MacBook Pro hands-on: Touch Bar is well-integrated into apps like Mail and Photos, and with a matte finish it's not too bright to be distracting
I'm sold on the Touch Bar — The new MacBook Pro is here — literally available for preorder today — and I've just tried it.
Context & Ripple Effects
This hands-on marks the debut of the Touch Bar era: Apple is shipping a MacBook Pro whose function keys are replaced by a contextual strip, driven by an ARM-based T1 chip running modified watchOS alongside the Intel CPU running macOS. The reviewer's verdict — well-integrated into Mail and Photos, matte enough not to distract — sets the bar third-party developers will be measured against.
The arc that follows is visible in the related coverage: Microsoft brought Touch Bar support to Office for Mac within months, extending the strip beyond Apple's own apps, but five years later The Verge's 2021 MacBook Pro hands-on welcomed its removal. This review is the starting point of that rise-and-reversal.
First-order effects
- Buyers can preorder the MacBook Pro today, choosing between a machine whose top row is now app-controlled rather than fixed physical keys.
- App developers face immediate pressure to add Touch Bar integration, since Apple's own Mail and Photos define what 'well-integrated' looks like out of the box.
Second-order effects
- Third-party suites like Microsoft Office respond by shipping their own Touch Bar support, making developer adoption — not hardware availability — the constraint on the feature's usefulness.
- Every subsequent MacBook Pro refresh, including the 2018 15-inch model, carries the Touch Bar forward, so accessory makers and keyboard-shortcut-dependent pro users must plan around a changing top row across the lineup.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the Touch Bar becomes a five-year experiment in replacing physical keys with adaptive screens — one Apple itself reverses in 2021, a reminder that laptop input changes stick only when they beat the mechanical keyboard at its own job.
- The hybrid architecture behind it (ARM silicon handling Touch ID and the strip beside an Intel main CPU) foreshadows Apple mixing processor roles inside one Mac before full architecture transitions.
The trend: Laptop makers treat input surfaces as an area for bold experimentation, but features like the Touch Bar survive only while software ecosystems adopt them — and get walked back when they don't.