I was thinking how silly the touch bar is for custom controls because you have to look at it - you should be looking at the screen. That was amplified by the photos demo where the touch bar wasn't actually letting you keep controls off the main screen (so more space for content) - it was literally bringing up the same menus you would normally use and the touch bar was just acting like a macro.
However, I've softened on it - a little. For pros that use keyboard shortcuts a lot, I assume software will be available that will let you create your own keyboard shortcuts with graphics for different apps. Or those apps will do it for you. If done well, with reasonable positioning above the number keys, you should probably still be able to use them blindly once you've memorised them. So effectively they become like normal function keys, but perhaps more customisable and allowing you to have a custom graphic overlay for each app you use.
So it could be useful overall, but Apple were hugely disproportionate on the amount of time and energy they spent trying to persuade everyone how game-changing it was, vs how useful it probably actually is.
This is my biggest problem with Apple at the moment. Everything is hyperbolised to such a point that it is actually numbing me. Touch bar and portrait mode on iphone 7+ are neat little features to spend a moment informing people about, but they aren't things to spend 15 minutes on a stage with multiple guest demonstrators.
If they genuinely come out with something that is a big improvement or a proper innovation, I might not spot it because I'm just hearing the same bullshit from them time and time again. 'beautiful', 'so proud', 'best ever', 'unrivalled experience'. Literally just shipping the exact same MBP as before but with a skylake chip would still be 'the best macbook pro...ever'. So surely thats a given?
They need to tone down on the hyperbole or people will really start tuning out.