Doom blasts onto MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar

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You can now play DOOM on the Touch Bar.
You can now play DOOM on the Touch Bar.
Photo: Defractive b3ll/YouTube

The jury is still out on whether the Touch Bar will become a useful tool, but one clever coder has already discovered that it’s absolutely terrible for playing video games on.

The Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pro is officially the latest absurd piece of tech to run Doom. Apple’s guidelines specifically bans games from running on the Touch Pad but that didn’t stop a developer from porting it onto the narrow screen that’s only 60 pixels heigh.

Check it out:

[contextly_auto_sidebar] Even though the Touch Bar is a technically a screen, Apple only wants developers to treat it like a dynamic keyboard.

Human interface guidelines for macOS specifically state:

“The Touch Bar functions as an input device, not a secondary display. The user may glance at the Touch Bar to locate or use a control, but their primary focus is the main screen. The Touch Bar shouldn’t display alerts, messages, scrolling content, static content, or anything else that commands the user’s attention or distracts from their work on the main screen.”

Enforcing those guidelines will be tough for Apple though. Unlike on iOS device, Mac users can install apps from outside of the App Store, even if they’re not approved by Apple.

After watching Doom on Touch Bar, it’s hard to see why anyone would want to game on it. This certainly isn’t the last time we’ll see Touch Bar games though.

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