MacBook Pro without Touch Bar: Setting up a Virtual Touch Bar
If you really like the Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro (Late 2016 and later), but went for the cheaper model with no Touch Bar, there is a way to use an on-screen Touch Bar. It requires some patience, significant space on your hard drive (unless you use a third-party alternative), and the operation won't be quite as smooth as a hardware Touch Bar, but you can decide if it is worth it to you.
The first step would be to download Xcode, free from Apple:
The drawback is that it takes up 5.39GB for the app, not including the additional installs that it does. Xcode is an app to help developers design apps for the Mac and for iOS devices, and is quite a powerful app, hence the size. However, for the purpose of the Touch Bar, we won't be using most of its capabilities.
Another option would be to download Touché (also free), which is much smaller in size since it doesn't have all those other features, however if you want an official Apple option, go with Xcode.
Once Xcode has downloaded and you open it, just go to Window > Show Touch Bar, and now you have an on-screen Touch Bar. The buttons shown in the Touch Bar will reflect whatever the active application is, so you can switch from Xcode to, for example, Safari, to be shown Touch Bar shortcuts specific for Safari. The Touch Bar on the screen will look like this:
(The buttons shown in this example are tailored for the taking a screenshot interface; they'll be different for another app).
As stated, the operation won't be as convenient as a built-in, hardware Touch Bar. You will need to move the cursor over to the Touch Bar button to click it. However, this can still come in handy if you wanted to download third-party apps that only use the Touch Bar and do not have a standalone interface. For example, there is an app that turns the Touch Bar into a piano keyboard. You would not be able to use the app if you don't have a Touch Bar, but this workaround would allow you to use apps like this via the on-screen Touch Bar.
Here's another example of the on-screen touch bar, this time with the aforementioned piano app:
Again, this is a good option for people who are Touch Bar fans, but do not have a MacBook Pro model with a Touch Bar, but most people would probably be best off getting the actual MacBook Pro with Touch Bar.