It started with a literal puff of smoke. When Phil Schiller stood on stage in 2016 to introduce the redesigned MacBook Pro, the apple computer touch bar was supposed to be the "pro" feature to end all pro features. A thin, glossy strip of multi-touch glass replacing the crusty old function keys we’d been tapping since the eighties. It looked like the future. It felt like something out of Star Trek.
Then people actually tried to use it.
Fast forward to today, and the Touch Bar is officially a legacy experiment. Apple started killing it off with the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros in 2021, and by the time the M3 chips rolled around, the strip was basically a ghost. But here’s the weird thing: people are still obsessed with it. Some users refuse to upgrade their older Intel or M2 13-inch models because they can't imagine life without that dynamic little screen. It’s one of the most polarizing pieces of hardware Apple ever shipped. You either loved the context-aware sliders, or you hated accidentally hitting the "Siri" button every time you reached for the Delete key.
The Reality of Using the Apple Computer Touch Bar Every Day
The main gripe? Haptics. Or rather, the total lack of them.
When you use a physical keyboard, your brain relies on muscle memory. You know exactly where the F-key is. You can feel the edges. With the apple computer touch bar, you had to look down. Every. Single. Time. For a "Pro" user—someone editing video in Final Cut or writing code in VS Code—breaking eye contact with the main display is a workflow killer. It’s annoying. It’s basically the opposite of what a professional wants.
But it wasn't all bad. Honestly, for certain tasks, it was kind of brilliant. If you spent a lot of time in Photoshop, having a dedicated opacity slider right under your fingertips was a game-changer. You didn't have to hunt through menus. You just slid your finger. It felt organic.
Apple’s mistake wasn't the technology itself; it was making it mandatory. By forcing the Touch Bar onto every high-end MacBook Pro, they alienated the people who just wanted a reliable Escape key. (Remember when the first version didn't even have a physical Escape key? That was a dark time for developers.)
Better Than You Remember?
Actually, if you talk to UI designers, they’ll tell you the Touch Bar was ahead of its time. It used a separate processor—the T1 chip (and later the T2)—to handle the security and the display logic. It was a mini-computer living inside your computer.
- It allowed for seamless Touch ID integration before it was standard on all Macs.
- The predictive text was surprisingly good if you were a hunt-and-peck typer.
- Scrubbing through a timeline in iMovie or QuickTime felt smoother than using a trackpad.
The problem was developer support. If you weren't using Apple’s first-party apps or big names like Adobe and Microsoft Office, the Touch Bar was mostly a blank, glowing void. It ended up being a "chicken and egg" problem. Developers didn't want to spend resources coding for a feature that only existed on a subset of laptops, and users didn't care about the feature because developers weren't supporting it.
Why Apple Finally Pulled the Plug
By 2021, the writing was on the wall. Apple realized that their core audience—the photographers, the engineers, the writers—valued tactile feedback over "cool" aesthetics. When the 14-inch MacBook Pro launched with the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, the apple computer touch bar was gone, replaced by a row of full-height physical function keys.
People cheered. Seriously. People actually stood up and cheered for the return of physical buttons.
It was a rare admission of "we got this wrong" from Cupertino. They realized that while the Touch Bar looked great in marketing photos, it didn't solve a problem that actually existed. A physical volume button is always in the same place. A virtual volume button moves depending on what app you have open. In the world of UX, consistency is king, and the Touch Bar was the king of inconsistency.
The Thermal Side Effect
There’s also a technical reason it vanished that people rarely talk about: heat and space. The 13-inch MacBook Pro chassis was notoriously cramped. Shoving a tiny OLED screen right above the hottest part of the logic board wasn't exactly great for longevity. Some users reported "ghost touches" where the Bar would start clicking things on its own as the laptop aged. By removing it, Apple freed up internal volume for better cooling and bigger batteries. It was a pragmatic trade-off.
How to Save Your Touch Bar Experience (If You're Still Using One)
If you're rocking a 2019-2022 MacBook and you're stuck with the strip, don't despair. You can actually make it useful. Most people just leave it on the default settings, which is a mistake.
First, go into your System Settings and customize the Control Strip. Remove the Siri button. Just do it. You’ll stop triggering it by accident. Second, check out an app called BetterTouchTool. This is the secret sauce. It lets you completely redesign what shows up on your apple computer touch bar. You can add crypto tickers, weather widgets, or even a tiny cat that walks across the screen (yes, really, it’s called TouchBar Pet).
Another pro tip: use "Pock." It’s an open-source tool that puts your macOS Dock inside the Touch Bar. This frees up screen real estate on your main display and makes the Touch Bar feel like a functional extension of the OS rather than a weird appendage.
The Legacy of the Glossy Strip
Is it dead forever? Probably. Apple seems committed to the physical row now. But you can see the Touch Bar’s DNA in other products. The "Dynamic Island" on the iPhone is essentially the Touch Bar's spiritual successor. It’s a context-aware UI element that changes based on what you’re doing, but it lives on the screen you’re already looking at. It solves the "don't look down" problem.
We should also give Apple credit for trying. Most laptop manufacturers just iterate. They make the screen slightly brighter or the hinge slightly sturdier. The apple computer touch bar was a massive, expensive swing at the fences. It failed, but it was a fascinating failure. It taught the industry that no matter how much we love touchscreens, we still really, really like the "click" of a real button.
If you are currently looking to buy a used MacBook, you’ll find that Touch Bar models are often significantly cheaper than the newer "all-key" versions. For a student or someone on a budget, an M2 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Touch Bar is still a powerhouse. Just be prepared to look down at your fingers a little more often than you'd like.
Maximizing Your Hardware Today
If you're keeping your Touch Bar Mac for a few more years, focus on maintenance. The OLED strip can suffer from burn-in if left at max brightness for years. Keep your display settings on "Auto" to help the strip dim when you aren't using it. If the Bar ever freezes—which happens—you don't have to restart the whole computer. You can just open "Activity Monitor," search for "TouchBarServer," and kill the process. It’ll restart itself in a second and usually fix any glitches.
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Moving Forward With or Without the Bar
The era of the apple computer touch bar is closing, but it changed how we think about the "dead space" on a laptop. We’re seeing more laptops with haptic trackpads and secondary displays because of the ground Apple broke.
If you want the best experience on a modern Mac, your path is pretty clear.
- Check your current workflow: If you rely on the F-keys for coding (like debugging in Xcode), prioritize the newer 14-inch or 16-inch models with physical keys.
- Use BetterTouchTool: If you are staying with your current Touch Bar model, download this utility immediately to turn the strip from a nuisance into a shortcut powerhouse.
- Monitor Battery Health: Touch Bar models (especially Intel ones) are prone to swelling batteries which can crack the glass strip from the inside. Use an app like AlDente to limit your charge to 80% if you're always plugged in.
- Embrace the Screen: If you're moving from a Touch Bar to a new model, don't miss the sliders too much—the new MacBook displays are so much better that you'll quickly forget the "cool" factor of the glass strip.