Apple Expected to Adopt Keyboard With Scissor Mechanism for Upcoming 16-inch MacBook Pro

[ignatius345]

This is comparably quite minor, but I do hope they revisit the "inverted T" layout of arrow keys at the bottom-right. Those little gaps on the scissor switch MacBook keyboards are super helpful in quickly orienting the fingers without looking.

That layout of arrow keys has been a standard on computer keyboards for decades, and for good reason.

But yeah, as soon as the new usable keyboards percolate down to the smaller MacBook models, I'll be in the market for a new Mac laptop for the first time in quite a few years now...

 

[SomeSoftwareGuy]

That old keyboard was one of the reason I have been holding off upgrading my macbook pro.

 

[BootsWalking]

I think the idea they would be fired for allowing this keyboard to be implemented is nonsense. Most likely the number of issues with this keyboard is way less than the tech internet bubble would lead one to believe. But if Apple is doing a redesign (like they usually do every 4-5 years) it only makes sense the keyboard would be included.


Right because Apple only decided to change the keyboard within the past month or so. Or even more ridiculous, Ive decided to leave because the redesigned Macs wouldn’t have a butterfly keyboard. And that’s assuming these guestimates turn out to be correct.

Ah, the ol' "problems are overblown" meme. That's quite a remarkable claim considering Apple just released brand new notebooks with yet another iteration of the keyboard and felt it necessary to include those new laptopsunder their existing four-year extended warranty for keyboard issues. That's quite a step for a problem that is overblown.

 

[Shirasaki]

LOL! The only thing that should have never been removed were optical drives those are still useful the fact that iTunes could have supported a 4K Blu-ray optical drive but they removed the optical drives when the support came.


Really dumb of Apple to think that people just watch everything through streaming.

A couple dozen YouTubers are gonna say otherwise. Plus Netflix, Hulu, and now Disney+, and more.

The painful fact streaming platform won’t accept is that even though optical disc is becoming less used than ever, streaming costs bandwidth, and hi-res contents cost a ton of bandwidth. In contrast, if I get BD loaded with movies, I insert it in BD player, and boom, I can watch movie now, instantly. And I can watch as many times as I want even if streaming platform pulls it off.

You...you still use CDs and/or DVDs? That's silly! Optical drives were cool in the late 90s.

I haven't used any "removable media" for the last 6 years, and haven't noticed it's absence. Previous to that I had an optical drive, but it was included in my PC build out of habit, not necessity.

Back in 2001, I knew a guy who bought a computer without a CD drive. I thought it was crazy, but he claimed it was the future.

Guess what? He was right.

He is right, but optical media will still be around for years to come. It only becomes niche and gradually be phased out of general public attention, much like old ports.

In the meantime, even with 5G, we still cannot Download 50GB of data in 1 second, although 1GB per second would be good enough for a long while.

 

[ike1707]

I plug in USB3.1 and DisplayPort every day, and quite regularly use my HDMI port and SD card reader.

I agree. and I'd throw you another upvote for the Burninator if I could.

 

[lec0rsaire]

Yeah, that’s what people said about that thunderbolt port on your MacBook Pro, USB-C will be replace soon enough. I do agree that having multiple USB-C ports is a good thing, need dual Ethernet? No problem, buy two USB-C adapters and boom you have two or even three if you want to get crazy.

Actually, no. Guess what? USB 4 will be exactly TB3/USB-C! So Apple basically gave us USB 4.0 about 6 years early! Despite all the backlash from those who fear change, Apple has prolonged the longevity of all TB3 Macs simply because of the superior I/O.

I still believe it will take a while for Type A to die but I see it being relegated to less demanding applications like smart TVs.

 

[ibivibiv]

Bring back all the useful ports, while you're at it.

View attachment 849844

Sad to say, but I would buy this boat anchor before I bought a current gen model. It looks like it could dissipate heat better and wouldn't throttle. Just saying.

 

[lec0rsaire]

A couple dozen YouTubers are gonna day otherwise. Plus Netflix, Hulu, and now Disney+, and more.

The painful fact streaming platform won’t accept is that even though optical disc is becoming less used than ever, streaming costs bandwidth, and hi-res contents cost a ton of bandwidth. In contrast, if I get BD loaded with movies, I insert it in BD player, and boom, I can watch movie now, instantly. And I can watch as many times as I want even if streaming platform pulls it off.

He is right, but optical media will still be around for years to come. It only becomes niche and gradually be phased out of general public attention, much like old ports.

In the meantime, even with 5G, we still cannot Download 50GB of data in 1 second, although 1GB per second would be good enough for a long while.

Optical media isn’t going anywhere but it will only be used by home theater enthusiasts and game consoles for the foreseeable future. It will be the only way to have lossless audio until 300 Mbit/s connections are standard everywhere. CDs will be a total niche product for audiophiles unfortunately. Best Buy doesn’t even sell them anymore!

Why? Because of copy protection (HDCP) over HDMI and the fact that the price of discs falls very quickly with economies of scale. Even the large BD-100s. Discs are much cheaper than flash drives which is another logically way of shipping movies if copy protection were possible.

As for 4K HDR video on computers, streaming will be the primary delivery mechanism. HEVC compression is really damn good. I have tons of 4K discs and I’ve gotta tell you that from normal viewing distances on a large OLED, the difference is nearly imperceptible. Both with iTunes/Netflix/Vudu as well as 20-30 GB HEVC rips.

 

[Cole Slaw]

Poor Jony Ive (of "Lovefrom Jony" fame) will be gutted.

 

[lec0rsaire]

It’s very possible that Apple sells the current 15” alongside the bezel less 15” aka 16” while asking for a $400 premium for the base 16”.

The only way Apple could ask much more money is with an OLED display. Unfortunately OLEDs are a terrible choice for computer displays. Why? Because desktop UIs have too much static stuff. The menu bar, the dock, web browsers running all day long with lots of static elements. Burn in would occur in no time. High quality, high peak brightness OLED panels are also very expensive.

There is currently no solution to the blue subpixel problem. They degrade really fast.

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

I hope to God this is true, and that the Macs look like the render.

EDIT:
My 2011 17" now necessitates a shell script I wrote to start up while avoiding the discrete graphics card because of the graphics issues those models were prone to.

Hopefully I can keep it going long enough to redo my entire Apple infrastructure in 2020 (2011/12 iMacs and MBPs) and move to just one of these and an iPhone.

I'm too lazy to learn iPadOS "workarounds" required for someone with "PC" muscle-memory.

I don't want rounded corners on my Mac screen. Noooooo thank you. (nor do I want a touchbar, or munted arrow keys and I think not having a forward facing camera would be a mistake).

 

[BGPL]

This has been harder for Apple to tackle than the charging mat.

 

[Shirasaki]

Optical media isn’t going anywhere but it will only be used by home theater enthusiasts and game consoles for the foreseeable future. It will be the only way to have lossless audio until 300 Mbit/s connections are standard everywhere. CDs will be a total niche product for audiophiles unfortunately. Best Buy doesn’t even sell them anymore!

Why? Because of copy protection (HDCP) over HDMI and the fact that the price of discs falls very quickly with economies of scale. Even the large BD-100s. Discs are much cheaper than flash drives which is another logically way of shipping movies if copy protection were possible.

As for 4K HDR video on computers, streaming will be the primary delivery mechanism. HEVC compression is really damn good. I have tons of 4K discs and I’ve gotta tell you that from normal viewing distances on a large OLED, the difference is nearly imperceptible. Both with iTunes/Netflix/Vudu as well as 20-30 GB HEVC rips.

Fair point. I am perfectly ok with CD being a niche product. With that being said, JB Hifi, Target and Kmart still sells CD and DVD and BD around Australia, and vinyl as well. Just a week ago, I bought a classical music CD from an exhibition. So yeah.

As for HEVC, personally I won’t notice some huge differences once resolution pasts 1080P anyways, so 2K or 4K is only cool to have, as the final quality can only be as good as the source. However I do appreciate the huge space saving on HEVC.

 

[femike]

I actually like the low travel & larger keys of butterfly keyboard as I find it a much better for accuracy.
But what I don't like and is unacceptable is the reliability issues.

 

[smirking]

Interesting, thanks for that. I do always wonder how bad the horror stories are. We get to hear about the bad things, but not the ones that are fine.

The keyboard has some issues to be sure and I'm saying this as someone who really likes them, it's just not as massive of an issue as half of MacRumors believes. It doesn't long to find people repeating phrases like, "it's not a matter of if, but when your keyboard will fail" and that just hasn't been anything close to my experiences. If every laptop's keyboard was bound to fail, I think you'd be reading about this EVERYWHERE and not just in tech-geek blog and news sites.

Nobody outside of Apple really knows the full story, but as a keyboard nut, my hunch is that it was mostly a manufacturing issue that affected some batches. Outside of that, you can add on a healthy percentage of "normal failures" that happen to every manufactured product, but doesn't typically get interpreted as part of a massive fail when there isn't an undercurrent of expectation that everything that crops up is a direct relation to the thing you read about on the Internets.

I had a 2016 that had a half dozen jams that lasted a few days each. It only happened intermittently in its first year and went away entirely. I didn't do anything to bring on the jams. They just happened. When they stopped happening, I was actually mistreating it intentionally because I wanted to score a new battery. I've had a 2018 for half a year now. No problem in the slightest and no extraordinary measures were taken with it. I work a lot and eat when I'm at my laptop and I don't even own a can of compressed air.

 

[Spectrum]

All we need now is MagSafe and ditching the touchbar, and maybe, just possibly, I might be comfortable in blowing £3000 of grant money on one of these...

 

[Naaaaak]

If only the 16 inch model gets a good keyboard, it will be quite telling:

Keyboards are a pro-level feature only offered on the top-end. Everyone else is a pleb.

 

[motulist]

It would be objectively terrible from a Dev perspective. There are tons of apps right now that would have to be "fixed" so that curved corners didn't cut off content and this would lead to everyone not using a new curved screen to have stupid wasted space at the corners of their apps. Also as a developer I would want to be able to see how my apps/web page looked for 99.9% of the people I am developing for who will not have a curved screen laptop.

Not a big deal on a 2ndary device like an iPad but having a laptop which is meant to be the primary machine for a wide range of users have such a limitation is a huge mistake.

I think you're right about everything except for it not being a big deal on an iPad or iPhone. Rounded corners on the new iPad pro is is the main reason why I didn't buy one.

 

[DanBig]

No

Switching it all USB-c was one of the smartest things Apple has done in a very long time. I have an older 2011 17" MBP that is stuck with crappy ports that are no longer very useful like FW800 and USB2. USB-c allows the MBP to adapt to any new future connection technology and prolong the life of an otherwise perfectly good computer.

The CPU and RAM in my 2011 is perfectly fine but the ports and horrifically slow GPU with no support for Metal really kills its usefulness today. If it had all TB3 ports I could have added a eGPU and all the USB 3.1 I could ever want to keep a perfectly good system usable.

You can buy a pair of USB-c to USB3.1 adapters for $6.

Us working Pro's don't want to fiddle looking though our bags to find that dam dongle! And if its forgotten what then?

We need onboard USB-A ports (2) We still want the USB-C (4) But the rear two need to be setup to support a MagSafe plug thats flush with the case. We also need SD card support and Ethernet.

Its all within the PCH logic! This is not a big hurdle to do. Remember Function over Form!

 

[LuciusWrong]

It’s very possible that Apple sells the current 15” alongside the bezel less 15” aka 16” while asking for a $400 premium for the base 16”.

The only way Apple could ask much more money is with an OLED display. Unfortunately OLEDs are a terrible choice for computer displays. Why? Because desktop UIs have too much static stuff. The menu bar, the dock, web browsers running all day long with lots of static elements. Burn in would occur in no time. High quality, high peak brightness OLED panels are also very expensive.

There is currently no solution to the blue subpixel problem. They degrade really fast.

Why does it seem that im the only one suggesting that Apple could introduce a CHEAPER version of a macbook?

A recent 16" rumor specified LCD display, dispelling previous hopes and rumors of an OLED display. If Apple is adding a non-IPS panel to the line-up, the price would drop.

Making the display with a slightly different size and pixel count indicates a change in display technology.

Im not a display nerd, so what are the "LCD" options that are there? Isnt the currwnt IPS panels about the best? So with little room for improvement, it seems most likely they are going to something cheaper. But God help us if they try a TN display in pursuit of a "gaming" macbook!

 

[Zdigital2015]

Actually, no. Guess what? USB 4 will be exactly TB3/USB-C! So Apple basically gave us USB 4.0 about 6 years early! Despite all the backlash from those who fear change, Apple has prolonged the longevity of all TB3 Macs simply because of the superior I/O.

I still believe it will take a while for Type A to die but I see it being relegated to less demanding applications like smart TVs.

USB-A cannot die fast enough...I am in the process of divesting myself of Thunderbolt 1/2 and USB-A where it makes sense...I will still have some use for it, but as long as I can get high quality replacement cables, USB-C is the path forward. For the supposedly forwarding thinking’s people here in these forums, the amount of complaining about the USB-A has enough potential material for someone to write their Master’s thesis.

 

[steshaw]

That is 3072x1920

 

[fredm2308]

EDIT:
My 2011 17" now necessitates a shell script I wrote to start up while avoiding the discrete graphics card because of the graphics issues those models were prone to.

Hello,

How did you accomplish using the Intel graphics card as booting graphics.
Have same problem. AMD graphics chip dead. Get only vertical stripes.

I’ve look on line for answers on how to boot up with Intel graphics chip only but haven’t been successful.

Would you please share your methodology with me so I can get my late 2011 17” MacBook Pro bootable again. I have a mid-2010 17” MacBook Pro with a NVidia graphics chip which I prefer. This computer still works but only has two cores activated and only FireWire connection.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could share with me how you got your 2011 17” MacBook Pro to boot using Intel graphics chip.

Thank you very much.

Fred

 

[duervo]

I like the curved edges from an aesthetic standpoint, but I get your point.

Any intrusion into the screen is unnecessary and or undesirable. I feel the notch is the worse offender, tho.

The mock-up is missing a notch. Gonna need one for that webcam/faceID hardware that people seem to want.

 

[smirking]

Us working Pro's don't want to fiddle looking though our bags to find that dam dongle! And if its forgotten what then?

That's an easy question. If you're a pro, you don't forget.

You create checklists to prevent that from happening. You program alarms to remind you. You refresh your gear so you have a fully compatible set of gear. You pack extra adapters just in case. If you're a pro, I expect you to have thought out the situations you'll be in and prepare accordingly. I don't expect pros to complain just because change is a hassle to deal with.

I still carry a VGA dongle because I never know when I'll run into a situation in which my only external projection option is a VGA projector and yes, that ancient VGA dongle has come in handy before. In an odd quirk of the people who I deal with, I actually use that VGA dongle more often than I use an HDMI one.