Another Attempt Made To Upstream An Apple Touch Bar Linux Driver

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Another Attempt Made To Upstream An Apple Touch Bar Linux Driver

Apple introduced the Touch Bar to their MacBook Pro laptops a half-decade ago as a dynamic touchscreen to replace the function keys on the keyboard. While some MacBook Pro models have already dropped the Touch Bar for not catching on, some community developers in the open-source Linux community continue work on enabling the functionality for the upstream Linux kernel...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Apple-Touch-Bar-Linux-2023

[heredoc]

What kind of hardware would be behind those touch bars of the current MacBook Pro M1/M2 models?
Do they light up those devices as well? Are they in any way similar?

[AKSF_Ackermann]

The touchbar is basically an iphone screen, except in a weird shape. On x86 macs its controlled by the t1/t2 chip, which is connected to the host over usb, while on m-series it is connected directly, and the former t-chip firmware is now running as a driver on the main cpu. Ofc that means the drivers will be very different for those.

[rene]

Quite pointless, the worst Macs ever built. Best sell on ebay, and get a proper, not failing machine with usable keyboard ;-)

[dlq84]

What kind of hardware would be behind those touch bars of the current MacBook Pro M1/M2 models?
Do they light up those devices as well? Are they in any way similar?

They don't have a touch bar...

[Quackdoc]

I love the touchbars on the macs, I know a lot of people think them as an expensive gimmick, but IMO they are very cool

[alvinde]

They don't have a touch bar...

Some do, like the 13inch Macbook Pro with M2 CPU. The touch bar is still there.

As can be seen here - https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro-13/

[nsklaus]

i had an M1 macbookpro, the 2020 model, 13" the entry level one.
it had a touch bar. the darn thing was such a pain. and i'm saying this on macos itself, not asahi linux. often times you press a virtual button on it and it wouldn't register it, you had to lift the finger and press again. then after two years it just broke on me. displaying glitches, flashing quickly at full brightness, or staying locked "on" also in full brightness displaying garbage, no way to turn it off. it was an horror. i got myself a 14" M2 without touchbar. now things are normal again, i press a key, and guess what ? it works.
best thing about touchbar is when it's simply not there. can't wait for apple to smell the coffee, get a pulse and ditch the notch on screen too. both (touchbar and notch) are ridiculous and in now way a practical improvement of any kind. at least with the notch i can choose a custom resolution to starting showing desktop below it and bypass that "feature" completely.

[Zapitron]

I use one of these MacBook Pros for my day job, but never actually use that part of the keyboard. It seems to always be changing, depending on what application has focus (? or something like that) . I suppose it's a neat idea for some people, but I wouldn't ever miss it.