It's the worst typing experience I've had to date https://datacrayon.com/posts/tools/misc/macbook-butterfly-ke...
BUT… my 2016 MBP is on its third keyboard, and seems ready for a fourth.
AND… for four years I've been wondering if my typing has been getting progressively worse worse; a couple weeks ago I picked up an M1 Air as a kind of stopgap while waiting for the M1 16".
LO AND BEHOLD: my typing accuracy got better overnight. That fraction of a millimeter between the keys makes a huge difference.
I love the butterfly keyboard. It was a disaster. RIP.
I haven't had those reliability issues, but 90% of the time work with an external keyboard and I clean my equipment more often than most.
Fwiw, I don't like any of the key systems that have a force threshold they just give up after. I had a Razer gaming keyboard that I didn't like for the same reason. It had good travel, but the keys don't move until you hit a certain force and then they totally cave and there's no resistance. They're also not really designed for typing though.
I have a couple scissor keyboards (the pre-magic ones) and, alternating between the laptop and the desktop one just makes it clear how much the butterfly feels better.
I haven’t heard of any trouble with the fourth gen (the last one before moving back to scissor-switches) at all.
It’s really unfortunate - a lot of people really liked the butterfly keyboard - but the reliability issues in earlier versions combined with the criticisms on key travel meant those voices just didn’t win out.
I’ve found that the dominant cause of RSI is wrist pose (position + orientation), which is mostly influenced by keyboard height (relative to your body), and also to a lesser extent by key pose.
Using a split, rising-away keyboard at a position where elbows are bent 90ish degrees and the wrists are in a neutral position is a game-changer.
Lower key travel/trigger times change the orientation of your wrists, but not the position. So it might make things better, but no laptop keyboard will provide the optimal typing environment.
The cherry mx brown switches in the Das Keyboard cause more pain than the proprietary scissor switches in the Magic Keyboard 2. Fatigue sets in quicker. I tried moving myself and the Contour Rollermouse up relative to the Das Keyboard keeping good ergonomics, but it still seems to have the same effect for me.
I am still shopping for a split keyboard, I definitely want to try it but I see it as a hail mary for reducing pain given that they typically use cherry switches.
Another thing it mentions but doesn’t visualize is the effect of having a split keyboard. Without the split, your shoulders are in a strained position while typing. You can practice this with a “ghost” keyboard and paying attention to your shoulder muscles, it makes a big difference!
[1]: http://ergonomictrends.com/proper-ergonomic-typing-posture-a...
I came from Cherry MX blues back in the day and for whatever reason came to find the obnoxious nature of the super-clacks (which the BF keys also deliver in spades) oddly satisfying.
Some of my colleagues complain of muscle pain from the short key travel on these models. From sitting next to them in pre-Covid days I can only imagine that's due to how hard they used to pound their poor keyboards.
I dreaded moving to the chiclet keyboards and then I dreaded moving to the butterfly, but at least for me they both turned out to be pleasantly surprising upgrades.