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Comment by pwinnski | Hacker News Reader

"The refined scissor mechanism with 1 mm of travel delivers a responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience."

What in that says "invented" "new" or even "wonderful?" It seems like you're reading into the text what isn't even there.

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Well, they are calling it the "magic" keyboard. How does that strike you?

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.

It strikes me as completely in line with their other peripheral offerings such as the:

- Magic Mouse

- Magic Mouse 2

- Magic Trackpad

- Magic Trackpad 2

- Magic Keyboard

- Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad

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.

> What in that says "invented" "new" or even "wonderful?"

Uh... "refined"?

Refined doesn't mean any of those words. Here's two definitions from Google:

> 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.

In fairness, that keyboard switch style hasn’t had 1mm off travel before, so don’t you think “refined” is somewhat accurate?

I read that as "elegant" not "made better". It's possible that people could read it either way.

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.

Are you seriously expecting them to say "our previous product was bad, this one is good"?

When has any tech company ever done that?

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.

That takes courage.

I mean Domino's managed to pull it off.

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.

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