How Apple Approached Keyboard Redesign wasWrong
The new keyboards of Apple MacBook Pro are not great. As matter of fact, they’re far from great at all. David Heinemeier Hansson, aka DHH, said the MacBook keyboard fiasco is way worse than Apple thinks. For those who don’t know, DHH is a well-known software developer and respected programmer. He is the creator of Ruby on Rails and CTO of Basecamp. And he is not alone.
Apple released a new generation of MacBook Pro in the late 2016. It redesigned the keyboard with butterfly keyboard. The keyboard was integrated with a strip touch screen called Touch Bar. It was meant to be a giant leap for Apple newly redesigned laptops. And it turned out to be a mistake.
The newly designed keyboard didn’t appear out of nowhere. As matter of fact, Apple unveiled the butterfly keyboard for the all new MacBook back in 2015. More than one year ahead of all new MacBook Pro. The MacBook didn’t get upgraded from Apple for several years, and people started to think the company may be giving up this model. It was exciting at that time when the all new MacBook was going to release! However, there were some complaints about the new keyboard on the MacBook. People found it harder to type because of the shallow-travel keyboard. It was a red flag.
Since 2015 MacBook was very portable, it was often compared to the tablets with keyboard attached. Needless to say, its butterfly keyboard was better than those tablet keyboards. But redesigning the new MacBook Pro with this butterfly keyboard was still a mistake. Why?
MacBook Pro Target Audience
What are the differences between MacBook and MacBook Pro? Simply put, MacBook Pro is intended for professionals while MacBook is for the mass market. The MacBook is fine for users caring most about portability. Less powerful CPU and not-so-good keyboard are bearable. MacBook Pro users tend to type way much more on the laptops. It’s not surprised they’ll demand a better keyboard.
I even heard a programmer sold out his MacBook Pro after only few months usage and said the sell was good riddance. Moreover, even if you could tolerant the narrow-travel keyboard, there is another reliability issue happening to the MacBook Pro keyboards.
“Apple keep insisting that only a ‘small number of customers have problems’ with the MacBook keyboards. That’s bollocks,” David Heinemeier Hansson writes for Signal v. Noise.
Butterfly Keyboard Gen 3
In late 2018, Apple released the third-generation butterfly keyboard for the slightly updated MacBook Pros. However, some customers still experienced the issues of sticky or non-responsive keys.
It’s a disaster. For trying to reduce just a bit of thickness of the laptops, the MacBook Pros weren’t productive tools for professionals anymore. Maybe it’s time for Apple to acknowledge the flawed design.
Butterfly mechanism keyboards are awful here. At least they are not a good fit for the MacBook Pros.
Do you have any thoughts about the MacBook Pro/MacBook as well? Any feedback is welcome.
