[sjwright]

My guess would be that such specific historical strengths are local manifestations of a more general instinct that is nurtured within a company culture. This instinct would result in similar behaviour when presented with a similar situation — for better or worse.

I also suspect that a company like Apple would have a portion of employees that stick around for the very long term, who have been there since early days and can act as the company's institutional memory.

Specifically in this instance though, it's pretty clear that Apple is going down this road because they've already started going down this road. This is all just straightforward technology and skill reuse: the touch bar is pretty much an Apple Watch in a different package.