JANUARY 2022 MACWORLD 17would truly be a
magical feature
that finally gives
the skinny screen
a purpose and
puts Apple’s
standalone
keyboards back
on the map.
iPAD PRO
If there’s one place
above all where
the Touch Bar
makes the most
sense, it’s the iPad.
The coolest option
would be to add it
to the Magic
Keyboard by rethinking the current layout.
Like the iPhone, the iPad doesn’t need the
same keys as the Mac, so the Magic
Keyboard could tweak the layout to make
room for a Touch Bar. Imagine snapping an
iPad Pro into a Magic Keyboard and having
a Touch Bar spring to life like a tiny second
display. What doesn’t make a ton of sense
on the MacBook Pro would be perfect for
the iPad Pro, which is a different sort of
professional machine.
The Touch Bar could also work as an
element on the screen. When typing on
the magic keyboard, a Touch Bar–style
strip could pop up along the bottom of the
screen that offers the same menu and
contextual options it provides on the
MacBook keyboard. We’ve seen it on
Android phones with varying results, but it
could work very well on a large-screen
iPad. Until we get a touch-screen Mac,
that’s probably the most logical place for
it—still in a line of sight when typing, but
without taking up important screen real
estate. It would be similar to the Shelf
introduced with iPadOS 15 and would let
Apple incorporate Apple’s multitasking
elements and shortcuts into a hand strip,
not unlike macOS 9’s Control Strip (fave.
co/31m1fTH). ■The iPad Pro’s Magic Keyboard would be a nice home for the Touch Bar.