| The TouchBar is fine and looks nice.
The problem is not the TouchBar itself, but how Apple decided to not care about many usability details complementary to the TouchBar (besides the ESC key). Something really stupid (related to TouchBar design) happened to me about 2 weeks ago. I watched a movie using an external TV, and I set the laptop screen brightness to zero. The movie ended, so I shut down the machine using the TV as a monitor. Next day, when I turned on the laptop (without the TV). Zero! No sound, nothing, only the artificial "ESC" key in the TouchBar. My first reaction... "ohh the brightness", it happened before with older MBP models. But... Where are my brightness keys!? For some reason, there were not displayed. (after a little bit of search in support forums, I found that some users were not seeing TouchBar keys during login too). I connected the TV again... nothing.
I tried to login... but since I couldn't see the login screen, I ended in the password recovery mode.
In total desperation (that included trying to reboot in recovery or to do a SMC reset without any visual and auditive feedback), I found by chance that the screen displayed the right brightness if I open/close the lid. When I saw the password reset mode screen, I was happy. But if I restarted the brightness remained in zero! and no TouchBar...
After another trial & error of open closing the lid, I saw the pass recovery screen again. Then I deactivated FileVault to reboot in recovery mode, and finally, I saw the brightness keys in the TouchBar!!! (it was a WTF moment). I searched in a lot of forums if it was possible to change the brightness with another key combination, but it wasn't possible. My secondary keyboard is a MagicKeyboard that is Bluetooth only... so I almost have to contact support for a very stupid design decision to not give the users a secondary method to control brightness when the TouchBar fails. BTW previous Mac models emitted a sound during power on... that would have been helpful. It's very hard to know if your computer is working without any feedback. And it's also very hard to hit the recovery key combination without auditive feedback. I like the aesthetics of Apple design, but as an Apple user for many years... the change of priorities in the hardware user experience is noticeable. |