Each year, apps become more and more creative with our screens. However, Apple is nervous about not using their Touch Bar in an intended way, which makes users even more irritated.
Here, we have extracted lines from Apple’s guidelines for apps developers on how to create interfaces for Touch Bar:
- - The company prefers not to compare Touch Bar with the display, but perceives it as an extension to the keyboard and trackpad.
- - The Touch Bar should have no items that distract the user from the work on this main screen, so no messages, alerts, content etc. is allowed.
- - No animation, as it is an extension to the keyboard; nobody is interested in an animated keyboard.
- - Developers must adhere to minimalistic style while working with colors. Touch Bar should be similar to a keyboard.
- - Touch Bar must contain nothing that can perform functions, like copy, select, deselect, paste, undo, redo, close, print and quit.
Lots of developers see so many opportunities to use this Touch Bar space, and they think of Apple’s instructions as of limitations and restrictions that do not coincide with user demands. It will be complicated to make both users and developers think of Touch Bar as a keyboard and not the display they see.
If the Touch Bar can serve two purposes, like keyboard and display – why not? It is easy to put standards, but in this case, it seems not like a standard but rather as a limitation. It is okay to add experimentation, as it can open opportunity for interesting and unique features provided by developers.
Everything depends on how strict Apple will be with these guidelines.
