The notch bar is not a replacement for the touchbar.
What the touchbar saved me is millions of clicks and all within th reach of two fingers.
Notch bar means to move the cursor, wait for the notch to unfold/appear, then click.
It is never the same as the very powerful touchbar (powerful not because Mac made it powerful but because BTT was invented)
I cant believe that once again Apple kills a feature that was actually doing something good (just like magsafe).
just because they do not know how to make it an actual useful feature... they got to kill it. I will never buy another Mac again lol. Seriously.
So many times I have been thinking how many gazillions of clicks has BTT saved me so far???
Like, for example spin up my working env.
If I do it the classic way, I click on at least 10 app icons, and a couple more to start the apps, and then even more to do things like clear cache, etc etc.
With BTT, it is one click to run the apps, another click to start MAMP and another click to clear a cache.
Yes, all that is also possible with keyboard strokes etc, but I am a visual/physical memory person, so having visual icons with a known location on a static place (touchbar) I can control the stuff by "intuition". It goes so far that when I move to my partners computer who has no touchbar I don't know anymore how to use things, and need to realise that "oh, has no touchbar".
A shame, really, that apple had to cancel this "because professionals do not use it"
I wonder what professionals they asked when they said "Professionals love it", and now the same pro's suddenly don't use it?
And all that together with a comeback of the magsafe (which I literally never understood how it could have been removed to start with) just shows that the ops at Apple lost connection to reality a long time ago.
Sadly having a laptop with up to 18 hours battery (which their M1 promises) is a strong argument to upgrade, but I am also happy with 11. It is still 3 times more than any other laptop I know brings to the table
You're right, the notch bar is cool, but it's not a replacement for the touch bar.
"Yes, all that is possible with keyboard strokes etc, but I'm a visual/physical memory person, so using visual icons with a known location in a static place (Touch Bar) I can control things by "intuition"."
Do you know Keyboard Maestro? With that you can visually design palettes (and sub-palettes) however you want (Icon, color...) and with any action you want in a "static place" on your Screen.
"Notch bar means to move the cursor, wait for the notch to unfold/appear, then click."
When these palettes are visible, you can trigger the actions with just one key, eg. "open Chrome" = c. No mouse, no modifier.
This is still not a touch bar, but at least it solves some of your problems
Today the TouchBar really died. There is no current Mac with the TouchBar. I will cherish my MacBook Pro 2019 with TouchBar and my M2 13-inch MacBook Pro with TouchBar until they die.
That's so sad, but we don't necessarily have to buy the latest Macbooks. We can still get the Macbook pro 13' M2, 16gb ram with touch bar 2022, which will still be pretty decent in 2030.
It is really stupid, and typical Apple.
Remember when they removed the best ever charger input the world has ever, and will ever see?
"MagSafe is not good, lets use usb-c so we can make money off people accidentally ripping out the cable..."
A few years later:
"The best charger input ever. MagSafe. standard on any new machine"
Lol apple. I suspect a similar thing will happen with Touch Bar. I did not yet give up, because as soon that thing became useful with BTT, I basically have to thank it for thousands of actions that usually take several seconds to be done in a fraction of that time (and time is money in my business).
Anyway... They could also bring Touch Bar to external keyboards, I'd love that. It is really useful when suing BTT!
As @Frank1 said, I think the above idea is still a nice option, especially if you have a laptop. I’m using a desktop now, and I don’t find this idea to work very well for me. This is because my desktop’s keyboard and display do not align as nicely as they would with a laptop.
Also, I’ve been working on a Touch Bar alternative BTT preset here. It started with Floating Webviews, but I’m working on converting the preset to the newer Floating Menus. Scroll down to post #21 to find the most recent preset.
Of course, it’s not a complete replacement for the Touch Bar, and it’s a work in progress, but it might be interesting to some of you in this thread.
