The Touch Bar: A Game-Changer for Mac Users

The new 15-in MacBook Pro is equipped with a touchscreen bar, also known as the Touch Bar, which has been a long-awaited feature for many Mac users. One of the key features of the Touch Bar is that it still works as an escape key, allowing users to easily switch out of the current app and back into the desktop environment. However, the Escape key itself disappears depending on what app you're looking at, but there's always an X icon there, which allows you to close out the feature and bring back the Escape key.

The Touch Bar is also customizable at the app level, allowing users to drag and drop tools and features specific to each application. This feature brings up a settings interface that enables users to personalize their experience with the Touch Bar. For example, in Final Cut Pro, you get some editing tools built right into the Touch Bar, which is very useful. In YouTube or iTunes, you'll get media controls that are more than just simple playback controls - they include Safari controls and sliders.

Another benefit of the Touch Bar is its integration with iOS features. When writing messages, you'll see autocomplete options, emoji keyboards, and markup tools like bolding, italicizing, and underlining. You can even change the color of text and adjust the layout or subject headings. The interface for these features is neat and intuitive, allowing users to quickly access these functions.

The Touch Bar also brings a bit of iOS to the Mac experience, with features like Siri shortcuts and Universal Clipboard. In Safari, you can create new tabs, see open tabs with a preview of the website on the Touch Bar, or open your favorite websites directly from the bar.

One of the standout features of the MacBook Pro's display is its compact design, which makes 15 inches more manageable than before. The massive trackpad is also a highlight, offering a great deal of space for gestures and multitouch interactions. The new Touch ID feature provides fast and secure biometric authentication, making it easy to log in or make payments.

However, not everyone will be happy with the I/O situation on this laptop. You'll need to use dongles with most peripherals, which can be inconvenient. USBC is still a relatively rare connector on Macs, so users may find themselves needing adapters for many of their existing devices.

Overall, the new 15-in MacBook Pro offers a great combination of features and design. The Touch Bar adds a new layer of functionality to the interface, while the compact design and massive trackpad make it more manageable than ever before. With its powerful performance, improved display, and innovative Touch Bar, this laptop is sure to be a hit with Mac users.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys Mike here the Detroit BG and about a couple weeks ago I took a look at the Baseline 13-inch MacBook Pro which wasn't terribly exciting because it didn't have the touch bar and touch ID this time we're going to take a look at a fully speced out 15-in MacBook Pro with the touch bar and touch ID so if you're not familiar with the touch bar basically it's an OLED strip that replaces the function keys from the standard Apple keyboard so as always the 15-in MacBook Pro is quite expensive this time it starts off at $23.99 but that get you a quad core core i7 along with Radeon Pro dedicated graphics but of course I went up a notch here and went with the 2.9 GHz core i7 along with the Radeon Pro 460 which gets me 4 gigs of RAM for the GPU you're also stuck to 16 gigs of RAM but it is faster Ram at 2133 MHz and of course we get even faster pcie based SSD storage and we're going to explore that when we compare them to the old model so getting to the unboxing in case you're not aware this is now available in space gray which is what I have here that's the only new color we still get silver as well if you want to go with the class CLC look so lifting up the lid the first thing we'll see here is our space gray MacBook Pro which I think looks fantastic in this color of course it's wrapped in plastic and once we get that out of the way we can go ahead and lift up the lid and remove the piece of paper that's protecting the glass display now as you can see in this case soon as you open up the lid it boots up right away that's a new characteristic of the MacBook Pro also new with the new Macbook Pros is the elimination of that classic Mac boot up sound so now it's completely silent there's also a slight tweak to the setup process here because we have a touch ID sensor built into the power button so this is a second generation sensor which again is covered with sapphire glass and it's pretty quick to set up and because this is Touch ID you can use this for payment so you can set this up as well through the setup process now before we dig into the details of the hardware let's get to the accessories including our packet which includes some paperwork on how to set up and use the new Macbook Pro in addition to White Apple stickers which once again don't color match the MacBook Pro like they do with the MacBook and of course we have our new power adapter so this is a USBC device which means we don't have mag safe anymore so the adapter itself has a USBC Port it's no longer tied to the magsafe cable so if you break the cable you don't necessarily break the power adapter so you can buy them separately of course the wall adapter is once again removable so you can extend this with an extension cable or use an international wall adapter and before you ask you will not find an extension cable hidden underneath the tray which is an old internet joke now personally I've never been a big fan of the mag safe connector just because it's very proprietary so that means you have to replace it with an apple accessory the other problem is it just disconnected way too easily but I do miss the LED indicator which let me know when it's charging and when it reach full charge but like an iPhone or an iPad when you connect the USBC cable it does make a tone to let you know it's charging so just like the 13-in the 15 in is also thinner and lighter than the previous generation in fact it's a full half pound lighter which now measures at 4 lb which makes it a lot more portable although it's still a pretty large laptop although the overall footprint is now much smaller and more compact than before so when it comes to our display once again we have a resolution of 2880 by 1800 over 15.4 in that's good for 220 pixels per inch although these are the same specs as the previous panel it is 67% brighter and the display now supports the cinema P3 standard for a wider color gamut so colors are much more vibrant and with that brighter display we have deeper contrast which gives you a lot more depth to the screen and generally speaking it looks a lot more Vivid and definitely makes an impact now something you might notice if you're an existing 15-in MacBook Pro user is the fact that the new Mac MacBook Pro has smaller text and smaller icons basically everything has been scaled down so you have more screen real estate but they've changed the default scale for the 15-in MacBook Pro and you can change this if you want to go back to something you're more used to although we still have a very glossy display they have improved the anti-reflective characteristics just like on the 13in so you're seeing that Improvement here on the 15in as well now once again if you haven't heard the backlit Apple logo has been sacrificed for this new display technology I think that's a worthy trade-off but of course it would be nice to have that signature feature retained so when it comes to the keyboard this is the same one that's also on the 13in it's also the same size which means you have all the space around it so we have these large speaker grills on either side and of course we have that gigantic track pad just below it so this is a force touch track pad which works as it did on the previous model of course we have all this surface area now because this trackpad is so wide you have to rest your palms on it in order to type but we have excellent Palm rejection just like in the 13-in model but it's especially important with this 15-in model because the track pad is even wider so you're definitely going to be resting your palms on this while typing so I can rest my Palms on the trackpad even lean pretty hard on them and it doesn't register a click so again this is a force touch trackpad so it replicates a physical click with a vibration motor called a taptic engine so you're not getting a physical click it's just a force sensor that detects whether you're pressing with your fingers or leaning on it with your palms now my previous MacBook Pro video I talked a lot about the keyboard which is using a second generation butterfly mechanism from the original MacBook which this originated from so it's a much better keyboard than that one so if you were put off by that keyboard this is definitely worth taking a look at I've actually been using it for a few weeks on the 13-in model and I absolutely love it because it's so fast it's got a much more solid click than the previous model so you get a lot more feedback so you're much more confident when striking the keys with this keyboard and because the keys are much more solid there's a lot less mechanical action taking up your time so you can fly across this keyboard so if you're a fast hper you're going to love this one this keyboard also has much better lighting than the previous model each key gets its own LED light so there's much less light leaking and the keys themselves are much brighter than the previous model and incidentally with that olded touch bar toward the top because it's olded it actually matches pretty well to the Keys below it so the colors and the lighting are very similar now the new Macbook Pro looks a lot like a blown-up version of the MacBook we have the same integrated hinge which is milled out of the same one piece of aluminum that forms the top which makes it look a lot neater than the previous model which had a plastic strip here which was part of the int system ventilation has been minimized although you'll find ventilation hidden within the hinge of the MacBook Pro which is now much smaller than the previous model but unlike the Baseline 13-in MacBook Pro we also get ventilation on the sides which is especially important for a high-powered computer with a core i7 processor and dedicated graphics this is somewhat similar to the ventilation on the previous MacBook Pros but it's a bit longer than the previous model and the built-in fans are designed to be much quieter than previously of course the big story with the MacBook Pro this year is the io we've gone with all USB type-c connectors and on the 15-in MacBook Pro all four of them are full 40 gigs per second Thunderbolt 3 ports as well which means they're very high-speed ports they can power 5K displays highspeed data transfers and if you have the right adapter you can use any devices on this from HDMI display port SD or USB type A connectors but that's the thing there's no way of getting around the fact that you're going to need some adapters to use this computer because not everything is using the USB type-c connector and like all MacBook Pros returning once again is a 720 P FaceTime HD camera with an LED indicator and an ambient light sensor speaker quality has also been improved slightly it's not quite as dramatic as we saw with the updated 13-in MacBook Pro but it definitely sounds a bit louder with a wider range now the big news with this generation really is the touch bar which is an OLED strip at the top of the keyboard replacing the function keys now the function keys are still here they're virtual buttons this time and they sort of move around but they're always available now the touch bar itself is OLED so it only lights the pixels that are needed so it does does blend pretty seamlessly with the keys themselves it's a very nice looking design the touch bar has sort of a matte texture which matches the keys it's also very anti-reflective so you won't get a lot of glare on the Strip now to the far right we get our Touch ID sensor which does have a sapphire crystal lens over top of it this is a touch id2 sensor so it's very fast and it works the same as it does on an iPhone so just like on an iPhone this is used to unlock your MacBook and it happens very fast thanks to the touch ID sensor now this is also a physical button so you use this to power on the MacBook or power off it doesn't put it to sleep or act as a home button like it would on an iOS device now the function keys are still retained in the touch bar they've just been collapsed off to the right side and can be expanded out as needed so the touch bar is definitely something that will change and evolve over time but right now the touch bar has a combination of the function keys we're familiar with and contextually aware software features which adds an extra layer of user interface to the app you're looking at on the screen so this constantly changes depending on the app now if you don't like any of these features and want to go back to the traditional function row you can do this under settings now for the most part I do like the features that the touch bar brings and it's definitely a very slick piece of design and of course I like the touch ID that's built in but what I don't like are the additional layers to often use features such as volume controls I now have to bring up the volume controls to get to a slider to adjust them I either have mute or I have to activate the slider which is not as quick as just using dedicated keys of course you get more precise control and eventually I think you'll get more customization options but for now it's kind of a barrier that I wasn't expecting now I think a lot of people have some concerns about the Escape key and there is this extra space off to the left side and I think that's just part of the hardware design but even if you tap this area it still works as an escape key so the entire surface is still touch sensitive so I don't think you really have to look to see the Escape key now the other issue is that the Escape key disappears depending on what app you're looking at but there's always an X icon there so if you need to activate the Escape key you'll just hit the X icon which closes out that feature and brings you back to the Escape key so you can hit it again now there are countless ways in which this touch bar can be used by other apps so for example in Final Cut Pro you get some editing tools built right into the touch bar which is very useful or if you're watching a video of any sort either on YouTube or with an iTunes you'll actually get some media controls right up top and they're more than just media controls they also include Sher controls and Sliders and that's kind of nice because that means you can interact with the video without bringing up the interface that blocks your view of it now this touch bar also brings a bit of iOS to the Mac so you'll see some autocomplete options when you're writing messages you'll even have an emoji keyboard which you can bring up and within that emoji keyboard of course you can search for the ones you want select the category you want to browse or long press on items to get to different options like skin color more useful are some of the markup features such as Bolding italicize or underline you can even change the layout or subject headings you can also change the color of text and you have a really neat interface here for that you can change the color the intensity you can go with a standard color or pick anything from a color selector so it's kind of neat to see the keys sort of transition to these bright vibrant colors and images now less useful but kind of neat is the uh timeline within the photos app so I can scrub through all my photographs and see little thumbnails right on the touch bar itself but I really like some of the features within Safari so for example I can create a new tab I can see the open tabs with a preview of the website right on the touch bar or I can open up any one of my favorites the touch bar is highly customizable at the app level so if the app supports the touch bar if you go to view you'll see the touch bar settings this basically brings up an interface that allows you to drag and drop the various tools that are available for that specific app so this allows you to drag and drop a few items but of course you're limited here because we don't have too much real estate you can also drag and drop to remove anything you don't want in the touch bar so when it comes to Performance I have the most powerful version of the MacBook Pro you can buy so this should give you a rough idea of what performance is like now apple is primarily focusing on the graphics performance here and apple says you should see about 130% improvement over the pre model so that's definitely where the strength of this laptop is now when it comes to the standard geekbench test the differences are not quite as definitive of course there is an improvement with the new model but it's not that significant we also get much faster ssds well above 2,000 on the read speed and near 2,000 on the right speed that's a significant improvement over the previous model now the interesting thing about the new Macbook Pro is that the battery is much smaller we go from 99.5 W hours to 76 but Apple says it should deliver an average of 10 hours which is an hour better than the previous model ultimately there's a lot to like about the new 15-in Macbook Pro it's got a great design that's much more compact than before which makes 15 in a lot more manageable than it used to be we have this fantastic new display and we have that massive trackpad which is very clever and the touch bar definitely adds a new layer to the interface which is genuinely useful if used right and of course this is something that will evolve over time as software and applications are updated to use it and it's fantastic to finally have Touch ID for logging in and Apple pay but there's no getting around the fact that some Pro users are not too happy with the I/O situation of course that means you're going to have to use dongles with basically every peripheral you already have today and USBC really isn't that ubiquitous yet so what do you guys think of the new 15-in Macbook Pro I would love to know your thoughts in the comment section below and of course I will have the 13-in MacBook Pro with touch bar and touch ID coming in shortly so stay tuned for those videos hope you guys enjoyed this one if you did please give it a thumbs up to let me know and I'll see you again in the next onewhat's up guys Mike here the Detroit BG and about a couple weeks ago I took a look at the Baseline 13-inch MacBook Pro which wasn't terribly exciting because it didn't have the touch bar and touch ID this time we're going to take a look at a fully speced out 15-in MacBook Pro with the touch bar and touch ID so if you're not familiar with the touch bar basically it's an OLED strip that replaces the function keys from the standard Apple keyboard so as always the 15-in MacBook Pro is quite expensive this time it starts off at $23.99 but that get you a quad core core i7 along with Radeon Pro dedicated graphics but of course I went up a notch here and went with the 2.9 GHz core i7 along with the Radeon Pro 460 which gets me 4 gigs of RAM for the GPU you're also stuck to 16 gigs of RAM but it is faster Ram at 2133 MHz and of course we get even faster pcie based SSD storage and we're going to explore that when we compare them to the old model so getting to the unboxing in case you're not aware this is now available in space gray which is what I have here that's the only new color we still get silver as well if you want to go with the class CLC look so lifting up the lid the first thing we'll see here is our space gray MacBook Pro which I think looks fantastic in this color of course it's wrapped in plastic and once we get that out of the way we can go ahead and lift up the lid and remove the piece of paper that's protecting the glass display now as you can see in this case soon as you open up the lid it boots up right away that's a new characteristic of the MacBook Pro also new with the new Macbook Pros is the elimination of that classic Mac boot up sound so now it's completely silent there's also a slight tweak to the setup process here because we have a touch ID sensor built into the power button so this is a second generation sensor which again is covered with sapphire glass and it's pretty quick to set up and because this is Touch ID you can use this for payment so you can set this up as well through the setup process now before we dig into the details of the hardware let's get to the accessories including our packet which includes some paperwork on how to set up and use the new Macbook Pro in addition to White Apple stickers which once again don't color match the MacBook Pro like they do with the MacBook and of course we have our new power adapter so this is a USBC device which means we don't have mag safe anymore so the adapter itself has a USBC Port it's no longer tied to the magsafe cable so if you break the cable you don't necessarily break the power adapter so you can buy them separately of course the wall adapter is once again removable so you can extend this with an extension cable or use an international wall adapter and before you ask you will not find an extension cable hidden underneath the tray which is an old internet joke now personally I've never been a big fan of the mag safe connector just because it's very proprietary so that means you have to replace it with an apple accessory the other problem is it just disconnected way too easily but I do miss the LED indicator which let me know when it's charging and when it reach full charge but like an iPhone or an iPad when you connect the USBC cable it does make a tone to let you know it's charging so just like the 13-in the 15 in is also thinner and lighter than the previous generation in fact it's a full half pound lighter which now measures at 4 lb which makes it a lot more portable although it's still a pretty large laptop although the overall footprint is now much smaller and more compact than before so when it comes to our display once again we have a resolution of 2880 by 1800 over 15.4 in that's good for 220 pixels per inch although these are the same specs as the previous panel it is 67% brighter and the display now supports the cinema P3 standard for a wider color gamut so colors are much more vibrant and with that brighter display we have deeper contrast which gives you a lot more depth to the screen and generally speaking it looks a lot more Vivid and definitely makes an impact now something you might notice if you're an existing 15-in MacBook Pro user is the fact that the new Mac MacBook Pro has smaller text and smaller icons basically everything has been scaled down so you have more screen real estate but they've changed the default scale for the 15-in MacBook Pro and you can change this if you want to go back to something you're more used to although we still have a very glossy display they have improved the anti-reflective characteristics just like on the 13in so you're seeing that Improvement here on the 15in as well now once again if you haven't heard the backlit Apple logo has been sacrificed for this new display technology I think that's a worthy trade-off but of course it would be nice to have that signature feature retained so when it comes to the keyboard this is the same one that's also on the 13in it's also the same size which means you have all the space around it so we have these large speaker grills on either side and of course we have that gigantic track pad just below it so this is a force touch track pad which works as it did on the previous model of course we have all this surface area now because this trackpad is so wide you have to rest your palms on it in order to type but we have excellent Palm rejection just like in the 13-in model but it's especially important with this 15-in model because the track pad is even wider so you're definitely going to be resting your palms on this while typing so I can rest my Palms on the trackpad even lean pretty hard on them and it doesn't register a click so again this is a force touch trackpad so it replicates a physical click with a vibration motor called a taptic engine so you're not getting a physical click it's just a force sensor that detects whether you're pressing with your fingers or leaning on it with your palms now my previous MacBook Pro video I talked a lot about the keyboard which is using a second generation butterfly mechanism from the original MacBook which this originated from so it's a much better keyboard than that one so if you were put off by that keyboard this is definitely worth taking a look at I've actually been using it for a few weeks on the 13-in model and I absolutely love it because it's so fast it's got a much more solid click than the previous model so you get a lot more feedback so you're much more confident when striking the keys with this keyboard and because the keys are much more solid there's a lot less mechanical action taking up your time so you can fly across this keyboard so if you're a fast hper you're going to love this one this keyboard also has much better lighting than the previous model each key gets its own LED light so there's much less light leaking and the keys themselves are much brighter than the previous model and incidentally with that olded touch bar toward the top because it's olded it actually matches pretty well to the Keys below it so the colors and the lighting are very similar now the new Macbook Pro looks a lot like a blown-up version of the MacBook we have the same integrated hinge which is milled out of the same one piece of aluminum that forms the top which makes it look a lot neater than the previous model which had a plastic strip here which was part of the int system ventilation has been minimized although you'll find ventilation hidden within the hinge of the MacBook Pro which is now much smaller than the previous model but unlike the Baseline 13-in MacBook Pro we also get ventilation on the sides which is especially important for a high-powered computer with a core i7 processor and dedicated graphics this is somewhat similar to the ventilation on the previous MacBook Pros but it's a bit longer than the previous model and the built-in fans are designed to be much quieter than previously of course the big story with the MacBook Pro this year is the io we've gone with all USB type-c connectors and on the 15-in MacBook Pro all four of them are full 40 gigs per second Thunderbolt 3 ports as well which means they're very high-speed ports they can power 5K displays highspeed data transfers and if you have the right adapter you can use any devices on this from HDMI display port SD or USB type A connectors but that's the thing there's no way of getting around the fact that you're going to need some adapters to use this computer because not everything is using the USB type-c connector and like all MacBook Pros returning once again is a 720 P FaceTime HD camera with an LED indicator and an ambient light sensor speaker quality has also been improved slightly it's not quite as dramatic as we saw with the updated 13-in MacBook Pro but it definitely sounds a bit louder with a wider range now the big news with this generation really is the touch bar which is an OLED strip at the top of the keyboard replacing the function keys now the function keys are still here they're virtual buttons this time and they sort of move around but they're always available now the touch bar itself is OLED so it only lights the pixels that are needed so it does does blend pretty seamlessly with the keys themselves it's a very nice looking design the touch bar has sort of a matte texture which matches the keys it's also very anti-reflective so you won't get a lot of glare on the Strip now to the far right we get our Touch ID sensor which does have a sapphire crystal lens over top of it this is a touch id2 sensor so it's very fast and it works the same as it does on an iPhone so just like on an iPhone this is used to unlock your MacBook and it happens very fast thanks to the touch ID sensor now this is also a physical button so you use this to power on the MacBook or power off it doesn't put it to sleep or act as a home button like it would on an iOS device now the function keys are still retained in the touch bar they've just been collapsed off to the right side and can be expanded out as needed so the touch bar is definitely something that will change and evolve over time but right now the touch bar has a combination of the function keys we're familiar with and contextually aware software features which adds an extra layer of user interface to the app you're looking at on the screen so this constantly changes depending on the app now if you don't like any of these features and want to go back to the traditional function row you can do this under settings now for the most part I do like the features that the touch bar brings and it's definitely a very slick piece of design and of course I like the touch ID that's built in but what I don't like are the additional layers to often use features such as volume controls I now have to bring up the volume controls to get to a slider to adjust them I either have mute or I have to activate the slider which is not as quick as just using dedicated keys of course you get more precise control and eventually I think you'll get more customization options but for now it's kind of a barrier that I wasn't expecting now I think a lot of people have some concerns about the Escape key and there is this extra space off to the left side and I think that's just part of the hardware design but even if you tap this area it still works as an escape key so the entire surface is still touch sensitive so I don't think you really have to look to see the Escape key now the other issue is that the Escape key disappears depending on what app you're looking at but there's always an X icon there so if you need to activate the Escape key you'll just hit the X icon which closes out that feature and brings you back to the Escape key so you can hit it again now there are countless ways in which this touch bar can be used by other apps so for example in Final Cut Pro you get some editing tools built right into the touch bar which is very useful or if you're watching a video of any sort either on YouTube or with an iTunes you'll actually get some media controls right up top and they're more than just media controls they also include Sher controls and Sliders and that's kind of nice because that means you can interact with the video without bringing up the interface that blocks your view of it now this touch bar also brings a bit of iOS to the Mac so you'll see some autocomplete options when you're writing messages you'll even have an emoji keyboard which you can bring up and within that emoji keyboard of course you can search for the ones you want select the category you want to browse or long press on items to get to different options like skin color more useful are some of the markup features such as Bolding italicize or underline you can even change the layout or subject headings you can also change the color of text and you have a really neat interface here for that you can change the color the intensity you can go with a standard color or pick anything from a color selector so it's kind of neat to see the keys sort of transition to these bright vibrant colors and images now less useful but kind of neat is the uh timeline within the photos app so I can scrub through all my photographs and see little thumbnails right on the touch bar itself but I really like some of the features within Safari so for example I can create a new tab I can see the open tabs with a preview of the website right on the touch bar or I can open up any one of my favorites the touch bar is highly customizable at the app level so if the app supports the touch bar if you go to view you'll see the touch bar settings this basically brings up an interface that allows you to drag and drop the various tools that are available for that specific app so this allows you to drag and drop a few items but of course you're limited here because we don't have too much real estate you can also drag and drop to remove anything you don't want in the touch bar so when it comes to Performance I have the most powerful version of the MacBook Pro you can buy so this should give you a rough idea of what performance is like now apple is primarily focusing on the graphics performance here and apple says you should see about 130% improvement over the pre model so that's definitely where the strength of this laptop is now when it comes to the standard geekbench test the differences are not quite as definitive of course there is an improvement with the new model but it's not that significant we also get much faster ssds well above 2,000 on the read speed and near 2,000 on the right speed that's a significant improvement over the previous model now the interesting thing about the new Macbook Pro is that the battery is much smaller we go from 99.5 W hours to 76 but Apple says it should deliver an average of 10 hours which is an hour better than the previous model ultimately there's a lot to like about the new 15-in Macbook Pro it's got a great design that's much more compact than before which makes 15 in a lot more manageable than it used to be we have this fantastic new display and we have that massive trackpad which is very clever and the touch bar definitely adds a new layer to the interface which is genuinely useful if used right and of course this is something that will evolve over time as software and applications are updated to use it and it's fantastic to finally have Touch ID for logging in and Apple pay but there's no getting around the fact that some Pro users are not too happy with the I/O situation of course that means you're going to have to use dongles with basically every peripheral you already have today and USBC really isn't that ubiquitous yet so what do you guys think of the new 15-in Macbook Pro I would love to know your thoughts in the comment section below and of course I will have the 13-in MacBook Pro with touch bar and touch ID coming in shortly so stay tuned for those videos hope you guys enjoyed this one if you did please give it a thumbs up to let me know and I'll see you again in the next one\n"