Everything you said is true but it was such a different era and market, sensitive security features for special needs. ThinkPads were designed for entreprise(+military) where everything is bulky and complex, in that regard having to install IBM battalion of tools was just the norm (and mandatory most of the time, they did provide value). The target crowd was also different, users would be trained at work, so it wasn't 'required' to be intuitive and invisible, a mainstream defining constraint, like a home button swipe. Here you have a few billion people probably using it every two days for every little id/money related task that don't wanna think about it (otherwise they'll toss it out).
"Target crowd" is a bit misleading. True, as long as fingerprint sensors were a bit difficult to use, only the ones with a specific need for them took the time and effort to use them. But the same was also the case with previous smartphones, and lots of other technology.
If some company hade made a really good and well integrated fingerprint sensor, it might well have seen more widespread use.
I kinda agree, but still, back then much fewer people needed security compared to nowadays where you have your life in your pocket. It's plausible Packard Bell did provide a very subtle Touch ID button on a cheap laptop and it flopped because nobody cared.
Well, people have their entire lives in their computers as well. You also see the same with touchpads. It's only after Apple pushed multitouch that touchpads have gradually started improving on PCs (many early gestures actually made PC touchpads _worse_ to the point where I had to turn them off).
