One of Apple’s most controversial tech features could go missing this year. Many will not miss it

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While the design of the MacBook Pro hasn’t changed significantly in five years, Apple will be phasing out its digital touch bar, according to a January note from Ming-Chi Kuo, a senior Apple analyst at TF International Securities. CNN Business translated the memo from Chinese.

Apple first unveiled the Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro in 2016. It’s a small, rectangular OLED touchscreen that replaced the row of function keys at the top of the keyboard. Its digital interface includes other features such as text prediction and shortcuts. Apple application developers are able to create software to take advantage of the capabilities of the touch screen.

Apple fans are divided over what they think of the Touch Bar. Some like it for its ease of use, but others miss the physical buttons it replaced.

Kuo’s memo predicts that the touch bar goes in two 2021 MacBook Pro models, a 14-inch laptop and a 16-inch laptop, and that the old physical buttons will return. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

An Apple employee presents the Touch Bar on a new MacBook Pro at a 2016 product launch event in Cupertino, California.

Apple may be abandoning the Touch Bar due to mixed response from fans, said Carolina Milanesi, technology analyst at research firm Creative Strategies.

“Apple may not have seen so much demand, and of course the extra cost then becomes an issue for Apple when it is not seen as value to the user,” Milanesi said. The drop in demand also “limited the level of developer interest, which limited the usefulness of the bar.”

The controversial legacy of the Touch Bar has been clear since its introduction in 2016.

“When Apple first unveiled the Touch Bar, the reception was quite polarized,” said Linn Huang, vice president of device and display research. “Many were confused by the problems it was supposed to solve and wondered how the developers would integrate it into their software experience.”

Avid fans of a MacBook with touchscreen capabilities weren’t happy with the Touch Bar either – they expected. a full touch screen, Huang said. But loyal fans “have found the Touch Bar to be a great addition to Apple’s much-vaunted user experience.”

Milanesi and Huang expect Apple to release a touchscreen MacBook again in the future. Once that happens, “history will remember the Touch Bar as a momentary half-concession between Apple and its loyal fans,” Huang said.

Reflection on the Touch Bar

Mark “Soldier Knows Best” Watson, a tech YouTuber with over 800,000 subscribers, said the Touch Bar “was a complete change to something we’ve all gotten used to.”

While this has helped Apple to “visually modernize” the new MacBooks, “Sometimes the uniqueness of the Touch Bar can require you to press a few keys instead of one like on a traditional keyboard,” he noted.

If Apple hadn’t replaced all the physical function keys with the Touch Bar, it might have been less controversial, he said.

Apple returned the escape key to the 16-inch MacBook Pro in 2019 and the 13-inch model in 2020.

Dave “Dave2D” Lee, a tech Youtuber with over 3 million subscribers, wants the Touch Bar to go away. It lacks the touch-sensitive function keys like volume, brightness, and media controls that the Touch Bar replaced.

These function keys were probably “built into muscle memory” for some Mac users and the Touch Bar isn’t as reliable, he said.

“Maybe I’m old school, but I wish they kept it simple,” he says. “A good keyboard without special tricks. It’s always a winner.”

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