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."

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66 Comments

cali 3494 comments · 10 Years

About 8 years ago

And the routine repeats:

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

sog35 said:

Look at Surface
Look at Macbook
Make sure Macbook does not look like a copy of Surface

It blows my mind why Apple has not made these products yet:

1. A true 2 in 1 Mac/iPad. The tech is there to do it already.

2. An iPhone with smaller bezel. Come on. Even POS china companies can do this

3. New MacPro

No idea why Apple is slow now days

I believe Apple is innovating faster than their partners. The weakest links are the chip and 3rd party manufacturers.

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.

slurpy 5388 comments · 15 Years

sog35 said:

Look at Surface
Look at Macbook
Make sure Macbook does not look like a copy of Surface

It blows my mind why Apple has not made these products yet:

1. A true 2 in 1 Mac/iPad. The tech is there to do it already.

2. An iPhone with smaller bezel. Come on. Even POS china companies can do this

3. New MacPro

No idea why Apple is slow now days

How many times a second do you hit the refresh button to get the 1st troll post for every article? How do you manage to eat/drink/go to the washroom in between, or take your meds? I'm honestly curious. You need help. Stop worrying about Apple and start worrying about your own mental health, clearly you've lost it. You're delusional if you think you have a clue about Apple's design process. You've proven time and time again that you're as clueless as you are unstable. What part of the fact that MAcOS is not meant for a tablet and iOS is not meant for a laptop form factor do you not comprehend? Your rabid desire to have Apple chase the strategies of companies that are doing infinitely worse than they are is disturbing.

wigby 692 comments · 15 Years

sog35 said:

Look at Surface
Look at Macbook
Make sure Macbook does not look like a copy of Surface

It blows my mind why Apple has not made these products yet:

1. A true 2 in 1 Mac/iPad. The tech is there to do it already.

2. An iPhone with smaller bezel. Come on. Even POS china companies can do this

3. New MacPro

No idea why Apple is slow now days

You are the reason Google and Samsung have customers. Just because technology can accomplish something doesn't mean it should be done. In fact it rarely means it should be done. Apple's focus and ability to say "no" is still their greatest strength. It's easy to say "yes" to everything that demos well or looks cool.

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.