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The Touch Bar of the MacBook Pro was meant to offer a new kind of interface for owners, something that was placed in lieu of the old function keys. One thing it could do was provide contextual suggestions to users but it looks like the feature has now become a channel for possible cheating.

The Board of Examinees of the State of North Carolina issued a notice to law students that the Touch Bar feature of their MacBook Pro will have to be disabled prior to entry to the Bar Examination site. To avoid any claims that users do not know how to disable it, the notice includes steps on how to go about it. Once disabled, the Touch Bar of the MacBook Pro will only show the standard system functions like media controls.

Aside from the issued notice on the MacBook Pro Touch Bar, ExamSoft will lend a helping hand to the Board of Law Examiners, 9 to 5 Mac reported. The move appends the previous SofTest software meant to block internet files as well as app and file access which could be used to cheat through the exam. Incidentally, it was also ExamSoft that raised the predictive text issue as a possible means of cheating.

The notice issued by the North Carolina state is actually friendlier when compared to other regions. New York employs a stricter stand on the use of devices, banning them entirely. Other states have yet to make their respective announcements though blogger Katherine Silver Kelly claims that the MacBook Pro Touch Bar is also banned in regions like Oklahoma, Massachusetts, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

With the move, it will be interesting if the disabling of the MacBook Pro Touch Bar or banning the machine altogether will be done in other fields. But if it does hold up the integrity of examiners, the protocol seems to be rightfully justified.