Most important point: Apple fixed the keyboard by ditching the flawed keyboard used for the past 3 years and returning to the Magic Keyboard scissor switch design. Comparing the 'new' keyboard to the Magic Keyboard: "side by side, we're hard pressed to spot any differences. Scissor switches, keycaps... There's slightly less space surrounding these new keys, and pundits will celebrate those reconfigured arrow keys—but everything else looks nigh identical."
The Magic Keyboard design is not the 2012-2015 MBP keyboard design, it's the design from their line of external keyboards. iFixit's jokey intro is misleading in this regard.
Personally, I prefer the MBP2015 keyboard to the Magic Keyboard.
I have been to an Apple Store recently to try out the MBP16's keyboard and it's good - but not as good as the one I'm typing this on.
I also don't understand the obsession with key stability on the corners. I like the instability. I use it when I'm touch typing - it gives my fingers a lot more tactile feedback.
>I also don't understand the obsession with key stability on the corners. I like the instability. I use it when I'm touch typing - it gives my fingers a lot more tactile feedback.
This!. Along with smaller Keys and hence more spacing between keys. Little things like these you dont appreciate but you will notice once they are gone.
I've been using a magic keyboard for the past few years, and any time I type on the older 2015 MacBook pro's keyboard now, it feels like I'm pressing my fingers into a mushy sponge.
For me, at least, the Magic Keyboard is the happy medium between the too short action on the 2016-19 Pro keyboards, and the too deep action on the 2015 and earlier,
Interesting, I work on a '14 MBP and one of the new full size magic keyboards, and while the MBP feels slightly softer, I never noticed any discomfort or annoyance, and didn't know the '15 had a significantly different keyboard.
I have a Mid-2015 15’’ MBP and a Magic Keyboard (about 2-year old) sitting in front me side by side right now, and I use both every day. I definitely prefer the Magic Keyboard.
Yes! Fujitsu desktop keyboards have rather pronounced concave keys - not fashionable but very nice to type on. (They have also figured out tactile response with rubber domes.)
Exactly this. Also, the instability means the keyboard is more forgiving of small aim mistakes.
If my finger presses 10% of the wrong key and 90% of the right one, key stability on the corners will mean the keyboard registers both. On the 2015 keyboard it only registers the one I meant. The fact that it wobbles also gives my fingers an extra milisecond to adjust position if it feels it's wrong.
It's also more obvious when I did hit the wrong place and I can automatically reach for the backspace/delete key without even thinking or noticing the wrong key visually on screen.
It's overall a more fluid typing experience.
This is especially useful when I'm typing at night or if my fingers are not moving optimally - like when they're cold or otherwise tight or tired.
To me it actually seems that the 16" keyboard is a brand new keyboard, that has never been in any laptop or external keyboard. But it's derived from the external Magic Keyboard and shares the marketing name.
It has 1mmb of key travel, which is less than the 1.25mm of the external Magic Keyboard. It's also less than the 1.35mm of the 2015 MBP. But it's much more than the 0.5mm travel of the Butterfly keyboard.
This is all to say that although the 16" MBP has a new scissor-based keyboard, it's not quite fair to say it's the same as the Magic Keyboard. And although it probably fixes all of the keyboard woes of the past couple years, I would still wait a few months and see.
Those were great, but having slightly sculpted keytops and longer travel takes an extra 2–3 millimeters of vertical space, which isn’t going to cut it if the #1 goal is for the folded up machine to be as thin as possible.
Is it possible to remove the glossy screen cover to get that extra space? My 2010 mac was the last with a matt screen and had "plenty" of space available.
It's a joke for you but a laptop with a good mech keyboard is exactly what I want.
I plug a mechanical keyboard into my laptop all the time, because it's easier on my fingers. A thicker laptop that I can type on is better for me than carrying around a separate mech and putting the laptop on a nearby flat surface instead of my lap.
We actually use something very similar to run our servers at conferences and presentations, don't really care about the gpu but having a desktop-grade CPU in a "portable" package is very useful for this.
Do you happen to run Linux? A couple years ago I looked at the MSI laptop, which actually has Cherry Brown switches, but it was heavily gaming-focused and I couldn't find anything about Linux support.
The two I linked to were “fully mechanical keyboards in a somewhat portable body” (for very modest definitions of “somewhat portable” – they were 13 and 20 pounds, respectively). Not really “laptops”, but two fantastic keyboards.
I should have included that one too. I like the Mac Portable keyboard even better than the IBM 5140 (orange vs. brown Alps SKCM switches were not quite as stiff).
I got a couple of NOS Mac Portable replacement keyboards on ebay a few years ago, but never got around to putting them into a working case.
And I found that the ones that came with a previous employers mac minis tended to fail quite quickly I had 2 or 3 in my parts cupboard with all the other broken and old equipment.
And I also did not like the feel Put it this way I brought in an old Zenith keyboard from a p90 system from the mid 90's to use instead.
I have a full size Magic keyboard (because my MBP 2018 keys started dying and they couldn't guarantee same-day repair) and it really isn't all that.
Sometimes I get a similar feeling as the MBP keyboard in that it seems to "miss" keystrokes, or get them in the wrong order. Though admittedly the worse MBP characteristic of doubling or tripling up a single keystroke is not there.
I love (and am typing this on) a bluetooth keyboard that came with my 2008 iMac. Is the "magic keyboard" (which apparently came out in 2015 and is lower-profile than its predecessors) sufficiently better to warrant the moniker "magic"?
I rarely complain about that kind of stuff, but the sheer number of jokes in that article had it reaching the "trying too hard to be funny" stage in near record time.
I wish Apple released a butterfly switch external keyboard. I know I am in a minority here but I really loved these new flat keyboards on Macbooks and I'd love to have a keyboard like that for my Windows PC.
How long you have been using the keyboard ? Mine got screwed after couple of months of usage (I took really good care of it as I had read about the initial backlash)
I've got my MBP in November 2016, as soon as it became available in my country. I was using it at home and office, carrying between both of those locations using sleeve, taking extra care to don't mess my precious new laptop up. Its keyboard worked perfectly all this time.
Reading about all the keyboard woes others had, I've been wondering if I am just lucky. In November 2018 I've traveled to another town with my laptop (in the sleeve, as usual). This was single day travel and it turned out that I've didn't even have to pull it from the bag a single time. After coming home 10 hours later I've pulled my laptop from the sleeve and pressed "R" key. It didn't "click". I've pressed it again. It didn't click either, but it sticked to the tip of my finger and popped out of its slot. I was now part of the people blessed with keyboard fault.
While you make a solid point about likely behavior, I'm sure there are those that said Microsoft will never cooperate with Linux.
"Never" is a bold word, and it's worth highlighting things like a hard-to-replace/repair keyboard to keep on that tiny bit of pressure to change (how often have you been in a meeting where "customers aren't asking for this" came up as a justification to not make a change?).
Also, just to let people KNOW - when buying a laptop you may not be considering if the keyboard is easy to service. Plenty of developers on any given day are making their first foray into these sorts of decisions, and there's nothing wrong with pointing out that which is obvious if you've been following for a decade but not if you're new to it.
Perhaps another way to put it is, "This iteration of Apple will never..."
Which carries with it a significant piece of information: Someone saying this is claiming that there is some structural or cultural obstacle, and that the company would have to change its nature in order to effect the requried change.
That was the case with Microsoft and Linux as well.
That's fair, but it would take a massive change in both consumer behavior and Apple's target audience to make something like this come about. But hey, ya never know.
A modular, easy to repair system would be great, but I would settle for a repairable system. That is, that a trained technician can perform the repairs in a reasonable timeframe without throwing components away, which are not defective.
As long as the products are not repairable, we should call Apple out for not being as environment friendly, as they try to present themselves.
They are repairable, just not at their stores. They do swaps at the stores and send out the old parts to be disassembled and remanufactured into warranty exchange parts. They are just as environmentally friendly as they present themselves.
Well, as I wrote, a technician should be able to repair it and that does not mean sending the device around for weeks. Availability of a device is an important thing if you use it for your work. Also, many "repairs" Apple offers are priced such, that quite often the device is totalled. A broken keyboard should cost $100, not >$600. A broken screen cable shouldn't cost > $800. A dead SSD should cost what an SSD does cost.
If you throw away a machine, that for any other brand could have been quickly repaired because it is totalled, this is not environmental friendly, even if Apple recycles the aluminum afterwards.
Most people don't care one way or the other as long as they end up with a functioning machine. They don't care about how the wheels end up getting turned as long as they get turned. If anything, replacing a larger component rather than diagnosing and fixing individual components should be faster. If someone has to solder or work on transistors, your repair could definitely take weeks and that time only goes up with the number of repairs necessary for all customers.
>If you throw away a machine
If you throw away a machine, that's on you. Apple, and most other PC manufacturers, offer some kind of machine recycling. That process includes recycling the raw materials and disassembling and reusing components. Unless we're talking about machines that are 7+ years, those components can still be used for warranty repairs and other assemblies. It's exactly why Apple stops servicing devices that are that old and instead only offers recycling for them. When the warranty claims go down, the parts needed go down.
Don't be silly. I am not talking about soldering or "work on transistors". I am talking about exchanging a keyboard, battery, SSD. That are tasks that every IT guy can do in minutest on most laptops. Most people will care about the difference between an hour and several days to several weeks of repair time. Any professional user certainly will.
And if people don't care about the time, they do care about the cost. It makes a difference whether a broken keyboard costs $100 or $600 to repair. In the latter case, the machine often is totalled. And then it doesn't matter how nicely you recycle the aluminium, the machine could have been used for many more years, if it could have been repaired.
Or asked the other way around: if Apple can so nicely reuse the parts, why do they charge more than the cost for the broken part? If they would replace broken keyboards for $100, few would ask, how they do it. Why don't they fix a broken SSD for $200?
>I am talking about exchanging a keyboard, battery, SSD
None of those things are as simple as you're making them out to be in the form/spec of the Macbook.
>And if people don't care about the time, they do care about the cost.
Apparently not as Apple has the highest customer service scores in the entire computing industry by a large margin. People care about having working computers and, by and large, people who buy Apple computers buy them knowing that out of warranty repairs may be expensive.
>why do they charge more than the cost for the broken part?
Because it's costly to recycle those parts. You can be cheap or you can be sustainable. Right now, you can't really be both.
>I am talking about exchanging a keyboard, battery, SSD
None of those things are as simple as you're making them out to be in the form/spec of the Macbook.
The things aren't as difficult as you make them. There are plenty of devices which have reasonable repairablity without being larger than the MacBook.
>And if people don't care about the time, they do care about the cost.
Apparently not as Apple has the highest customer service scores in the entire computing industry by a large margin. People care about having working computers and, by and large, people who buy Apple computers buy them knowing that out of warranty repairs may be expensive.
Most people who buy Apple computers don't know about the costs of out-of-warranty repairs. It will be interesting to see how big the shitstorm will be once people have to throw away their butterfly-keyboard machines becaus thy can't typ th lttr "E".
>why do they charge more than the cost for the broken part?
Because it's costly to recycle those parts. You can be cheap or you can be sustainable. Right now, you can't really be both.
Yeah, as if it would cost $500 to recyle a pound of aluminium. They do it because they have to machine a new part and want to push the money on the customer. But with a proper design, you wouldn't have to throw away large parts of your laptop for minor repairs.
>There are plenty of devices which have reasonable repairablity without being larger than the MacBook.
Name one. You've made a lot of empty claims in your posts without backing up a single one. I don't even know why I'm responding to you anymore, you clearly have an axe to grind since you're responding to almost every person that disagrees with you.
I am defending my opinion, which I consider be based by facts and good arguments. That is why I answer to anyone who disagrees with me trying to argue for my opionion and what I consider facts.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they go that way too. When I first heard that rumor, I thought "never!". But now I'm like... "hmm, hooray battery life, an OS that more fluidly switches from mobile to desktop, maybe not a bad option". Plus ARM is only getting faster/more powerful. Yeah yeah, apple will probably go the way of locking the OS down more, and thats a major buzkill/non-starter, but otherwise I think it's an intriguing concept. Convince me otherwise, I want to hear what huge drawbacks you see to having an ARM laptop.
Microsoft already has ARM-based laptops, so we can see what some drawbacks to ARM might be. The Intel-compiled app compatibility is unbearably slow, despite them making a custom ARM chip to improve performance, and the better battery life isn't happening. The Verge could only get 5-6 hours of battery life on the ARM-based Surface Pro X. [1]
Presumably Apple is working harder on fixing all of those things than Microsoft, but maybe issues like that are why we still haven't seen an ARM MacBook yet.
For context, the current iPad Pro (still running last year's A-chip generation) benchmarks 50% faster than the Surface Pro X, and basic web browsing battery life tests peg it at around 13 hours battery life.
Apple killing off 32-bit app support (and Carbon, QuickTime API, etc) is probably them preparing for an ARM transition. Any app that managed to make that transition is well-prepared for a pretty trivial "just change the compile target and press the button" ARM port.
Apple would be betting on Mac app devs quickly getting ARM ports of their apps out there. In the Microsoft ecosystem there's zero chance of that happening, so they have to rely much more heavily on emulation.
That depends. The EU is already implementing a right-to-repair law for appliances, it will only be a matter of time until this is extended to electronic devices such as laptops and smartphones.
Apple will have two options then: drop out of the EU market (which they won't do, 500M consumers waiting to be fleeced) or follow the law.
Realistically the chance is slim. It's likely an ingrained Apple culture thing going all the way back to when Steve didn't even want the case of the Apple II to be able to be opened.
Or the Mac Pro. While it’s not a laptop, the original cheese grater Mac Pro is a delight to open up. It’s amazing to see what Apple can come up with when they make serviceability a central design goal.
The new one looks nice too, though it seems significantly overpriced.
The Powermac G3 and G4 towers were awesome. Just pull a lever and the side drops down. Everything is nice, neat, and accessible. The G5 towers were similarly functional and very nice as well, and the early Mac Pro towers were obviously based on the same design. It should also be noted that the old beige PowerMacs were no worse than PCs of similar vintage.
There seems to have been a large cultural shift at Apple toward extreme form-over-function around the time of the intel transition. I still have to deal with Macs because my wife uses them, and they've only been getting worse. Personally, I've been on PCs running Linux for several years now.
Yes, this! I haven't even booted my ancient (2006?) mac pro in a couple years, but have kept it bc it's so easy to imagine happily rebuilding something modern inside it.
I had a Dell keyboard with a similar design years ago. These individual scissor keys were painful to clip replacements (or just popped off keys) on. Dell themselves just replaced entire keyboards.
Assuming given the extra decade, Apple's keys are hopefully more durable, but it's still no pain free job either.
It's not something manufacturer do since it can be time consuming, but if you have a spare afternoon it's fairly easy to do.
The only cases where I have personally seen that a whole keyboard replacement was needed were those caused by a liquid spill, but Apple is never going to cover those since they could easily damage the logic board and you wouldn't be "safe" even after months.
But yes, at the end of the day using screws instead of rivets would be better for everyone
This is something I don't get. It would have been reasonable to design the keybord that it can be exchanged, even if it some effort. While I like the improvents of this iteration, it shouldn't be that unrepairable. A MB Pro is an expensive device, but that is ok, if you get the appropriate quality. Making the machine a write off, if there is a problem after the mandatory Apple-care runs out, does mean it is much less value than if it were reasonably repairable.
It is not obvious to me that screws would be less stiff than rivets. I am fine with such a laptop not being "user serviceable", but it should be designed so that a trained technician with the right tools can do these kind of repairs.
I consider the statements of Apple about the environment friendlyness of their devices phony, as long as a keyboard defect can total the device or at least mean, that large parts of the device have to be changed, which aren't defective.
Let's hope that the new keyboard is robust enough to make it a non-issue. But if Apple is committed to their design and think it is unlikely to ever break, why doesn't Apple price a keyboard replacement at the same price like other laptops?
> I consider the statements of Apple about the environment friendlyness of their devices phony, as long as a keyboard defect can total the device or at least mean, that large parts of the device have to be changed, which aren't defective.
It's a tough question to definitively answer. Are there greater environmental costs to producing and using screws rather than rivets? If so, how does that balance against the environmental costs of replacing failed computers?
It's possible that a fixed keyboard could be the correct choice if their new keyboard fails in low enough numbers.
The numbers would need to be very low to make that difference. There are other reasons to change your keyboard beyond defects: language adjustments. Here in Europe we have over 20 different languages with different keyboard layouts...
And in any case, even if it were a theoretical environmental gain - should the burdon for that lie on the consumer, who randomly looses her or his device, just so that every laptop is a tiny bit more efficient (and the effect would be really tiny)? Shouldn't in this case Apple carry the additional cost for repairs?
Not while keeping the same thickness, though. A screw requires about 1mm (at least) distance from the housing so the screw has something to screw in to, a rivet / weld not.
Key travel for the 2016 is 1mm. The "bad" keyboards had 0.5-0.7mm travel. 2015 and earlier had 1.2-1.5mm travel. Not sure about the reliability of the new mechanism, but the 2016 keyboard does feel much more like the old 2015 one.
Well even your article say the 2016 keyboard are the same to 2017 and 2018 which is 0.6-0.7mm. Although the general accepted Key Travel for 2016 - 2019 15"MBP are 0.5mm.
This is one of the reasons I didn't buy any new MBP after 2016 anymore.
I was so unsatisfied with many changes ranging from the keyboard disaster to the loss of ports that are still industry standard and used every day for some years to come.
Probably this is the start for Apple to find back to some quality and say goodbye to strange experiments. Users should feel good using a device and not pay a lot of $$$ to become Beta-Test Lab Rats.
I basically concur but not all of us can just "flick a switch" here.
The most of my customers still need a lot of "obsolete" connectors as well as my devices which I won't replace just because they have no USB-C yet.
In 5-10 years maybe but they will come up with other standards until then and the race will go on. I think it is a matter of your domain(s) how cutting-edge your choices can be.
These were no experiment. These changes were only a matter of cutting cost.
The new butterfly system was cheaper to produce than the old one. Old keyboard design were more complicated. And the keys made from a more sturdy plastic. I have removed and replaced several keys on both kind keyboard and I broke partially 2 key from the new keyboard, using a more fragile plastic but none of the old version, this taking account to the fact that the new key were more easy to remove.
The USB-C choice was also about reducing cost. Integrate 2 USB-C is less expensive than integrate 1 power input, 2 thunderbolts, 2 USB 3, 1 card reader, and 1 hdmi output.
Removing the MacSafe for the cheap defective usb-c power plug (after 1 year, the cable don't stay stuck anymore in the USB-C, causing the macbook battery to discharge without useur knowledge, and forcing him to push back the cable a least 10 time as day because of the low quality of the component, no matter the cable you used to plug your macbook) was also about cutting cost.
On the pretense to changing design and and adopting new trends, the have cut cost by reducing the quality and the number of feature of their computer.
That's how they became the richest company in the world.
In this case they should have done their market analysis properly I think.
One of the USP's for Apple devices for me always was the quality of materials and production. Weakening this point of reference by opting for poor quality materials and implementing strange new designs that break fast is poor product management in my opinion.
I don't see that behavior in Apple's past so often - the opposite is true.
Look at the iPhones for example: The early models had a plastic case and buttons and then they introduces more metal etc. somewhere around the 4/5s.
The same happened with their notebooks: They started with cheap plastic cases and upgraded to metal. Nice.
There is more products where they excelled at improving the features and the quality. If it is their choice to leave this USP in the dust they will loose customers like me because quality, good materials and stuff like that are very important for some people.
