MacBook Pro Touch Bar is barred from NC bar exams

Yes, it is a pun disaster in the making. When Apple designed the hi-tech Touch Bar for its higher end MacBook Pros, it probably didn't imagine the insane things people would do with them. Like playing a round of first-person shooter Doom on it. It probably also never imagined it would be used as a tool for cheating. And yet that it exactly the presumption that states across the country are making in issuing announcements that instruct bar exam takers to disable their MacBook Pro's feature.

The Touch Bar is intended to be a more configurable alternative to the Function keys that it also physical replaces. Its configuration and functionality is mostly left up to the software that's currently on the screen. But as experience has shown us, all it takes is the right tool and the right mind to turn it into something else.

We've seen the Touch Bar used and misused for so many things, many of them quite unreasonable or impractical. Many of them involve playing a short game, like Doom, or an "endless runner" Pac-man. Those same hacks, however, could also be used for less innocent purposes, like inconspicuously displaying answers to an exam.

That is what the state of North Carolina fears, which is why it is instructing exam takers who own the late 2016 MacBook Pro to disable the Touch Bar prior to taking the exam. Proctors might still opt to individually check each MacBook Pro to ensure compliance.

Other states, however, are not taking any chances. In California, for example, this particular MacBook Pro is banned outright, citing embedded functions that could be "problematic for use" during exams. Consider how bar exams are pretty big deals, takers should probably take the warning seriously.

VIA: Apple Insider