I like it as well, especially in applications like CLion/IntelliJ which have tons of keybindings I keep forgetting because they are different between Linux and macOS. The context-sensitive touch bar is actually very useful in these applications for things like rebuilding, changing targets, stepping through the debugger etc. without having to use the mouse.
There's a lot of things to complain about with Apple products, but if you ask me there's been enough touch bar bashing by now and people should just get over it. It's pretty useful in some situations, and IMO no real downsides, especially now that the esc key is a real physical key again. Why all the hate?
If you hold Fn you get the traditional row of function keys, which seems like a pretty good tradeoff. And if you really hate that, you can simply configure the touch bar to always display them, in which case literally the only downside is that they are not physical keys anymore. Do people really touch-type the function keys so heavily that this becomes a an actual annoyance and not just an ideological one?
Adding an extra row of physical keys that do the same thing as the row of virtual function keys, at the expense of trackpad size and possibly ergonomic (harder to reach the touch bar) doesn't make a lot of sense IMO.
You can’t hit them without looking at the bar, because you have nothing to index your fingers on.
The touchbar is the second worst thing Apple has ever done in the history of the Mac, following closely on that abomination of a “keyboard” they used from 2016-2019.
My guess - that you couldn't get a Macbook without the TouchBar. I'd like to be able to choose between a Macbook with or without a TouchBar, but with otherwise entirely identical specs.
I've been holding out on upgrading my 2013 MBP (mostly out of frugality) to a newer version, mostly due to the butterfly keys and the TouchBar.
There's a lot of things to complain about with Apple products, but if you ask me there's been enough touch bar bashing by now and people should just get over it. It's pretty useful in some situations, and IMO no real downsides, especially now that the esc key is a real physical key again. Why all the hate?