Edit: not sure why this is being downvoted, this is literally the source URL quoted in the Verge article and Vox sites (including this one) are frequently filled with clickbait.
I've got [capslock] mapped to [control] via system prefs already, and I'm not willing to give that up. As a Vim user, that puts me in a quandary for how to deal with the [escape] key should I ever move to a touchbar MBP, and is one of the reasons I'm still typing this on a 2012 MBPr. I live inside Vim all day every day.
Given that I am not a vi user, ESC being there doesn't matter to me.
There are the F keys when debugging, but I tend to jump between them and mouse anyway.
Since I only use Mac devices occasionally at work, I guess all in all it doesn't make that bad impression on me, versus fighting single keys for input.
As a vim user, I always use Ctrl-[ anyway instead of escape. So I map my capslock to control.
(Although nowadays I mainly use a kinesis advantage keyboard so non of that matters much anymore. Hell, many of vi's features like hjkl movement don't matter anymore either as all the modifier keys are all easily reachable now)
Finally! It took four years to admit there is something wrong. And one more year to change upcoming laptops. - It‘s unbelievable how this crap could be released. Coming from a ThinkPad to a MBP in 2015 I was even disappointed by the keyboard of the MBP 2015. Then switching to a MBP 2018 I was shocked how much worse things could get (for the sake of thinness?)
I think I used a ThinkPad back in 1997 when my Uncle had a laptop. But aside from that possibility I don’t believe I’ve ever touched one until beginning of this year.
I have a T520 at home as my linux box. At work I use a 2015 MacBook Pro.
I don't know.
I don't find the T520's keyboard to be any better than the MBP's. The differences in key placement are much more noticeable than any difference in key shape, travel, or response.
Am I missing something?
... and thanks to Linux, it runs like on the first day.
The integrated Intel GPU in my T520 is stuck on XDDM and never got an updated WDDM driver. So it can't run a modern version of Windows anyways.
Funny there's a conversation about the ThinkPad 2015 going on - my x240 was the generation that had the buttonless trackpad (which screwed the trackpoint).
Credit to Lenovo, they backtracked within one generation, but I am not nearly so rich as to be able to change laptops that often so it was a costly design "innovation" to me on their end!
> Finally! It took four years to admit there is something wrong. And one more year to change upcoming laptops
I think they admitted something was wrong as soon as they created the replacement program, it's just they have been completely unwilling to alter their planned product schedule to fix it early. When they create a laptop design they expect to be able to ship the same basic chassis design for 3-4 years and in this design the keyboard and chassis are so entwined they're literally bolted together.
We're getting a new non-Pro design revision with it fixed right on schedule and the Pro isn't scheduled to redesign till next year so we get the fix then. Both these fixes could have been in the market 1-2 years ago if they company truly wanted it.
They just decided it either wasn't worth the money, or wasn't worth changing their cadence to fix it early. Just don't think they have much respect for their Mac customers anymore and know they'll stick around.
> Both these fixes could have been in the market 1-2 years ago if they company truly wanted it.
How much development time does Apple need for a new laptop design? I think it takes them about 2 years.
So if you say they could have had fixed keyboards in 2017, they would have had to start designing them in 2015, which is a year before the 2016 models even went on sale.
My assumption is that they only realized that the butterfly switches are unsalvageable after the July 2017 upgrade failed to fix the problems, so they started working on new Macbook designs with scissor switches in late 2017, which will be released in 2019/2020.
I don’t think the parent was implying that it took them 4 years to design a keyboard but that once Apple made a new design they expected it to last a minimum of 3 to 4 years. So they could’ve fixed it earlier but they insisted on getting their 3-4 years out of the original design.
> unwilling to alter their planned product schedule
Given that Apple is a company headed by a COO, run entirely on tight logistics, my strong belief is that they just wanted to use up all the butterfly keyboard key-mechs they had already pumped out.
Yeah I was going to say that but I definitely don't think it would have stayed in the market this long if the CEO was a product person rather than ops.
I mean I'm not trying to downplay how huge it would be to dump that design early, they have an insane amount of machinery and production line set up which they expect to get a few years of usage out of and at the end of the day only the CEO can make a call on if its important enough to go back and retool early and your Ballmers, your Tim Cooks are just never going to make that trade off.
An ops person isn't going to lose any sleep over the MacBook line being downgraded from a great product to an ok product.
In code the reason we don't do wholesale rewrites of complicated systems very often is because while there are bugs in the current system they're known quantities; going back to the drawing board and starting from scratch results in a newer, better, but unknown system with unknown bugs. That might be worse. It's a massive risk.
This is true for Apple's new keyboard too. We can't automatically assume it's better than the existing one, or that it has no issues. It's an unknown. For all we know a new keyboard might be even worse than the current one. Hopefully Apple will have learned from their mistakes but whether or not they've corrected all the problems or introduced new problems is something we can't know.
It's good that Apple appear to be listening and are trying to fix the problem (if that's the reason for the new keyboard) but I won't be rushing out to buy one for a while.
Nobody said they need to start from scratch. This failure of a keyboard already proved your point. Simply going back to the previous design and iterating from that would have been a massive improvement.
Yep. I find myself unable to use my personal MBP 2015 after using the 2018 MBP for work. The feel is just so much better. The reliability is the issue(though I haven’t faced any issues yet).
I really dislike #2 and #3 but to their credit it is thin (which I don't care much about). You can argue about #2 and #3 being subjective which is fair enough (the same is true for it being thin). However #1 is not subjective, and doesn't occur in a "few isolated cases". It is a proven design issue.
What I'd furthermore argue though is that #1 and #2 and #3 are together the sole result of going for thinness. After all, the previous keyboards worked great (and I owned 4 MBPs of the 2010-2015 range).
Meanwhile, the prices of the MBPs have only increased which adds insult to injury!
There's this saying, "if it ain't broken, don't fix it". At the same time there's "release early, release often". The first version of the iPhone had serious disadvantages. Apple didn't release AirPower. These each had their minus. However Apple has failed to address this specific minus. We've been beta testing this feature enough. It is time to admit the design flaw, and move on (but don't Osbourne the current series).
It may make a bit more noise than the older one, but it certainly does not make "a lot" of noise. And the short travel is also not a problem, just a personal preference. As I said, I much prefer it, as do many others.
It is a lot of noise compared to my flaretech red switches. It is a lot of noise compared to my current and previous MBPs are previous ThinkPads.
Also, I even have my TouchPad on silent (I prefer than over the < 2015 versions even though the 2014 have less design flaws).
You prefer it, I don't. Many others prefer it, many other's don't. Like the touchbar, it was a controversial change. But if it then turns out to break regularly, then it is better to return to the previous design.
Personal anecdote but I was on an film set recently with mine, I'd planned to just work away because I was only going to be needed if things went wrong but on a quiet set I actually felt the keyboard was so noisy that I'd worry it would be getting picked up on the microphones. It felt uncomfortably loud even if they're filming a good 10 meters away.
I actually do like noisy keyboards in my own home, but the issue with Apple is if one size fits all then you really need to think of all the places that machine is potentially going to end up.
I often travel with public transport, including by train. Noisy people on smartphone is annoying, but there is a silence coupe where people have to be silent. So you can go sit there, right? Then it becomes apparent how noisy these newer Apple MBPs are. Whenever I get annoyed by the noise of a laptop, it is that.
And unfortunately I cannot listen to music and read... I wish I could! But I can't...
Everyone here, including e.g. IT, uses HP membrane keyboards with not a whole lot of travel. They don't make noise. I grew up with a IBM keyboard. Only thing I remember is I loved the feeling of it because they keys were always under my finger. I don't remember how much noise it made. I guess it is different if you're the person who's typing.
Not every mechanical keyboard creates as much noise as the other one though. And it also depends on how you use the keyboard.
If I'd work from home, a MBP butterfly would make my partner insane though. It could wake up my child, even. If you make your own noise, it is might be soothing or something. If it is other people around you whilst you're trying to concentrate you are violating their ability to use their time efficiently. I'm of the opinion that we should value such as "extremely rude".
I love my Carbon X1, especially because of it's excellent keyboard. Unfortunatly the same can not be said about it's touchpad which causes constantly accidental clicks while typing.
A combination of Lenovo's keyboard and Apple's touchpad would make a strong combination.
Thank goodness. MacBooks are the best laptops in many respects, but I had to cross them off the buy list due to the keyboard. I understand it's controversial, but for me I've spent plenty of time using the butterfly keyboard and it just doesn't feel comfortable to me. And I'm not some mechanical keyboard purist, actually my favorite keyboard of all time was the previous chicklet keyboard. A runner up for me is a travel Bluetooth keyboard with round keys that Logitech makes.
Yeah forking over an extra grand to buy a poorly built computer that looks pretty to use a god awful OS on mediocre hardware... what a great experience.
It doesn't sound like any of you have used a windows laptop in decades.
Except for trackpad and a decent MacOS, nothing really. Low quality hardware, increasingly subpar battery life on newer MBPs, battery swellings too common.
The hardware issues are common, but PR damage control teams, stakeholders, and fans will bury anyone who mentions it.
For several years (after the ThinkPad brand got sold to Lenovo who promptly started shipping it with spyware) there wasn't really a PC laptop brand with a rock solid reputation for high build quality.
Lots of companies were putting their badges on inch-thick, mostly plastic 15" laptops with mediocre touchpads that never delivered the battery life they promised. And if your employer issued you with a Windows laptop, that was what you got. Remember laptop bags, when moving a laptop needed padding and a shoulder strap and pockets to carry your mouse and power brick?
That's not to say there weren't some good products out there - there were some well designed Vaios, some pretty daring early tablet PCs and so on. But there wasn't a brand where you could say "Just buy an X" and know that you'd get a good quality product.
Of course, in recent years a lot of PC manufacturers have stepped up their game (or maybe I'm just spending more money?) while Apple has had a few stumbles.
Oh, I would never just advise someone to buy a Lenovo. They might end up choosing some mediocre IdeaPad!
I only advise people to buy ThinkPads, and I make specific recommendations on what model to get and which options to choose after we talk about their needs. For example, most people are better off getting a better display instead of a faster CPU if they don't have the money for both.
Everyone I've advised like this has been delighted with their ThinkPads. If there is any "shadow" over the brand, it hasn't affected them or me.
Best overall balance between performance/weight/battery life.
Best trackpad, hands down, no caveats, no balancing against other concerns. It's just that good.
Best integration with other devices (iphone, watch, etc). Making calls/sending text messages from a laptop is something I'm unwilling to give up at this point.
And most importantly, it's _by far_ the best support for a commercial unix/unix-like OS on a laptop. Dell isn't too bad though.
In the end, unix or a unix-like os is hard requirement for many of us, and I'm just too tired of fiddling with xorg/powertop to get decent battery life. I just want to get work done.
The older (say 2008-2015) trackpad is best -- a dream to use. The newer one is too big, alas. It's shocking how often I accidentally press it when I'm just trying to rest my palms on my laptop.
(But yes, the unix-like OS that doesn't require a lot of fiddling about and has nice GUI is the big thing for me, too.)
The trackpad makes it impossible for me to use a non-Apple laptop (I particularly love the haptic ones) - if anything else comes close I would love to try it.
Near-instant sleep/wake, best trackpad, Exceptional battery life, good weight/thinness balance for the power, industry-leading I/O performance with their SSD (which were PCIe years before the mainstream), very fast external ports (USB-C now) which can drive RAID disk arrays, fast flash drives, even eGPUs.
After the hardware, the software:
it's a GUI that just works with minimal fuss, supports most mainstream software, and also works with all the *nix stuff from Linux and BSD.
AND I can dual boot to Linux, Free/Open BSD, or Windows
AND I can run VMware or Parallels or the native Mac hypervisor (Docker)
I've seriously given consideration to the Surface Book Performance Base and the Dell XPS 15, but there are a lot of tradeoffs that keep me coming back to Apple's choices. The touchbar is not very useful to me but it's a minor thing. The keyboard I've been lucky (for 2 years).
I took multiple days to get my hackintosh running. The only reason I kept going was because I didn’t want to buy a MB that could break down anytime and take days to repair. I am glad they are finally switching the keyboard.
Great! Maybe next year I can finally get a new mbp :) I've been staying on 2013 mbp because of that but it's getting long in the tooth (plus affected by staingate but apparently too late for Apple to fix)
Once I got used to the new keyboards, I actually far prefer them. Ditto with the TouchBar. Yeah, I'm a heretic I suppose.
Keyboard: pleasant clicky-ness and little movement required. Thin AF.
TouchBar: customized with BetterTouchTools to be a hybrid of my most often-used shortcuts (expand menu, alfred, fantastical, window management, and 1password on the left, notification center and lock screen on the right) and music controls with gestures in the middle: shows current track, can change volume, switch tracks, play/pause, mute, or tap into a submenu to pull up most frequent playlists and add current songs to my library. Way better than using the function keys of old.
Oh and the escape key… long remapped to caps lock. If I really need caps lock, fn + caps lock key toggles it.
The problem that most people have is not with how it feels, it's how unreliable it is with buttons failing or missing keystrokes. Sometimes only caused by a spec of dust.
Getting used to the feeling of the flatter keyboard isn't really an issue for most people.
According to Twitter Poll by 50 different Web SaaS companies, All of them had MacBook Pro Keyboard failure in their team and have been working around them.
If you are telling me even a 5% keyboard failure rate within the first 2 year of purchase is an acceptable number that we can simply stop further discussion and say we agree to disagree.
I haven’t had a failure yet and I hate HATE the butterfly switches. I thought the old scissor switches were subpar and prefer a mechanical keyboard, though, so obviously thin and non-tactile are akin to profanity in my world...
How is "little movement required" a good thing though? Having a healthy amount of key travel makes typing a lot more comfortable. I'm not impressed by thinness either. Laptops are thin enough to be functional. When Apple says "our new keyboard design is 40% thinner" it's a non sequitur. The question should be whether it's better, not whether it's thinner. That should attract ridicule like if an energy drink advertised: "Our formula is now 11% more dense!" Like, I'm sure their flavor scientists are aware of the density but that's a random and bizarre data point to be bragging about publicly.
I think it's impossible to make an objective judgement about whether more key travel is better or worse. Personally I got used to the new keyboard in a couple of hours, and never thought key travel again. I do like the "clickiness" of the keys, but I don't really care how far I have to press it.
I would say the toucbar is a completely useless liability, and the poor durability of the keyboard is an issue, but if they were able to produce a butterfly keyboard which worked reliably and had a physical escape key it would be more than fine for me.
Yeah after a year getting used to it I thought the same. Then I went back and used my old Macbook Air while it was getting repaired (for keyboard issues, of course). After using the old MBA keyboard for more than 30 seconds I changed my mind pretty quickly.
I've tried BTT, but the biggest issue is you're trading touch typing for contextual hunt and peck, even worse if you're opening one of those submenus. You can fit 100x the shortcuts in the same real estate with f1~12 + modifier keys, and you don't have to look down from the screen.
That's good news—for the people who are buying laptops next year.
Hopefully the return to scissor switches is combined with some improvements to the touch bar. My suggestion to Apple would be: put a small physical ESC key on the far left of the touch bar on 13 inch models, and include both physical F-keys AND a touch bar on the larger models.
Bonus points: allow people to choose classic F-keys on the 13 inch models as a BTO option.
I would love to see Apple make the touch bar an option. If Apple sold two identical MacBooks models, except for the touch bar, my guess would be that they would sell significantly more units without the touch bar.
Is anyone seriously benefiting from the touch bar or even using it for anything other than as a gimmick?
I hate it, but I think there are definitely uses for the TouchBar. My main issue is the lack of indexing. You really can't use it without looking at your keyboard. I already dislike that the chiclet keyboards have no grouping of F-keys, unlike my standard layout keyboard that groups them into groups of four. But at least there I understand it's due to space constraints, and at least I still have some physical guide to the key I want.
IMO it's a liability and an unmitigated failure. It feels like a decision which came down from the board room, not from UX. Like: how can we make this product "pop" and at the same time make keyboard replacements produce more revenue?
The toudchbar is useless without developer adoption, and there will never be developer adoption if the only people using the feature are those who can spend a couple thousand dollars on a laptop. It seems to me the non-inclusion on the new Macbook Air was an admission of failure.
Are the butterflies justifiably thinner than the older chicklet keyboard? I feel like there is no way they made a measurable difference... But maybe it did.
Don't understand the problem. I like new keyboard more than the previous one, I'm indifferent to touchbar and mapping escape to capslock was the best thing ever. The only thing I hate is keys getting stuck, but it actually stopped happening(2017 model). I wouldn't like to come back to old keyboard now.
If you're always in a clean environment, the keyboard is ok.
I've used 3 consecutive mac laptops on the same balcony, open air. The one from 2010 and the one from 2014 are just fine thank you. The one from 2018 already has keyboard problems and it hasn't even been a year since i bought it.
Yeah that’s crucial. I’m still using my 2012 MBP. I clean it once or twice a year, more for aesthetics. It’s great not having to worry about where and how I use it (outside of extreme environments) every time I use it.
Yeah, I was very sceptical about both the keyboard and the touch bar until I actually got a new MBP for work. Now it's my favorite keyboard. Less effort pushing the keys seem to always mean swifter typing.
The new keyboard is less wobbly than the old keyboard. It would have been an awesome keyboard, if there is little more travel and they had completely fix the keys getting stuck issue. Maybe returning back to the scissor keys confirms that there isn't a solution yet.
About time, been wanting get a MacBook pro to replace my 2011 MacBook Air but wasn't going to get one with that keyboard. Will still wait a while to see if new design is any good.
Yep, same here. I broke down and got a used 2015 MBP when the new Gen Airs came out, because I needed something and just couldn't handle the butterfly keyboard. ($day_job machine is a 2017 MBP, and 95% of the time, I use an external keyboard/monitor)
I'm really hoping for materials improvements across the board on the next 13" MBP. I haven't had that many issues with the keyboard, though do find it a little loud. However, I find that the aluminum scratches too easily, gets stained quickly, and the screen coating is very vulnerable to damage from both the keyboard pressing against it and just bout anything touching it. Likewise, while I happen to have only been using it exclusively as a portable laptop with not much plugged into it, the thought of trying to plug this into the wall, a monitor, and an external HD at the same time is infuriating. Even if I had a USB-C to displayport connector, I'd be out of ports. Couldn't even plug in a Logitech wireless mouse at the same time. It's pretty upsetting that I spent so much money and have more constraints than I did before.
You've pretty much summed up where I am with my 2017 13" MBP. It was a huge purchase for me and I felt it was an investment at the time (I'm spending a few years learning coding skills having been made redundant), but having had to have the screen replaced because of keybaord damage, and having ugly-looking wear around the thunderbolt ports - all of this on a laptop that I treat very well, and which had had a hardshell case since day one and always travels in a padded slip case - I can't say I'm impressed at all.
If it really was a 'pro' piece of kit, I wouldn't need to put a sheet of A4 paper between the screen and keyboard to avoid the glass getting damaged every time I shut it (it's now out of Apple Care warranty, and another screen would be £500). I actually like the feel of the keyboard (although it is noisy), and I love the trackpad - anything else feels like a cheap toy in comparison now.
I've needed on occasion to use it with external hardware - soundcard, dongle for Cubase, USB memory, etc., and it's a messy pain. I also have a 2010 15" MBP I was recently gifted, and it's better overall because it's solid, reliable and has lots of ports, and doesn't need to be treated with kid gloves. Yes, it has the procesing power of a ZX Spectrum in comparison to the 2017, but I can live with that. It's become my travelling laptop instead of the 2017 because it's not a hothouse flower.
I don't know if this trend was solely Jony Ive's, but I sincerely hope they will make actual 'Pro' machines in the future.
However, I shall not be buying one. This cost me a fortune (twice as much as any laptop I've bought in the past), and it's once bitten, twice shy, I'm afraid.
I have a personal 2015 MBP but my current client has provided me with a 2018 MBP. Despite being a Vim user, I’ve discovered that the Touch ID allows me to shut my laptop more often due to the quick login, rather than it being an always open distraction. (I work from books and paper a lot). This is not applicable to many others, I’m sure, but I’ve found a new way of using the laptop as a result: as yet another tool and not the dominant one.
Yeah, it seems to me the ideal version still has TouchId but not the rest of the touch bar (Like modern Macbook Air). Combine that with scissor switch keys, and then I'll be happy to upgrade
I’m still using my 2012 MacBook Pro desperately hoping they release a new 15-inch line without the Touch Bar. I had bought a MacBook pro with the Touch Bar and after a few weeks I just hated it more and more and returned it.
I’m still mad about them ditching MagSafe but I can get over that at least.
In the same position. Though I actually don’t like MagSafe that much. It falls out if you’re working on your lap, and the light is inconvenient if you charge at night. I much prefer the sound to notify charging.
> But will they still keep that awful touchbar where the Esc and F1-12 are supposed to be?
If you use the escape key often, it should be where caps-lock is. Mac OS X even has a built-in setting for this.
If you only use it once in a while, it doesn't really matter that it's a virtual touch key.
F1-12 has always been a horrible interface. They're too far away from home row. There's a reason why many hyper-optimized keyboads like Ergodox don't come with one. Letter-based keyboard shortcuts are always better, and are usually easier to remember because you can associate the letter they use with a word (Cmd+B for "Build").
The touch bar is objectively a better use of that space if you ask me, it just came with an unacceptable price jump. It's not that much better than the old key row
I realize this is a joke, but when typing e.g. "echo $ITERM_PROFILE", you have to press shift anyway to type the $ and any subsequent _'s, and I find it considerably easier to hold down the shift key, type the whole word, and release, instead of: press shift for $, release, press caps lock, release and press shift for _, release, type rest of word, and disable caps lock at the end.
Seriously, the only non-facetious use case (CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL) for caps lock that I've ever encountered is how EV Nova uses it as the 2x speed toggle. And even then, its open source successor Endless Sky emulates the same behavior even when I have caps lock still mapped to ctrl.
Does anyone have a real use case for caps lock? I'm even willing to accept a serious, no-kidding "YES I ACTUALLY TYPE IN ALL CAPS MOST OF THE TIME WHEN CHATTING WITH MY FRIENDS AND IT'S EASIER" as an answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caps_Lock#History and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter#Shift_key give some background. "However, because the shift key required more force to push (its mechanism was moving a much larger mass than other keys), and was operated by the little finger (normally the weakest finger on the hand), it was difficult to hold the shift down for more than two or three consecutive strokes. The "shift lock" key (the precursor to the modern caps lock) allowed the shift operation to be maintained indefinitely." This seems not very applicable to modern keyboards.
For non English keyboards, they let you toggle between different ‘alphabet’ sets. For Japanese keyboards, you can toggle them between hiragana and katakana, or full and half width characters.
There used to be an option for Chinese keyboards but I don’t remember what those were anymore.
Not the OP but yes I’ve used it and yes I hated it. 95% gimmick and frustrating as hell to use. Had to return my laptop and I’ve been desperately waiting for them to remove it for a 15-inch pro.
The "consulting" thing is pure window-dressing IMO. I have several friends who work for Apple, and from talking to them (+ everything I've ever read about their culture) either you're in the tent or you're out. Outsiders have no meaningful role in their process.
It really makes me appreciate how valuable it is to have a physical mute button on every device which makes sound. Especially when it gets hung for a few seconds, and I have to manually mute from the task bar using the cursor.
Too late for me. I've already jumped ship and the effort of moving back isn't worth it. I still have and use apple products, but I've no interest in buying any more now, thanks to the shoddy experience I had with their more recent products. I also have no interest in airpods, so a new iphone is out too. Apple won me over quite late and then within about two years lost me again. It made me sad, because I really liked their products during that time, especially the multi-device experience, but I now already use too many non-Apple devices for that to matter and don't care anymore now.
Mixture between a desktop, a cheap laptop (which I plan to replace with an X1 Carbon or a Thinkpad isn’t he coming months, although I haven’t researched it yet) and an old Mac Mini when I want to use mac software. OS-wise, I use Manjaro Linux.
The complexity and cost of butterfly keyboards comparatively to traditional keyboards, reliables and cheaps just reminds me a bit an article I read on the development of Electromagnetic Catapults in US Navy (hard to build, astronomical costs).
Most stuff people use USB for still have the good old USB-A adapters: mice, keyboards, USB sticks/other drives, card readers, LTE dongles.
The things that actually need the massive speed benefits from USB-C (10G network adapters and PCIe enclosures) can have USB-C, fine with me, but please don't force users to buy and especially lose adapters just to be able to use their existing stuff. And no need to make shit ever more expensive and complex, a mouse won't ever need anything from USB-C.
I have a hard time understanding people that just keep complaining about the new USB-C ports instead of just buying a handful of those (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CVX3516) and permanently attaching them to the mouse/keyboard cables.
I've been gradually moving over to all USB-C peripherals, and the experience is great. It's an ergonomic connector, and it's nice not to have a bunch of separate subtypes for different applications (normal, micro, that weird long one etc.). The main problem has been lack of support for USB-C in peripheral manufacturers.
For instance, in the last couple years I purchased a high-end E-Reader and a pair of noise-canceling headphones, and neither of them had USB-C as an option (the headphones do as of the most recent iteraation, but oh well). Also it's impossible to find a Thunderbolt over USB-C external SSD which has a small form-factor and isn't obscenely expensive.
I'm ready to move into the USB-C-only future, but the ecosystem still isn't quite there yet.
665 comments
[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 311 ms ] threadOriginal source from the article: https://9to5mac.com/2019/07/04/kuo-new-keyboard-macbook-air-...
dang could you update it?
Edit: not sure why this is being downvoted, this is literally the source URL quoted in the Verge article and Vox sites (including this one) are frequently filled with clickbait.
I don't mind the touchbar, rather the quality where dust particles break it down.
I've got [capslock] mapped to [control] via system prefs already, and I'm not willing to give that up. As a Vim user, that puts me in a quandary for how to deal with the [escape] key should I ever move to a touchbar MBP, and is one of the reasons I'm still typing this on a 2012 MBPr. I live inside Vim all day every day.
https://github.com/jasonrudolph/ControlEscape.spoon
You can do all kinds of Keyboard modifications. See here for the mentioned mod: https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/complex_modifications/#caps_l...
There are the F keys when debugging, but I tend to jump between them and mouse anyway.
Since I only use Mac devices occasionally at work, I guess all in all it doesn't make that bad impression on me, versus fighting single keys for input.
(Although nowadays I mainly use a kinesis advantage keyboard so non of that matters much anymore. Hell, many of vi's features like hjkl movement don't matter anymore either as all the modifier keys are all easily reachable now)
... and thanks to Linux, it runs like on the first day.
I don't know.
I don't find the T520's keyboard to be any better than the MBP's. The differences in key placement are much more noticeable than any difference in key shape, travel, or response.
Am I missing something?
... and thanks to Linux, it runs like on the first day.
The integrated Intel GPU in my T520 is stuck on XDDM and never got an updated WDDM driver. So it can't run a modern version of Windows anyways.
https://support.apple.com/15-inch-macbook-pro-battery-recall
Credit to Lenovo, they backtracked within one generation, but I am not nearly so rich as to be able to change laptops that often so it was a costly design "innovation" to me on their end!
I think they admitted something was wrong as soon as they created the replacement program, it's just they have been completely unwilling to alter their planned product schedule to fix it early. When they create a laptop design they expect to be able to ship the same basic chassis design for 3-4 years and in this design the keyboard and chassis are so entwined they're literally bolted together.
We're getting a new non-Pro design revision with it fixed right on schedule and the Pro isn't scheduled to redesign till next year so we get the fix then. Both these fixes could have been in the market 1-2 years ago if they company truly wanted it.
They just decided it either wasn't worth the money, or wasn't worth changing their cadence to fix it early. Just don't think they have much respect for their Mac customers anymore and know they'll stick around.
How much development time does Apple need for a new laptop design? I think it takes them about 2 years.
So if you say they could have had fixed keyboards in 2017, they would have had to start designing them in 2015, which is a year before the 2016 models even went on sale.
My assumption is that they only realized that the butterfly switches are unsalvageable after the July 2017 upgrade failed to fix the problems, so they started working on new Macbook designs with scissor switches in late 2017, which will be released in 2019/2020.
Jusdging from the irrational enthusiasm in most of this thread, it looks like you are right.
Given that Apple is a company headed by a COO, run entirely on tight logistics, my strong belief is that they just wanted to use up all the butterfly keyboard key-mechs they had already pumped out.
I mean I'm not trying to downplay how huge it would be to dump that design early, they have an insane amount of machinery and production line set up which they expect to get a few years of usage out of and at the end of the day only the CEO can make a call on if its important enough to go back and retool early and your Ballmers, your Tim Cooks are just never going to make that trade off.
An ops person isn't going to lose any sleep over the MacBook line being downgraded from a great product to an ok product.
This is true for Apple's new keyboard too. We can't automatically assume it's better than the existing one, or that it has no issues. It's an unknown. For all we know a new keyboard might be even worse than the current one. Hopefully Apple will have learned from their mistakes but whether or not they've corrected all the problems or introduced new problems is something we can't know.
It's good that Apple appear to be listening and are trying to fix the problem (if that's the reason for the new keyboard) but I won't be rushing out to buy one for a while.
* It breaks.
* It makes a lot of noise.
* It has almost no travel.
I really dislike #2 and #3 but to their credit it is thin (which I don't care much about). You can argue about #2 and #3 being subjective which is fair enough (the same is true for it being thin). However #1 is not subjective, and doesn't occur in a "few isolated cases". It is a proven design issue.
What I'd furthermore argue though is that #1 and #2 and #3 are together the sole result of going for thinness. After all, the previous keyboards worked great (and I owned 4 MBPs of the 2010-2015 range).
Meanwhile, the prices of the MBPs have only increased which adds insult to injury!
There's this saying, "if it ain't broken, don't fix it". At the same time there's "release early, release often". The first version of the iPhone had serious disadvantages. Apple didn't release AirPower. These each had their minus. However Apple has failed to address this specific minus. We've been beta testing this feature enough. It is time to admit the design flaw, and move on (but don't Osbourne the current series).
Also, I even have my TouchPad on silent (I prefer than over the < 2015 versions even though the 2014 have less design flaws).
You prefer it, I don't. Many others prefer it, many other's don't. Like the touchbar, it was a controversial change. But if it then turns out to break regularly, then it is better to return to the previous design.
Personal anecdote but I was on an film set recently with mine, I'd planned to just work away because I was only going to be needed if things went wrong but on a quiet set I actually felt the keyboard was so noisy that I'd worry it would be getting picked up on the microphones. It felt uncomfortably loud even if they're filming a good 10 meters away.
I actually do like noisy keyboards in my own home, but the issue with Apple is if one size fits all then you really need to think of all the places that machine is potentially going to end up.
And unfortunately I cannot listen to music and read... I wish I could! But I can't...
You don't work with people using mechanical keyboards, right?
Not every mechanical keyboard creates as much noise as the other one though. And it also depends on how you use the keyboard.
If I'd work from home, a MBP butterfly would make my partner insane though. It could wake up my child, even. If you make your own noise, it is might be soothing or something. If it is other people around you whilst you're trying to concentrate you are violating their ability to use their time efficiently. I'm of the opinion that we should value such as "extremely rude".
A combination of Lenovo's keyboard and Apple's touchpad would make a strong combination.
Needs to always be on
Needs haptic feedback
I've never heard this before.
I thought some people needed their proprietary software that could only be run on Apple products, and that is what forces someone to buy a Macbook.
What are they best in class for?
EDIT: Thank you for the serious responses
Edit: And the best trackpad ever designed imo
The trackpad is unsurpassed in the industry
Low power consumption / good battery life
The overall experience.
It doesn't sound like any of you have used a windows laptop in decades.
The hardware issues are common, but PR damage control teams, stakeholders, and fans will bury anyone who mentions it.
Lots of companies were putting their badges on inch-thick, mostly plastic 15" laptops with mediocre touchpads that never delivered the battery life they promised. And if your employer issued you with a Windows laptop, that was what you got. Remember laptop bags, when moving a laptop needed padding and a shoulder strap and pockets to carry your mouse and power brick?
That's not to say there weren't some good products out there - there were some well designed Vaios, some pretty daring early tablet PCs and so on. But there wasn't a brand where you could say "Just buy an X" and know that you'd get a good quality product.
Of course, in recent years a lot of PC manufacturers have stepped up their game (or maybe I'm just spending more money?) while Apple has had a few stumbles.
That's incorrect. You're referring to SuperFish, which was only on Lenovo's consumer machines, not on ThinkPad.
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/superfish
I only advise people to buy ThinkPads, and I make specific recommendations on what model to get and which options to choose after we talk about their needs. For example, most people are better off getting a better display instead of a faster CPU if they don't have the money for both.
Everyone I've advised like this has been delighted with their ThinkPads. If there is any "shadow" over the brand, it hasn't affected them or me.
Best overall balance between performance/weight/battery life.
Best trackpad, hands down, no caveats, no balancing against other concerns. It's just that good.
Best integration with other devices (iphone, watch, etc). Making calls/sending text messages from a laptop is something I'm unwilling to give up at this point.
And most importantly, it's _by far_ the best support for a commercial unix/unix-like OS on a laptop. Dell isn't too bad though.
In the end, unix or a unix-like os is hard requirement for many of us, and I'm just too tired of fiddling with xorg/powertop to get decent battery life. I just want to get work done.
(But yes, the unix-like OS that doesn't require a lot of fiddling about and has nice GUI is the big thing for me, too.)
Try to dial down the BS.
After the hardware, the software: it's a GUI that just works with minimal fuss, supports most mainstream software, and also works with all the *nix stuff from Linux and BSD.
AND I can dual boot to Linux, Free/Open BSD, or Windows
AND I can run VMware or Parallels or the native Mac hypervisor (Docker)
I've seriously given consideration to the Surface Book Performance Base and the Dell XPS 15, but there are a lot of tradeoffs that keep me coming back to Apple's choices. The touchbar is not very useful to me but it's a minor thing. The keyboard I've been lucky (for 2 years).
But I'm glad they finally admitted the problem.
Keyboard: pleasant clicky-ness and little movement required. Thin AF.
TouchBar: customized with BetterTouchTools to be a hybrid of my most often-used shortcuts (expand menu, alfred, fantastical, window management, and 1password on the left, notification center and lock screen on the right) and music controls with gestures in the middle: shows current track, can change volume, switch tracks, play/pause, mute, or tap into a submenu to pull up most frequent playlists and add current songs to my library. Way better than using the function keys of old.
Oh and the escape key… long remapped to caps lock. If I really need caps lock, fn + caps lock key toggles it.
Getting used to the feeling of the flatter keyboard isn't really an issue for most people.
It’s a piece of shit, and even after a replacement it’s broken within weeks.
If you are telling me even a 5% keyboard failure rate within the first 2 year of purchase is an acceptable number that we can simply stop further discussion and say we agree to disagree.
I've remapped escape to caps lock too, but how do you get fn + caps lock to toggle caps lock?
https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/complex_modifications/
I would say the toucbar is a completely useless liability, and the poor durability of the keyboard is an issue, but if they were able to produce a butterfly keyboard which worked reliably and had a physical escape key it would be more than fine for me.
Hopefully the return to scissor switches is combined with some improvements to the touch bar. My suggestion to Apple would be: put a small physical ESC key on the far left of the touch bar on 13 inch models, and include both physical F-keys AND a touch bar on the larger models.
Bonus points: allow people to choose classic F-keys on the 13 inch models as a BTO option.
Is anyone seriously benefiting from the touch bar or even using it for anything other than as a gimmick?
The toudchbar is useless without developer adoption, and there will never be developer adoption if the only people using the feature are those who can spend a couple thousand dollars on a laptop. It seems to me the non-inclusion on the new Macbook Air was an admission of failure.
I've used 3 consecutive mac laptops on the same balcony, open air. The one from 2010 and the one from 2014 are just fine thank you. The one from 2018 already has keyboard problems and it hasn't even been a year since i bought it.
So yes, the keyboard is complete and utter shit.
Going back to the previous generation feels mushy now...
If it really was a 'pro' piece of kit, I wouldn't need to put a sheet of A4 paper between the screen and keyboard to avoid the glass getting damaged every time I shut it (it's now out of Apple Care warranty, and another screen would be £500). I actually like the feel of the keyboard (although it is noisy), and I love the trackpad - anything else feels like a cheap toy in comparison now.
I've needed on occasion to use it with external hardware - soundcard, dongle for Cubase, USB memory, etc., and it's a messy pain. I also have a 2010 15" MBP I was recently gifted, and it's better overall because it's solid, reliable and has lots of ports, and doesn't need to be treated with kid gloves. Yes, it has the procesing power of a ZX Spectrum in comparison to the 2017, but I can live with that. It's become my travelling laptop instead of the 2017 because it's not a hothouse flower.
I don't know if this trend was solely Jony Ive's, but I sincerely hope they will make actual 'Pro' machines in the future.
However, I shall not be buying one. This cost me a fortune (twice as much as any laptop I've bought in the past), and it's once bitten, twice shy, I'm afraid.
But will they still keep that awful touchbar where the Esc and F1-12 are supposed to be? Then I'll still be passing.
I already had Caps Lock mapped to Ctrl. I used Karabiner Elements to map a Caps Lock press to Escape. It took about a day to get used to.
I’ve managed to get a 2015 model back now, but I’m sticking with Caps Lock press = Escape.
I miss the fingerprint reader!
I’m still mad about them ditching MagSafe but I can get over that at least.
I don't see how this lack of upgradability meets the needs of "Pro" users.
If you use the escape key often, it should be where caps-lock is. Mac OS X even has a built-in setting for this.
If you only use it once in a while, it doesn't really matter that it's a virtual touch key.
F1-12 has always been a horrible interface. They're too far away from home row. There's a reason why many hyper-optimized keyboads like Ergodox don't come with one. Letter-based keyboard shortcuts are always better, and are usually easier to remember because you can associate the letter they use with a word (Cmd+B for "Build").
The touch bar is objectively a better use of that space if you ask me, it just came with an unacceptable price jump. It's not that much better than the old key row
Blasphemy. Caps lock should be banished from all keyboards and replaced with control.
Blasphemy! How am I supposed to type variable names in Bash without it ?
Seriously, the only non-facetious use case (CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL) for caps lock that I've ever encountered is how EV Nova uses it as the 2x speed toggle. And even then, its open source successor Endless Sky emulates the same behavior even when I have caps lock still mapped to ctrl.
Does anyone have a real use case for caps lock? I'm even willing to accept a serious, no-kidding "YES I ACTUALLY TYPE IN ALL CAPS MOST OF THE TIME WHEN CHATTING WITH MY FRIENDS AND IT'S EASIER" as an answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caps_Lock#History and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter#Shift_key give some background. "However, because the shift key required more force to push (its mechanism was moving a much larger mass than other keys), and was operated by the little finger (normally the weakest finger on the hand), it was difficult to hold the shift down for more than two or three consecutive strokes. The "shift lock" key (the precursor to the modern caps lock) allowed the shift operation to be maintained indefinitely." This seems not very applicable to modern keyboards.
There used to be an option for Chinese keyboards but I don’t remember what those were anymore.
The pro has 4 usb ports.
The things that actually need the massive speed benefits from USB-C (10G network adapters and PCIe enclosures) can have USB-C, fine with me, but please don't force users to buy and especially lose adapters just to be able to use their existing stuff. And no need to make shit ever more expensive and complex, a mouse won't ever need anything from USB-C.
For instance, in the last couple years I purchased a high-end E-Reader and a pair of noise-canceling headphones, and neither of them had USB-C as an option (the headphones do as of the most recent iteraation, but oh well). Also it's impossible to find a Thunderbolt over USB-C external SSD which has a small form-factor and isn't obscenely expensive.
I'm ready to move into the USB-C-only future, but the ecosystem still isn't quite there yet.