The Contact Bar is once more, sort of...and it appears horrible

Does anyone miss the MacBook Skilled Contact Bar so desperately that they need it once more in almost any type? The reply might make sure within the occasion you are talking to Eniac, a small agency that’s merely reinvented the not-quite-iconic Contact Bar as a Flexbar that may be utilized with the Mac, iPad, Android, and even your House home windows PC.

Apple Launched the Contact Bar on MacBook Execs in 2016. It was as shut as a MacBook would ever come to having a touchscreen present. In apply, you sometimes touched the Contact Bar, which sat embedded alongside the keyboard’s excessive edge, whereas wanting on the touch-averse MacBook Skilled show display. The Contact Bar was almost magically contextual, switching up present choices counting on the app. The shortage of function buttons and Power/TouchID button irritated many hardcore MacBook Skilled prospects, though. And Apple, perhaps sensing it had gone too far, killed the Contact Bar when it launched its first Apple Silicon MacBook Skilled laptops in 2022.

I lamented the loss and the Contact Bar’s “innate serendipity,” nonetheless I moreover understood the Contact Bar’s significantly restricted utility and recall how that OLED present went untouched for weeks at a time.

Few, not even me, seen a necessity for a model new Contact Bar and positively not one which sits exterior the system.

The Contact Bar is once more, sort of…and it appears horrible

(Image credit score rating: Eniac)

As envisioned by Eniac and now on present for $119 on Kickstarter, the model new Contact Bar, generally known as a Flexbar, is an aluminum bar that features a 10-inch, 2K OLED present on one aspect. It appears every bit as adaptive because the distinctive and even choices haptic solutions. However it is a thickish strip that has to sit down on excessive of the home between your keyboard and laptop computer laptop present.

Having it awkwardly lying there whereas moreover plugged into power by means of its USB-C port as you contact and swipe at it, seems inelegant at best and positively not the type of issue that can ever emerge from, say, Apple’s industrial design studio. A minimal of there’s a magnetic stand to hold the Flexbar in place, nonetheless that merely makes it stick up rather more from the keyboard.

If someone is that decided in order so as to add contact to a MacBook, wouldn’t they merely go for an iPad? Equally, many House home windows 11 prospects take pleasure in touch-screen laptops; why do they need one different touch-screen interface beneath that finger-friendly present?

Flexbar’s one-click macro recording operate is true right here to help! File your strikes & replay at any time! – YouTube
Flexbar's one-click macro recording feature is here to help! Record your moves & replay at any time! - YouTube

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What the engineers at Eniac could also be missing proper right here is the enchantment of the distinctive Contact Bar lay, on the very least partially, in that it was built-in into the MacBook Skilled chassis. That made it delicate within the simplest way and allowed you to utilize it or casually ignore it. I don’t see any method of ignoring the thick, aluminum Flexbar.

Eniac clearly sees points in any other case. The moveable design might probably be a bonus on account of it means one Flexbar might be paired with fairly just a few strategies. Plus, Eniac is clear about why they created the Flexbar. From the Kickstarter net web page:

“The discontinuation of the distinctive Contact Bar didn’t suggest the concept was flawed—it merely wasn’t taken far ample to attain its full. There’s one factor plain itself: the potential for a customizable, adaptive interface which may streamline workflows was immense.”

Flexbar does lean onerous into customizability and macros; it appears merely as helpful and customizable because the distinctive Contact Bar. Nevertheless I nonetheless can not see the MacBook Skilled viewers adopting it. It would uncover further followers amongst people who want to use it alongside House home windows strategies, iPads, and Android tablets. At $119 when it begins supply in 2025, it could be low price ample that people will say, “What the heck, I’m going to provide it prior to now.”

Even so, I won’t title this a Contact Bar substitute as that’s type of an insult to the distinctive’s elegant design.

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The Contact Bar is once more, sort of…and it appears horrible

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