MacBook Pro Touch Bars broke often and lacked function.

And no, its notonlybecauseyou could put Nyan Cat on it.

I Prefer Volume and Brightness Sliders

Sliders and dials are perfect for fine-tuning prefs.

Editing a screenshot in Shottr’s editor on a Mac.

Pressing function keys to achieve these tasks, as weve traditionally done, works fine.

But the sharp volume and brightness jolts that occur arent aesthetically or audibly pleasing to me.

Plus, all the tapping is inefficient when you think about it.

A MacBook with the Touch Bar highlighted.

Lucas Gouveia / How-To Geek | Apple

Sliding a finger along the Touch Bar required less physical work while offering better control.

Here, drag the volume and brightness sliders back and forth a bit.

Quite a bit more pleasant, wouldnt you say?

A MacBook Pro with Touch Bar adjusting the screen brightness.

Noah Densmore/Shutterstock.com

The Touch Bar was also great for video and audio playback in a similar capacity.

Did you know that you could even skip ads by scrubbing through them?

Its a nifty trick, even in an era of ad-blocking ubiquity.

A row of emojis on a MacBook Pro Touch Bar.

abdullah serbest/Shutterstock.com

Hovering a Safari tab with your mouse provides a far better read of its contents.

Having bookmarks on the Touch Bar provided ease of access to websites I frequented.

However, some of the ideas released during that time frame put it to great use.

Apple Magic Keyboard Fn key in focus.

Tim Brookes / How-To Geek

This saved me the trouble of clicking around the UI, making for a more fluid reading experience.

Similar functionality was made available in other word processors, editing apps, and the like.

But the Touch Bar felt like a taste of the future because it tried something new.

A MacBook Pro being opened.

Farknot Architect/Shutterstock.com

Screens can transform to fit any need, which in turn means endless possibilities.

By this same measure, the Touch Bar had me reconsidering just what a keyboard could be capable of.

I want Apple to continue taking risks by shaking up the technologies and designs weve taken for granted.

Yet it still feels like Apple played things safe to a fault by completely eradicating their horizontal touch screen.

And thats therealtakeaway here.

And as I noted, that Touch Bar could get really hot!