I traded in my old MacBook Pro for the latest MacBook Pro 13” with Apple Silicon (M1). Hands down, it is the best laptop I have ever used — I’m not a gamer,, and I’m not doing VR development on it.
It’s light, it’s fast, I never hear the fan, it’s always cool to the touch — amazing.
Situation
I experienced an odd glitch a few days ago. I opened the laptop (instant on!) and noticed that the Touch Bar was blank and non-responsive. I touched it, nothing happened. I tapped it, nothing happened. I changed applications, and nothing appeared on the Touch Bar.
At this point, I was completely distracted by the non-functioning Touch Bar rather than working on the next task on my list. I could choose to ignore it, but, let’s be honest, when you purchase a new device, you expect it to work, right? Also, I’m a techie and like to find out how things work (or don’t).
So, I Googled for solutions and tried a few things from the command line. Nothing worked. I tried restarting the Dock, and that didn’t help.
$ sudo pkill "Touch Bar agent"
$ sudo killall "ControlStrip"
Was it a hardware problem? I hope not because I love the MBP and don’t want to live without it, even for a few days. It could be a few weeks since this is a 16 GB/1TB model, and they aren’t always in stock.
The Fix
As with many devices and gadgets, the solution that worked was
Turn it off and back on again!
Were there other fixes? Possibly? I’m a techie and couldn’t find a solution within 15 minutes so I resorted to doing what many of us do — restart.
Thoughts about the future of tech
Have devices become so complex, with layer upon layer of frameworks, with parts integrated from multiple vendors, that we can no longer expect them to work correctly all the time?
Surely, there are critical real-time systems with built-in redundancy that work amazingly well. And I know that consumer devices aren’t regulated to meet the same standards, but, maybe they should be?
Question
As we continue our transformation from analog to digital and 2D to 3D virtual worlds, and Brain Computer Interfaces, maybe consumer tech does require regulation.