You're underestimating Apple's meticulous planning, which has only become more intense in the Cook era. Bad feature/UX or not, each one of those decisions was calculated.

Read this ars quote from 2010 [0]:

>Apple used the small part—one that is not integral to the device’s functionality—to see if the company was capable or producing a custom design to Apple’s specifications. Typically, manufacturers prefer to have at least two sources for parts, so that a supply problem from one supplier won’t halt manufacturing. Since Liquidmetal is only available from one source, Apple needed to make sure the company could deliver.

For Apple Silicon, there was no way they'd make the switch in one go, so they had to figure out a way to hedge that bet. That's what the TouchBar really was, with all its warts and solutions for problems nobody had.

And as someone else in this thread pointed out, the first custom cellular chip wasn't released with a flagship model - they exclusively paired it with the budget iPhone 16e.

Apple is always calculating and hedging.

[0]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2010/08/apple-tested-liquidm...

You're misunderstanding how difficult it is to make major architectural changes to products the way Apple can. One of the ways to do it is to hide the architectural change as something else, something niche, and only when it has survived the fire of deployment there try to scale it up to the full market. It's actually quite genious, and you can expect more of it now that Apple's hardware guru is the chief.

I can't help but wonder if this agentic-via-accessibility angle is the result of this new leadership. If it is, it's a very good sign for Apple, because software and especially the AI gap is Apple's achillies right now.

I liked the TouchBar. There were two problems with it:

1. It replaced the F keys. I suspect pros wouldn’t have complained so loudly if it didn’t. And it was too expensive for the cheaper computers where it may have been more popular.

2. They never changed it. Ok the first version wasn’t a big hit. Other than bringing back the escape key they never did anything. They sent it out to be a hit or to die and gave up there.

Even at the time I remember it was widely cited that the SIM eject tool was a test for their new manufacturing process.

Vision is hilarious as it is more than just a solution looking for a problem. It was also desperately avoiding the current market that exists for it. Anything but games, it seemed.

Interesting - I knew they’d been trying to get off Qualcomm for years, but didn’t realise that they actually managed to do it.

It's not metallic glass. It's an injectable, super strong alloy. You can manufacture things like you're using injection molded plastic.

To be honest, British also has an injectable stainless steel, but its application domain is much more different.

I also am looking forward to Apple smart glasses. I use Meta glasses because thre useful since I'm totally blind. I'd much rather have on device recognission though if possible. I also trust Apple more then Meta. At least I'm technically enclined enough to realize I shouldn't wear them in the bathroom or bedroom. At least when humans look at my AI prompts there maily seeing food boxes or computer bios screens.

Same for me! Both pairs of Metas are now inoperative because I can't get them back to factory reset. Once you pull that little blue tab out of them when they're new, it's GAME OVER.

The hate was because it replaced function keys many people use by tactile touch, without looking. Doing the same on a touch screen is very difficult.

If the bar had been added on top of those, I don't think there would've been the same kind of hate for it.

1) First generation made ESC button a touch button. Aside from ergonomics (or lack of them), at least for me, on a psychological level "abort" button needs to be something you can smash. Also, macOS already had the worst input handling under load, making it virtual button made it worse.

2) While "happy path" on macOS pretty much never requires you to use Fkeys, but my workflow does. Blindly using touch buttons is harder than real buttons.

3) I'm not huge media keys users, but I bet #2 applies here as well.

I liked the touchbar in every other sense. If it was just an addition to an existing keyboard, people wouldn't have hate it[];

[]: At that time it was hard to not be frustrated using mac (butterfly keyboard etc), so touchbar might have gotten more hate than it deserved because of overall frustration.

Also, the Touch Bar seemed to be abandoned as soon as it launched. It only ever launched on the Pro line. There were never any feature updates. They never made it flexible enough for people to customize it.

I still have a personal Touch Bar MBP, and I find it annoying.

My problem is that I lightly rest my hands on the keyboard (including the f keys), and this habit is harmless on most Macs, but inadvertently activates the Touch Bar functions.

I actually like the idea a lot, and would probably love it if it required a little more pressure to activate.

One more on top of others. Many people felt it was a solution in search of a problem. As in, there was no problem i had that it solved. And it was forced on us, in place of something useful. From the start i read that as: This wont be here in a couple years. Which then made it annoying to deal with in the meantime (the hate).

Things that stick around, are generally value adding across a large or complete subset of their users. Touch bar was always niche, and thus always doomed. I think a good counter comparison is Apple VR headsets. For me, i have no use and little interest. But i can see them as a hedge at the very least, or as an enthusiast entrant into an emerging market, where future products in that segment may become interesting. And on top, it doesnt impact me - i can ignore their existence until it becomes useful.

If touch bar were launched like VR, i suspect it would have gotten similar level of dismisals, but less hate.

I didn't like it, and was happy when they got rid of it. But I didn't hate it.

I did hate the butterfly keyboard that was introduced at the same time. Probably Apple's biggest hardware mistake of the past 15 years or so.

Yes, it was an amorphous metal alloy. I knew people from grad school that worked for the company.

They have interesting properties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_51frrQzCYM

Yes.

I have a Sandisk Titanium flash drive which is the first practical application of the alloy, shortly before Apple snapped it.

It's feels solid, not wearing down and pretty robust for what it is. It doesn't get scratches like aluminum alloys.

It's entirely something else.