It's never going to happen but I'd love to see a return of the Aluminum / Titanium PowerBook keyboard.
Personally I wish sommeone went back to the keyboards used on IBM 5140 or IBM P70. Probably not too likely though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_Convertible https://deskthority.net/wiki/IBM_P70/P75_keyboard
This is a joke btw.
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.
For example: https://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/msi-gt75vr-titan-p...
I mean, at 4.5kg it's extremely heavy for a laptop, but it does have a mechanical keyboard and very beefy spec.
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 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 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.
Sloppiness shouldn’t make it feel better.
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.
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 love the instability.
Again, good. But could be better.
Everything else seems like a toy keyboard in comparison.
I just got the Magic Keyboard and it’s still growing on me after a few days.
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,
I'm not even used to typing on the MBP2015 anymore, but every time I pick it up (which is every few weeks in general) it's just great.
The Magic Keyboard (both the external ones and the MBP16's) is good, just not as good.
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.
It is a rechargeable Bluetooth keyboard, no real magic, little innovation.
It is a very nice Bluetooth keyboard though, reliable, easy to clean, feels higher quality
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.
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.
"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.
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.
The new one looks nice too, though it seems significantly overpriced.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/5/20948092/microsoft-surfac...
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.
There's also a chance Apple could do some kind of bitcode magic[0], but they don't enable bitcode on the Mac App Store yet, so that is probably not in the cards [0] https://www.highcaffeinecontent.com/blog/20190518-Translatin...
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
By the way, this laptop scores 9 out of 10 on ifixit: https://de.ifixit.com/Anleitung/EliteBook+1050+Repairability...
Another 9: https://de.ifixit.com/Anleitung/Samsung+Series+9+15-Inch+Rep...
The MB Pro used to score a 7 (https://de.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Unibody+M...). It would still house a 2.5" HD and a DVD drive, so it could be a lot smaller with a SSD.
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.
Assuming given the extra decade, Apple's keys are hopefully more durable, but it's still no pain free job either.
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
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?
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.
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?
https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/11/15/heres-what-the-16...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Where can I raise a mob to clamor about it so I can have the full-sized keys back in 3 years?