The Air doesn't need the new keyboard. Butterfly is the right design choice for it because it's thin and non Pros don't read these threads.
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the 16" is an (obvious) admission of guilt in my eyes
- Thread starter thadoggfather
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The Air doesn't need the new keyboard. Butterfly is the right design choice for it because it's thin and non Pros don't read these threads.
Disagree..
Apple changing back is all about a loss of sales due to the butterfly KB and what has to be, and will be, costing them an arm and a leg in repairs over the 4-year extended warranty of them..
The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
It's rare for people to rave about the butterfly keyboard, it's more likely people will complain about it.
Going back to a true and tried keyboard will satisfy a lot of customers. I for one do not care; both keyboard designs are fine for me as long as I can type on a stable laptop keyboard. I wouldn't call it an admission of guilt or fault.
Also I am still on the original keyboard for my 2016 MacBook Pro. Never had any key problems.
I don't mind a bigger laptop; I really miss my 17" MacBook Pro, and we are getting ever closer!
It's rare for people to rave about the butterfly keyboard, it's more likely people will complain about it.
Going back to a true and tried keyboard will satisfy a lot of customers. I for one do not care; both keyboard designs are fine for me as long as I can type on a stable laptop keyboard. I wouldn't call it an admission of guilt or fault.
Also I am still on the original keyboard for my 2016 MacBook Pro. Never had any key problems.
I don't mind a bigger laptop; I really miss my 17" MacBook Pro, and we are getting ever closer!
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Yes, it took too long. I don’t think there’s any question about butterfly being a poor choice regardless of the message. I’m just happy they’re finally moving on. Especially because I could be looking for a new machine next year. I do feel bad for those who have had problems.
If they want to experiment with keyboards, experiment with external keyboards. If they catch on, then consider putting them in laptops. A keyboard in a laptop has to be bulletproof.
You are probably right. What I meant that I had an impression that Ive's role in this process has shrunk significantly in the last year or so. Then again, I am just speculating widely, it's not that I have it directly from the man himself.
I would have to believe that design of the 16in MBP began well before the release of the latest iteration of the butterfly KB, which happened this summer. So, Apple was working on both in parallel. Apple would have no idea how successful the new butterfly KB would be in the wild. It seems like the first 5-6 months have been better than the predecessor keyboards. But, it's going to take some time to tell for sure.
My point is the decision to use the scissor mechanism on the 16in MBP was likely informed by problems with the early versions of butterfly KB rather than the failure rate of the current butterfly KB.....which, at this point, appears to be better than the processors.
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I can see how people like us, who visit tech sites regularly, would come to that conclusion and believe that the Butterfly KB was really hurting sales. But, the MBA is really a laptop for everyday users and not tech junkies. So, I am just not sure if the typical MBA customer is that dialed in to all of this stuff. They are probably aware that there is an extended warranty on the KB when they buy it, but I doubt most people think about it.
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It's even worse. Pro users hate change. If the world was rules by pro users we'd be still sitting on serial ports. Because every time someone try to make things better, a bunch of pro users will appear and start shouting "I hate this since it disrupts my established workflow".
Well I don’t know. I’m just going by things I’ve read. I’m curious where this notion of Ive alone being obsessed with thinness comes from. Is there some interview he gave or some other reporting that indicates he prioritized thinness above all else? How do we know that marketing wasn‘t also obsessed with it as a selling point? I mean Schiller had no problem getting up on stage and enthusiastically selling these products. Heck the marketing for the iPad Air was that it was thinner than a #2 pencil. And the marketing for the iPad Air 2 was that they made it even thinner. I have a hard time believing one person can drive or mandate certain product attributes if the rest of the company doesn‘t agree. Maybe Steve Jobs could.
It is how it goes in technology. Sometime newer is not better.
But remember this is not the same keyboard from 2015 and earlier. It supposedly has things like glass fibers in it for stability. The travel is still shorter than the those keyboards, but the keys feel more stable.
But remember this is not the same keyboard from 2015 and earlier. It supposedly has things like glass fibers in it for stability. The travel is still shorter than the those keyboards, but the keys feel more stable.
So true. I would pay $100 to NOT have that stupid bar. It was just useless and was never needed. Imagine of they had put all that useless engineering into something useful, like upgradeable RAM or more cooling. Sad.
On Jason Snell’s recent podcast he put forth this theory that designers at Apple had one goal: always thinner and lighter, and that now the companies priorities are changing. The narrative was pure conjecture. iPhones have been getting thicker since the iPhone 7. It seems to me this narrative is being pushed because it’s easy to communicate. Well of course it’s just designers run amok with too much power. Anything else would take time to develop and wouldn’t be as easy to explain.
With the pro Mac products it’s clear things changed after a lot of bad press. It’s not clear this was a culture change in the company so much as it was oh s—t pros are really pissed off we gotta do something. Maybe this will evolve into a long term culture change at the company, at least for pro products. Who knows.
One thing Snell mentioned that I do agree with is if the company is going to be so secretive then they have to deal with the consequences of that secrecy. And what’s worse for Apple in terms of product sales: people like Joanna Stern constantly complaining about the keyboard, others saying don’t buy; or Apple saying they get pro customers aren’t happy with the keyboard and are working on fix. In either case if someone really needs a laptop they’ll buy one. If they don’t they’ll wait. Being secretive in those instances isn’t helping Apple at all.
With the pro Mac products it’s clear things changed after a lot of bad press. It’s not clear this was a culture change in the company so much as it was oh s—t pros are really pissed off we gotta do something. Maybe this will evolve into a long term culture change at the company, at least for pro products. Who knows.
One thing Snell mentioned that I do agree with is if the company is going to be so secretive then they have to deal with the consequences of that secrecy. And what’s worse for Apple in terms of product sales: people like Joanna Stern constantly complaining about the keyboard, others saying don’t buy; or Apple saying they get pro customers aren’t happy with the keyboard and are working on fix. In either case if someone really needs a laptop they’ll buy one. If they don’t they’ll wait. Being secretive in those instances isn’t helping Apple at all.
I wouldn't bank on it. The membrane-era butterfly keyboards do seem to be much more reliable than the pre-membrane butterflies.. Changing to the new-old 'Magic' keyboard will result in the lineup having to get thicker - a sensible trade-off on the 16", but less so on the rest of the lineup, especially in the context of the 12" MacBook no longer existing.
Unrealiable, certainly, but not built to fail.
The new Magic keyboard has greater stability than the desktop version. Some lessons have been learned. I think the 16" was pushed out as quickly as reasonably possible. Its awkward release timing - after iPhone season but before the Mac Pro - and delayed Bootcamp drivers support this theory. The last thing they would want is a changing of course, an admission of error, only for the 'fix' to be unreliable too. I expect a huge amount of care went into the new design.
Agreed 100%.
Agreed. I went to see the 16" in-store and it does feel like a brick compared to the 15", and the current screen quality does not equate with seven years of well-applied progress in my opinion.
The Touch Bar still bugs out. Three years after release in the wild, this is completely unacceptable.
Agreed. The butterfly ain't dead yet.
The design parameters on external keyboards and laptop keyboards are different. A desktop keyboard is thicker with greater key travel, the weight isn't an issue, and it doesn't form a structural part of a structural part of a chassis or potentially act as ventilation. The mechanism in PC desktop keyboards, a rectangular stalk in a plastic hole, and PC laptops, scissor switches, are different.
Regardless of where the butterfly originated from and how much it was initially liked I don‘t think there’s any team inside Apple that would be happy about a product not being reliable and getting such negative press coverage. There is a real question though as to why it took Apple so long to fix. Which is why I think the fix was more about the negative press coverage/feedback (especially from pros) than a real change in direction inside the company.
The Butterfly originated with the 12” MacBook. I’d be fascinated to know the backstory on that product and how it came to be. Apple’s not selling it anymore but the company never said it was dead so it could come back as an ARM laptop. I’d also be fascinated to know the conversations around brining the butterfly to the pro laptops. One would assume Apple could have kept the butterfly to just the non-pro laptops. Had they done that (and improved reliability) and left the pro keyboard alone the backlash would have been a lot less.
The Butterfly originated with the 12” MacBook. I’d be fascinated to know the backstory on that product and how it came to be. Apple’s not selling it anymore but the company never said it was dead so it could come back as an ARM laptop. I’d also be fascinated to know the conversations around brining the butterfly to the pro laptops. One would assume Apple could have kept the butterfly to just the non-pro laptops. Had they done that (and improved reliability) and left the pro keyboard alone the backlash would have been a lot less.
They should have gone back to the scissors keyboard as soon as they discovered the major design flaws in the butterfly keyboard on the 2016 models. They may not have had the redesign ready for the 2017 release, but they certainly could have put the scissors keyboard back into the 2018 release.
That they "held out" for so long to me represents Apple's arrogance -- "our new design is better, we will make it work!" -- until they realized they couldn't...
That they "held out" for so long to me represents Apple's arrogance -- "our new design is better, we will make it work!" -- until they realized they couldn't...
The butterfly was always designed to be the best keyboard they could make that only allowed for .5mm travel, using it on the MBP was definitely a mistake, I would suggest it's even more about not developing a specific thinner MBP keyboard (i.e. the one they finally now have) and component sharing across the lines for economy of scale. Presumably they had in mind that they wanted the 2016 to be thinner, lighter, faster like all previous MBPs were (in itself not inherently a bad goal) - so they wanted the keyboard to be thinner, why go to the trouble of making a new one when they already have the butterfly from the MacBook?
Looks like the MBA might be the one to go ARM (It's big enough it will be easier to re engineer for the magic KB (as you say Butterfly is now pretty toxic)) - they already only offer one (i5) processor option which makes it easier to just offer the single "A13M" or whatever, quite possibly WWDC next year.
"Removing the headphone jack makes my new iPhone amazing!"
"This TouchBar has improved my productivity by a factor of 5!"
"My new butterfly keyboard improves my touch typing at least 20 words per minute!"
- said by exactly no one...ever.
"This TouchBar has improved my productivity by a factor of 5!"
"My new butterfly keyboard improves my touch typing at least 20 words per minute!"
- said by exactly no one...ever.
I’d argue that removing the headphone jack on a product millions of people use has caused Bluetooth audio to improve by a lot and it’s only going to get better now that there isn’t something to fall back on.
and forces you to replace your headphones every 2 years. thats another 200/2 years for apple for each person who buys them. i can see the headphone jack being dated, but its obvious that move was so they could force people to buy airpods
I’ve never bought AirPods. There are other truly wireless earbuds that exist. Besides, the people that use AirPods love them and it’s not like wired headphones last a long time. I’ve spent thousands of dollars over the past 15 years on wired headphones that eventually within 6 months to a year break.
I suppose but it was a bad idea. If they would have kept the keyboard to the MB and MBA there would be a lot less criticism IMO.
I still do think the feel of butterfly keyboard is not unattractive. Actually, I could have liked it. It provides a unique clickly feel that's fun.
However, the combination of other things made it failure. Lack of "ESC" and quality issue. Apple had 4 years to fix the problem, but miserably failed year after year depleting customer's patience and brand image. You know, 2019 butterfly keyboard could have been a major improvement, and perhaps in one or two years, Apple could've come up with a perfect butterfly keyboard. Alas, what came out in 2019 should have come out in 2017 if Apple were to keep the keyboard.
So here we are. Finally, a good, and hopefully, reliable keyboard that most people like.
However, the combination of other things made it failure. Lack of "ESC" and quality issue. Apple had 4 years to fix the problem, but miserably failed year after year depleting customer's patience and brand image. You know, 2019 butterfly keyboard could have been a major improvement, and perhaps in one or two years, Apple could've come up with a perfect butterfly keyboard. Alas, what came out in 2019 should have come out in 2017 if Apple were to keep the keyboard.
So here we are. Finally, a good, and hopefully, reliable keyboard that most people like.
I agree with this. The Butterfly KB makes more sense as a design decision when you are building an ultra-portable. I understand that there are other ultra-portables that don't use the Butterfly mechanism, so I am not say it is the only option.....it just makes more sense for MB and MBA. The irony is that Apple has actually made some progress with it and improved the reliability.