Kuo: Apple to Use New Scissor Switch Keyboard in Future MacBooks, Starting With 2019 MacBook Air Refresh

[cmaier]

Most people don’t have keyboard problems. Apple’s sold 25+ million, how many of those have problems?

It’s interesting (to me anyway) that some users report multiple occurrences, while others have had no problems whatsoever. That leads me to think it’s a defective part/process issue or a user issue (or both).

It’s not a user issue. I’ve had 7 different MacBooks, pros, and airs over the years. Only the butterfly keyboards on my wife’s MacBook and my MacBook Pro have ever given me troubles. I don’t eat near them, I always carry them in a sleeve, etc. I’ve had multiple keys go bad on my two machines with butterfly keyboards. One was “fixable” with compressed air. The other was not, and has had multiple keys go bad.

 

[naturalstar]

Great news! Hopefully the thermal issue is also addressed. That concerned me more. I didn’t keep the 2018 MBP long enough to experience any keyboard issues (kinda liked the low travel actually) because of how hot it got... and that being a couple of tries after the first. All were way too hot where I typed.

Let’s see what you got Apple. Looking forward to seeing the releases this year and next.

 

[nottorp]

Most people don’t have keyboard problems. Apple’s sold 25+ million, how many of those have problems?

It’s interesting (to me anyway) that some users report multiple occurrences, while others have had no problems whatsoever. That leads me to think it’s a defective part/process issue or a user issue (or both).

No, if you ask me the ones who have problems dare to use their laptops in less than squeaky clean environments. Like... shudder... outdoors.

I'm sure that the laptops only used in (clean) living rooms and offices are fine.

Note that I have the 2018 model with the additional silicone protection under the keys. Didn't help.

 

[ghanwani]

I don't know if I should be happy (that they are finally acknowledging butterfly was a complete failure) or whether I should be pissed (that I bought 2 generations of butterfly keyboards, and that the only reason I got rid of a $2000 laptop after just 2 years of use was the keyboard noise and feel).

I actually feel like I've been had by Apple.

Now please do us all a favor and get rid of the Touch Bar too!

 

[michaelsviews]

The next question is though "Do you buy the first generation" ? or wait?

And Apple if your reading this, DITCH the TOUCH-BAR or make it optional.

 

[ChrisA]

So they had to fire Jony Ive to do this. Good.

If I were Tim Cooke I would make policy at Apple that every executive including himself had to actually use Apple products like Macs every day. If Jony Ive actually used a keyboard 4 or 5 hours a day do you think there would have been this problem? If you yourself never use the Mac it is so easy to say "Take those ports off, they don't look good" or "Can you make it thinner?"

An executive who actually uses a Mac all day every day would say things like "Can we improve the connectivity? Can't we find a place for one more USB port?" or "Is the aluminum shell thick enough not to dent" and "how can we improve the user's typing accuracy and speed"

In other words, a "designer" does not care tomuchh about how the mac works and things of how it looks while a mMac user things abut funtionality first

They need to put the user's back in the design process.

I think Ive was basically kicked out.

 

[jlc1978]

It was not so easy to win Jobs approval with a mere good-looking machine, if it was lacking on the function part, he had a good eye for both areas. He would not accept such serious drawbacks as we've seen during the last few years, just for the shake of form. E.g. many heads would've rolled if Jobs was still here, after 4 consecutive years of faulty keyboards.

Possibly, but he had a few misses as well. Remember "You're holding it wrong?"

 

[jeyf]

This news makes my current decision even harder ... however, I will immediately purchase the new air on release if it has a new keyboard...

the smart and thrifty would wait 6mo for the new release to prove it self.

Do you own a mac just now?

 

[ersan191]

Am I the only one that doesn’t care all that much about the reliability issues, since Apple is going to fix them if they crop up, but the keyboard just feels like crap to type on? I assume it’s the nonexistent key travel, but it just feels terrible. The old MBP keyboards were the best in the business.

 

[1146331]

Mind to read the report? The scissors keyboard costs less and that's why Apple is adopting it.

The scissors may be cheaper, but they also WORK 200% better than the crapy butterfly keyboard!

 

[ghanwani]

Am I the only one that doesn’t care all that much about the reliability issues, since Apple is going to fix them if they crop up, but the keyboard just feels like crap to type on? I assume it’s the nonexistent key travel, but it just feels terrible. The old MBP keyboards were the best in the business.

Have you had a machine with a problem keyboard? I have had one and it is no fun having to send it in for repairs. I had to send one in 3 times for repair and the last time it was in they messed the open/close of the lid because of which the store manager agreed to give me a new machine. Being without the machine for 3 or 4 days while it goes in for repair is a big deal for some people. And many people like to keep their laptop, for which they paid $2K-$4K, for more than 4 years.

The keyboard feel is crappy, but reliability matters too.

 

[jmpmntwnty3]

Looks like I'll be getting the next Macbook Pro! My 2012 works fine (I upgraded my HD to SSD a few years ago) so I'm primed for a new machine!

 

[lec0rsaire]

Jony was great when Steve would say no to him, so Jony would have to revise and edit his ideas.
Without Steve, everyone was letting Jony have carte blanche with design and now we have a thinness problem.

So blame Tim. He is the boss after all and should take more interest in what they’re actually making.
[doublepost=1562355281][/doublepost]

You can just default the touch bar to be the F keys if you want, it's not a big deal.

I’m pretty sure these guys don’t want the function row for that purpose but to use the alternate brightness, volume, playback. They do not want to get used to anything new.

 

[SweWriter]

Am I the only one that doesn’t care all that much about the reliability issues, since Apple is going to fix them if they crop up, but the keyboard just feels like crap to type on? I assume it’s the nonexistent key travel, but it just feels terrible. The old MBP keyboards were the best in the business.

The macs used to be the gold standard for writers. They no longer are.

 

[Acidsplat]

So blame Tim. He is the boss after all and should take more interest in what they’re actually making.
[doublepost=1562355281][/doublepost]

I’m pretty sure these guys don’t want the function row for that purpose but to use the alternate brightness, volume, playback. They do not want to get used to anything new.

I am blaming Tim for not editing Jony.

 

[MrGuder]

I’ve seen several news articles hitting the big networks like CNN about this issue and that Apple is finally admitting the keyboards have issues. Why did it take from 2016 to 2019 for Apple to fix this and I don’t mean with a bandage like a silicone membrane.

 

[WillNN]

Don't want to claim any authority...but-- I've noticed these two things about the butterfly keyboard on my 2017 MBP. First, I don't transpose nearly as many letters as I used to, and I type a lot, have done so for many many years, so this is a very big plus. Second, I do notice some fatigue, perhaps like a very slight case of pad banging. Sort of like running on a hard surface too hard, but on my fingertips. Possibly because there's less travel and I haven't been able to back off how hard I hammer away.
Jammed keys. Oh, yeah. This is really insidious, but I've got an air compressor and for once Apple Support Network had an excellent How To-- so it wasn't too hard to sort out. (I don't know what this would be like while traveling. It really does shut down typing.)
I hope that who's ever on this switch is thinking and not reacting.
One suggestion I would like to contribute, I continue to make many of the same mistakes I've made for many years. Punctuation keys like ; and ' I often hit wrong. And many times if I just have to type in a few or only one word, like for a search, often my fingers are shifted over and it's all gibberish. There should be some tips on how to avoid, or train out of these errors. (I have put drips of hot glue on certain keys and that's helped. I hardly notice the two tiny pips on the f and j keys.) And perhaps there should be some changes in the layout to help with this, maybe a gap between some of the keys.
And what's the 'caps lock' key still doing on the American English keyboard? I understand that some people need Caps Lock, just as a year ago I needed to know the key combination for £ and €. Do something else with that area. (What would writers like? Add that and then add some practice for it. I use two commas in a row for ," which was about the only 'killer app' for me using my long long in the tooth word processor.)
And my required beef about the track pad sensitivity (my cursor jumped to another place in my text while writing this-- which is a huge improvement since they replaced the the keyboard and track pad) and I can't be the only person who hits random functions in the 'feature' strip while typing numbers.

 

[nouveau_redneck]

The macs used to be the gold standard for writers. They no longer are.

What authority are you referring that sets this "gold standard for writers"?

 

[x-evil-x]

My brothers 2016 MBP broke the first day. His replacement broke within a week. His second replacement also broke within a week. Now he uses a Surface laptop.

I also have multiple people in my friend sphere who have abandoned their 2016-2017 Mac laptops.

I’m not saying that pre 2016 laptops didn’t have problems, but I’ve never met anyone pre 2016 where a breadcrumb turned their Mac unusable.

Not saying that you’re lying but it seems sketchy that all of that would happen. I don’t know who to believe on the internet but having a keyboard break the first day and the replacement within a week as well as another replacement within a week seems weird to me. Having owned a 2016 for 3 years. Maybe some people have really bad luck. I still can’t see how that could possibly happen without abuse. Not on 3 new machines.
[doublepost=1562370470][/doublepost]

Thankfully on my 2016 I havent experienced any issues with the keyboard. At work we had 2 out of the 40 that we bought that year have keyboard problems.

According to people in here you should be on your 8th keyboard. One a week.

 

[Queen6]

If they are reverting to scissors mechanism it’s and indicative that the problems with butterfly keyboard cannot be fixed, don’t you think? It would make absolutely no sense to keep improving the mechanism only to abandon it once you’ve finally fixed it.

From a PR perspective it's likely too late as the damage is done. Apple should have put real effort into fixing the issue in 2016 for the next years release. For reasons unknown Apple opted for band aids and rhetoric and allowed the issue to gain traction in the public domain.

The cost of replacing all these keyboards is one thing, the damage to Apple's credibility entirely another...

Q-6

 

[Plutonius]

But why the change ?

Apple promised us that they fixed the butterfly keyboard this time . /S

 

[derekamoss]

Not saying that you’re lying but it seems sketchy that all of that would happen. I don’t know who to believe on the internet but having a keyboard break the first day and the replacement within a week as well as another replacement within a week seems weird to me. Having owned a 2016 for 3 years. Maybe some people have really bad luck. I still can’t see how that could possibly happen without abuse. Not on 3 new machines.
[doublepost=1562370470][/doublepost]
According to people in here you should be on your 8th keyboard. One a week.

I think its at the point now where we have to quit worrying if someone is telling the truth or not and just assume, that probably actually happened to somebody somewhere on this earth...Some people just have an actual streak of bad luck...

 

[Rogifan]

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/07/05/macbook-scissor-keyboards

The leaks from Cupertino pinning responsibility for the keyboards on Ive — and also saying that new scissor-switch keyboards with more travel are in the works — came months ago. They were just done quietly.

I’d love to know who leaked this and to whom. If true that employees inside the company knew the butterfly keyboard wouldn’t work then it’s a failure of leadership for Cook or Williams not to step in and say sorry this isn’t going to work come up with something else.

Gruber mentions more key travel. Key travel isn’t a defect. It’s a personal preference. When I recently got a new laptop at work I had to replace my keyboard because it was so old the I/O didn’t work with my new docking station. The new keyboard I was provided I ended up not using because it had no palm rest and less key travel. There was nothing defective about it and most people I work with use that exact keyboard. I just didn’t like it. Seems to me Gruber is conflating different things here. A lot of the Apple commentariat/podcast world have a preference for keyboards with lots of key travel. Even if the butterfly keyboard was defect free they still wouldn’t like it. But that’s personal preference not a product flaw.

 

[sahnjuro]

I suppose that this is one way that the infallible people at Apple to admit that they made a mistake. Certainly took them long enough.

 

[nouveau_redneck]

From a PR perspective it's likely too late as the damage is done. Apple should have put real effort into fixing the issue in 2016 for the next years release. For reasons unknown Apple opted for band aids and rhetoric and allowed the issue to gain traction in the public domain.

The cost of replacing all these keyboards is one thing, the damage to Apple's credibility entirely another...

Q-6

I've always wondered if it was someone in engineering making assurances to the leadership team that it was under control with the next revision. Each one successively revision failing. Then finally, someone in leadership said, that's ****ing enough. Thus the new scissor coming.

And then, the question would become, did the responsible SOB get forced out or otherwise smacked down a notch or two.