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Comment by jp555 | Hacker News Reader

Bret Victor tweeted that the TouchBar took 8 years of work to go from conception to production. https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/791767756928462848

You sure it was a reaction to MS?

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Yes, but that can also mean that during that it was shelved as a bad idea only to be revived as a scrambled attempt to have a one-more-thing moment.

An 8 year release process lines up with the release of touchscreen-enabled windows 7 and 8. Sure, they may have been investigating it before the windows release, but the choice to produce this hamfisted feature, rather than a touchscreen, still looks like a competitive reaction.

Many things take lots of time to develop, and lots of things never make it into an actual release.

EDIT: khaledtaha's comment above sounds even more plausible, give the strategy Apple currently appears to be pursuing.

Steve Jobs: "I'm as proud of the things I have done as the things I have not". Jobs would not have brought this version of TouchBar to market; not a chance.[1]

[1] My source is my personal opinion and anecdotal. If I'm not unimpeachably correct in this assertion you should downvote; there is no possible means to prove the assertion so only judgement can decide the validity of my claim. While I had met Jobs and had multiple run-ins with him in Palo Alto (I was an avid walker and lived on Ramona for several years), I never knew him well on an intra-personal level.

It doesn't matter what Jobs would've done. It's a different Apple now. Also "Never ask what I would do. Just do what's right." Tim, Jonny or whoever clearly thought the Touch Bar was "right".

You never knew him well on a personal level. An intra-personal level would mean that you were stuck in the same body, like Being John Malkovich.

lol whoops interpersonal then?

If you need a massive disclaimer at the end of your comment explaining that something you expressed as a fact shouldn't be treated as a fact what's the point? Jobs made plenty of bad product decisions, some much worse than the touch bar.

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