touch screen into a few mm's of laptop is technically impressive.

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