Apple's Touch Bar or Microsoft's Dial? One outshines the other
Apple added a touchscreen to its laptops but not in the monitor.
Rather the touchscreen is part of the keyboard.
Apple's new Mac Book Pro laptops replace the traditional function keys on top of the keyboard.
With a customizable touchscreen strip that can read fingerprints.
The touch bar adapts to whatever software you are using.
Editing videos will show different options than say if you were in Photoshop or a music editing software.
If you're typing, you'll get quick suggestions of words of you can scroll through emojis.
But perhaps the biggest takeaway from Apple's news It's how willfully unimpressive it was compared to what Microsoft unveiled the day before, which is Surface Studio and Surface Dial.
Both Microsoft and Apple this week have given consumers new ways to interact with a computer.
Microsoft has the Surface Dial a hockey puck shaped scroll wheel that can be picked up and put on top of the touchscreen to pull up and cycle through different settings.
And it changes depending on the program you're in.
Apple, on the other hand, put this concept into a strip on the laptop.
If you do creative work for a living, you're now questioning If you want to use a wheel and work directly on a touchscreen monitor, or tap through a thin strip of options.
Are you team dial or team bar?
Well team bar is less expensive, the new Macbook with touchbar arrives mid November and starts at around $1800, that's roughly half the cost of Microsoft's Surface Studio PC with a dial.
Meanwhile, Apple also introduced a new way to watch shows on the Apple TV.
There's a new app simply called TV.
It pulls in all the shows and movies you're watching from across all your TV apps, clueing you in to what shows are coming up next, along with recommendations.
So Apple TV now has a TV app you download on TVOS that lets you watch TV shows on your TV.
Now imagine how confusing it will get if Apple ever actually makes a TV.
I'm Bridget Carey, that's it for your tech news update.
Stay on top of the latest at cnet.com/update.
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