MacBook Pro teardown confirms the new keyboard is just the old keyboard | Hacker News Reader

MacBook Pro teardown confirms the new keyboard is just the old keyboard

theverge.com

81 pointsjc_81127 comments

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Maybe we could link to the original article instead of the blogspam?

https://www.ifixit.com/News/16-inch-macbook-pro-magic-keyboa...

HN should change the title. The actual article title ends with “just the old, good keyboard”.

Leaving out the word “good” changes the entire meaning.

Only if you think there’s something inherently wrong with ‘old’!

I don't think it has anything to do with that.

"the old" they are referring to in the article is not the last one but the keyboard technology before that.

What they're suggesting is that it was a change in name only (which would be bad) while it's actually a rollback to a different, formerly used technology. (Scissor switches are back.)

I think they count on this ambiguity of an unspecific "old" to drive attention.

Not at all, it’s a drastic change in meaning in title between original article and HN.

Given the huge breadth of complaints against the butterfly keyboard, the title saying that the keyboard of a ‘new’ MacBook is the same as the ‘old’ MacBook suggests keyboard hasn’t changed. But it clearly has, which is the point of the article.

The inclusion of a single additional word “good” clarifies the new keyboard matches the old version BEFORE the butterfly keyboard.

Depends on one's reading, right?

- same old keyboard (post-2015 butterfly)

- old, good keyboard (2015 and older scissor)

Regardless, with Ive's departure, we might get some functional hardware again.

Still a bit less key travel than the pre-butterfly MacBook Pros; apparently the last one of those (which I've personally stuck with until now) has 1.3mm. [1] 1.0mm is probably good enough though.

[1] https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/macbook-pro-2015-is-best-...

For someone reading only the headline and wondering if old means Butterfly keyboard : NO. Thank God for that!

That's literally all we wanted from the keyboard.

We want 12 physical function keys as well ...

Not all of us, I just wanted an escape key. I’m happy now.

Seriously, keeping esc but dropping the function keys for something you can dynamically change is super cool. Those keys were always mapped to app specific functions anyway so now apps have a lot more freedom to do clever things like sliders, color pallets, switching out buttons on context.

This was all true before but now it’s not the annoying thing that gets in the way when using Vim.

We wanted an escape from the touchbar...

I never used those function keys. I much prefer the touchbar. I use it way more than I ever used function keys. Not just for volume and screen brightness sliders but also for styles in Pages. The latter usage is incredibly handy compared to traditional function keys because you aren’t forced to remember which key maps to which style, especially given that different documents will have different custom styles.

I do appreciate the return of the escape key though.

There’s 5 or 10 more things I want from a keyboard. But I know Apple (and every other manufacturer) is never going to give them to us.

I know the wording "just the old keyboard" is meant as clickbait, but for those of us who have used the butterfly keyboard, we pretty much interpreted this as "just the old, awesome keyboard, yeah baby!"

So happy Jony Ive is no longer Chief Design Officer.

What is your recommendations for someone seeking to buy a 13" MacBook Pro or Air atm? Is the latest incarnation of the butterfly keyboard still as bad? Are revamped versions of those machines around the corner? Or far away? Actually asking for a friend.

I bought a 13” mpb this year and the keyboard is fine, though I don’t use it much.

Biggest mistake was buying the “higher end” 2.4ghz model that’s actually performing the same as the much cheaper 1.4ghz model.

I feel I must add: The 1.4 performs the same as the 2.4 ... in the role you employ it :) No contest!

In my workloads there’s been a wayyy big difference from a 4-core 15” to a faster-clocked 4-core to to a 6-core.

But there’s absolutely no contest from me on a modern 1.4GHz processor being a powerhouse, especially paired with SSDs as fast as in these.

I’ve been fine with the butterfly keyboard. If you line the typing action I think you’ll be fine. I personally love the butterfly keyboard ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Friends have had reliability issues - not all of them :) - but afaik those have been, well, solved?

Now I can finally move on from my '15 MBP! I love Linux but OSX is so great for work.

I hate typing on the Magic Keyboards, they feel more like the butterfly to me than the pre-2015 macbook keyboards. :(

Kudos on Apple for having the courage to get rid of those keyboards and bring back what once worked. Everyone seemed to really love the old keyboard, why did they feel the need to change it I would never understand. I'm still typing this on my MBP with two keys ("E" and "R") randomly falling off right now.

Good.

CMD-Z

Apple is the most corrupted IT company ever existed. Look at how they make money, based on marketing and sales. There's not a single innovation in the past 10 years.

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