Does anyone miss the MacBook Pro's Touch Bar so much that they need it in almost any form? The answer would be yes if you're talking to Eniac, a small company that just reinvented the not-quite-iconic Touch Bar as a Flexbar that can be used with Mac, iPad, Android, and even your Windows PC.
Apple introduced the Touch Bar on MacBook Pros in 2016. It was the closest a MacBook came to having a touchscreen. In practice, you often touched the Touch Bar, which was embedded in the top edge of the keyboard, while looking at the MacBook Pro's touchscreen. The Touch Bar was almost magically contextual, changing display functions depending on the app. However, the loss of the function buttons and the power button/TouchID upset many hardcore MacBook Pro users. And Apple, perhaps feeling it had gone too far, removed the Touch Bar when it introduced its first Apple Silicon laptops. MacBook Pro in 2022.
I mourned the loss and the “innate serendipity” of the Touch Bar, but I also understood the Touch Bar's somewhat limited usefulness and remember how that OLED screen remained untouched for weeks at a time.
Few, not even me, saw the need for a new Touch Bar and certainly none that were left out of the system.
Just as envisioned by Eniac and now offered for $119 on Kickstarter, the new Touch Bar, called Flexbar, is an aluminum bar that features a 10-inch 2K OLED display on one side. It looks as adaptable as the original and even features haptic feedback. But it is a thick strip that should sit above the space between the keyboard and the laptop screen.
Having it sit there clumsily while plugged into power via its USB-C port while you tap and swipe around seems inelegant at best and certainly not the sort of thing that would ever come out of, say, the studio of Apple industrial design. At least there's a magnetic holder to keep the Flexbar in place, but that makes it stick out even more from the keyboard.
If someone is so desperate to add touch to a MacBook, wouldn't they just opt for an iPad? Similarly, many Windows 11 users enjoy touchscreen laptops; Why do they need another touchscreen interface beneath that easy-to-use display?
Flexbar's one-click macro recording feature is here to help! Record your movements and play them back anytime! – YouTube
Look
What Eniac engineers might be missing here is that the appeal of the original Touch Bar lies, at least in part, in that it was integrated into the MacBook Pro chassis. That made it subtle in the best way and allowed you to use it or casually ignore it. I don't see any way to ignore the thick aluminum Flexbar.
Evidently, Eniac sees things differently. The portable design could be an advantage because it means that a Flexbar can be combined with numerous systems. Furthermore, Eniac is clear about why they created Flexbar. From the Kickstarter page:
“The discontinuation of the original Touch Bar did not mean that the concept was flawed; it simply was not taken far enough to reach its fullness. There is something undeniable in itself: the potential for a customizable and adaptable interface that could streamline workflows was huge.
Flexbar leans heavily towards customization and macros; It looks as functional and customizable as the original Touch Bar. But I still don't see the MacBook Pro audience adopting it. You may find more fans among people who want to use it in conjunction with Windows systems, iPads, and Android tablets. At $119 when it starts shipping in 2025, it might be cheap enough to make people say, “What the heck, I'll give this away a while ago.”
Still, I wouldn't call this a replacement for the Touch Bar as it's an insult to the sleek design of the original.