Man I miss the touch bar. Never got why people hated it so much

The hate was because it replaced function keys many people use by tactile touch, without looking. Doing the same on a touch screen is very difficult.

If the bar had been added on top of those, I don't think there would've been the same kind of hate for it.

1) First generation made ESC button a touch button. Aside from ergonomics (or lack of them), at least for me, on a psychological level "abort" button needs to be something you can smash. Also, macOS already had the worst input handling under load, making it virtual button made it worse.

2) While "happy path" on macOS pretty much never requires you to use Fkeys, but my workflow does. Blindly using touch buttons is harder than real buttons.

3) I'm not huge media keys users, but I bet #2 applies here as well.

I liked the touchbar in every other sense. If it was just an addition to an existing keyboard, people wouldn't have hate it[];

[]: At that time it was hard to not be frustrated using mac (butterfly keyboard etc), so touchbar might have gotten more hate than it deserved because of overall frustration.

Also, the Touch Bar seemed to be abandoned as soon as it launched. It only ever launched on the Pro line. There were never any feature updates. They never made it flexible enough for people to customize it.

I still have a personal Touch Bar MBP, and I find it annoying.

My problem is that I lightly rest my hands on the keyboard (including the f keys), and this habit is harmless on most Macs, but inadvertently activates the Touch Bar functions.

I actually like the idea a lot, and would probably love it if it required a little more pressure to activate.

One more on top of others. Many people felt it was a solution in search of a problem. As in, there was no problem i had that it solved. And it was forced on us, in place of something useful. From the start i read that as: This wont be here in a couple years. Which then made it annoying to deal with in the meantime (the hate).

Things that stick around, are generally value adding across a large or complete subset of their users. Touch bar was always niche, and thus always doomed. I think a good counter comparison is Apple VR headsets. For me, i have no use and little interest. But i can see them as a hedge at the very least, or as an enthusiast entrant into an emerging market, where future products in that segment may become interesting. And on top, it doesnt impact me - i can ignore their existence until it becomes useful.

If touch bar were launched like VR, i suspect it would have gotten similar level of dismisals, but less hate.

I didn't like it, and was happy when they got rid of it. But I didn't hate it.

I did hate the butterfly keyboard that was introduced at the same time. Probably Apple's biggest hardware mistake of the past 15 years or so.