After seven sad years, Apple has finally killed the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. What could have been an iconic mark for Apple became a PR crisis until the company moved away from this design entirely when it introduced the M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pro models.
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Of all the problems these Macs had, I can assure you it wasn’t the Touch Bar’s fault – or at least when Apple finally introduced a version of this product with a physical ESC button, everything was perfect for me.
During the seven years of Touch Bar, I owned the 2017 MacBook Pro 13″ and the 2019 MacBook Pro 16″ – before I moved to the M1 Pro MacBook Pro. While using these machines, the feature I loved the most was the ability to quickly reply with any emoji from this OLED bar or control the music playing, display brightness, and more with the Touch Bar.
Image source: José Adorno for BGR
Basically, everything I could do with the function keys I was doing with the Touch Bar, and it felt so technological and futuristic. That said, I understand that developers and other professionals really relied on the physical function keys, but, for me, it was worth the change.
That said, of all the issues these MacBook Pro models had, I can assure you that Touch Bar was just fine.
The downfall of the past MacBook Pro
Despite the Touch Bar, these were the main issues the past generation of MacBook Pro had, and Apple almost solved all problems throughout these models:
- Lack of physical ESC key – which was solved
- Poor quality FaceTime camera – only solved with the M1 Pro MacBook Pro
- Butterfly keyboard – solved with the 2019 MacBook Pro
- Lack of ports – only solved with the M1 Pro MacBook Pro
- No MagSafe charger – only solved with the M1 Pro MacBook Pro
Image source: José Adorno for BGR
With that in mind, it’s not that the Touch Bar was bad, but everything else on these computers didn’t help. If Apple were to add the Touch Bar to this generation, I feel like it could be well-received – but the company would need to push developers to integrate this panel into their apps once more, as Cupertino failed to do that the last time.
Wrap up
I loved using the Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro, and it’s sad to see it go. However, I feel like Apple is finally listening to its customers with the latest high-end models, and I hope the company keeps following this trend.