Touch Bar on MacBook Pro might be useful surprise

NEW YORK — A touch strip on a MacBook Pro isn't a surprise. Its usefulness might turn out to be.

Apple added a novel touch-strip above the keyboard on its new MacBook Pros, an expected flourish to the 13- and 15-inch laptops. I'm impressed by how versatile this Retina-quality, multi-touch strip of glass appears to be, and how much third-party support the Touch Bar is getting.

A quick explainer: Touch Bar supplies dynamic shortcuts to the controls, sliders, menus and tools that relate to the task at hand, so they appear and disappear as needed. As you tap, swipe or drag the Touch Bar keys, you see the results of your actions on the MacBook Pro’s full-size Retina displays.

Pros: Many uses

If you’re in the Messages app, for example, you might use the Touch Bar to scroll through and choose emojis, which show up on the strip. If you’re listening to music, you’ll find the play controls there. And if you’re editing in Photos, you can scrub through images and apply filters or rotate the pics you choose.

Through the Touch Bar you can easily access favorite websites in Safari or answer (or reject) incoming FaceTime calls. As you’re writing something, you can also get predictive suggestions of the words you may want to type next, similar to a feature found on iOS devices.

What’s more, Apple opened up Touch Bar to outside app developers. So you might employ Touch Bar when choosing brushes or blending colors in Adobe Photoshop, one of the partners Apple trotted on stage in introducing the feature. There will even be Touch Bar support for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Office apps.

And in case you’re wondering, you can still summon Touch Bar versions of the physical function keys that used to reside above the keyboard to raise the brightness or lower the volume. Touch Bar keys are also customizable.

Con: The price, USB adapter

Now the bad news. As with prior MacBook Pros, they're expensive. MacBook Pros with Touch Bar start at $1,799 for a 13-inch model and $2,399 for a 15-inch model. If you can live without the Touch Bar, you can also purchase a 13-inch MacBook Pro that still has physical function keys for $1,499.

While Touch Bar is the feature that will surely garner the most interest — and I only briefly got to demo it —  Apple has also added the Touch ID sensor to the MacBook Pro, which means you can unlock the Mac with a fingerprint, just like you can do on state-of-the-art iPhones. It is integrated with the power button. And if you share the Mac with other members of your household or office, you can use Touch ID to take advantage of the feature Apple calls “fast user switching.” When an authorized person places his or her finger on Touch ID, their user environment takes over.

Touch ID also makes it much simpler to pay for web transactions through Apple Pay, a feature that arrived with the macOS Sierra upgrade and that used to require an iPhone or Apple Watch.

Longtime fans of MacBook Pros, notably professional and creative types, will also appreciate that these long-in-the-tooth computers will be outfitted with state-of-the-art specs: sixth-generation dual or quad-core Intel Core i5 or i7 processors for starters. Apple says they’ll will run much faster than the prior generation. The entry point is 256GB of storage.

Moreover, at 3 pounds and 14.9mm or 4 pounds and 15.mm, respectively for 13- and 15-inch models, these are also the lightest and thinnest MacBook Pros, a welcome relief to those schlepping predecessor versions. They are even thinner than the MacBook Air.

The 13-inch model without the Touch Bar comes with a pair of Thunderbolt (USB-C) ports; the 13- and 15-inch models with Touch Bar four such ports. You can use these to charge the computer — Apple touts about 10 hours of battery life — or to drive external monitors. Keep in mind though that your existing magnetic MagSafe Mac charger won't work without an adapter, and you’ll also need an adapter to connect your older USB gear or even to charge an iPhone, which relies on a Lightning type connector that you won’t find on any Macs. Alas, none are included in the box and Apple sells a Lightning to USB-C cable for $25.

Apple has also ditched the SD card slot, a turn-off for many photographers.

I'm really missing the SD slot on the new MacBook Pro

The machines have significantly larger Force Touch trackpads than the prior generation, and Apple says the butterfly-mechanism keyboard (which is based on the keyboard first introduced on the MacBook) has been improved. I briefly got to type on it in a demonstration area, and I did feel more comfortable, though I'd still like to spend more time testing.

Touch Bar looks to be one of those innovations that goes beyond a gimmick and could potentially make you more productive. Which means my review, once I get the laptop, should be written in half the time.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter