After months of rumors and speculation and leaks, Apple has unveiled their new MacBook Pros at an event of their own hosting yesterday. While laptop upgrades are pretty common and to be expected, Apple also introduced a new hardware feature called Touch Bar that replaces the function keys with a touchscreen strip.
Naturally Touch Bar is open to developers to take advantage of to extend the capability of their apps or websites, but it seems that Apple’s rules regarding what can or cannot be done have come across feeling rather strict and restrictive. For starters Apple has mentioned multiple times that Touch Bar is meant to act as an extension of the keyboard and trackpad, and not of the display.
They also state that, “Touch Bar shouldn’t display alerts, messages, scrolling content, static content, or anything else that commands the user’s attention or distracts from their work on the main screen.” They are also telling developers to avoid the use of animation because people “don’t expect animation in their keyboard”.
We suppose it is understandable that Apple wants to keep things neat, but as TechCrunch points out, these restrictions means that certain features that users might find useful might not be allowed, such as an active stock ticker, or maybe an alternative way to display their Twitter feed, and so on.
It is possible that maybe Apple could relax on the rules later on, but to be fair at the moment since the new MacBook Pros aren’t available yet, maybe we should see how well it handles in real-life before we start making wishlists.
Filed in . Read more about Apps, Laptops and Macbook Pro.