At its Unleashed event, Apple announced the official demise of the Touch Bar on Mac. With such an omission, users have since lost hope of ever seeing a touchscreen on the Apple laptop.
The History of Touchscreens on MacBook
In the mid-2010s, many manufacturers started producing many hybrid PCs, with more or less innovative solutions for rotating their touchscreens and keyboards.
Therefore, analysts and leakers legitimately wondered what would happen to the Mac. At the same time, the firm had made it clear that it saw several problems with such technology on its devices. Presented as uncomfortable, its ergonomics was therefore one of them.
Additionally, Apple seemed reluctant to develop some sort of flexible iPad/Mac hybrid.
The other problem came from the macOS operating system, the interactive elements, buttons and others, being adapted with a pointer and not an index.
Apple's solution
In 2016, Apple offered a Mac with a touch element. Known as the Touch Bar, this sat directly on the keyboard, in the form of a narrow, pressure-sensitive strip.
Some users have come to appreciate it and found real benefits to it. Other apps, such as Better Touch Tool, have tried to make the most of this invention.
With it, we could perform more tasks without moving our hands from the keyboard, or even show otherwise hidden shortcuts in submenus. However, the function keys used to control brightness and volume felt better to us when they were physical.
Why remove the Touch Bar?
The Touch Bar was only a brief chapter in Apple's history and never enjoyed the success of the mouse and trackpad. As a result, it has now disappeared from all brand products except the MacBook Pro with M1.
This year, it even unveiled its new generation of MacBook Pro with quite spectacular design changes, but without integrating a touch screen.
Thus, we can safely predict that a touchscreen on the Mac will never see the light of day. To take advantage of such technology, it will then be necessary to turn to the iPad.
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