> I'm sure people noticed this issue internally and brought it up but some thing by some designer was seen as biblically sacred and overruled all reason.
Funny how Apple went from Jony Ive sacrificing hardware usability for "beauty" (touch bars and butterfly switches) to Alan Dye mucking up macOS and iOS with Liquid glAss.
In that sense a touch bar in addition to function keys would be very nice, because it's a much smoother way to adjust volume.
Adoption engenders development, and development engenders adoption. All of the best use cases of a touch bar are ones we would have seen had such a virtuous cycle been allowed to occur.
I agree with the sentiment - making a control surface that adapts to the user's current task makes total sense to me, and is a compelling feature in theory.
The execution (and how the touchbar differs from the Stream Deck) is where I think the argument falls apart. There is effectively zero ability to navigate the touchbar without using your eyes and taking your focus off the display, and your work. The Stream Deck can easily be used without looking. A static grid of real buttons whose function changes within context is a more useful implementation in the real world, even though it is technically _less_ capable.
IMO the touchbar concept is flawed in exactly in the same way as the modern car user interface.
As a user of the touch bar, I _hated_ having to look down from the screen, and move my hands away from the keyboard home row / touchpad area, _all the way up_ to the touchbar area to finally use it. It completely breaks the flow every single time. I don't think just inserting physical Fn keys beneath it would have won me over at all.
I'm not familiar with the stream deck, haven't even heard of it until just now.