The refined scissor mechanism with 1 mm of travel delivers a responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience. The inverted-T arrow keys help you fly through lines of code, spreadsheets, or game environments.
This isn't progress. This is the baseline. Apple have gone from bad to OK, and they're celebrating as though they've achieved something amazing.
We all (most of us anyway) wanted them to go back to the scissor design. Are we going to now complain that they did what the community has been begging them to do? Was butterfly a mistake? Yes. Were they slow to correct the issue? Yes. Now that they fixed it we should be happy about it.
As far as talking about it being amazing, its called marketing spin. This is how it works. However, those two sentences do not say anything about it being amazing. It simply focuses on the positive features of the keyboard. The two sentences above clearly communicate to mac users that the company has fixed the problems that people wanted fixed. Did you really expect a bunch of public self-flaggelation? They are telling us clearly that they did what we asked for. Perfect.
I think it's the marketing copy most people are taking issue with with.
They tried a new design, which was horrible to use and had a high failure rate. They continued to claim the new keyboard was amazing, and stubbornly continued to use this crappy keyboard long after the problems were apparent.
And now they are touting a "normal" keyboard mechanism as if they've invented something new and wonderful... only Apple could get away with such transparent BS.
I assumed that was because it’s the same key-mech that’s in their (external, Bluetooth) Magic Keyboard. Where it itself was branded “magic” just in reference to its two sibling peripherals, the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad.
IIRC, the peripheral line itself was started with the original Magic Mouse, which was branded as such because it didn’t have separate external actuatable buttons, but rather was just a smooth surface with a multitouch digitizer on the top half + a single actuatable microswitch underneath the shell†. Apple wanted the image of it “magically” figuring out when you left/right/middle-clicked (despite no L/M/R buttons) or scrolled (despite no scroll-wheel.) Also, the “plug in to pair” experience might have contributed to the claimed “magic”—it was a fairly unique approach to pairing at the time.
† Which is a design with some real benefits, like being easily disinfectable, with no crevasses close to the hand for filth and germs to accumulate in. (There is a crevice on the Magic Mouse, but it’s on the bottom, where your hands will never touch it.)
There is also a bit of “magic” in the Magic line of peripherals that’s not in the hardware itself, but rather in the OS: when the Magic line of peripherals—Apple’s first Bluetooth line of peripherals—was introduced, Apple added a feature to macOS where macOS will “train” the Apple EFI firmware to recognize devices paired in macOS itself, such that the firmware will later attempt to connect to such paired devices on boot. This means that e.g. holding Option on your Bluetooth keyboard to select an alternate boot device on an iMac would actually work. Which was kind of necessary, as those are the peripherals iMacs shipped with.
The previous sentence: "Now features the new Magic Keyboard."
"Refined" is also an adjective that has a definition close to "new and wonderful". It's not just a word to bring out an emotional response to make people feel like buying the thing.
They refined the scissor mechanism. It's an improved scissor mechanism with better key stability than previous scissor keyboards on their laptops (so sort of the "best of both worlds" between the butterfly keyboard and their old scissor keyboard). The new mechanism is also used in the Magic Keyboard and 16" MacBook Pro.
"Refined" means made better. This is better than the previous keyboard, and also features 1mm of travel, making it better in that sense than any of their previous keyboards.
Imagining a word to mean what you want it to, and then reacting negatively to that, that doesn't say as much about Apple as it does the observer.
Yes, that's by design; it's a purposefully ambiguous choice of words that be read either way depending on what the reader's subconscious wants to hear. Either way, they don't have to admit that they were wrong, customers that hated the old now now feel relieved and vindicated, and people are probably more likely to buy the new one. That particular choice of words is probably the result of millions of dollars of marketing psychology, focus groups and A/B testing.
Where does it say "we stuffed up, and in response to your feedback we've gone back to basics"? Sometimes, people want to hear acknowledgement of error.
A good value trade in program would have been nice. I managed to sell my 2017 15” for a bit under $2000 CAD to upgrade to the current 16”. I would have rather dealt with Apple than deal with hagglers and low ballers.
Last time I remember that happening was Porsche's recent launch of the 992 generation 911, in which they poked fun at the fried-egg headlights on the 996. If they can do it, so can Apple. They are both Jedi-level marketing orgs.
They did basically say that in the live announcement of the 16” MBP, but remember they still sell some models with the old keyboard, plus millions of people still will be using that one for years to come, so there’s no way they will disparage it for the next few years at least.
They said that when they announced the extended warranty program on the old keyboard. People who want to hear an acknowledgement of error can go back and read that, if they missed it.
People want to hear wailing and gnashing of teeth, which is silly.
It’s marketing man. Next you will be complaining that the burgers look a lot better on the billboards compared to when you unwrap them, or that the shirt looked a lot better on the mannequin than when you put it on, or that car ads always show their car speeding on an open road instead of stuck in a traffic jam during the morning commute.
Ignore the marketingese and don’t let it bother you so much. The important thing is that they listened to their customers and created a better product as a result.
We do not expect people to be honest in other aspects of their life. Just look at the cosmetics industry. Politicians with their campaign promises. Management with their corporate right-sizing and synergies. Kids and Santa Claus. (haha!)
Anyway, I consider fake reviews to be dishonest .. I consider this to be more like "putting a positive spin on it".
Well it isn't normal, and it isn't the old Keyboard either.
Despite having Double the Key Travel of Butterfly ( 0.5mm to 1mm ) It still felt the same as butterfly. The old Scissor had 1.3mm, while only 0.3mm difference, it felt night and day.
The new scissors also claims higher stability. Although I doubt this has anything to do with the design but rather of the "height" of the key be lower.
It is indeed new, but I know if it is wonderful yet. I haven't had a long period of time to try and use it.
Marketing aside, thank god we're back to normal. Some things are just better left alone and don't need innovation (vim comes to mind). Refinement sure. I love my 2014 MBP keyboard.
I dunno, I used to buy Apples because they had great hardware for a fair price (premium, sure, but if you're in the market for a premium machine...), but my last two machines have been a Dell and a Surface. It's different trade offs, but '\_o_/` I was never wedded to their operating system anyway.
I held off buying a new MBP replacement for two years now thanks to the massive criticism over the butterfly fiasco. I'd say the complaining was useful and had an impact. Not wasteful at all.
To be honest, yes, I'd like them to say "we messed up, and we finally recognised that, so we're fixing it".
I think it would be amazing if the most valuable, most design-focused company in the world admitted to everyone that they made a mistake. It would do a lot towards allowing everyone else to make mistakes without beating themselves up over it. After all, if the thousands of specialist engineers, paid billions in salaries, given the best equipment in the world, in a company that really (and I mean really) values design, can make a mistake, then it's kinda OK that your home page looks a little crappy on mobile.
Wasn't that the dust problem, though? Admitting that there's a problem when people are taking out class-action lawsuits against you seems a little late to me. And again, rather than a "we're so sorry, we made a huge mistake" speech, it's more of a "we're such an amazing company, we're going to fix your faulty laptops for free!" speech.
>To be honest, yes, I'd like them to say "we messed up, and we finally recognised that, so we're fixing it".
Exactly. In Steve Jobs days he would have either jokingly admit there was a mistake or at least say something that people dont like it ( hence admitting there is a problem ).
The new Apple put up a big middle finger and didn't act until there are class action.
Even with the fix, I'm ddisappointed in their response. II had a 2013 MBP that worked great for years and years, and was excited to finally get a maxed out MBP about eiighteen months ago. The ffirst year was great and then this damn keyboard started doing its thing. I'm deliberately leaving the keyboard errors in place for this comment, they aren't typos. Yes, they havee the keeyboard replaceement program for the enext 3-4 years. But then you have to be wiithout your workhorse for a week while they replace it, and then what, you'll probably have the same problems a year later. (Incidentally, I have a job switch coming up wiith some tiime off - my plan was to use that time to send in the laptop for repairs theen when my clieint isn't relying on my availability, but now that plan is shot wiith the Apple Stores and malls being closed.) And yes, I can fix this by just buying the 16", but this computer was expensive and was supposed to last me at least 3-5 years. I'm supposed to iincrease my spending to Apple? A sane program would be to buy back this lemon at a heffty price so I can buy the new one and be made whole.
Marketing spin is not clear communication. It does not deserve praise. It's not mandatory, either.
None of:
> MacBook Air now features the new Magic Keyboard, first seen on the 16-inch MacBook Pro. The refined scissor mechanism with 1 mm of travel delivers a responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience. The inverted-T arrow keys help you fly through lines of code, spreadsheets, or game environments.
says anything about "fixing problems that people wanted fixed" or "doing what people asked for." That would read:
> We used a lower-travel keyboard with a butterfly mechanism and alternative arrow key layout on recent models, and you said you didn't like it. We listened. The MacBook Air now features a proven scissor mechanism with a return to 1mm travel and classic inverted-T arrow key layout.
They're implying that they've come up with something new, which is a lie. That's not perfect.
As far as I can tell, this is the first keyboard with 1mm of travel that Apple has made. Before the recent butterfly debacle, their keyboards had as low as 1.2mm travel (on the iMac keyboard) or more. The much-maligned butterfly design got down to 0.5mm travel.
So this scissor design with 1mm of travel seems to be something new. The inverted-T arrow keys are not new, but the scissor mechanism itself is, a refinement of previous designs.
To be completely honest, they should describe the keyboard as "a lot less bad than the previous keyboards, but not quite as good as the ones before them".
The two sentence above clearly oversell the product: "refined", "delivers", "help you fly", plus all the details for something that is already known... It's not because everybody is doing glorified marketing, which often results in being deceptive, that we have to be okay with it.
Does refined not mean that they took out some of the bad parts? That's about as close as you can get to admission of a fuckup as you can get in sales copy
Honestly, Apple's marketing has always been worse than the other companies when it comes to sell basic things as a revolutionary, life changing progress.
IMO, when you see car companies 2020 model gets 3 more horsepower or 1 more MPG, it’s better to consider how difficult that was rather than simply expecting it. Even a slightly better toothbrush is a positive life change. We have normalized progress, but even seemingly incremental progress is making the world a better place.
Further, it can take revolutionary change to maintain incremental improvements. Filling HDD with say Helium has a lot of knock on effects hidden by the spec sheet.
"We've gone back to where we were three years ago after a mistake, sorry."
I don't understand what the issue is with Apple trying to sell their products. It sounds like people here are upset that marketing and sales exists, and that they use language to try to make their products seem impressive, and that consumers aren't rational when it comes to buying things.
To be fair the butterfly keyboard was pretty nice after you got used to it but unnforrtunattelyyyyy itt enndddeed iin fffaiiilurree foorrr moosst off usss. I batted mine back to the apple store after 3 weeks. Thank goodness it was the Christmas no questions asked period.
> Ok. How should they communicate this? "We've gone back to where we were three years ago after a mistake, sorry."
Yes. We expect adults to own up to their mistakes, so why don't we hold corporations to the same standard and instead just accept corporate bullshit from them?
> "We've gone back to where we were three years ago after a mistake, sorry."
Yep this is the right move, and as someone else says, this would be worthy of respect.
I think we've all just about had it with corporate bullshit -- and to be sure that says more about this moment in time than anything else.
Apple is consistently guilty of blowing smoke up our collective asses. It would be nice if they could give it a rest and simply be honest. But here we are.
"Half truths are lies". The pp is saying they're lying because they didn't admit fault. What's wrong with a company trying to sell a product by outright honestly saying "yeah, we tried to balance usability and thinness, and we went too far, we heard your complaints, and we've gone back and refined our old designs". I mean, they can tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth in an even more markety way if direct honesty is too much.
This seems like nonsense. Must they admit fault in every communication for the next three years? Must they use specific words while admitting fault?
There's nothing wrong with a company saying "we screwed up." Which Apple has done already. There'a also nothing wrong with a company saying, "This keyboard is great," if it is in fact great.
No, they're not saying it's innovative or amazing, they are simply calling it a "responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience", which I guess is true.
Their (very) old keyboards are still amazing to type on. They went from high quality mechanical switches to bad rubber domes to okish rubber domes. The current magic keyboard is actually not bad, but I would still prefer the old alps switches.
I completely agree. My 2014 MacBook Pro purchased refurbished still has the best keyboard of all the devices I use. The Lenovo X1 I use for work is a close second.
What I noticed in the image that made me excited about this device is the function keys. If the 16in MBP had function keys, I probably would have purchased one already. I do wonder if the top spec of the new MBA is going to hold up to my usage though.
Whole world seems to be celebrating that Javascript desktop turds runs 10 times slower and consumes 10 times more resources than 20 year old native applications. So I guess everything is worth celebrating.
In the olden days, we complained about apps that used all our ram. Nowadays, we complain about Firefox or proprietary web browsers using all our ram, when in reality they're doing the best they can. The task manager can't show users who's actually to blame, so lazy devs get the glory while hardworking browser developers cop the flack.
Except that when I use the old apps that used to use all my RAM, now they don't because I have more RAM.
I don't blame the browser vendors (except maybe that V8 made JS juuuuuust good enough to make something like Node viable). They took a thing that run slow for everyone, and they made it faster.
I do blame application developers for writing everything to the web because it's there. There's instances of folks doing better than most in Electron/JS land, but it's still nothing close to the native or even managed Java/C# apps of yesteryear.
Nope, that's exactly what I wanted to hear before buying. Rather than just saying they improved it, they explicitly pointed out it has the keyboard you want from the 16" MBP.
>MacBook Air now features the new Magic Keyboard, first seen on the 16-inch MacBook Pro.
That saved me from having to google "hey, is the 'new magic keyboard' the thing in the 16" MBP that I've been waiting for in the Air and 13" MBP, or is it something else entirely".
Some people just seem to choose a target for life (like the Favored Enemy of a Ranger from Dungeons & Dragons) and never give it a break, no matter what.
I suspect that even if Apple comes out with the best keyboard that mankind is ever going to make, some of you are still going to be angry about how they removed optical drives 4000 years ago.
- Apple knows that at the very least, some set of vocal people don't like the previous keyboard. They also know that many of their customers had to get repairs, even if they liked the keyboard. Those customers might understand that "butterfly = bad"
- They need to tell people that they've fixed the problem but don't want to do so in a way that says "the last product was bad" (so they can't just say nothing about it)
I think we should also place some fault on other manufacturers for just blindly attempting to do what Apple does without thinking: check out the latest XPS 13. They've implemented the same arrow setup as Apple's butterfly keyboards. And yet, I haven't seen a single review online that criticizes the XPS for this choice.
So much this- I struggled with my butterfly mbp for about 18 months all under the guise of "its a stout machine, the keyboard isnt that bad" or "I can use an external keyboard".
Then I grew tired of the macbook fan noise when running windows 10 and debugging with the touch bar. I ordered a surface 3 laptop and immediately realized how important a nice keyboard is to me. Its tactile, its got enough travel, the keys feel nice. I type with fewer errors and I work faster. Anyone want to buy a 2018 macbook pro with 6 core and 32gb ram?
I think you're underselling how truly revolutionary the inverted-T arrow keys are. I hear they help you fly through lines of code, spreadsheets, or game environments.
So is this a not-broken keyboard design? I have the (now) previous-generation Air, and need a keyboard repair.
Would be seriously tempted to just buy a new one if I was confident the keyboard wasn't absolute garbage. Typing on it was fine when it worked, but it double-spaces, and a couple of the other keys are now wonky.
Never had a keyboard die on me before this -- Mac or otherwise.
This is essentially the same type of keyboard from before the crappy design you ended up with. I've had a MBP 2014 since release with that keyboard and I love it. I can't express enough how good it feels to type on (although some personal preference).
I also tried out the new version of that keyboard on the recently-released MBP. It feels almost the exact same as the old one, just a slightly more shallow depth.
Conversely, I went from a MBP 2015 to the 16" model, and I think the "fixed" keyboard is still terrible. I've used all sorts of keyboard, and it's the first one where I regularly have doubled or missing letters when typing. Maybe I'm not hammering the keys hard enough?
I mean, this has a quad-core option, too. It's a no-brainer better machine.
I have the 16-inch that has the same keyboard mechanism as this. It's 100% an evolution on the previous design. While it is early, it's a proven design and there's no chance of it having any of the issues that the butterfly keyboard did.
I feel like my 16-inch is the computer I intended to buy in 2016.
If you can afford the upgrade cost after you sell your current one, you won't regret it.
I use my laptops for my business for 3 years under AppleCare and Joint Venture protection, buy the top of the line, and migrate the old one to the rest of the family. For children, the laptops are fine for another 5-7 years. The current laptop has the old scissor keyboard, and I'm waiting for Apple Stores to open again to pick it up from depot-sent-parts Genius-repair under an AppleCare that just ran out end of February.
Unfortunately, Apple will only replace the butterfly keyboard for 4 years after initial retail purchase of the laptop.
I dread the eventual breakdown of the new butterfly keyboard after the end of February next year, when I'm on my own. I hope iFixIt will start selling DIY repair kits, or the cost to repair at Apple makes such a frequent failure a non-starter (in which case I'll turn it into a fixed-place computer in the house, with an external keyboard).
Don't hold your breath on repair kits. It's a very difficult repair and you can't separate the butterfly keyboard from the top case. You have to replace the whole top case. The best you could maybe do is not replace the battery - but it's all glued. Good luck. I wouldn't attempt that sort of thing, and Apple doesn't.
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple bended that 4 year rule, though. But also realize that Apple will eventually stop repairing all computers just due to time passage. And also, eventually, from a financial perspective it's more cost effective to find a working used computer (after heavy depreciation) than to actually do a repair even if that repair is doable.
I do think that their replacement keyboards have better reliability than the early models. I didn't have any problems after getting mine replaced - I believe I used the replacement keyboard for around two years. But I still wasn't willing to keep the computer longer. I went straight from the 2016 to the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro.
In any event, it was a nice opportunity for an upgrade. My 2016 was still worth $1000, and I ended up with 4 more cores, double the storage, and an absolutely massive increase in graphics performance. Using the education store and picking up in a state with no sales tax did a lot to make that price more palatable.
If you liked the stability of the butterfly switches, but the travel and reliability of the scissor switches, the new thing is really pretty nice, and is arguably an advance over both.
It's amazing how well received the "I'm cynical and world-weary" angle plays on Hacker News.
"This is the baseline. Apple have gone from bad to OK"
Apple's scissor keyboard is pretty broadly considered the best in the industry by a country mile. Their butterfly mechanism was a bad misstep (I mean...almost indistinguishable from my Yoga 720, but compared to prior Apple keyboards), but saying that they went from "bad" to "OK" is just nonsense.
"and they're celebrating"
Advertising doing what advertising does. So brave on HN to point out that marketing is marketing-ee. Are you also telling me that the new car isn't going to make me an adventure seeking extrovert?
> Advertising doing what advertising does. So brave on HN to point out that marketing is marketing-ee. Are you also telling me that the new car isn't going to make me an adventure seeking extrovert?
Why is that acceptable? If you lie or misrepresent the truth in almost any other field, you get criticised. But when marketers do it, they're immune. That's just weird.
False advertising is, in fact, illegal. If in your opinion they've crossed the line into actual factual inaccuracy, it's your right to take legal action against them, or request that your state's attorney general do so on your behalf.
It is progress. Apple runs a monopoly, people seem to not be able to escape (I'm on Windows) and Apple has struggled to fix an utterly broken keyboard for 3 or more years. So, finally they did this on an entry model.
Even I who gave up on Apple thought, hey what a nice machine.
Imagine a country where a terrible leader comes to power, and the nation regresses for years. Then a new leader arises and reverses course. Does the country celebrate and boast?
This is below baseline. I still don't understand why it's important for them to make compromises at the keyboard, which is an essential part of the notebook experience. A keyboard has keys, keys have a certain height. Get over it Apple. I've tried the latest 3 generations of keyboards and the 2015 still comes out on top. It looks as if Apple's engineers are trying to fight the keyboard. Macbook's keyboard were almost unquestionably the best among notebooks. Now we're happy if they're not crap. Of course this is all personal opinion and I'm sure Apple tests these things extensively and only release them if they make for a significant improvement. They wouldn't release a broken keyboard and deny they're at fault for years, right?
This isn't progress. This is the baseline. Apple have gone from bad to OK, and they're celebrating as though they've achieved something amazing.