This response is fascinating to me, primarily because my personal preference is almost completely the opposite.

One thing that strikes me though: of the things you mentioned that you like about the touchbar, many of them don't necessarily need to live in that area of the keyboard.

I should also clarify one thing: I do like that the touchbar can visualize things in context (and I find the things you mentioned cool), but I wouldn't choose that over the physical keys.

For me, the perfect middle ground would be a bar above the function row that doesn't try to be both things. Or perhaps somewhere else entirely (to the right or left of the trackpad?)

> Perhaps those with larger hands can reach the function keys without disrupting their positioning. For me it is not possible.

This could be part of the issue as well. I can reach without issue, but I can understand why this doesn't work for everyone.

> To me, using function keys is un-apple-ish.

To add to this point, I don’t recall using the function keys for anything other than adjusting brightness or volume or similar functions that aren’t associated with application specific features.

> I have command, control, and option keys that allow me to be quite expressive without moving my hands away from the home area of the board.

This is true, with the Command and Option keys providing many choices of keyboard actions if one learns about them. But in general, macOS is not as keyboard friendly as Windows (or Linux), where many things have keyboard access by default across applications. But this is digressing from the function keys and Touch Bar points.