I'm looking to buy a new Mac Pro...and now there's this new Touch Bar thingy...anyone try it out? It's like $450 more than a new Mac Pro without one...is it useful? A waste? Give me your thoughts...

i hear you can run doom on the touchbar

if you're the kind of guy who frequently uses the function keys on his keyboard, like many times within a few minutes, then yeah, it's probably a good purchase for you. otherwise, skip it imo

I mostly use the laptop to write and to surf the web. I don't play games on it.

i don't think gamers typically use the function keys. If you were using something like photo/video editing software or audio recording suites, you might get a lot of use out of it. If it's just writing and web browsing, just get a goddamn chromebook and save a thousand bucks.

I'm going to skip the touch bar I think so I can save for the super iMacs coming out this winter. Who has two thumbs and needs a quad core Xeon beasty? And I'm getting one anyway...

If you really want a mac, get a MacBook Air.

Actually, a giant iPad is probably all he really needs for surfing although the writing part may be better on a real keyboard... The super iMacs are space ****ing gray man!

I looked at the 13" MBP SKUs on Apple.com, you also pick up a faster CPU (3.1 vs 2.3 GHz), a slightly faster GPU, and double the storage (128GB vs 256GB) going from the $1300 base model to the $1800 Touchbar model. There's a $1500 non-touchbar model that has 256GB storage.
In the 15"SKUs, you gain a faster CPU and GPU moving to the touchbar model. These are massively overkill for writing/browsing but should be nice devices if you want the larger screen and keyboard.
The $1600 MacBook SKU may be worth a look if you value having something lighter in the bag at the cost of top end performance you probably won't use that often and very limited built in ports (IIRC just a single USB-C also used for charging)

128GB is pretty small to live on for a primary use device. Any of these options will do the job, the lowest will require managing space more, the highest will be a bit snappier booting, waking up and when under heavy load.

Out of curiosity, what's the current device you're replacing, and what are your favorite/most hated features of it?

You mean - MacBook Pro. Right?

True, but you can typically pay an extra hundred to get 256, or if you're clever you can get most of the space you need using Dropbox and google docs. Bonus, google drive has access to a PowerPoint creator, among other free tools.

The new file system in 11 is going to be much more efficient so 128 + the cloud could work for a larger subset of people.

If you like the Touch ID aspects of iPhone it's included on the bar and you can customize the buttons by program iirc. Like someone said it sounds like a better thing to get an air, cheaper and lighter.

If you get iCloud storage it has the optimize storage feature which will archive your least accessed files/photos/videos on iCloud and prevent you from running out of space internally provided you purchase enough cloud storage.

iPad Pro confirmed better than MacBook