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This is what Apple’s Touch Bar should have been
Apple’s Touch Bar may be on its way out, but it could have been different if it behaved like the Elgato Stream Deck.
If the rumours are true, the Mac Touch Bar’s days are numbered. Despite its flaws, I’ll be sorry if Apple does phase it out. But it could have been very different if Apple had relaxed its inherent control freakery and followed the example of the Elgato Stream Deck.
The Elgato Stream Deck might not seem like an obvious rival to the Touch Bar. It’s primarily aimed at YouTube/Twitch streamers who want to press a button mid-stream and flash up a graphic reminding viewers to subscribe or to play a sound effect. However, as my PC Pro colleague Paul Ockenden brought to my attention, the Stream Deck has other uses.
Underneath each of those 15 buttons on the Stream Deck is a little LCD screen (correction: it’s actually one big LCD screen, as my colleague Paul Ockenden rightly points out) that can be customised and assigned to a particular keyboard shortcut that you’ll probably never remember.
In the photo at the top of the page, for example, you see my shortcuts for Adobe Lightroom Classic. It’s not very easy to see them on the photo, but the screenshot from the Stream Deck software below should make it…
