Will the touch bar ever come back?

the touch bar macbook pro is completely discontinued. and even if you found a country with a page for the last touch bar macbook pro, you cant buy it if youre not in that country. to read about it, use the internet archive link i posted and if you want one get a refurbished or secondhand one

SharmithaVijayan wrote:

One of the best things about Mac was its touch bar. it was so iconic.

It really wasn't "iconic". I doubt very many people ever associated it with Apple in popular culture. It was only ever available on a subset of Macs and wasn't popular enough to be continued.

You can, however, let Apple know that you'd like to see it back here:

Product Feedback - Apple

Meanwhile, my advice is to not become so attached to one feature of a piece of technology that when it goes away, you are "devastated." Because change is going to happen.

Apple has a much broader history of removing things and not bringing them back, e.g. SCSI port, floppy drive, and optical drive, not to mention the Dashboard, target disk mode, headset jacks on iPhones. I could go on.

You can hope Apple will bring the TouchBar back. You can let them know it's something you'd like to see using the feedback link previously provided. But, I wouldn't expect it or make your upgrade plans contingent upon it. Eventually, you will need a new computer. At that point, you will have the choice of upgrading to what is available (from whatever manufacturer) or doing without.

chdsl wrote:

There appears to be a 13" M2 MBP with the TouchBar

That link leads to an Apple page for Moldova.

It shows the 13" M2 MacBook Pro, the 14"/16" M2 {Pro/Max} MacBook Pros (labeled "New"), and at the top, an icon for macOS Sonoma that says "Preview".

Here in the United States, all of those MacBook Pros are discontinued.

• Apple replaced the 13" M2 MacBook Pro with a 14" M3 MacBook Pro that has the base M3 chip. That model gained a mini-LED backlit screen, HDMI port, SDXC card slot, and MagSafe 3 charging port, but kept the two USB-C / Thunderbolt port and one external display limitations. It lost the Touch Bar.
• Apple replaced the 14" and 16" M2 {Pro/Max} MacBook Pros with ones using the M3 {Pro/Max} chips. These MacBook Pros, like their {M1/M2} {Pro/Max} predecessors, do not have Touch Bars.

Also, here in the United States, Sonoma is out, and has been since September 2023!

chdsl wrote:

Servant of Cats wrote:

chdsl wrote:

There appears to be a 13" M2 MBP with the TouchBar

•

That link leads to an Apple page for Moldova.

I don't know why that link goes to Moldova (looks like guys in Moldova are lucky!), but the other link on specifications is in the UK MacBook Pro (13-inch, M2, 2022) - Technical Specifications – Apple Support (UK).

There's no question that the 13" M2 MacBook Pro has a Touch Bar.

It's also discontinued in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and probably most of the other places that I could check if I had all day to play with the country and region selection controls on the Apple Web site. R.I.P. Touch Bar.

I don't know if the guys in Moldova are "lucky" if they go to the Apple Web site and it tells them that M2 {Pro/Max} MacBook Pros are "new" when those Macs have in fact been discontinued in favor of M3 {Pro/Max} ones in just about every other part of the world. I also don't know if 13" M2 MacBook Pros are really available in Moldova … could be that whoever was responsible for updating that local version of Apple's Web site just dropped the ball.

Apple looked extensively at touch input. They made many public statement that their research showed that a touch screen was a different use case from a MacBook Pro entirely and were not moved to include a touch screen on the MacBook Pro (despite Microsoft introducing such a device).

They introduced the touchbar as a compromise, suggesting it brought some touch controls to many Apps where they could be most effective.

But they continued to engineer the iPad, and refined it into a formidable touch input device, and added Apple Pencil features as well. They also came up with Sidecar, where the iPad could be an additional output (and input) device for your MacBook Pro or other Mac.

The war is over. The touchbar was not able to earn its place above the keyboard. Unless you buy a refurbished model quickly, the touchbar is gone.

The winner of the touch input wars is the vastly superior touch input device you can connect alongside your Mac, the iPad. And if you like, you can even add Apple Pencil to full-sized iPads that support it.

refusenick wrote:

The Touchbar Macs were the highest-spec models, so they didn't sell as much as lower-spec models like MacBook Airs. That's always been the case even now. What's frustrating is Apple's utter silence on the matter, quietly removing the Touchbar without so much as an announcement and lack of communication on its status.

Some of the early MacBook Pros that had the Touch Bar were high-spec models.

The two MacBook Pros to most recently have the Touch Bar – the 13" M1 and M2 MacBook Pros – were low-spec models. They only had two USB-C (Thunderbolt) ports, only supported one external display, and were essentially the conceptual descendants of the low-end 13" Intel-based MBPs. Those laptops also had only two USB-C (TB) ports, and had older-generation Intel CPUs than the 13" models that had four USB-C (TB) ports.

When Apple released the 13" M2 MacBook Airs and Pros, the M2 Airs got MagSafe 3 ports. The 13" MBPs didn't. You could practically read the handwriting on the wall.

MAC1904 wrote:

I fully understand the business side of things.

However, only Apple could have thought of such an amazing feature, which in my opinion, outperforms any computer brand in the world, as always.

Apple has created many brilliant features and products and then discontinued them if they didn't sell well. Apple is, first and foremost, a for-profit business. So, no matter how much you like a feature, no matter how amazing it is, if it doesn't sell, Apple is unlikely to bring it back, at least not in the same form. The Newton was brilliant, groundbreaking, and wonderful, but it didn't sell. Apple discontinued it. It was quite a few years before we got the iPad, which, while it fills the same niche, is different.

The 13" M2 MacBook Pro – which is very similar to the 13" M2 MacBook Air – has a Touch Bar. It doesn't have the MagSafe 3 port that that Apple added to the M2 MacBook Air.

We users here have no insight into what Apple will or will not include in future releases of hardware or software.

If you would like to leave product feedback or to submit a request for features consideration you can follow this link:

Product Feedback - Apple

MacMikeInOK wrote:

While none of us here can speak for Apple, as only Apple knows the reason for leaving it off new Macs, I can guess some of Apple's reasons:

…

• Software developer support wasn't as universal as Apple had hoped when it was first introduced.

…

• For quite a few users, the Touch Bar required some input changes. (And, although everyone wants progress, nobody seems to want change).

For people who were software developers with a Unix or Linux background, the lack of a physical ESC key on the original Touch Bar Macs was a definite minus. The ESC key is very heavily used in Emacs (among other editors), and touch-typists did not care for a flat virtual button as a substitute for a real key.

Later Touch Bar Macs remedied this problem by including a physical ESC key, and just having the Touch Bar take the place of the F-keys.

AlexxelA101 wrote:

I really hope Apple see that they really were onto something with the Touch Bar.

Apple does not read here for feedback or suggestions. You can, however, let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

However, the TouchBar never sold that well so, I don't see it's return as likely.

_Que wrote:

I could care less about the dynamic island seeing that there's really nothing "wow" you can do with it. If they can give that a chance, certainly there's hope.

Sometimes, it's not about the "wow". Many of us buy computers to do work. It's about how well something functions versus how much it adds to the cost of the device (both initial outlay and repairs). You should nonetheless let Apple know what you'd like to see here:

Product Feedback - Apple

I suspect that only a massive feedback campaign will make any difference. And even then, probably not.

nonya1 wrote:

I will miss the touch bar. I have it with my 2019 macbook pro 16". why take it away?

No one here in this user-to-user forum can give a definitive answer. However, it is widely surmised that the feature never sold very well and, when something went wrong with it, it was expensive to fix.

First Blackberry, now this.

Blackberry crashed and burned due to some very stupid business decisions. Almost anyone working in the industry at the time saw it coming.

I feel your pain regarding the Touch Bar, as I used it quite often on my 2016 MBP. I've since moved on to a 2023 15" MBA, which doesn't have one. Once in a while I miss it, but I'm slowly getting over it.

While none of us here can speak for Apple, as only Apple knows the reason for leaving it off new Macs, I can guess some of Apple's reasons:

• Added cost (when compared to standard function keys)
• Software developer support wasn't as universal as Apple had hoped when it was first introduced.
• The most frequently used Touch Bar keys (for me) were the volume keys, which are standard function bar keys (though not as polished as the Touch Bar keys)
• For quite a few users, the Touch Bar required some input changes. (And, although everyone wants progress, nobody seems to want change).

My guess, though, is the added cost was the primary driver of Apple's decision.