Analysts corroborate rumors that upcoming MacBook Pro will ditch the Touch Bar

The TouchBar was a useless gimmick and a waste of space on the laptop anyway. Glad its removed.

Looks like it was a very good idea to skip the M1 MacBook Pro and wait for the upgraded version.

There's a lot of good customisation options for the Touchbar if you use a third party tool like BetterTouchTool. It's Apple's loss to not give the user full control of it in the first place.

Apple should have learned their lesson with the original Apple ][ RESET key.

The earliest model of the Apple ][ had a normal RESET key in the upper right corner of the keyboard, with only a slightly stiffer spring than every other key on the keyboard. When you pressed it, it went BEEP and dumped you in the monitor.

Later versions of the Apple ][+ increased the spring stiffness a bit, but not enough that it wasn't still way too easy to accidentally press.

And eventually Applesoft came along and it dumped you in BASIC instead of the monitor. But it also disconnected you from DOS and made it almost impossible to continue what you were doing.

There was a whole third party ecosystem of physical and electronic devices to make the RESET key harder to press.

One common one was a square plastic tube that fit over the button, that you had to stick your finger into to press. They came in various styles and colors and designs, and made great branded swag to hand out at trade shows.

Another popular electronic one was a little board that you wired up to make it necessary to press the control key at the same time as the RESET button.

The Apple //e finally adopted built-in control-key RESET protection. (Putting many little third party companies out of business -- not the first or the last time Apple did that!)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23068829

The original Apple ][ had a reset key in the upper right corner of the keyboard that was WAAAAAY too easy to press.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e3/1b/53/e31b53767fad646fc635...

They eventually put a stronger spring under it so it was harder to press, but it was still terrible. There was actually a thriving after-market for $3.25 "RESET KEY PROTECTORS": square plastic tube shields that fit over the reset key so you had to stick your finger down inside of it to press reset.

https://apple2history.org/history/ah13/

RESET KEY PROTECTOR, which prevented accidental RESET on the earliest models of the Apple II, was available for only $3.25 from Special Systems Design. This was necessary because the RESET key, on the upper right of the keyboard, was easy to press because it had the same spring action as the other keys on the keyboard. Various methods (like this product) were used to stiffen that key, and make it harder to press.

https://imgur.com/a/jGpcT4Z

Special Systems Design ad for Apple ][ Reset Key Protector, from Apple Orchard v1n1 1980 Mar Apr, page 107.

https://archive.org/details/Apple-Orchard-v1n1-1980-Mar-Apr/...

Videx Enhancer ][ Reset Key Protection:

https://archive.org/details/Videx_Enhancer_II_Installation_a...

I remember back in 2016 that some coworkers said that the new keyboard had ruined their life. I've not heard anything that strong about the touchbar but I don't know a single person who likes it and everyone seems to dislike it to some extent. Perhaps them ditching it will be the thing that gets me to check out silicon.

Shame their palm sizes would remain the same when next smallest iPhone grows even bigger.

I believe they were among the best MacBooks ever built. I remember Paul Graham also chiming the same in a tweet.

And for emojis, although the FN-+type ahead works better tbh

These same people have clearly never tried using a laptop long-term with just the touchscreen. It's painful, not just in the figurative sense that desktop operating systems were not designed for touchscreens (even Windows which attempted a hybrid model, is still crap), but in the literal sense that holding your arm up all day to use it gets really tiring, really fast. Even convertible formats suffer the same problems, they often end up bulky and are never really a good replacement for either a tablet or a proper laptop.

> Fully expect the M2 MBP to have a touch screen and possibly a convertible format.

Arguably, Apple's already got that market covered with the iPad and Magic Keyboard. I think we would sooner see an iPad SKU running macOS than any MacBook going to a convertible style.