Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive details MacBook Pro Touch Bar design process
In a new interview, Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive spoke about the process leading up to the implementation of the Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pro line.
In a conversation with Cnet, Ive primarily discussed the evolution of the Touch Bar as found in the new MacBook Pro over the last two years, and called it "the beginning of a very interesting direction" for the company. Not going into any specific details, Ive claims that the company lived with several different iterations of similar touch input devices for a while, before settling on the Touch Bar as it stands today.
"When we lived on them for a while, sort of pragmatically and day to day, [they] are sometimes less compelling," said Ive. "This is something [we] lived on for quite a while before we did any of the prototypes."
Ive believes that Apple's philosophy in hardware and software development paved the way for the Touch Bar.
"It required a fairly mature software environment, and a fairly mature and sophisticated hardware prototype, to really be able to figure out whether these ideas were valuable or not," said Ive. "You have to prototype to a sufficiently sophisticated level to really figure out whether you're considering the idea, or whether what you're really doing is evaluating how effective a prototype is."
One of the company's prototypes was a "larger, haptic-rich trackpad", which Ive says was the Touch Bar combined with a keyboard -- seemingly very similar to the Optimus keyboard from a few years ago, or the recent rumors about the Sonder e-ink keyboard. The concept was scuttled, at least temporarily, because it didn't appear to be as "compelling" as the company thought it would be.
Ive still believes that a multitouch screen is not the right approach for the Mac, claiming that implementation wasn't useful, or an "appropriate application" of multitouch. Even so, Ive declined to comment on why, because it would put him in a position to talk about potential future products.
"You can become fairly comfortable that you have a design direction that's compelling," declared Ive. "But if you can't work out how you can refine that [without] compromising the final product, you can still undermine a big idea."
In a conversation with Cnet, Ive primarily discussed the evolution of the Touch Bar as found in the new MacBook Pro over the last two years, and called it "the beginning of a very interesting direction" for the company. Not going into any specific details, Ive claims that the company lived with several different iterations of similar touch input devices for a while, before settling on the Touch Bar as it stands today.
"When we lived on them for a while, sort of pragmatically and day to day, [they] are sometimes less compelling," said Ive. "This is something [we] lived on for quite a while before we did any of the prototypes."
Ive believes that Apple's philosophy in hardware and software development paved the way for the Touch Bar.
"It required a fairly mature software environment, and a fairly mature and sophisticated hardware prototype, to really be able to figure out whether these ideas were valuable or not," said Ive. "You have to prototype to a sufficiently sophisticated level to really figure out whether you're considering the idea, or whether what you're really doing is evaluating how effective a prototype is."
One of the company's prototypes was a "larger, haptic-rich trackpad", which Ive says was the Touch Bar combined with a keyboard -- seemingly very similar to the Optimus keyboard from a few years ago, or the recent rumors about the Sonder e-ink keyboard. The concept was scuttled, at least temporarily, because it didn't appear to be as "compelling" as the company thought it would be.
Ive still believes that a multitouch screen is not the right approach for the Mac, claiming that implementation wasn't useful, or an "appropriate application" of multitouch. Even so, Ive declined to comment on why, because it would put him in a position to talk about potential future products.
"You can become fairly comfortable that you have a design direction that's compelling," declared Ive. "But if you can't work out how you can refine that [without] compromising the final product, you can still undermine a big idea."
Comments
This idea was dumb
Apple isn't innovating
Idea is mocked
5 years later the whole industry adopts idea
Everyone forgot they mocked Apple
repeat
This is why I can't wait for Apples A series to catch up to Intel. I don't mind if they have to change the whole infrastructure if it means being years beyond the competition and yearly updates.
I would have saved the macOS name for that.
That being said, Apple is slower these days because they're 10x larger than they were just a few years ago. All companies slow down when they are that big and especially when they are the market leader in the most profitable technology (mobile hardware) in the world.
Can't figure out what else to do with a laptop. "Settles" on marketing gimmick.
Why take it out? Why....?
Very disappointed...
"how many PC applications have even been rewritten away from the mouse? More importantly, with all the innovation and investment now going to mobile, how may ever will? I have a horrible feeling that I'd buy this gorgeous thing, forget the pen in a drawer and waggle the mouse every morning to find the cursor...
Microsoft's approach, especially with the surface studio is to make a splash, be the headline. But more times than not, those headlines don't translate to units sold, which means the product never resonated with people because the technology was something nice to look at but was never one people saw themselves use on a daily basis.
Time will tell, the surface studio may turn out to be the thing that changes the industry to the point that Apple is the one following instead of leading for once. But I'm willing to bet that won't be the case because apple's model of incremental changes and design towards consistency and usability still proven to work.
I agree with the Mac Pro, but the holdup there may be Intel processors. Or maybe they are spending their three years doing a whole new design to counter some of the complains with the initial model. Who knows.
For a 2-in-1 Mac/iPad, how do you see that working? iOS apps running within macOS? That would be cool, but would require a full touch-screen system, and Apple refused to go down that road. Instead, they are researching alternative touch-based interfaces. Or do you want macOS running on a tablet? Bleh!
As for a smaller bezel.. why is that so important to you? For the coolness factor? Is the bezel somehow limiting you, or do you want the largest possible screen on the smallest possible device? The bezel does serve a useful purpose -- holding the device. I'm sure Apple is doing plenty of testing with edge-to-edge screens and waiting until they have everything working perfectly, which requires touch-rejection built into iOS and the touch sensors.
I'll make a prediction right now: more people will own the new MBP and it's so-called gimmicky touch bar than will ever own a Microsoft Surface Studio. Btw, I've seen tweets from people who have tried out the Surface Studio at Microsoft stores say the latency is pretty bad and it's no where close to Apple Pencil and iPad Pro. Of course everyone in the tech press got the memo (Microsoft is more innovative than Apple right now) so they're all singing from the same song book. But we all know which device the hipsters at The Verge will actually own and it's not the $3K Surface Studio.
I'll bet that Apple makes more money in a year of sales of AirPods than MS does off of its entire Surface product line in the same year.
I'm grumpy at Apple for lots of other decisions made related to the new MacBooks but not the Touch Bar.
So if your USB-C or TB 3 cable breaks, your loss is only a few bucks, but if your MagSafe cable breaks, your loss is $79.00 because you need to replace the whole adapter.
You have no ability to think rationally about hardware. You've demonstrated over and over that you're ignorant and distracted by the cheapest and tawdriest of visual gimmicks, like Samsung's Edge and Microsoft's tricks. Read the interview — assuming you can read for comprehension.
Get back to us when you understand why alloy matters when you're machining aluminum, and why PC makers are all trying to make their high-end laptops look MacBook Pros and Airs. If Apple is so slow, why are they being copied time after time? Stop polluting these threads with your idiocy,
Apple needs to balance iOS software capabilities with their hardware in how quickly both are able to advance. People are resistant to change so moving in a controlled manner is likely best. The same multitouch capabilities used on Macs (TouchBar, rumored e-ink keyboard) could very well be used with iOS as well (for when the device is configured to be used like a laptop or desktop).
Just prepare for all the complaining to get louder ...