MacBook Pro Touch Bar lets users skip through YouTube ads

The Touch Bar in Apple’s new MacBook Pro may have met with mixed reviews so far, but there’s one group it is finding favor with: people who absolutely hate having to watch compulsory YouTube ads.

First spotted by users on Reddit, at present the fancy new Touch Bar lets users scrub through otherwise unskippable ads so you can start watching videos straight away.

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“In Safari, the touchbar [sic] will pop up a scrubbing control whenever a video begins to play,” Redditor RomansFiveEight writes. “Amazingly, you can use that to scrub THROUGH an ad, even a non-skippable 30 second pre-roll ad; and begin your video right away!”

Of course, buying a MacBook Pro — which started arriving for early adopter customers this week — for this reason alone would be a bit short-sighted, since it will almost certainly vanish in a future update. (Not to mention the fact that there are other adblock software services that will do the same thing for a whole lot less money!)

Then again, since Apple previously opened up the floodgates to official adblockers on iOS, maybe this is yet another strike by the good folks in Cupertino against an ad-driven revenue model.

Source: Reddit

Via: Apple Insider

Luke Dormehl

Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.