The best laptop I’ve ever had was the one I used for five glorious computer years, from 2012 to 2017. It was a mid-2012 15” Retina MacBook Pro, the first version of that particular new design. From the moment I opened the box I was in love. It was sleek and light despite the huge, brilliant high-resolution screen. It was fast with the latest CPU from Intel and a separate NVIDIA GeForce GPU. There were lots of ports, even an SD memory card reader. And the keyboard – it worked perfectly!
I’ll admit that the keyboard wasn’t particularly stylish and the touch was a bit “mushy”, but the travel was good, the keys were backlit, and the distance between the keys was optimal for my fingers. Even the arrow keys were nice and placed in a logical inverted-T layout.
In mid-2017 came the time for a new laptop and the major decision was downsizing to 13”, but that was justifiable due to increased need for mobility. What was, however, beyond my influence was the keyboard. In 2016 Apple had introduced a new keyboard design with a butterfly mechanism, which featured thinner and broader keys, but with much less travel. It sure looked good in pictures and promo videos.
The infamous butterfly keyboard in a 13” MacBook Pro. Photo by Ruben Martinez on Unsplash.
When the new laptop arrived, everything seemed promising. The smaller screen size was okay, considering the purpose of this particular device. The huge trackpad was amazing. I even thought the TouchBar with TouchID was cool. I was totally fine with the missing physical escape key. Even the lack of an SD card reader and nothing but USB-C ports was something I could live with.
But the keyboard was horrible.
I can still remember the three first thoughts that ran in my head. Is it really supposed to make such a loud “clacky” sound when typing? How come I make so many typos when writing? And how come I can’t find the correct arrow keys? Then I thought, well perhaps I’ll get used to the sound and it’ll probably just take some time to get used to a new touch and feel. Besides, Apple and Jony Ive have told us that this is great and thousands of engineering as well as design hours have been poured into it, so I guess it must be true.
Okay, this is where I will stop my sad butterfly keyboard story. Besides, It’s a topic that has been exhausted on the interwebs. Suffice it to say that I never learned to type equally fast with this keyboad design, the clacky noise was super disturbing in public spaces and in Zoom calls, my space bar got stuck twice, and my up-arrow key never actually worked reliably.
I will also refrain myself from analyzing how on earth Apple could release such a keyboard in the first place and why it took so long to admit the mistake and take corrective actions, despite all the negative publicity. Of all the articles that were written about this keyboard, it was probably Joanna Stern’s fabulous article in the WSJ that had the greatest impact on Apple. It was a clever piece, in which all the “e” and “r” letters were missing, in order to vividly illustrate the nature of the problem. With a mouse click you could restore the missing letters.
Fortunately, in the end Apple took corrective actions, and first they released a keyboard repair program and eventually also switched back to the “traditional” scissor mechanism in all laptop models. Having tried the new (or rather old) keyboard both on the latest 13” and 16” MacBook Pro models, I can say that the touch and feel is just right. It’s the way a keyboard should be: 100% reliable and something you ideally shouldn’t even pay any attention to.
As I’m now considering updating my 3 year old mid-2017 13” MacBook Pro to the latest edition, and having looked at all the tech specs, it seems clear that by far the most important feature would indeed be the new keyboard. And that is, quite frankly, a weird situation to have in the year 2020.