Why did the touchbar not take off? It's pretty cool

[pinkoos]

Went to the Apple Store and was playing around with the touchbar on the 13" MacBook Pro

Wondering why it never took off and why it got so much bad press, especially in the tech community?

It's actually pretty cool - very customizable in Settings and actually seems like it would be pretty useful

(The effect when you customize it by dragging an icon down to the bottom of the screen and it then 'leaves' the screen and lands down on the touchbar is very cool.)

I get that people complained that you have to look down at it b/c there's no 'feel' to it, but so what?

Just trying to understand from those of you who have it why you either like it or not

[gadje]

I didn’t like it. To change brightness or volume it took 2 steps. First I had to open that menu, then press the key to adjust. With a normal keyboard I just press volume up until I reach the desired volume. It just seems faster and easier to me.

I didn’t really hate it, I just didn’t fall in love with it.

[Tiangou]

You have to reach up to use it, so it interrupts the smooth flow of typing or mousing, and few apps supported it in any way that was particularly inventive or useful.

I appreciated being able to tap-drag the brightness and volume controls.

But that didn't make up for my frequent accidental brushing of the Escape-key corner which was awkward much of the time and occasionally catastrophic.

[Tiangou]

gadje wrote:
I didn’t like it. To change brightness or volume it took 2 steps. First I had to open that menu, then press the key yo adjust. With a normal keyboard I just press volume up until I reach the desired volume. It just seems faster and easier to me.

Umm... No.

Just tap your finger on the volume-icon, hold it a half a second and you'll get a drag-bar. Then drag left/right. No need to lift your finger until you have it at the setting that you want. Just one tap.

That's one of the best things about it. (See above.)

[gadje]

But it’s still a two step process in my opinion

[Gareth]

Tiangou wrote:
[quote=gadje]
I didn’t like it. To change brightness or volume it took 2 steps. First I had to open that menu, then press the key yo adjust. With a normal keyboard I just press volume up until I reach the desired volume. It just seems faster and easier to me.

Umm... No.

Just tap your finger on the volume-icon, hold it a half a second and you'll get a drag-bar. Then drag left/right. No need to lift your finger until you have it at the setting that you want. Just one tap.

That's one of the best things about it. (See above.)
But, that's also not intuitive. I didn't know it could work that way either, and it's also weird because you're dragging on a part of the touchbar that doesn't correspond with the actual slider.

[S. Pupp]

I use Pock to customize the touch bar. The dock sits on the touch bar, rather than taking up valuable screen space.

[Lew Zealand]

I'm frequently changing volume and brightness so single, dedicated keys for each is a must, hence my dislike for the Touchbar. It does have good uses but the downsides are too many. I use an older Dell laptop from time to time and it uses Fn-Fkey for Volume and Brightness, and it's ergonomically equally awful but in a different way.

[pinkoos]

Pock looks really cool

[rich in distress]

Touchbar FTW!