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Comment by mFixman | Hacker News Reader

I never understood the hate for the touchbar. I found no decrease in productivity after remapping Escape to Caps Lock, and both the special options for applications and the more granular volume and brightness controls make it more enjoyable than having F-keys.

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I find that having to look down at it to hit any of the "buttons" accurately is a huge decrease in productivity. I loved having play/pause right where it goes. Now I have to look at it, hit a button to go to a second level menu, then hit the button. AND it costs more money. That's not good.

If you plan to use capslock for anything else (some people do actually use it as caps-lock, and I have gotten used to it as an alternate Ctrl for Emacs use) it's definitely more of a pain.

I've yet to encounter a single good use for the touchbar, even the volume control is annoying to use. Especially since it's essentially impossible to hit without looking since there's no 'key feel', and I keep finding myself triggering touchbar actions because my fingers slightly overshoot the number or backspace key on occasion.

It'd be great as an optional addition above the F-keys, or even a little further away since it requires a concerted effort to use anyway.

Even the fact that the pretend 'escape' key doesn't properly operate all the way to the end of the bar (such that it might align with the keys below it) suggests it was far more about aesthetics or some weird notion of 'design' than actual usability.

Or I'm just not the right sort of Pro.

As others already mentioned the biggest pain point with the Touch Bar is, that you can't use it without looking at it. That's a major annoyance, especially if you use the function keys in your daily work.

Yet there is still a solution which would probably satisfy most users: A traditional function key row and an additional Touch Bar above.

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