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16-Inch MacBook Pro Returns to Pre-2016 Arrow Key Layout, Sticks With 720p Webcam and 802.11ac Wi-Fi

ignatius345 said:
Anybody out there still defending the butterfly keyboard: you were wrong. Apology accepted.

(Been waiting a long time to type that, and it feels great.)
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It’s not so much defending the design as perfect as it was playing the voice of reason for users claiming a hardware design flaw and an immediate recall of all butterfly keyboards should happen immediately.

It was clear the issue wasn’t urgent enough to take any sort of rash or immediate action.

Bottom line, it was a vocal minority and Apple correctly waited to improve the design in the next iteration, as I predicted.

All of you screaming your head off were the wrong ones.
 
btrach144 said:
No it’s not. Stop spreading fake news. 45w 9th gen chips don’t have WiFi 6 (AX). Apple would have had to implement a 3rd party controller.

You’ll have to wait another year for 10th gen chips.
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I think it's somebody else here spreading misinformation: the processor itself has nothing to do with WiFi. There is a separate chip for that available from Intel as well and Apple could've used it in this laptop.
 
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Baymowe335 said:
It’s not so much defending the design as perfect as it was playing the voice of reason for users claiming a hardware design flaw and an immediate recall of all butterfly keyboards should happen immediately.

It was clear the issue wasn’t urgent enough to take any sort of rash or immediate action.

Bottom line, it was a vocal minority and Apple correctly waited to improve the design in the next iteration, as I predicted.

All of you screaming your head off were the wrong ones.
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Having upgraded from a 2015 MacBook Pro to a 2019 mbp, I admit the butterfly keyboard took some getting used to, but now I actually love it and i’m typing faster than I ever did with the previous keyboard. Which was a superb keyboard as well, don’t get me wrong. At the time it was the best keyboard I’d used on a laptop. I’m prone to making more mistakes on a 2015 now and it’s a strange feeling typing on a keyboard with more travel.

Point being, I actually am one of those who loves the butterfly keyboard on the 2019 mbp.
 
Baymowe335 said:
It’s not so much defending the design as perfect as it was playing the voice of reason for users claiming a hardware design flaw and an immediate recall of all butterfly keyboards should happen immediately.

It was clear the issue wasn’t urgent enough to take any sort of rash or immediate action.

Bottom line, it was a vocal minority and Apple correctly waited to improve the design in the next iteration, as I predicted.

All of you screaming your head off were the wrong ones.
Click to expand...
There were plenty on these forums trying to "convince" us that there was no issue with the Butterfly keyboard and that it was a very limited issue. Turns out they were wrong, thank god there are some people out there that are not afraid to call out companies when they make a bad design decision.
 
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It’s so hard. Apple finally listened on the keyboard, thermals, and battery life. And price. Finally.

This should be a day of celebration.

So why nickel-and-dime on camera and WiFi? Is the 5 bucks of margin really worth the continued brand damage that modern Macs are compromised devices?

Anyway, I want to focus on the positive. They fixed the dreaded keyboard and thermals. And took a half-step on the useless Touch Bar. This is a good day. And I’m looking forward to these changes coming to the rest of the Mac line.
 
torana355 said:
There were plenty on these forums trying to "convince" us that there was no issue with the Butterfly keyboard and that it was a very limited issue. Turns out they were wrong, thank god there are some people out there that are not afraid to call out companies when they make a bad design decision.
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It may not have been optimal, but Apple would have reacted instantly if it were some kind of hardware failure or even issue that was universally hated. It just wasn’t as bad as people believed.

Apple certainly recognized SOME issue, but they simply corrected it on their own timeline.
 
myscrnnm said:
The arrow keys look horrible.
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The arrow keys look beautiful to these eyes - and I won't be looking at them, I'll be cheerfully hitting them with my fingers without looking. That's why the inverted-T is such a win. Jony Ive was giving us things that looked beautiful. They weren't as usable.

I particularly like this quote from John Gruber on DaringFireball:

What Apple emphasized is simply that they listened to the complaints from professional MacBook users. They recognized how important the Escape key is to developers — they even mentioned Vim by name during a developer tool demo.​
 
Waiting to see what Apple does with ARM in the next two years. Intel is holding back Apple in my opinion.
 
802.11ac for wireless networking, 720p webcam,going back to the older cheaper keyboard and asking for a higher price. It's a nice racket apple has going. Talk about phoning it in.....another dud for Tim.
 
coolfactor said:
A large audience of Mac laptops are developers and sys admins, many of whom are die-hard keyboard junkies, using command-line interfaces to interact with the local system and remote systems (ie. servers, etc.) and the Esc key is absolutely essential! A `Pro` machine needs to properly support the Esc key.

The inverted-T arrow keys is an improvement over their misstep from the last layout.

I agree that losing the MagSafe connector was a step backwards, but we also have significant battery improvements from when it first came out, so I see it as a give-and-take situation.
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I know, I was just reflecting on how these things are standard on all computers except the previous generation MBP... And now the "big deal" is all about how Apple re-added some thing they never should have removed in the first place. Remove a much loved feature for 3 years, and then add it back and everyone goes nuts!
 
nvmls said:
Pretty decent update considering previous ones. Would have liked:
...
-More powerful GPU
...
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It's got the most powerful AMD GPU available. Only Nvidia has something faster, and including an Nvidia product was always extremely unlikely to happen.

ThisBougieLife said:
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Webcam technology has not improved. The lid would need to be much thicker to accomodate a better webcam or a FaceID module.
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FaceID can't be integrated into the current display since the lid is extremely thin (several times thinner than the FaceID module in iPhones/iPads). It may eventually come in a few years, but definitely impossible to do with current technology. 1080p FaceTime camera would be nice, though.
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It's really not impossible. They just need to design the lid with space for the camera (for 1080p/2160p) or for the Face ID sensors. There didn't use to be space in phones for fancy cameras either, and phone makers started designing phones to accommodate the better cameras.

edgonzalez32 said:
The Verge and MKBHD have both said 1mm, not .5mm.
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I understand it as 1mm key travel, and an increase of key spacing of 0.5mm.

MacFather said:
Anyone worried about the inclusion of the T2 Security Chip?
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No...why?

theluggage said:
So what? Its a webcam fixed in a laptop lid. Ergonomically, it is useless for anything other than video conferencing, and I don't want, or need, to see other people's nose hairs in 4k resolution.
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But 1080p nose hairs would be nice. As would improved dynamic range and improved low light performance. There are plenty of possible camera improvements that don't require a resolution increase.
 
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While I can nitpick things like the trackpad being a bit too big for my liking, or the lack of SD, overall this is a step in the right direction. With this and the new Mac Pro, they are starting to get some good hardware in again.

Now I do hope they remove the TouchBar or offer a model without it at some point, it would definitely make it cheaper.
 
So in 9/10 years we've only gained an extra 4hrs in battery (compared to the 17") and still no return of Magsafe, this is one beast I don't want to drag accidentally off a desk, despite the price it would've been a buy (base 17' was £1799 in 2011).
 
McScooby said:
So in 9/10 years we've only gained an extra 4hrs in battery (compared to the 17") and still no return of Magsafe, this is one beast I don't want to drag accidentally off a desk, despite the price it would've been a buy (base 17' was £1799 in 2011).
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My 17" got dragged off a table by the power cable, despite MagSafe - and that was a brick compared to the current MacBook line. Maybe as laptops get lighter, MagSafe proved less effective...?
 
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