Am I the only one that is scared at the prospect of losing physical keys for changing volume and brightness? I do this all the time, changing volume up/down during conference calls, adjusting the brightness when working late at night. Can you even map the Touch-bar to have "keys" for these instead of the slider which seems way less precise and direct? Genuinely asking since I'm still on 2014 MBP.
Yes you can have buttons to change volume and brightness. In fact the icons next to the slider are buttons you can tap to lower/increase volume/brightness. Or you can configure them to always show up as buttons without slider.
If you don't mind spending a few bucks on a third-party tool, Better Touch Tool (https://folivora.ai/) will let you map two or three finger swipe gestures to control volume and brightness. This lets you adjust either without having to look at the touch bar and find the virtual button. It's still a slide instead of a press though, which takes a little getting used to.
I'm completely with you. I have the older TouchBar model and every time I use the external Apple keyboard I am so much happier with the physical brightness, music controls and changing volume keys.
For me I'd actually pay to have a model without TouchBar (but with TouchID, which actually is really useful).
