By Schiller’s own admission, this keyboard was a fan favorite for years, but was Apple satisfied? Of course not. It evolved into a Magic Keyboard in October 2015. Before there was a “Magic” keyboard, actually, Apple simply called their own take on a scissor-switch input device the Apple Wireless Keyboard. When we lost the Magic A pre-Butterfly-era 2015 MacBook with its keycap removed, and scissor-style switch exposed.īefore there were butterflies, there was Magic. But we have to wonder if a similar outcry could make Apple reconsider making other parts of their esteemed laptop more simple and repairable. Meanwhile, the company has only barely admitted to “some quality issues.” Don’t get us wrong adding function at the expense of negligible size and weight increases is a step in the right direction.
Early reviews are full of Stockholm Syndrome swoon, with high praise for keys that don’t feel or sound bad. Their four-year keyboard hostage negotiation with MacBook buyers seems to have paid off handsomely. Replacing a broken switch mechanism still involves disassembling the whole device, and will likely be painful, but, still: this is a practical move, and one we could not have expected until recently.Īpple’s not exactly surrendering, though. Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.Customers, press, and those of us who care about device longevity have scored a win. These new keys, which are essentially the old keys, have deeper travel, softer sound, and a more robust design. Apple’s most recent 2018 models aren’t yet on the list, but should still be covered by existing one-year warranties.
If your Mac is on this list then you will be eligible for free keyboard replacement.Visit an Apple Store or contact Apple Support online.E, T, A, O, N are the most commonly used English characters and the ones you should make sure you clean most. Follow these instructions to clean your Mac keyboard.That combination of power and reliability is, after all, the foundation not just of the Mac but all the other products derived from Apple’s Unix-based platform. However, if it comes to a trade-off between thinness and reliability, I think most Mac users will opt for the latter above the first. People remain addicted to Mac love, so it is clearly doing something right.
Yet it sells more Macs now than it did a decade ago and still returns customer satisfaction scores that make it the envy of its peers in the PC game.
What real use is a super-thin professional Mac if you also need to carry an external keyboard with you? What’s the user experience of owning the world’s most sophisticated notebook if you cannot type your own name on the thing?Īpple has tested Mac user loyalty for years at this point. What’s open to question is when this thinner-by-design principle becomes more important than the product itself. The butterfly keyboard let it shave another millimetre off the design. It’s moves to abandon interconnects and to adopt SSD storage on Macs helped it achieve this. Why would it do this if there was little demand for repair? What’s this thin thing anyway?Īpple has always focused on making its devices thinner.
How else do you explain a recent leaked memo in which the company instructs its service and support teams in Apple retail stores to fix any faulty keyboards by the very next day? Apple has even supplied its stores with the spare parts.
It looks like plenty of people did make contact.
“We are aware that a small number of users are having issues with their third-generation butterfly keyboard and for that we are sorry," an Apple spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern.Īpple continued to claim most Mac notebooks work fine and urged people to make contact if they had a problem. In early 2019, Apple was forced to admit the problems exist. The current MacBook Pro and MacBook Air both boast the third-generation version of the butterfly keyboard, which is equipped with an elastic membrane designed to mitigate any dust-derived damage. The 2016 MacBook Pro had a second-generation butterfly keyboard, but this also suffered problems. Instead it launched a keyboard replacement program in June 2018 and continued to tweak the keyboard design. Apple being Apple it never really admitted to problems with these keyboards until very recently.