[matwood]

They released a new keyboard with TouchID and no TouchBar. IMO, that means the TB is dead. Otherwise, it's a niche item that no one will ever make full use of.

[salamandersauce]

I wouldn't take that as a clear sign. They still made an M1 touch bar 13" MBP, they bothered to refresh it and keep it when swapping from butterfly back to scissor and the MBA only has touchID too.

The touch bar is handled by the T1/T2/M1 chips in the laptops. It could be that just cramming a T2+OLED into a keyboard may have made it way too expensive for a keyboard. Plus does Bluetooth even have enough bandwidth to handle sending screen data that size reliably?

It is a niche item and it does suck but for some reason they keep tacking it on...

[cercatrova]

> They still made an M1 touch bar 13" MBP, they bothered to refresh it and keep it when swapping from butterfly back to scissor and the MBA only has touchID too.

That's because changing the chassis is too expensive, but when they redesign it, you'll see it most likely without a touchbar.

[salamandersauce]

They already had a touch bar free 13" MBP in that chassis. In fact they put in extra effort to add the touch bar to the 2 port 13" MBP.

[matwood]

You made 2 great points. There's also a rumor Apple had to do things to hide the M1 from Intel. Could the added TB been a part of that? Hard to know.

I'm not a TB hater (more indifference), and I still think it's going away :)

[cercatrova]

Ah you're right, I forgot about the 13" without touch bar.