Adding a useless touch bar and losing F-keys also doesn't do much to win over fans, and it should be stressed that the infamous MacBook pro keyboards were a constant source of problems.
I’d rather have fkeys for everything else. Maybe they could give us a mini touchbar just wide enough for going volume and brightness.
Love Spotify with touchbar, debugging with vs code etc - shame it was hated.
A mini Touch Bar with fn keys above would be lovely!
That wasn't the issue. My main gripe with the touch bar is a lack of tactility; I don't need to look down at my hands to pinpoint the location of "F5" for debugging in VS Code, nor do I need to make sure my finger is hovering over the escape key before I press it. On top of that, capacitive touchscreens just don't make good buttons, my fingers frequently bump against the screen and trigger mutes and screenshots that simply wouldn't happen with a button. It's something of a usability nightmare.
This has been a setting in Preferences since a year or two after Touch Bar was introduced.
Always good to remember other people can have different experiences, of course, so ymmv.