18 MACWORLD SEPTEMBER 2020
MACUSER WILL THE TOUCH BAR SURVIVE?some iPad and iPhone vibes to the Mac.
The Intel era is at an end, and so perhaps
it’s time for the Touch Bar to fade away, too.
Macs running Apple silicon will have
access to iPhone and iPad apps aplenty,
and perhaps will even have touchscreens
for the first time. Apple won’t need the
Touch Bar to bring multitouch interfaces to
Mac users.
I’ve spent an awful lot of time using
iPads with attached keyboards, and it’s
become clear to me that the two
perpendicular planes of a traditional
computer interface—the screen and the
keyboard—are used in entirely different
ways. I don’t look down at my keyboard,
except occasionally to orient myself, and I
navigate it by feel.
Apple talks a good game about letting
each device it
makes focus on
what it does best,
but the keyboard
is not a place to
look carefully and
touch only when
you’re certain
about what you’re
touching. There’s
already a place for
that kind of
interaction. It’s the
screen. And once
the Mac gets a
touchscreen, it won’t need the Touch Bar
anymore.
I can’t say what Apple will do with the
Touch Bar. But if I had to guess, I’d say that
the lack of effort put into the Touch Bar in
the past few macOS updates suggests that
Apple itself doesn’t believe in it, and has
been waiting for an appropriate moment to
let it fade away. The transition to Apple
silicon is that moment. And while I kind of
like the idea of a widget bar at the top of
my MacBook keyboard, it’s an idea that
feels like it’s trying a bit too hard.
That’s the story of the Touch Bar as a
whole, isn’t it? It was designed to address
some of the Intel Mac’s deficiencies, and
with Apple silicon those deficiencies are
going to be wiped away. The Touch Bar’s
services are no longer needed. ■If MacBooks eventually get touchscreens, why do we need a Touch Bar?