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Comment by xirdstl | Hacker News Reader

Do you find the Touchbar actually useful, or are you just indifferent / don't really use it?

I have a $job-provided MBP with the touchbar, and I find it actively evil. I am _constantly_ resting my fingers in the general vicinity of the top row, which triggers F11-type behavior, volume changes, esc-key hits, etc. It is a _damnably_ sensitive gimmick, pressure-sensitivity would improve it, but in general its a solution looking for a problem. In its current incarnation, I do not like it at all.

When it was announced, there was a lot of backlash, but I thought I'd keep an open yet skeptical mind. Fast forward, I hear mostly indifferent or negative things.

I am very curious to see what Apple does with it going forward. Can they admit it was a bust and move past it? Will they insist it is the amazing innovation they advertised and keep pushing it? Will they get rid of it but spin it in such a way that it was an amazing feature that they've now innovated past?

Disclaimer: I'm generally an Apple fan since getting the first iPhone a decade ago. However I'm struggling to find compelling reasons to upgrade in their latest couple rounds of product releases. Partly, I'm sure, is that getting older I'm not as enamored with having the absolute latest toys to play with.

I personally think if they can lower the price they can justify it and nobody will really care anymore. People only really care because of two reasons:

1) It costs $400 more.

2) It steals their ESC key.

Both of these issues can be solved in due time. I think the hate against the Touchbar itself is completely unwarranted and all that is needed is changes.

Everything new is something to get used to.

Given the complaints about the Touch bar, and also about some of the specs, maybe they're better off ditching it and throwing in some more ram? Who knows

The ESC key is the only thing my coworkers with this laptop use the bar for.

Where do you rest your hands to be able to trigger it? When I rest my hands I can't even reach that far with my fingers, much less press something by mistake.

edit: personally I rest my palm on my desk when I am using the touchpad, and rest my palms on each side of the touchpad when I am using the keyboard.

I’m constantly brushing mine by accident, not sure exactly how. I think it would be improved immensely by just being very slightly harder to trigger, either with pressure or dwell time.

I removed all those behaviors from the touch bar after I accidentally triggered Siri for the thousandth time. Doing that means the touch bar is black most of the time but has made the keyboard easier to live with.

Which is an issue. Disabling a $400 gimmick so that your $3000 computer is “easier to live with”.

The sad part is, I completely agree. I purchased a 15” MBP in May and I finally gave up a couple weeks ago. My wife now uses it to play the Sims, while I switched back to my Dell XPS. She doesn’t seem to mind the touch bar, so maybe it’s how I rest my hands. She hates the keyboard too, though.

I think the Touchbar could potentially be useful, but besides being cool and myself really liking sliders, I don't get practical use out of it, at least maybe not to warrant $400 for some people.

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