Apple unveiled its new MacBook Touch Bar last week, and many were quick to compare it to Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon adaptive keys from 2014. While Lenovo scrapped its touch keys after feedback due to the poor implementation, Microsoft has been investigating the use of adaptive keyboards for more than 15 years.

A concept for adaptive hardware began back in 1999, with an idea that PCs could display action keys and hide other parts of the keyboard based on context. Steven Bathiche, director of research in Microsoft’s applied sciences group, spent years investigating keyboards that changed their function keys and actions based on applications on the screen. While most of the work was primitive compared to today’s touchscreen interfaces, a…

Continue reading…