MS does display a strong desire to tackle this segment. They had the balls to present the Surface Studio literally days before the MacWorld keynote, expecting Apple to under-deliver, at least as far as creatives are concerned. Every single demo of the tilted screen, the stylus/touch interface, the dial, speak directly to creatives in a positive manner.
Bingo. They knew Apple had gotten complacent, and they knew they had a great product, and they had the courage to trust they had the upper hand, much like Jobs used to do. And, as you say, the balls to launch at the time when it was going to have the greatest impact, win or lose, on both companies. A very focused presentation, and a convincing one. Clearly, this is not the MS we're used to, and the competition has just started for real.
On the flip side, during the MBP reveal, even the Adobe rep on stage was struggling to showhow the touch bar actually helps Photoshop workflow that wasn't already possible with keyboard shortcuts, which every seasoned pro probably knows them all.
Presumably because the touch bar, though an interesting concept, isn't really all that helpful. Jobs outlined this some time ago, how the keyboard area is something you use by muscle memory. TB is the antithesis of that, being dynamic, visual, obscured by your fingers and lacking any of the tactile guidance you've learned to rely on as a touch typist. (Predictive typing is probably useful for hunt and peck, but the reason we have it on cell phones is to compensate for the lack of a proper keyboard, not because it's inherently fast.)
There is another modality that suits the touch bar, however, which is visual interaction, based on hand-eye coordination. This requires an unobstructed view of the hands and what they're interacting with, such as on a touch screen. It's very useful in some contexts, and very useful to the non-pro segment, as well. But the TB is, again, the antithesis of that, as its visibility is low due to its placement, it offers little real estate to work on, and it's being conceptualized as a keyboard element, as well as cluttered with controls that -do- belong on a keyboard.
I could see enlarging the trackpad further and turning it into a full featured multitouch secondary display. That might have some potential. I suspect a lot of potential. But it would also be more expensive, among other things, and would require a lot of development to mature into something to put on a product. Especially an already expensive premium product that's weighed down with expectations.
If I were in charge of the process that led to the TB, my approach would have been to launch a revised Magic Trackpad, even larger, featuring a high resolution OLED display surface and pencil support, as a seperate product to be used as a testbed for further development, but functional out of the box and incentivized with the pencil. Update some apps for it, throw in useful widgets/dock elements on there, work on polishing the way it interacts with the system, put great APIs over there. Then let that mature until it's ready for prime time and add it to the MBP generation after that, expanding it further to cover the entire area below the keyboard if the cost/benefit allows for it.
'Course, that's just my top-of-my-head naive idea of how it could've been done. Got no experience with this stuff.
The Surface pro/book lines also are beating the iPad Pros like they are nothing. The ability to run desktop class applications on a tablet is a huge productivity advantage. And Apple keeps giving excuses on how touch interface doesn't work for OS X, which is not even the point.
Yeah, the SP4 was nice in that regard. And the pen for it, almost as good as the pencil, and with an eraser (my number one request for the pencil, other than being supported on more devices than just the iPad Pro). Frankly, the SP4 was a computer, not just a tablet. True two in one. Would've loved to see it with macOS or iOS as a dual boot option. Except, noisy SSDs are a dealbreaker for me.
In 2 or 3 years I can see the Surface line up taking center stage, right now the products are in infancy / refinement process with only a few technical barriers that only takes time to break. Apple on the other hand will need to do the impossible: take their heads out of their arses.
Surface is an experiment, and holds its own against finished products, which is promising. Much like how Google Pixel, the first in-house product, went up against serious long term refined competition and didn't get KO'd in the first round. Really stunning. Refined and polished, they will be impressive, and force Apple to step up their own game. Maybe that's what it takes. Hit the wallet, make them hungry again. I dunno.
I'm actually liking the tMBP without touch bar, and am excited about the ports change, except I think they should've kept the SD card (harder to replace and easier to do well internally) and included some legacy ports until the update (by then, the problem will be resolved, and the timeline would've avoided the current situation of every product being sold out due to people switching all at the same time). Maybe not launched with broken HDMI support. Waited to get the full battery capacity in there, rather than rushing for the Q4 sale season. Perhaps a keyboard that won't get me thrown out of the library for being loud. Upgradeable RAM and SSD would've been nice, too, but hey. What was I saying again? Oh, yes. Love it. Not a peep from the SSD. Just adore it.
