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The touch bar is optional. In my opinion, it is great. The only issue is that it consumes more of your battery.

I agree that the new machine is lacking in terms of Battery and Memory (only 16GB!). I'm waiting for the next release.

The models without the touchbar have fewer USB ports. That’s why it’s questionably optional. My work setup uses two external monitors and wired Ethernet. So I’d like three ports and no touch bar. If I want enough ports for my setup, I have to take the touch bar too. I don’t like having to make that kind of choice.

I didn't know that. Any good reasons for that?

I think they used fewer or smaller usb controllers in the cheaper model. So it only has bandwidth to drive two ports. And I suspect it was intentional to encourage high end users to take the one with the touch bar, as a way of driving adoption.

Get a dock

The Touch Bar is mandatory on the 15” model, and while there is a 13” without it, it has two USB ports instead of four, and is using a lower power class CPU. They advertised it more as a replacement to the MacBook Air in the original keynote.

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