According to a news report, the Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro might have been an idea or, more specifically, the thought child of Microsoft.
Huh? What?
This apparently dates back to 1999, when Microsoft came up with the concept of a Touch Bar. According to ‘The Verge’, Steven Bathiche, Director of Research in the Applied Sciences Group at Microsoft, spent a long time doing research in the field of keyboards with changing functionalities. In other words, he was working on an ‘adaptive keyboard.
The Verge publication wrote, “While most of the work was primitive compared to today’s touchscreen interfaces, a lot of the concepts behind Apple’s MacBook Touch Bar were investigated by Microsoft’s research teams”.
Microsoft’s project was ultimately finalized in 2009. Sadly, this research did not go any further because the company was not in the business of hardware back then. This was also speculated to be one of the reasons behind Steve Ballmer falling out with Bill Gates.
It should come as no surprise that many companies tried to beat Apple with some of their innovative products. But most of them weren’t good enough to knock Apple off its feet. In the process of trying to overtake Apple, many companies made blunders. One such company was Lenovo, which came up with the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultrabook laptop. It hit the market in 2014 and claimed to have the adaptive keyboard that Apple is offering now.
But, unfortunately, a spokesperson said that the integration of the adaptive experience was one step ahead of its time. The technology was also lacking compatibility with business customers. So their product did not do well in the market despite being so innovative. There is something called timing, I guess.
The integration of the adaptive keyboard is a positive step towards innovation and uniqueness. Along with the positive feedback that Apple got from its users, the adaptive keyboard, in reality, has proven to be just as appealing for business customers.
Ultimately, the goal of a successful tech company is not to come up with a brilliant idea; it is to implement the tech in a sensible manner that fits the requirements of the user.
This also does not mean that we belittle the efforts of Microsoft or Lenovo who came up with the idea of a Touch Bar. But trying to beat Apple to the Touch Bar isn’t exactly easy and I doubt if any other company could have done it with so much finesse.
