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.
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.
Somehow I think Apple can handle it. Anyone wasting energy complaining is only doing so because they are waiting to buy again.
It makes as much sense defending them as it does yelling at them about a keyboard.
No, we moved on and do not care. There are many companies that make laptops and keyboards. 5 years too late.
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.
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.
What in that says "invented" "new" or even "wonderful?" It seems like you're reading into the text what isn't even there.
Uh... "refined"?
> with impurities or unwanted elements having been removed by processing.
> developed or improved so as to be precise or subtle.
It basically just mean improved, which most people would agree.
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.
- Magic Mouse
- Magic Mouse 2
- Magic Trackpad
- Magic Trackpad 2
- Magic Keyboard
- Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad
When has any tech company ever done that?
People want to hear wailing and gnashing of teeth, which is silly.
"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.
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.
I actually liked typing on the butterfly switches, the only thing I did not like was the left/right arrow keys being bigger.
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.
Anyway, I consider fake reviews to be dishonest .. I consider this to be more like "putting a positive spin on it".
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.
What ? No. They are telling us they refined it, not that they fixed their mistake. It's not perfect, it's lame and cheesy.
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.
[0] https://www.tomsguide.com/us/apple-macbook-keyboard-service-...
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.
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.
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.
"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.
"The refined scissor mechanism with 1 mm of travel delivers a responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience."
Is any of that false? How do we know?
They pretty clearly admitted fault when they offered free out of warranty repairs for keyboard issues.
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.
Sent from my MBP 13" 2018 with sticky spacebar.
That would be refreshing, I'd respect that.
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.
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?
New Apple doesn't act. Refuse to listen. Even with the Repair programme they still act as if it was not their fault.
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.
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.
Really I should just link to my last Electron rant, seems like they're getting closer together nowadays... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22598148
>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.
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?
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.
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.
Hopefully that's helpful.
1. Get your keyboard repaired (free, I assume)
2. Sell that thing online
3. Get this one.
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.
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).
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.
"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?
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.
Even I who gave up on Apple thought, hey what a nice machine.