[aidos]

> hardware hasn’t been upgraded since 2017

What? They switched architecture to an amazing new chip series since then. I’d go even further and say that the era before then was the lost era of rubbish keyboards and strange gimmicks (looking at you, touchbar).

[shagie]

I haven't dabbled much in the AV domain where I suspect there might be more use for it... IntelliJ has good support for the Touch Bar that I do use when I'm on that laptop - https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/touch-bar-support.html

It was interesting. I put it in the "you don't know if it works until you try it... and for most people it wasn't useful."

It might have been something that would have caught on more if they had a Touch Bar only USB device that could fit reasonably with a 109 key 3rd party keyboard (yea, heresy) and be used independently.

Something that could be used like a stream deck ( https://www.elgato.com/us/en/p/stream-deck-mk2-black )

There is utility for a special purpose keyboard... just not the way the Touch Bar was done (and in so limited a way). It is something that was designed for professional workflows (like IntelliJ, Final Cut Pro) but it was only on the laptop and I use my Mac Pro for more "professional" uses and it wasn't there.

[sumuyuda]

The Apple Silicon models still require dongles for USB-A, have no upgradable components, and have terrible repairability. More like a small step forwards, but a long way from the MacBook Pros up to 2012.

[weikju]

Or perhaps the person hasn’t updated to new Apple devices since 2017.