Hacker News Reader

Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

The inverted-T arrow keys help you fly through lines of code, spreadsheets, or game environments.

That sentence made me check again...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Macbook_white_redjar_2006...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MacBook_Air_1b.jpg

...and yes, it's the same layout of the arrow keys that was there 14 years ago. If they were advertising new full size arrow keys that would definitely be worth mentioning, but I'm not sure why they had to draw attention to that particular aspect... especially given that half-height arrow keys are one of the more annoying things about laptop keyboards in general.

View on HN

Apple recently converted all laptops to an annoying non-inverted-T arrow key layout that users generally didn't like.

They are advertising the switch back to the old style that people actually liked.

I still mis-hit one of the arrow keys about 20% of the time with the annoying 'full size left and right' arrow key arrangement. Going back to inverted-T makes perfect sense. It was an experiment that failed.

It was an awful experiment that should have never left the lab. What could possibly have been the thinking for the entire butterfly/touchbar line, "People should be looking at the keyboard more when they type. Also, there's not nearly enough wrist pain going around. I wonder what important part of the Macbook we can ruin to address both of these problems."

I suspect they're slowly fixing all of the things that Jony Ive wouldn't allow them to change back. No more brutal "form over function".

I find Thinkpad keyboards have always been pretty nice:

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wpje8JydZq3y_R5C-LMe3N-fiMk=...

Inverted T or bust. I couldn't consistently find the up and down keys without looking on a 2018 model for over a year and it sucked.

They're drawing attention to it because so many people complained about the old layout. For me, the arrow key layout was the sole reason I did not buy a new MacBook Pro in 2016, and one of the reasons I stayed away for 4 years.

This is a close Apple gets to saying "we fucked up".

Anyone have experience with A) their keyboard holding back their performance, and B) their keyboard was also not a mac?

My new Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard comes with an "emoji" key in place of the right-hand Windows key that I can't remap.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com