Because it is almost unbelievable that it happened; I can barely type on mine. I have all my hardware from 10+ years ago until now to compare with. Would return this one in an instant, if possible.
My first mac computer is the 2018 MBP which features the butterfly keyboard, it started failing after about 6 months of use. My previous laptop, a dell e6230 which runs Linux, feels almost as fast, especially for Docker stuff, has a fantastic keyboard and way better battery life. Can't see myself buying any Apple product after that.
I bought a 2017 MBP and figured that surely it can't be that bad in practice.
It was, to the point where I could barely type sentences without having to correct double-letter inputs. And that's without anything failing.
Thankfully the laptop was insured and I got the 2019 16 inch model now (with the escape key and a working keyboard). Touchbar with BetterTouchTool has proven to be much more useful than I expected.
But man was this a massive fuck-up. There's no way a 2000+ product should be able to malfunction in such a fundamental way!
EDIT: also, pain. I'm pretty flexible when it comes to getting used to changes in input, so I expected to be okay with less key travel and whatnot. But a day of using the new keyboards /felt/ different. My hands/wrists would hurt. This was only with the MBP with the new keyboard. Whenever I used my old MacBook Air or even the new Magic Keyboard I had no issues.
I can't tell for sure, but while it feels a lot better, even the new 16 inch MBP leaves my fingers a bit more sore than the mushier 2013-era Air.
Apple as a whole would have failed long ago for prioritizing form over function with an astronomical markup, but consumers are unendingly stupid so as long as Apple shovels out underfeatured shiny status symbols the gravy train's never gonna stop.
I’ve owned both high-end and middle-of-the-road computers and mobile devices from many manufacturers... they almost all suck in comparison to Apple’s products. You don’t make revolutionary products by playing it safe - good design is about both form and function, as can be experienced with the vast majority of Apple’s current product offerings.
Same disk capacity, not sure if the MSI's is an SSD but that's less than $100
60Hz vs 144Hz
So I'd be getting an all-around better laptop that doesn't need dongles for everything and gives you far more control over the system and runs far more programs for $900 less.
Saying "MSI's is better" is not objective. If your objective reasoning for a device being better is "But this one goes to 11", then I'm not sure we're on the same page.
Some of your facts are wrong. The basic 16-inch MacBook Pro has also an i7-9750H, not a years-old processor like you said. Additionally... the screen on the MacBook Pro is leaps above gaming laptops for working with photos and video - I know that, since I actually recommended one of those to a friend who wanted a laptop for some photo editing, and he ended up returning it because the colors on the screen were all wrong, and it didn't appear to be fixable.
That's not to say that the MSI may not be a better deal... But you can't just compare the specs you said, there's more at stake.
Must have been an older model - I just googled "macbook i7" or something since Apple's page didn't mention it, but I should've noticed the cores.
I forgot about resolution too but I've done this comparison a few times in the past with different laptops and always found better for the price point.
Colors might be a good point here but I'm sure there are other laptops with good colors too.
This illustrates pretty well one of the main reasons I switched to Apple years ago: I know what I'm getting and at least until keyboard-gate it did "just work".
While it's true that I could get better-specced laptop, phone, bluetooth earbuds, and so one, I consistently run into two issues that I just don't have with Apple: 1) there's almost always something subpar about the product, that reviews didn't warn me against, and/or 2) I hate having to carefully select from a dizzying array of inter- and intra-company options, where often companies actively game the system (reviews) or try to up-sell.
It's honestly somewhat astonishing how consistently I run into these issues when I buy a non-apple product, in particular laptops.
Now of course being 'in' the ecosystem already also has a ton of benefits, and of course I can afford being a little less price-conscious. But it's absolutely not the case that I go for Apple because it's cool. Or because they market well.
An SoC is more than just a CPU & GPU. Until A13, Qualcomm was the undisputed leader of GPUs. They also make the best modems there is on any SoC. Apple has a clear lead only in CPU. Even in memory Android OEMs have caught up.
And yet my high-end Android phone is slower and jankier where it counts most to me: UI stuff.
From what I've read this has to do with the Android OS, and things are getting better and better. but my point is that this sluggishness is or at least was just as 'objective', and to many of us ultimately much more important than raw specs.
It's the same reason why I still willing to pay the Apple premium for laptops (although more and more begrudgingly so). I don't care about better raw specs when sleep mode still doesn't quite work, or the fans are unreasonably loud, or the trackpad sucks, and I haven't really cared about these things since I switched from my custom-built tower PC back in the day.
> And yet my high-end Android phone is slower and jankier where it counts most to me: UI stuff.
Has no relation to SoC. My Pixel 4 is noticeably smoother than iPhone 11 I tried.
> It's the same reason why I still willing to pay the Apple premium for laptops (although more and more begrudgingly so). I don't care about better raw specs when sleep mode still doesn't quite work, or the fans are unreasonably loud, or the trackpad sucks, and I haven't really cared about these things since I switched from my custom-built tower PC back in the day.
I am typing this on a $2000 i7 Macbook Pro 2017 running hot as a pipe. The same workload works a lot cooler on my $500 Ryzen 3500u laptop. The plastic is much comfortable to hold even when things get hotter compared to unbearable metal of Macbook. And don't even get me started on the Keyboard.
You can't convince people to stop buying iPhones and Harley-Davidsons in any case because they're not selling products, they're selling an image and people want to have status symbols and fit in with the image.
This would be more of a discussion if we were given an inside perspective on the processes which led to this, whether there were countervoices, why they weren't heard, etc.
I asked a high level apple engineer about the butterfly keyboard fiasco, and he jokingly replied that he'll consider releasing that info and other insider baseball at his funeral. He's not even allowed to tell many other Apple employees what he's working on. It's not easy to get an inside perspective or gossip from Apple employees.
The author even says that he thought the butterfly keyboards were better for typing -- i.e., for their purpose:
> I find the butterfly switches far crisper and snappier to use than the softer, mushier scissor-switch
His only point seems to be that Apple not did care about reliability, but I find that highly suspect.
It seems to me that Apple's problem was likely insufficient testing. If they had known that the keyboards would break in real-world usage, they wouldn't have shipped them.
I don't actually mind the butterfly keyboard. Back in 2016 I got one of the first laptops with the it, the 12" MacBook, and I'm still using it daily. Also had a 2017 15" which I just upgraded to the new 16". Zero issues with both, and I haven't babied them at all.
While there's not a lot of key travel, it is very clicky and feels satisfying for me to type on. Individual keys are also very stable.
Not sure why you're being downvoted - my experience mirrors yours. I've just swapped from a 2018 MBP with the last (final?) iteration of the butterfly mechanism to a 2020 13" MBP with the new keyboard and in all honesty I preferred the butterfly.
Not so silent, there's several comment threads that show up in every article about how they're the best thing ever. I disagree for multiple reasons, but that's tangental.
It’s been my experience that coworkers with butterfly keyboards either type nearly silently or incredibly loudly. I’m not sure it’s worth the trade off.
1. less reliable (probably true)
2. different (so hate it)
Like anyone else, I don't want less reliability. But the "different" in this case isn't at all bad--like you said, less travel. I don't need key travel once my nervous system has calibrated to the keyboard, and extra travel aggravates my RSI as well.
I think this is overstated. The butterfly keyboards were better day to day than the old style imho, and I say that as someone who had to have one replaced multiple times. It was the robustness that was an issue rather than the keyboard itself.
Apple can be accused of moving too slowly to when issues arose perhaps, but they did iterate trying to fix it and they’ve been very good in my experience with replacements.
Happily the new one is fantastic as far as I can tell so far.
Jony Ive retires and all of a sudden Apple hardware starts making more "sense". I don't think that was a coincidence. The engineers are more influential than the designers at the moment.
Read a rumor somewhere that he made the edges of the MacBook in his prototype design so sharp to the point of serious discomfort to users, but he only changed it after Steve Jobs had to ask him about it.
The day that the new keyboard was released, I walked over to the Apple store and tried it out.
I physically recoiled from it. It reminded me of the Atari 400 keyboard, a cheap membrane keyboard from the 1970s . . . not quite that bad, but still awful.
The Apple store employee who was watching me remarked on my reaction. "This keyboard feels terrible," I said, "Apple is going to lose a lot of money over it." Naturally the employee didn't care about my opinion.
Early on it seemed like Apple took a Bauhaus-like approach to design, where the motivating principle can be summarized as "form follows function". From an outsider's perspective, there's so much time spent discussing Apple's design on aesthetic merits that the focus shifted over time from making supremely functional devices to ones that signal high class and taste at the expense of more mundane concerns. Let's try to re-center the discussion on device/product design as driven first by function, and then by form.
I always thought people were just exaggerating about this keyboard until I got a laptop that has one. I have a MacBook Air with a keyboard I love and use for personal stuff and my current client sent me a MacBook Pro. I was excited because the specs were crazy. Until I started typing. It was so bad and weird compared to my MacBook Air. So I assume it has that hated keyboard.
I had one at work. Thankfully it wasn't my main dev machine or main laptop. Whenever I used it my typing precision took a huge hit. The lack of key travel really messed me up in terms of "did I actually activate that key?" I was perpetually missing A's in my typing.
Maybe other people were able to get used to it, but I couldn't.
Penetrating analysis. I am grateful that the journalists at The Verge have graced us with the singular insight that can only be borne from their evident engineering genius.
Nonsense. The article makes several unfounded assumptions why apple designed such a keyboard. The keyboard is amazing! When it works.. I myself am a victim of its astonishing unreliability, would even join a class-action lawsuit against apple. But it's purely failed implementation.
Reliability was one problem. The other was that for many of us it was uncomfortable to use. I would actually feel some pain in my hands/wrists after using this keyboard for a while. Both the older keyboard and the newer keyboard are fine for some reason.
The level of contempt for paying customers on display is nothing short of stunning. With the price premium they get, they could afford to deliver superb quality and outstanding service. Instead they pocket the difference, every time.
What is most remarkable is that the customers keep coming back anyway.
64 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 126 ms ] threadhttps://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/1/31/18205570/b...
It was, to the point where I could barely type sentences without having to correct double-letter inputs. And that's without anything failing.
Thankfully the laptop was insured and I got the 2019 16 inch model now (with the escape key and a working keyboard). Touchbar with BetterTouchTool has proven to be much more useful than I expected.
But man was this a massive fuck-up. There's no way a 2000+ product should be able to malfunction in such a fundamental way!
EDIT: also, pain. I'm pretty flexible when it comes to getting used to changes in input, so I expected to be okay with less key travel and whatnot. But a day of using the new keyboards /felt/ different. My hands/wrists would hurt. This was only with the MBP with the new keyboard. Whenever I used my old MacBook Air or even the new Magic Keyboard I had no issues.
I can't tell for sure, but while it feels a lot better, even the new 16 inch MBP leaves my fingers a bit more sore than the mushier 2013-era Air.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ThinkPad_Butterfly_keyboar...
16" vs 17.3"
Processor: 4-core i7-4870HQ vs 6-core i7-9750H, MSI is much better https://technical.city/en/cpu/Core-i7-9750H-vs-Core-i7-4870H...
GPU: MSI's is better https://www.notebookcheck.net/Radeon-Pro-5300M-vs-GeForce-GT...
Same RAM
Same disk capacity, not sure if the MSI's is an SSD but that's less than $100
60Hz vs 144Hz
So I'd be getting an all-around better laptop that doesn't need dongles for everything and gives you far more control over the system and runs far more programs for $900 less.
https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/16-inch
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Laptop-NVIDIA-1660-i7-9750H-GTX-I...
That's not to say that the MSI may not be a better deal... But you can't just compare the specs you said, there's more at stake.
I forgot about resolution too but I've done this comparison a few times in the past with different laptops and always found better for the price point.
Colors might be a good point here but I'm sure there are other laptops with good colors too.
While it's true that I could get better-specced laptop, phone, bluetooth earbuds, and so one, I consistently run into two issues that I just don't have with Apple: 1) there's almost always something subpar about the product, that reviews didn't warn me against, and/or 2) I hate having to carefully select from a dizzying array of inter- and intra-company options, where often companies actively game the system (reviews) or try to up-sell.
It's honestly somewhat astonishing how consistently I run into these issues when I buy a non-apple product, in particular laptops.
Now of course being 'in' the ecosystem already also has a ton of benefits, and of course I can afford being a little less price-conscious. But it's absolutely not the case that I go for Apple because it's cool. Or because they market well.
From what I've read this has to do with the Android OS, and things are getting better and better. but my point is that this sluggishness is or at least was just as 'objective', and to many of us ultimately much more important than raw specs.
It's the same reason why I still willing to pay the Apple premium for laptops (although more and more begrudgingly so). I don't care about better raw specs when sleep mode still doesn't quite work, or the fans are unreasonably loud, or the trackpad sucks, and I haven't really cared about these things since I switched from my custom-built tower PC back in the day.
Has no relation to SoC. My Pixel 4 is noticeably smoother than iPhone 11 I tried.
> It's the same reason why I still willing to pay the Apple premium for laptops (although more and more begrudgingly so). I don't care about better raw specs when sleep mode still doesn't quite work, or the fans are unreasonably loud, or the trackpad sucks, and I haven't really cared about these things since I switched from my custom-built tower PC back in the day.
I am typing this on a $2000 i7 Macbook Pro 2017 running hot as a pipe. The same workload works a lot cooler on my $500 Ryzen 3500u laptop. The plastic is much comfortable to hold even when things get hotter compared to unbearable metal of Macbook. And don't even get me started on the Keyboard.
You won't convince people to try something else by calling them stupid.
The author even says that he thought the butterfly keyboards were better for typing -- i.e., for their purpose:
> I find the butterfly switches far crisper and snappier to use than the softer, mushier scissor-switch
His only point seems to be that Apple not did care about reliability, but I find that highly suspect.
It seems to me that Apple's problem was likely insufficient testing. If they had known that the keyboards would break in real-world usage, they wouldn't have shipped them.
While there's not a lot of key travel, it is very clicky and feels satisfying for me to type on. Individual keys are also very stable.
1. less reliable (probably true) 2. different (so hate it)
Like anyone else, I don't want less reliability. But the "different" in this case isn't at all bad--like you said, less travel. I don't need key travel once my nervous system has calibrated to the keyboard, and extra travel aggravates my RSI as well.
Yes it’s a bad keyboard. But the interesting story is in how a company that once prioritised quality of user experience came to make that choice.
The article is a set of maybes without any new insights.
Apple can be accused of moving too slowly to when issues arose perhaps, but they did iterate trying to fix it and they’ve been very good in my experience with replacements.
Happily the new one is fantastic as far as I can tell so far.
edit: [1] Turns out it was the first iPhone.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20437041
I physically recoiled from it. It reminded me of the Atari 400 keyboard, a cheap membrane keyboard from the 1970s . . . not quite that bad, but still awful.
The Apple store employee who was watching me remarked on my reaction. "This keyboard feels terrible," I said, "Apple is going to lose a lot of money over it." Naturally the employee didn't care about my opinion.
Software engineers, always Cassandras.
Maybe other people were able to get used to it, but I couldn't.
What is most remarkable is that the customers keep coming back anyway.