I don't believe that the fundamental issue can be fixed. Ironically "Touch Bar" is something you can't feel when you touch it. Real physical buttons guide your finger to the correct location if you miss them slightly. "Touch" buttons don't.

To fix that, one would need to rework the whole OS and applications in such way that they don't use F-keys at all, but rather something else.

So, fixing Touch Bar means rethinking OS and application shortcuts.

I don't think average users really use F-buttons that much, but we developers generally do.

if there was even a way to just have the f-keys on all the time by default, that would have helped. Last I looked, that was not an option - you needed to hold down the fn key (or control?)

You can actually, on a per application basis: http://m.imore.com/how-make-function-keys-default-touch-bar-...

I don't want them on a 'per-application' basis.

The older macs, you could have f-key 'default' with the other options activated by holding the FN key, or reverse it, so that the brightness/etc were default, and f-keys activated by holding down the FN key.

There is no option to just have f-keys defaulted, with other touchbar stuff activated by FN key. For people who simply want standard f-keys as default all the time (like you could have in the previous macs), there is no option right now.

You can't, actually. This only works for some applications. None of my WINE apps, for example, can have this enabled. Apple failed.

Just wait until the force-touchbar and then the 3d-touchbar.

I agree with the feedback, but I'm certain they will add this.

A 3d, force, touchbar sounds awfully like just a row of buttons to me ;-)

The second that happens they will remove it in the following release.