Many Loved To Hate This Macbook Pro Feature, So Apple Decided To Just Cancel It: 'Good Riddance'

Apple Inc. AAPL has officially discontinued the controversial Touch Bar feature on its MacBook Pro lineup, marking the end of a component with both fervent supporters and vocal critics.

What Happened: On Monday, during Apple’s Halloween “Scary Fast” event, the tech giant revealed that the Touch Bar feature’s tumultuous journey has ended. The feature was first introduced in 2016 and received mixed reviews from users. 

While some appreciated the potential of the Touch Bar to enhance productivity, many found it cumbersome and less practical. 

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Now, after the confirmation that Touch Bar won’t be available on new 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pros powered by M3-flavored chips, some users have expressed nostalgia on social media, while others heaved a sigh of relief. 

A critical aspect of the debate was accessibility. 

One user commented, “To all of you celebrating Apple putting the final nail in the Touch Bar’s coffin, it’s worth noting that NOT EVERYONE is a touch typist. You didn’t like the Touch Bar because you had to look down at it—but a lot of us have no choice in order to type. It was accessibility.”

However, most people just said “good riddance.” 

Good riddance. I never understood why #Apple had the touch bar on the #MacBook Pro.

👉🏾 Apple finally kills off the 13-inch Touch Bar MacBook Pro https://t.co/6IJr6hWPLP
https://t.co/OWFs7OYKGP

— Darnell Clayton (@Darnell) October 31, 2023

Touch Bar was the most underrated canceled Apple feature of all time, with 3D Touch maybe being a close second https://t.co/KgGTjsZP6y

— Pratik Kharat (@pratikjkharat) October 31, 2023

I still think Apple innovates. Look at Apple Silicon and Vision Pro. But the Touch Bar was a swing and a miss from Apple. Function keys are critical to a lot of workloads, like video production, software dev, and even research applications. https://t.co/8t8BjNBIMQ

— Tyler Mason (@ty_mason99) October 31, 2023

Touch Bar is bad, but the original M1 MBP 13" truly peaked the battery life of any Apple device.

I still use mine daily (80% battery health) and afraid to switch away. M2 and M3 drain much faster in spite of bs marketing.

Perf per watt lagging hard. https://t.co/QGRWKEIVR0

— Andrew Pantyukhin (@pandrewhk) October 31, 2023

Rest in Peace Touch Bar: The Touch Bar was like a screen above the keyboard on certain MacBook Pro laptops. It could change and show different buttons depending on what users were doing. 

For example, if they were typing a document, it might show buttons to change the text’s style or size. If they were looking at a map, it could show buttons to find nearby places with just one tap.

Check out more of Benzinga’s Consumer Tech coverage by following this link.

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