The MacBook Pro Touch Bar is being revived

By Willow Roberts Published December 3, 2024

Standalone Touch Bar product, Flexbar. — Eniac

The Touch Bar era of MacBook Pros is not something many of us want to return to.

And yet, as reported by The Verge, a new project has appeared on Kickstarter that hopes to bring back the Apple Touch Bar — but as a standalone device. The 10-inch 2K OLED touchscreen is designed to sit above the keyboard on your laptop, on your desk above your keyboard, or even beside your tablet to give you quick access to your most-used buttons.

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The device is being made by a new startup called Eniac that believes the now discontinued Touch Bar wasn’t a bad concept in itself and that Apple just didn’t do enough with it. According to the company, its version — called the Flexbar — will focus on offering major customizability so you can create macros for everything from your favorite Procreate brushes to a cooldown bar for Final Fantasy XIV.

To create these ultra-personal setups, the company has made software, FlexbarDesigner, to help you get the exact functionalities, colors, and layouts you want.

Flexbar being used with Final Fantasy 14. — Eniac

The bar has haptic feedback and a magnetic stand to help it stay in place wherever you put it. One major drawback of the product, however, is that it appears to require a wired connection to whatever device you use it with. All the videos and images the company has released show the Flexbar plugged in with its USB-C adapter, and there is no mention of Bluetooth connectivity.

This could easily be a deal breaker for many since we’re all used to our Bluetooth mice and keyboards, and this product feels like it should work the same way.

Another point to keep in mind is that this is the company’s first-ever Kickstarter project and first-ever product — so there’s no guarantee that it will successfully ship. Eniac told The Verge it was using “standard supply channels” to get its OLED screen, but considering how unique the size of the display is, it doesn’t seem like something that would be easy to find.

If you’re interested in the project, however, you can check out the Kickstarter page here and even download the FlexbarDesigner software to see how it works.

Computing Writer

Willow Roberts has been a Computing Writer at Digital Trends for a year and has been writing for about a decade. She has a…

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The long overdue MacBook Pro design refresh might land in 2026

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Apple likes to stick around with each product design refresh for at least a few generations. Take for example the M4 MacBook Pro, which is still carrying the same design language that was first introduced atop the M1 series models back in 2021.
Things could finally change next year. “In terms of major new Mac designs, I don’t expect the MacBook Pro to get an overhaul until around 2026 — when the M6 model is due to come out,” says a Bloomberg report.
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“It’s no joke to lug around. Some will appreciate the extra screen real estate, no doubt, but there’s definitely a trade-off in mobility,” said Digital Trends’ review of the current-gen MacBook Pro.
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According to statistics from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), MacBook form factors, in either MacBook Pro or MacBook Air made up 86% of Apple’s PC market share in 2024. Consumers especially favored the M4 MacBook Pro at a rate of 53%, while 33% of MacBook Air models shipped during the year, and 14% of iMac models. These figures vary only slightly from the year prior; however, CIRP noted that Apple appears to have weathered any fluctuations that may have occurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Rumors have persisted for years now that Apple is working on a touchscreen MacBook, but I’ve never been truly convinced. For one thing, I don’t see how a touchscreen could improve my MacBook experience enough to justify the inevitable price rise. This is Apple we’re talking about, after all, and there’s just no way that a touchscreen MacBook will possibly come cheap.

As well as that, I’ve long agreed with Steve Jobs’ belief that adding a touchscreen to a regular MacBook is an ergonomic nightmare. Constantly reaching up to the display is a quick way to exhaust your arms, and paining its users isn’t really part of Apple’s playbook. The Mac operating system isn’t designed for touch either, and in any case, adding a touchscreen would result in all manner of greasy fingerprints on your monitor. It’s never seemed like a good idea to me.