
Jony Ive talks about putting the Apple 'touch' on the Macbook Pro - dsego
https://www.cnet.com/special-reports/jony-ive-talks-about-putting-the-apple-touch-on-the-macbook-pro/
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riprowan
Wow, that ended awkwardly:

> When we were exploring multitouch many, many years ago, we were trying to
> understand the appropriate application and opportunities for [it]. We just
> didn’t feel that [the Mac] was the right place for that…. It wasn’t
> particularly useful or an appropriate application of multitouch.

> Because?

> For a bunch of practical reasons. It’s difficult to talk [laughs] without
> going into a lot of details that puts me starting to talk about things that
> we are working on. I don’t really want to talk much more about it.

The politics behind this must be mind-bending.

In the earliest days of touch computing, Apple and Microsoft each bet the farm
on two different strategies. Apple spun off a new product line based on iOS
while Microsoft worked to integrate touch into the existing laptop / desktop
OS.

Microsoft's difficulty shoehorning Windows onto a phone-sized device meant
that Apple's phone products were always superior (though MS did turn out a few
good devices along the way). However they have finally integrated touch into
Windows in a way that is starting to transform the product.

The critical issue here is that now both companies feel the bind of their
strategies. Apple now has to double-down on its decision not to put
touchscreens on Macs. There's absolutely no technical reasons the Mac team
can't integrate a touchscreen into a Mac - hell, it's probably easier than
getting one to work in Windows. The only thing stopping them now is politics,
and the original design decision, which has some merit (a touch-enabled 12"
Macbook might make sense, but a touch-enabled 27" or larger iMac? C'mon.)

It's political because there now exist two different power centers within
Apple that are not really integrable and their existence is dependent on Macs
not having touchscreens.

Now it's just a question of which strategy works best.

As a matter of fact I don't have a strong opinion on this, but a few years ago
I bet that, _if_ Microsoft could actually bring touch to Windows in a way that
_really_ worked, they'd win for the very reason that Apple would be
structurally unable to copy it. [1]

[1] [http://riprowan.com/windows-8-vs-ipad-advantage-
microsoft/](http://riprowan.com/windows-8-vs-ipad-advantage-microsoft/)

