USA TODAY International Edition
MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar proves awkward, pricey
A full touch- screen Macintosh computer is a touchy topic at Apple. Despite popularizing touch screens on iPhones and iPads, and the fact that Windows rivals have embraced touch screen PCs for awhile, the folks at Apple have resisted on the Mac. They still have. On the pricey ($ 1,799 on up) new MacBook Pro laptops that I’ve been testing for more than a week, Apple brought a fresh approach to touch computing via a high- resolution strip of virtual controls known as the Touch Bar that’s above the traditional Qwerty keyboard. I found it useful at times, but it comes at a high cost.
This multitouch glass strip of shortcut keys dynamically changes depending on the app you’re using. In the Calendar app, for example, you can change the on- screen view by electing day, week, month or year controls on the Touch Bar. In Photos, you can slide your finger to crop or rotate a picture and apply filters. And in Messages you can easily insert emojis.
Sometimes the context- sensitive functionality of the Touch Bar adds capabilities you may be accustomed to on an iOS device. Take predictive text — if you’re composing an email or iMessage, say, the Touch Bar surfaces words you may want to type next.
And yes, you can still summon traditional function keys and system controls from the Touch Bar, for screen brightness, volume and so on, all accessible via a collapsed strip on the right side.
Apple is also opening up the Touch Bar to third- party developers, bringing the functionality to, among others, Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop. At this stage, though, all my Touch Bar usage involved Apple’s own apps and tools.
Is the Touch Bar worth it? Though tough to quantify, I quickly came to appreciate how the Touch Bar might make you more productive.
But you still have to weigh whether trading up for the feature is worth the splurge, what with 13- inch MacBook Pros with the Touch Bar starting at $ 1,799 and 15- inch versions $ 2,399. After all, new MacBook Pros without the Touch Bar go for $ 1,499, and you can still get an older model for $ 200 less than that.
Plus, handy as it is, Touch Bar does take a little getting used to, if only because old computing habits are hard to break. With the laptop on my, well, lap, I sometimes gazed right past the Touch Bar altogether and instead stared directly onto the computer screen.
Other times I’d pause momentarily to consider whether I should use the Touch Bar to handle some task or alter my workflow. Sometimes there’s no Touch Bar alternative. When I wanted to scroll inside the Safari browser, I had to stick to my tried and true method of using the trackpad, which was far easier anyway.
Speaking of which, the trackpads on the new MacBook Pros are relatively ginormous: twice as large as the prior generation on the 15- inch model and 46% on the 13- inch. Apple had to consider which actions warranted Touch Bar controls and which didn’t.
In the iBooks app, you can drag your finger to quickly pore through the pages of a book, but there’s no Touch Bar control for moving ahead or back a single page at a time.
Meanwhile, here are other observations on what are on balance very appealing, if expensive, MacBook Pros.
Touch ID. The fingerprint sensor familiar to the iPhone crowd is a welcome addition to the Mac, and not only for using it to get past a lock screen. It’s a handy way to authorize pur- chases made on the Web through Apple Pay.
uThe keyboard. I never fully cozied up to the “butterfly” style Qwerty keyboard on Apple’s MacBook notebook and was worried when I first learned that the MacBook Pro keyboard was based on the same technology. But the refined second- generation butterfly mechanism used here represents a marked improvement. The keys are responsive. I felt perfectly comfortable, for instance, typing this column out on the keyboard.
uPorts As it has done so many times, Apple gives and takes away. The priciest new MacBook Pros come with four Thunderbolt 3/ USB- C ports, two on each side. You can use pretty much any USB- C charger to juice up your Mac, though if you try a cellphone charger as I did, it might not charge quite as fast as using the supplied USB- C power adapter, which incidentally replaces the old MagSafe power adapter. And you’ll need an adapter to charge an iPhone.
Indeed, while the ports here are fast, powerful and versatile, you’ll need accessory adapters for HDMI, full- sized standard USB connectors and other devices, a painful transition for some. Apple has already lowered the price of some accessories.
uBattery. I didn’t do a formal test, but Apple is claiming about 10 hours of battery life for wireless Web usage or iTunes movie playback, comparable to prior models.
uSound. Apple says the speakers here have twice the dynamic range of earlier MacBook Pros. What I can say is that the speakers are loud and crisp, and the overall audio quality is excellent.
uPortability. Older MacBook Pros were not only expensive compared to MacBook Airs but heavier. They’re still not cheap, but the latest 13- inch model weighs 3 pounds, same as the Air, and is 12% thinner. The 15- inch model weighs about a pound more. That makes them easier to schlep around.