In time for the holiday season, Apple released the update to the Macbook Pro which featured an all new innovation among laptops – instead of going the ‘Windows 10’ approach of having laptops with touch screens, Apple, made sure to keep people’s hands close to the keyboard with their AMOLED touch bar at the top of the keyboard, replacing the typical function keys. It is a new and interesting innovation by Apple. However, will it really pay off? Here are the main benefits and drawbacks to the touch bar to help you decide whether the touch bar is worthy enough to persuade you into investing into a new Macbook Pro or not.

 

Touch Bar Pros

1. It changes to suit the application you are using – This is the biggest benefit to the Touch Bar – the keys you can touch on the Touch Bar will change based on what you are currently viewing. This helps to make the whole experience more contextual to the application you are viewing.
2. Possibilities are endless – Just like with the App store when it was first released, the Touch Bar possibilities are endless for applications and software to take advantage of. Although it is very new (therefore most of the applications that truly take advantage of the Touch Bar are Apple-own applications) you can expect 3rd party companies to start implementing their own unique Touch Bar into their applications and software.
3. Touch ID – At the far end of the Touch Bar, there is a finger print sensor with Touch ID, so you are able to sign into your Macbook Pro more securely and pay for things online more securely too.

 

Touch Bar Cons

1. It’s very early on – Just like with most new technology which requires 3rd parties to come on board to develop things for it, such as with LG’s G5 which is modular, it is going to be a while until we truly see the Touch Bar at its full potential. Depending on the rate of development of third party companies will depend on how soon this happens. But, as a rough guess, it should be around a year until we see the full integration of Touch ID with all the software on a standard user’s Macbook Pro.
2. Not physical keys – Some people will no doubt dislike the fact that the keyboard will have two variations in ‘clicks’ when using it. If buttons are displayed in the Touch Bar, going between using the physical keyboard and Touch Bar can cause a little frustration that the Touch Bar will not ‘click’ the same as the keys on the keyboard.
3. What happens to the useful function keys? It is great that the function keys are being replaced with more useful buttons for different applications and software. However, there are some function keys that, I feel, always have to stay on. These include volume control, escape, print screen and the delete key – Regardless of the application, I always use this on an minute by minute basis so I would find it hard to live without these and have these changed based on what application I have open.