#HTE

Apple’s New Touch Bar for the MacBook Pro: Incremental, and Welcome, Design Innovation

From 2001 to about 2010 we were spoiled with revolutionary Apple products: The iPod, the iPhone, the iPad. All were category-busters, game-changers. In the years since, nothing (in my opinion) as impactful has emerged from Cupertino.

But, as their product line-up matures, it’s nice to see they’ve still got some design juice. It seems that for the foreseeable future it will be incremental improvements to existing categories, rather than Holy-Shit-I-Need-That moments, and I’m okay with that.

A good case in point is Apple’s new Touch Bar, announced for their updated MacBook Pros. For those of you that haven’t seen it yet, take a look:

It sounded kooky to me at first, but after seeing it in action, its value became obvious. I wouldn’t wait outside overnight and trample you in the morning to get one of these, but I can instantly think of ways I’d use it. I like that you can customize it via drag-and-drop, and I’d love to use it to scroll through an Adobe Premiere timeline. In both Photoshop and Microsoft Word, I can think of at least a half-dozen commands I’d like up there.

The larger trackpad seems nice too, though I’d need to test it out in person; I’m worried about false-positive hand-heel hits while I’m typing.

In any case, do you think my earlier assessment is correct, about it being incremental change rather than game-changers from here on out from Apple? Their long-term car project was recently scuttled, or at least gutted; that notwithstanding, do you think Apple’s got more revolutionary stuff up their sleeve?