My work gave me a Mac with this. I absolutely hated it - constantly triggering random things I didn't want or need and apparently something about the wiring caused the physical keyboard to fail prematurely.
Fortunately we've moved on from those dark days. I still have to use a Mac, but at least there's no touch bar.
The part of that book I remember after all these years is that at one point his parents were like "fine" and moved in with him. I read it when I was young enough to not realize it was fictitious, but that part always seemed odd to me.
I didn't know (until I opened your wiki link just now) that there were sequels.