I've been thinking about it it too. I was really enamored with the touch bar until I received my current laptop, and I essentially never use it. The one killer feature is putting the lock screen button right next to the finger print reader so unlocking and locking is a breeze.
The reality is that when I'm at work, I'm logged in to a super beefy server. When I'm at home, I'm logged in to a moderately sized server in GCE. I don't use an IDE, essentially the only apps I use are Firefox, Spotify, and Terminal.
What's holding me back is the screen size. I'll take the biggest screen I can get. More screen == more panes. I absolutely love the 15" inch pro screen. Not sure if I could live with the 13" on the air.
Not to take away the one redeeming feature of the Touch Bar for you, but have you looked at hot corners for locking the screen? I find that even less friction.
Control+Shift+Power turns off the display and by checking "Require password after sleep or screen saver begins" in System Preferences you get same effect by using a keyboard shortcut. https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/46170
For me, Hot Corners are a pain when they're accidentally activated, so another way is Apple menu -> Lock Screen. After about 5 seconds, the screen turns off.
The other killer feature is finer control for volume and brightness, specially when you figure out that it's not necessary to move your finger to the slider after pressing the keys from the TouchBar. If Apple decided to remove the gigantic image in the screen when you change these it would be perfect.
I don't understand why people whine so much about it. I never used the F keys from a Mac, and everyone who needs the Esc key already remapped it to Caps Lock or some other one.
You should consider the 12.9” iPad Pro if you have a terminal based workflow. The extra vertical space and higher resolution screen compared to my 13”rMBP and the ability to use any keyboard (I use the Apple Magic Keyboard 2) means it’s actually quite a cool device.
iPads don't have "desktops", so no. That said, if you have two apps open side-by-side, Mission Control (double-tap home/four finger swipe up/drag up from bottom) remembers this and keeps the two apps together until you separate them.
As for keyboards, you can use any Bluetooth keyboard with any iOS device. That said, the keyboards made for the Smart Connector are quite nice — just not the first generation Smart Keyboard because the case is too flexible to use on a lap.
as an aside there's a super easy keyboard shortcut for screen locking now in OS X 10.14 cmd-ctrl-q.
As I've swapped caps lock and control in the keyboard settings, it's very easily became second nature - due to where my hands sit at rest on the keyboard I only really need to move my 3rd finger to q to hit it - even easier than having to look down at the keyboard/touchbar
The reality is that when I'm at work, I'm logged in to a super beefy server. When I'm at home, I'm logged in to a moderately sized server in GCE. I don't use an IDE, essentially the only apps I use are Firefox, Spotify, and Terminal.
What's holding me back is the screen size. I'll take the biggest screen I can get. More screen == more panes. I absolutely love the 15" inch pro screen. Not sure if I could live with the 13" on the air.