1. It replaced the F keys. I suspect pros wouldn’t have complained so loudly if it didn’t. And it was too expensive for the cheaper computers where it may have been more popular.
2. They never changed it. Ok the first version wasn’t a big hit. Other than bringing back the escape key they never did anything. They sent it out to be a hit or to die and gave up there.
And the stupid thing was that there was plenty of space for a row of function keys and the touch bar.
and the F keys come back on the touch bar if you hold the fn button
For me touch keys will never work, like the other poster said I need tactile feedback. Apple's keyboards are pretty bad at that already by the way, even the return to scissor models. The only ones I find workable are the ones of 2015 and before.
See the NeXT keyboards - no F keys. http://xahlee.info/kbd/NeXT_computer_keyboard.html
The ones with the command key beneath the space were nice - except for the help key being so prominent.
Requiring the use of two hands in order to right click is also a fascinating hill to die on. I'm surprised that the operation didn't also require a foot pedal, all to, presumably, not confuse their users with the inclusion of a second button on their mice.
* With the default control scheme anyways.
https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/touch-bar-support.html
Having the Touch Bar screen show up the relevant buttons for the context I was in was really nice compared to trying to remember which F key was which debug option.
A "I wish..." would have been a $200 usb bar and hub that could sit right behind my keyboard for a desktop.
The other was I made some Shortcuts that were very handy for me and set them up as buttons. It’s been over a year, I still miss them.
One would pop up a dialog I could type a Jira ticket number into and it would open it. I tried to do that with Salesforce but they’re insane so you can’t.
My favorite would open my next meeting. Know I have a meeting in 5 minutes? Hit the button and my browser would open the right Google Meet or Zoom and come to the front.
So useful.
The desktop problem is a real one too. It was great… as long as you only use your laptop as a laptop or your keyboard. Use anything else and you list it.
iMac? No. Mac Pro? No. Mac Mini? Don’t be stupid. No.
MBP only.
However, a capacitive touch surface should not be so close to tactile buttons. This made it way more likely to falsely register actions.
Move it a half key width farther up and make it taller to have greater flexibility on how it uses the space and I think it would have been a much better feature.
IMHO the big problem is that the five year hardware cycle of the MBP is not conducive for revolutionary improvements. They had the MacBook back then, which would have been a great platform for faster design iterations.
