Hopefully they also put back in MagSafe and an escape key
Agreed, I miss the MagSafe but am now liking the additional(?) TB3/USB-C port. I think Apple did the right thing by going to that standard. There are USB-C "MagSafe" adapters that have pretty good reviews. I waffle between buying one and then deciding I don't need it. If Apple did something like a recessed USB-C/MageSafe adapter so it would be flush, that would be interesting, but I doubt that'll happen.
What’s the problem for that? It’s small, reversible and don’t take the bandwidth. MagSafe is proprietary, clunky in comparison, and isn’t that reliable too.
I loved the MagSafe connector on my 2011 MBA. the only issue was I had to replace the cord after 7 years - I consider that an acceptable lifespan for a power cable.
MagSafe was quintessential Apple design - beautifully executed, functional, and it just worked. I have 4 USB C ports on my 2017 MBP. The majority of the time I only use one to charge. Or to plug in a USB A adaptor. I'd be willing to bet that there are exceedingly few users that actually need 4 USB C ports. The only advantage of USB C is that you can plug in from either side. In every other aspect, the MagSafe connector was better.
I've seen the adaptor you list above, my concern (perhaps unfounded) is that it would catch on things as I slide my computer in/out of my bag, straining or breaking the USB C port.
Another big advantage of USB-C over Magsafe is it's an interoperable standard. Only Apple can legally make Magsafe connectors, and they only make said connectors integrated into the power adapter. With USB-C for charging, you can get the charger from many vendors, and most chargers allow for separate cables. If the cable wears out, you just replace the cable.
As for the durability concerns of an adapter such as the one above, Apple's USB-C and Thunderbolt ports are actually pretty good in that regard. USB-C has a male-in-female receptacle, and a female-in-male plug. This lets Apple build the receptacle out of the casing of the laptop. That part is as durable as any port is ever likely to be. They can then include the more-delicate contacts inside, where the laptop casing prevents them from receiving much torque. I wouldn't be too worried.
That argument only works if its "either / or". What's wrong with both? My MacBook (and likely most) is connected to power far more than anything else -- argues for a separate Magsafe power connector.
This article makes no sense. If the scissor keyboard is better, then Apple would adopt it on the MacBook Pro first - not as a minor change to only the Macbook Air. The article goes on to say that the scissor keyboard is much cheaper to produce, and since the MacBook Air is the cheapest notebook that Apple makes, if Apple is in fact intending such change ... that the change is entirely about saving some production costs on a low-cost machine, leaving the more expensive Butterfly design for the Pro models.
I quite like the new Butterfly design - it takes a little getting used to, my error rate is a little higher until I adapt from my desktop keyboard, but after a bit, it can be very fast and nice to use.
Tech blog forums exist in their own little universes. What is declared useless and unusable by tech blog forums is often quite popular in the real world. For example, tech blog forums declared that a round face on a smartwatch was the ONLY proper design. Android watches had round faces so they were declared superior to the Watch. Only that didn’t happen in the real world did it. The Watch now completely dominates the smartwatch market. In tech blog forums all it takes is a single criticism to declare the entire design faulty, the “pile on” and “me too” paradigm.
Don't round faces dominate the smartwatch segment?
I thought Apple's rectangular offering had less than a third of the market. The biggest problem seems to be that people haven't come round to non-round faces just yet. So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.
What’s your source for this?
Certainly not Apple.
Why on earth would I turn to Apple for the answer?
Of course not!
What is strange is that I provided a link to where the information probably came from so you know it wasn't Apple.
Because Apple is the only one who has the answer.
Here is the original question again:
"Don't round faces dominate the smartwatch segment?"
To which Rogifan asked for a source.
I gave one.
The off topic point basically ended there, but...
You chime in with the source certainly wasn't Apple.
I asked why the source would be Apple.
You reply with 'because Apple is the only one who has the answer'.
I'm going to leave things as they are because there is no point taking things further and It is not butterfly keyboard related.
I think @rogifan question for source is more likely from this sentence of yours “So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.”
No one will doubt that cheap smart watch could dominate market share :roll eyes:
No. That is impossible.
Rogifan read the article that contained the rumour and participated in the thread.
"Reportedly, thousands of the $10,000 gold edition of the Apple Watch remained unsold. Overall, WSJ says that Apple sold around 10 million Apple Watches in the first year -- but that this was a quarter of what they'd expected. "
No need then, to ask about the source of the rumour. Rogifan was well aware of that.
Also, my comment on that rumour was simply a supporting reference. Not key to the issue I was speaking on which was purely simply round faces. And 'cheap vs expensive' wasn't key either.
As I said, I didn't mention any rumours on Apple Watch and round faces (although they exist too).
Oh, you’re talking about one edition of watch released 4 years ago that nobody thought would sell. Gotcha. But takes it into context of what you wrote
”The biggest problem seems to be that people haven't come round to non-round faces just yet. So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.”
..that doesn’t make any sense. You’re saying people haven’t come around to non-watch faces and then quote the rumor of the original Apple Watch sold 4 years ago as evidence
It doesn't matter which year or model was included in the rumour. The point was that sales supposedly fell well below what Apple expected, which makes your claim of 'nobody thought [Apple Watch] would sell well' nonsensical because you are arguing against the rumour with nothing to support it (not even a rumour). Or do you categorically know that subsequent sales met or exceeded expectations?
The takeaway from your affirmation, though, is that 'nobody' obviously didn't include Apple itself!
But isn't it time to get back to butterfly keyboards?
Well, it does because you said people haven’t come around to it, implying present term so quoting a rumor of sale of an original Apple Watch launched 4 years ago - of an Edition that no one predict will sell no less - is very weird logic to says the least. If you don’t understand why that is weird then you have more problem than I initially think.
Oh and I didn’t claim “nobody thought Apple Watch would sell well”. Please quote me directly where I said that. I think you’re talking way out of your league here. In simple English you’re talking about something you simply didn’t have a clue about. Maybe that’s why your logic here is very weird to me. I said “nobody thought that Apple Watch Edition would sell well”. Very big difference, like an Atlantic Ocean big.
You are correct on one thing: I have very little interest in Apple Watch but, ....
...
You should! The damn things are like potato chips -- once you start you can't stop (except they're a lot healthier!!!). And it might even get your butt outside to get some exercise!
Years ago people had no interest in "car phones" and only bought and used them for emergencies. Then they saw what they enabled...
My latest little joy is opening my garage door from my watch. (It doesn't have a keypad outside and so it saves me carrying keys or going around inside.) Another is setting a timer while I'm cooking or need a reminder.
I echo Henrybay... Apple should replace the butterfly keyboard ASAP and banish them completely from the line!
I know I wouldn't buy a 'butterfly' Mac or keyboard. And I'm an 'Apple Guy.'
And let's make the MBP a bit thicker, now that Jony is history, to allow for some more ports so I don't have to carry dongles. I don't mind a solid piece of hardware for my hard-earned money.
I agree.
There is no way I would buy a butterfly keyboard laptop -- the keys suck then they fail. And I can buy a whole new Windows laptop for the cost of repairing the stupid thing.
And I also agree with a thicker laptop -- well, sort of. I wouldn't recommend making all existing MacBooks thicker. Rather I would recommend that Apple put out a new series of "full function" laptops with high end keyboards (with actual travel!), full ports and a 15"-17" screen -- basically a workstation that can travel when/if needed. Think about it: The only thing unique about any MacBook is the OS and Apple's ecosystem -- everything else is essentially off-the-shelf hardware and easily designed and produced. ... Thin and light are nice and are needed by some, but they also introduce inherent limitations.
If adding an additional mm to the MBP meant it had a more reliable keyboard (or even one that could be separately replaced) I'd be all for it. Doing so wouldn't necessarily add significantly to the weight but would improve the repairability and longevity. Like I said above, I suspect Apple didn't switch to the butterfly mechanism because it was better, rather because it was thinner and they could cut a mm off the thickness (or add that much. more battery, since what people care about is battery life.) That would explain the claims that the butterfly keyboard is more expensive, too. Unfortunately, what we ended up with was a premium laptop with a critical component that is subpar and impossible to replace without doing major surgery on the device.
John Gruber claims there were leaks from inside the company that Ive was responsible for the keyboard. Even if he pushed for it the fact the the company shipped it (either believing it was good enough to ship or not doing proper testing to find out there were problems) is a failure leadership up and down the line. Dan Riccio runs Mac engineering. Jeff Williams runs operations. One would assume employees in their orgs were involved in engineering and manufacturing this keyboard. Did they just not do enough QA testing? I have a hard time believing anyone (including Ive) would intentionally sign off on a keyboard they knew was defective. So the only conclusion I can come to is the testing they did wasn’t good enough and didn’t catch problems. And that blame can be laid at the feet of many executives, including Tim Cook. As CEO the buck stops with him.
I tend to believe the Gruber claim that lays the butterfly keyboard on Ives because: Despite the well known criticisms of the butterfly keyboard (no feel, breaks a lot and VERY expensive) Apple not only stuck to their guns but even doubled and tripled down on it. It was like a religion to them -- faith in the failed design despite overwhelming evidence.
Why do I blame Ives? -- It is a typical Ives' design (thin, light, minimalist) -- Ives is a God at Apple and the only person with the power and influence of keeping Apple stuck to that failed design. It always mystified me that Apple was so stuck on this keyboard -- it seemed that office politics of some sort had to be driving it. That somebody very powerful in the organization (who could not be challenged) was backing it.
Ives had a design ideology that produced some good things -- some truly great things -- but some occasional clunkers. But he had the power and influence at Apple to drive even the clunkers. A genius like Ives needs somebody sitting behind it to offer occasional guidance and keep them on track. When Apple lost Steve, Ives lost that somebody.
What's old is NEW! Are we talking about a return to the old design with some changes?
Magsafe and the old Keyboard please. I need to replace my MBP 13 Late 2013. Hurry.
I echo Henrybay... Apple should replace the butterfly keyboard ASAP and banish them completely from the line!
I know I wouldn't buy a 'butterfly' Mac or keyboard. And I'm an 'Apple Guy.'
And let's make the MBP a bit thicker, now that Jony is history, to allow for some more ports so I don't have to carry dongles. I don't mind a solid piece of hardware for my hard-earned money.
I agree.
There is no way I would buy a butterfly keyboard laptop -- the keys suck then they fail. And I can buy a whole new Windows laptop for the cost of repairing the stupid thing.
And I also agree with a thicker laptop -- well, sort of. I wouldn't recommend making all existing MacBooks thicker. Rather I would recommend that Apple put out a new series of "full function" laptops with high end keyboards (with actual travel!), full ports and a 15"-17" screen -- basically a workstation that can travel when/if needed. Think about it: The only thing unique about any MacBook is the OS and Apple's ecosystem -- everything else is essentially off-the-shelf hardware and easily designed and produced. ... Thin and light are nice and are needed by some, but they also introduce inherent limitations.
If adding an additional mm to the MBP meant it had a more reliable keyboard (or even one that could be separately replaced) I'd be all for it. Doing so wouldn't necessarily add significantly to the weight but would improve the repairability and longevity. Like I said above, I suspect Apple didn't switch to the butterfly mechanism because it was better, rather because it was thinner and they could cut a mm off the thickness (or add that much. more battery, since what people care about is battery life.) That would explain the claims that the butterfly keyboard is more expensive, too. Unfortunately, what we ended up with was a premium laptop with a critical component that is subpar and impossible to replace without doing major surgery on the device.
John Gruber claims there were leaks from inside the company that Ive was responsible for the keyboard. Even if he pushed for it the fact the the company shipped it (either believing it was good enough to ship or not doing proper testing to find out there were problems) is a failure leadership up and down the line. Dan Riccio runs Mac engineering. Jeff Williams runs operations. One would assume employees in their orgs were involved in engineering and manufacturing this keyboard. Did they just not do enough QA testing? I have a hard time believing anyone (including Ive) would intentionally sign off on a keyboard they knew was defective. So the only conclusion I can come to is the testing they did wasn’t good enough and didn’t catch problems. And that blame can be laid at the feet of many executives, including Tim Cook. As CEO the buck stops with him.
What perplexes me is that if Apple did pre-test the butterfly keyboard with, say, 200 users, I am sure a significant proportion of them would have provided feedback that was negative to neutral (especially about the lack of key travel). Yet, Apple pushed ahead with this horrible keyboard regardless.
It seems like someone in Apple railroaded it through. For the sake of saving a few measly millimetres they ruined the best laptop keyboard in the business. The sooner they bring back the good old scissor mechanism keyboard the better.
I echo Henrybay... Apple should replace the butterfly keyboard ASAP and banish them completely from the line!
I know I wouldn't buy a 'butterfly' Mac or keyboard. And I'm an 'Apple Guy.'
And let's make the MBP a bit thicker, now that Jony is history, to allow for some more ports so I don't have to carry dongles. I don't mind a solid piece of hardware for my hard-earned money.
I agree.
There is no way I would buy a butterfly keyboard laptop -- the keys suck then they fail. And I can buy a whole new Windows laptop for the cost of repairing the stupid thing.
And I also agree with a thicker laptop -- well, sort of. I wouldn't recommend making all existing MacBooks thicker. Rather I would recommend that Apple put out a new series of "full function" laptops with high end keyboards (with actual travel!), full ports and a 15"-17" screen -- basically a workstation that can travel when/if needed. Think about it: The only thing unique about any MacBook is the OS and Apple's ecosystem -- everything else is essentially off-the-shelf hardware and easily designed and produced. ... Thin and light are nice and are needed by some, but they also introduce inherent limitations.
If adding an additional mm to the MBP meant it had a more reliable keyboard (or even one that could be separately replaced) I'd be all for it. Doing so wouldn't necessarily add significantly to the weight but would improve the repairability and longevity. Like I said above, I suspect Apple didn't switch to the butterfly mechanism because it was better, rather because it was thinner and they could cut a mm off the thickness (or add that much. more battery, since what people care about is battery life.) That would explain the claims that the butterfly keyboard is more expensive, too. Unfortunately, what we ended up with was a premium laptop with a critical component that is subpar and impossible to replace without doing major surgery on the device.
John Gruber claims there were leaks from inside the company that Ive was responsible for the keyboard. Even if he pushed for it the fact the the company shipped it (either believing it was good enough to ship or not doing proper testing to find out there were problems) is a failure leadership up and down the line. Dan Riccio runs Mac engineering. Jeff Williams runs operations. One would assume employees in their orgs were involved in engineering and manufacturing this keyboard. Did they just not do enough QA testing? I have a hard time believing anyone (including Ive) would intentionally sign off on a keyboard they knew was defective. So the only conclusion I can come to is the testing they did wasn’t good enough and didn’t catch problems. And that blame can be laid at the feet of many executives, including Tim Cook. As CEO the buck stops with him.
I tend to believe the Gruber claim that lays the butterfly keyboard on Ives because: Despite the well known criticisms of the butterfly keyboard (no feel, breaks a lot and VERY expensive) Apple not only stuck to their guns but even doubled and tripled down on it. It was like a religion to them -- faith in the failed design despite overwhelming evidence.
Why do I blame Ives? -- It is a typical Ives' design (thin, light, minimalist) -- Ives is a God at Apple and the only person with the power and influence of keeping Apple stuck to that failed design. It always mystified me that Apple was so stuck on this keyboard -- it seemed that office politics of some sort had to be driving it. That somebody very powerful in the organization (who could not be challenged) was backing it.
Ives had a design ideology that produced some good things -- some truly great things -- but some occasional clunkers. But he had the power and influence at Apple to drive even the clunkers. A genius like Ives needs somebody sitting behind it to offer occasional guidance and keep them on track. When Apple lost Steve, Ives lost that somebody.
First of all his name is Ive, not Ives. Second, neither Gruber nor anyone else has provided evidence that Ive was fine with shipping a defective keyboard (because thinness matters more than all else). Third, neither Gruber nor anyone else has provided evidence that Ive alone decided if products shipped. Dan Riccio is in charge of hardware engineering (mechanical design) and Jeff Williams is in charge of operations (manufacturing). Gruber was us to believe that both of those men (one who many have tipped to be the next CEO) would sign off on a defective keyboard out of obedience to Ive?
A product being thin and being defective are two different things. Same thing with key travel. Lower key travel isn’t a defect, even if some people don’t prefer it. Too often with this whole butterfly saga personal preferences and actual product defects have been conflated. Since there are Windows laptops as thin as MacBooks that seemingly don’t have similar keyboard issues it’s difficult to say thinness is the reason the butterfly keyboard was problematic. The latest rumor we have says nothing about the laptops getting thicker.
This article makes no sense. If the scissor keyboard is better, then Apple would adopt it on the MacBook Pro first - not as a minor change to only the Macbook Air. The article goes on to say that the scissor keyboard is much cheaper to produce, and since the MacBook Air is the cheapest notebook that Apple makes, if Apple is in fact intending such change ... that the change is entirely about saving some production costs on a low-cost machine, leaving the more expensive Butterfly design for the Pro models.
I quite like the new Butterfly design - it takes a little getting used to, my error rate is a little higher until I adapt from my desktop keyboard, but after a bit, it can be very fast and nice to use.
Tech blog forums exist in their own little universes. What is declared useless and unusable by tech blog forums is often quite popular in the real world. For example, tech blog forums declared that a round face on a smartwatch was the ONLY proper design. Android watches had round faces so they were declared superior to the Watch. Only that didn’t happen in the real world did it. The Watch now completely dominates the smartwatch market. In tech blog forums all it takes is a single criticism to declare the entire design faulty, the “pile on” and “me too” paradigm.
Don't round faces dominate the smartwatch segment?
I thought Apple's rectangular offering had less than a third of the market. The biggest problem seems to be that people haven't come round to non-round faces just yet. So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.
What’s your source for this?
Certainly not Apple.
Why on earth would I turn to Apple for the answer?
Of course not!
What is strange is that I provided a link to where the information probably came from so you know it wasn't Apple.
Because Apple is the only one who has the answer.
Here is the original question again:
"Don't round faces dominate the smartwatch segment?"
To which Rogifan asked for a source.
I gave one.
The off topic point basically ended there, but...
You chime in with the source certainly wasn't Apple.
I asked why the source would be Apple.
You reply with 'because Apple is the only one who has the answer'.
I'm going to leave things as they are because there is no point taking things further and It is not butterfly keyboard related.
I think @rogifan question for source is more likely from this sentence of yours “So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.”
No one will doubt that cheap smart watch could dominate market share :roll eyes:
No. That is impossible.
Rogifan read the article that contained the rumour and participated in the thread.
"Reportedly, thousands of the $10,000 gold edition of the Apple Watch remained unsold. Overall, WSJ says that Apple sold around 10 million Apple Watches in the first year -- but that this was a quarter of what they'd expected. "
No need then, to ask about the source of the rumour. Rogifan was well aware of that.
Also, my comment on that rumour was simply a supporting reference. Not key to the issue I was speaking on which was purely simply round faces. And 'cheap vs expensive' wasn't key either.
As I said, I didn't mention any rumours on Apple Watch and round faces (although they exist too).
Oh, you’re talking about one edition of watch released 4 years ago that nobody thought would sell. Gotcha. But takes it into context of what you wrote
”The biggest problem seems to be that people haven't come round to non-round faces just yet. So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.”
..that doesn’t make any sense. You’re saying people haven’t come around to non-watch faces and then quote the rumor of the original Apple Watch sold 4 years ago as evidence
It doesn't matter which year or model was included in the rumour. The point was that sales supposedly fell well below what Apple expected, which makes your claim of 'nobody thought [Apple Watch] would sell well' nonsensical because you are arguing against the rumour with nothing to support it (not even a rumour). Or do you categorically know that subsequent sales met or exceeded expectations?
The takeaway from your affirmation, though, is that 'nobody' obviously didn't include Apple itself!
But isn't it time to get back to butterfly keyboards?
Well, it does because you said people haven’t come around to it, implying present term so quoting a rumor of sale of an original Apple Watch launched 4 years ago - of an Edition that no one predict will sell no less - is very weird logic to says the least. If you don’t understand why that is weird then you have more problem than I initially think.
Oh and I didn’t claim “nobody thought Apple Watch would sell well”. Please quote me directly where I said that. I think you’re talking way out of your league here. In simple English you’re talking about something you simply didn’t have a clue about. Maybe that’s why your logic here is very weird to me. I said “nobody thought that Apple Watch Edition would sell well”. Very big difference, like an Atlantic Ocean big.
You are correct on one thing: I have very little interest in Apple Watch but, ....
...
You should! The damn things are like potato chips -- once you start you can't stop (except they're a lot healthier!!!). And it might even get your butt outside to get some exercise!
Years ago people had no interest in "car phones" and only bought and used them for emergencies. Then they saw what they enabled...
My latest little joy is opening my garage door from my watch. (It doesn't have a keypad outside and so it saves me carrying keys or going around inside.) Another is setting a timer while I'm cooking or need a reminder.
It's the myriad little things that add up...
Agreed. I like the advantages but I stopped wearing watches 30 years ago, so breaking the habit of not wearing anything is going to be very hard.
For fitness, I can make do with a band of some sort and had one in the past.
However, I think the big push for me could definitely be in the health area.
If the rumoured constant glucose monitoring can be pulled off with sufficient accuracy I would get one on pre-order. That is one of the Holy Grails of non-invasive health wearables.
I'm also interested in glasses wearables but for both watches and glasses I need things to slim down more, together with better battery technology before they all the dots can be joined in my particular case (unless they manage to crack the glucose monitoring first).
A product being thin and being defective are two different things. Same thing with key travel. Lower key travel isn’t a defect, even if some people don’t prefer it. Too often with this whole butterfly saga personal preferences and actual product defects have been conflated. Since there are Windows laptops as thin as MacBooks that seemingly don’t have similar keyboard issues it’s difficult to say thinness is the reason the butterfly keyboard was problematic. The latest rumor we have says nothing about the laptops getting thicker.
Totally agree - I’m not a fan of the new keyboard feel, but I got used to it. Feel is a preference. Sticking, malfunctioning keys is a defect.
I’m not sure that Ive was ‘responsible’ for the keyboard, at least not directly. True, His design style is minimalist, but from an aesthetic point of view the keyboard is the same. The reduced travel allows for other changes, but I can’t see Ive demanding less than 0.8 mm key travel for keyboard aesthetics.
Either they didn't adequately test the keyboard to uncover the issues, or they uncovered them at such a late point in the process that a change was impossible because it would have required a major redesign of the entire product. We’ll never know, but I hope it’s the former.
Hopefully they also put back in MagSafe and an escape key
Agreed, I miss the MagSafe but am now liking the additional(?) TB3/USB-C port. I think Apple did the right thing by going to that standard. There are USB-C "MagSafe" adapters that have pretty good reviews. I waffle between buying one and then deciding I don't need it. If Apple did something like a recessed USB-C/MageSafe adapter so it would be flush, that would be interesting, but I doubt that'll happen.
What’s the problem for that? It’s small, reversible and don’t take the bandwidth. MagSafe is proprietary, clunky in comparison, and isn’t that reliable too.
Am I missing something? This may be the best alternative to the current situation but come on. You’re saying MagSafe was proprietary, clunky, and isn’t reliable, yet you suggest a clunky replacement with a proprietary cable that no one will have in stock if something should happen to it, and is utterly useless if the adapter breaks or falls out? Worse yet it could possibly damage your laptop if it takes an awkward bounce or hit when it’s in your bag. Not to mention there is practically no record of reliability. The lack of logic is outstanding in this suggestion. Do you have an affiliation with SnapCable?
Here’s a simple solution. Remove one USB-C and replace it with a MagSafe port. How hard is that? Best of both worlds.
I echo Henrybay... Apple should replace the butterfly keyboard ASAP and banish them completely from the line!
I know I wouldn't buy a 'butterfly' Mac or keyboard. And I'm an 'Apple Guy.'
And let's make the MBP a bit thicker, now that Jony is history, to allow for some more ports so I don't have to carry dongles. I don't mind a solid piece of hardware for my hard-earned money.
I agree.
There is no way I would buy a butterfly keyboard laptop -- the keys suck then they fail. And I can buy a whole new Windows laptop for the cost of repairing the stupid thing.
And I also agree with a thicker laptop -- well, sort of. I wouldn't recommend making all existing MacBooks thicker. Rather I would recommend that Apple put out a new series of "full function" laptops with high end keyboards (with actual travel!), full ports and a 15"-17" screen -- basically a workstation that can travel when/if needed. Think about it: The only thing unique about any MacBook is the OS and Apple's ecosystem -- everything else is essentially off-the-shelf hardware and easily designed and produced. ... Thin and light are nice and are needed by some, but they also introduce inherent limitations.
If adding an additional mm to the MBP meant it had a more reliable keyboard (or even one that could be separately replaced) I'd be all for it. Doing so wouldn't necessarily add significantly to the weight but would improve the repairability and longevity. Like I said above, I suspect Apple didn't switch to the butterfly mechanism because it was better, rather because it was thinner and they could cut a mm off the thickness (or add that much. more battery, since what people care about is battery life.) That would explain the claims that the butterfly keyboard is more expensive, too. Unfortunately, what we ended up with was a premium laptop with a critical component that is subpar and impossible to replace without doing major surgery on the device.
John Gruber claims there were leaks from inside the company that Ive was responsible for the keyboard. Even if he pushed for it the fact the the company shipped it (either believing it was good enough to ship or not doing proper testing to find out there were problems) is a failure leadership up and down the line. Dan Riccio runs Mac engineering. Jeff Williams runs operations. One would assume employees in their orgs were involved in engineering and manufacturing this keyboard. Did they just not do enough QA testing? I have a hard time believing anyone (including Ive) would intentionally sign off on a keyboard they knew was defective. So the only conclusion I can come to is the testing they did wasn’t good enough and didn’t catch problems. And that blame can be laid at the feet of many executives, including Tim Cook. As CEO the buck stops with him.
I tend to believe the Gruber claim that lays the butterfly keyboard on Ives because: Despite the well known criticisms of the butterfly keyboard (no feel, breaks a lot and VERY expensive) Apple not only stuck to their guns but even doubled and tripled down on it. It was like a religion to them -- faith in the failed design despite overwhelming evidence.
Why do I blame Ives? -- It is a typical Ives' design (thin, light, minimalist) -- Ives is a God at Apple and the only person with the power and influence of keeping Apple stuck to that failed design. It always mystified me that Apple was so stuck on this keyboard -- it seemed that office politics of some sort had to be driving it. That somebody very powerful in the organization (who could not be challenged) was backing it.
Ives had a design ideology that produced some good things -- some truly great things -- but some occasional clunkers. But he had the power and influence at Apple to drive even the clunkers. A genius like Ives needs somebody sitting behind it to offer occasional guidance and keep them on track. When Apple lost Steve, Ives lost that somebody.
First of all his name is Ive, not Ives. Second, neither Gruber nor anyone else has provided evidence that Ive was fine with shipping a defective keyboard (because thinness matters more than all else). Third, neither Gruber nor anyone else has provided evidence that Ive alone decided if products shipped. Dan Riccio is in charge of hardware engineering (mechanical design) and Jeff Williams is in charge of operations (manufacturing). Gruber was us to believe that both of those men (one who many have tipped to be the next CEO) would sign off on a defective keyboard out of obedience to Ive?
A product being thin and being defective are two different things. Same thing with key travel. Lower key travel isn’t a defect, even if some people don’t prefer it. Too often with this whole butterfly saga personal preferences and actual product defects have been conflated. Since there are Windows laptops as thin as MacBooks that seemingly don’t have similar keyboard issues it’s difficult to say thinness is the reason the butterfly keyboard was problematic. The latest rumor we have says nothing about the laptops getting thicker.
None of that makes sense -- as most of it is irrelevant nonsense meant to prove a point. Who cares what "evidence" Gruber presented? LOL... We all know what we have seen and this poorly designed product has Ives finger prints all over it.
And "A product being thin and being defective are two different things. Same
thing with key travel. Lower key travel isn’t a defect, even if some
people don’t prefer it." is just nonsense.
Of course being thin does not automatically make something defective and nobody ever said or implied any such thing. But a design error that impairs people to use the machine effectively is as much a defect as a manufacturing error. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a vendor defend a product that doesn't work by saying "But it was designed that way!" LOL... And, marginalizing those touch typists who demand a quality keyboard changes nothing.
This article makes no sense. If the scissor keyboard is better, then Apple would adopt it on the MacBook Pro first - not as a minor change to only the Macbook Air. The article goes on to say that the scissor keyboard is much cheaper to produce, and since the MacBook Air is the cheapest notebook that Apple makes, if Apple is in fact intending such change ... that the change is entirely about saving some production costs on a low-cost machine, leaving the more expensive Butterfly design for the Pro models.
I quite like the new Butterfly design - it takes a little getting used to, my error rate is a little higher until I adapt from my desktop keyboard, but after a bit, it can be very fast and nice to use.
Tech blog forums exist in their own little universes. What is declared useless and unusable by tech blog forums is often quite popular in the real world. For example, tech blog forums declared that a round face on a smartwatch was the ONLY proper design. Android watches had round faces so they were declared superior to the Watch. Only that didn’t happen in the real world did it. The Watch now completely dominates the smartwatch market. In tech blog forums all it takes is a single criticism to declare the entire design faulty, the “pile on” and “me too” paradigm.
Don't round faces dominate the smartwatch segment?
I thought Apple's rectangular offering had less than a third of the market. The biggest problem seems to be that people haven't come round to non-round faces just yet. So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.
What’s your source for this?
Certainly not Apple.
Why on earth would I turn to Apple for the answer?
Of course not!
What is strange is that I provided a link to where the information probably came from so you know it wasn't Apple.
Because Apple is the only one who has the answer.
Here is the original question again:
"Don't round faces dominate the smartwatch segment?"
To which Rogifan asked for a source.
I gave one.
The off topic point basically ended there, but...
You chime in with the source certainly wasn't Apple.
I asked why the source would be Apple.
You reply with 'because Apple is the only one who has the answer'.
I'm going to leave things as they are because there is no point taking things further and It is not butterfly keyboard related.
I think @rogifan question for source is more likely from this sentence of yours “So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.”
No one will doubt that cheap smart watch could dominate market share :roll eyes:
No. That is impossible.
Rogifan read the article that contained the rumour and participated in the thread.
"Reportedly, thousands of the $10,000 gold edition of the Apple Watch remained unsold. Overall, WSJ says that Apple sold around 10 million Apple Watches in the first year -- but that this was a quarter of what they'd expected. "
No need then, to ask about the source of the rumour. Rogifan was well aware of that.
Also, my comment on that rumour was simply a supporting reference. Not key to the issue I was speaking on which was purely simply round faces. And 'cheap vs expensive' wasn't key either.
As I said, I didn't mention any rumours on Apple Watch and round faces (although they exist too).
Oh, you’re talking about one edition of watch released 4 years ago that nobody thought would sell. Gotcha. But takes it into context of what you wrote
”The biggest problem seems to be that people haven't come round to non-round faces just yet. So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.”
..that doesn’t make any sense. You’re saying people haven’t come around to non-watch faces and then quote the rumor of the original Apple Watch sold 4 years ago as evidence
It doesn't matter which year or model was included in the rumour. The point was that sales supposedly fell well below what Apple expected, which makes your claim of 'nobody thought [Apple Watch] would sell well' nonsensical because you are arguing against the rumour with nothing to support it (not even a rumour). Or do you categorically know that subsequent sales met or exceeded expectations?
The takeaway from your affirmation, though, is that 'nobody' obviously didn't include Apple itself!
But isn't it time to get back to butterfly keyboards?
Well, it does because you said people haven’t come around to it, implying present term so quoting a rumor of sale of an original Apple Watch launched 4 years ago - of an Edition that no one predict will sell no less - is very weird logic to says the least. If you don’t understand why that is weird then you have more problem than I initially think.
Oh and I didn’t claim “nobody thought Apple Watch would sell well”. Please quote me directly where I said that. I think you’re talking way out of your league here. In simple English you’re talking about something you simply didn’t have a clue about. Maybe that’s why your logic here is very weird to me. I said “nobody thought that Apple Watch Edition would sell well”. Very big difference, like an Atlantic Ocean big.
You are correct on one thing: I have very little interest in Apple Watch but, ....
...
You should! The damn things are like potato chips -- once you start you can't stop (except they're a lot healthier!!!). And it might even get your butt outside to get some exercise!
Years ago people had no interest in "car phones" and only bought and used them for emergencies. Then they saw what they enabled...
My latest little joy is opening my garage door from my watch. (It doesn't have a keypad outside and so it saves me carrying keys or going around inside.) Another is setting a timer while I'm cooking or need a reminder.
It's the myriad little things that add up...
Agreed. I like the advantages but I stopped wearing watches 30 years ago, so breaking the habit of not wearing anything is going to be very hard.
For fitness, I can make do with a band of some sort and had one in the past.
However, I think the big push for me could definitely be in the health area.
If the rumoured constant glucose monitoring can be pulled off with sufficient accuracy I would get one on pre-order. That is one of the Holy Grails of non-invasive health wearables.
I'm also interested in glasses wearables but for both watches and glasses I need things to slim down more, together with better battery technology before they all the dots can be joined in my particular case (unless they manage to crack the glucose monitoring first).
type 2 Diabetes is 80-90% a lifestyle disease. Losing fat (either worn or eaten) by eating healthy along with daily exercise make it unnecessary to monitor glucose because that fixes the cause rather than merely treating the symptoms.
A product being thin and being defective are two different things. Same thing with key travel. Lower key travel isn’t a defect, even if some people don’t prefer it. Too often with this whole butterfly saga personal preferences and actual product defects have been conflated. Since there are Windows laptops as thin as MacBooks that seemingly don’t have similar keyboard issues it’s difficult to say thinness is the reason the butterfly keyboard was problematic. The latest rumor we have says nothing about the laptops getting thicker.
Totally agree - I’m not a fan of the new keyboard feel, but I got used to it. Feel is a preference. Sticking, malfunctioning keys is a defect.
I’m not sure that Ive was ‘responsible’ for the keyboard, at least not directly. True, His design style is minimalist, but from an aesthetic point of view the keyboard is the same. The reduced travel allows for other changes, but I can’t see Ive demanding less than 0.8 mm key travel for keyboard aesthetics.
Either they didn't adequately test the keyboard to uncover the issues, or they uncovered them at such a late point in the process that a change was impossible because it would have required a major redesign of the entire product. We’ll never know, but I hope it’s the former.
I think you under estimate him: Ive's design ideology went far deeper than mere aesthetcs. It incorporated the entire package all the way through. Part of that became thin, light, minimalist designs even, sometimes, at the expense of practicality and functonality.
The full function keyboard with adequate travel for accurate, effective touch typing went the same way as the headphone jack in order to make the entire package a smidgeon thinner, lighter and more minimalist. It had nothing to do with how the keyboard or headphone jack looked.
This article makes no sense. If the scissor keyboard is better, then Apple would adopt it on the MacBook Pro first - not as a minor change to only the Macbook Air. The article goes on to say that the scissor keyboard is much cheaper to produce, and since the MacBook Air is the cheapest notebook that Apple makes, if Apple is in fact intending such change ... that the change is entirely about saving some production costs on a low-cost machine, leaving the more expensive Butterfly design for the Pro models.
I quite like the new Butterfly design - it takes a little getting used to, my error rate is a little higher until I adapt from my desktop keyboard, but after a bit, it can be very fast and nice to use.
Tech blog forums exist in their own little universes. What is declared useless and unusable by tech blog forums is often quite popular in the real world. For example, tech blog forums declared that a round face on a smartwatch was the ONLY proper design. Android watches had round faces so they were declared superior to the Watch. Only that didn’t happen in the real world did it. The Watch now completely dominates the smartwatch market. In tech blog forums all it takes is a single criticism to declare the entire design faulty, the “pile on” and “me too” paradigm.
Don't round faces dominate the smartwatch segment?
I thought Apple's rectangular offering had less than a third of the market. The biggest problem seems to be that people haven't come round to non-round faces just yet. So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.
What’s your source for this?
Certainly not Apple.
Why on earth would I turn to Apple for the answer?
Of course not!
What is strange is that I provided a link to where the information probably came from so you know it wasn't Apple.
Because Apple is the only one who has the answer.
Here is the original question again:
"Don't round faces dominate the smartwatch segment?"
To which Rogifan asked for a source.
I gave one.
The off topic point basically ended there, but...
You chime in with the source certainly wasn't Apple.
I asked why the source would be Apple.
You reply with 'because Apple is the only one who has the answer'.
I'm going to leave things as they are because there is no point taking things further and It is not butterfly keyboard related.
I think @rogifan question for source is more likely from this sentence of yours “So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.”
No one will doubt that cheap smart watch could dominate market share :roll eyes:
No. That is impossible.
Rogifan read the article that contained the rumour and participated in the thread.
"Reportedly, thousands of the $10,000 gold edition of the Apple Watch remained unsold. Overall, WSJ says that Apple sold around 10 million Apple Watches in the first year -- but that this was a quarter of what they'd expected. "
No need then, to ask about the source of the rumour. Rogifan was well aware of that.
Also, my comment on that rumour was simply a supporting reference. Not key to the issue I was speaking on which was purely simply round faces. And 'cheap vs expensive' wasn't key either.
As I said, I didn't mention any rumours on Apple Watch and round faces (although they exist too).
Oh, you’re talking about one edition of watch released 4 years ago that nobody thought would sell. Gotcha. But takes it into context of what you wrote
”The biggest problem seems to be that people haven't come round to non-round faces just yet. So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.”
..that doesn’t make any sense. You’re saying people haven’t come around to non-watch faces and then quote the rumor of the original Apple Watch sold 4 years ago as evidence
It doesn't matter which year or model was included in the rumour. The point was that sales supposedly fell well below what Apple expected, which makes your claim of 'nobody thought [Apple Watch] would sell well' nonsensical because you are arguing against the rumour with nothing to support it (not even a rumour). Or do you categorically know that subsequent sales met or exceeded expectations?
The takeaway from your affirmation, though, is that 'nobody' obviously didn't include Apple itself!
But isn't it time to get back to butterfly keyboards?
Well, it does because you said people haven’t come around to it, implying present term so quoting a rumor of sale of an original Apple Watch launched 4 years ago - of an Edition that no one predict will sell no less - is very weird logic to says the least. If you don’t understand why that is weird then you have more problem than I initially think.
Oh and I didn’t claim “nobody thought Apple Watch would sell well”. Please quote me directly where I said that. I think you’re talking way out of your league here. In simple English you’re talking about something you simply didn’t have a clue about. Maybe that’s why your logic here is very weird to me. I said “nobody thought that Apple Watch Edition would sell well”. Very big difference, like an Atlantic Ocean big.
You are correct on one thing: I have very little interest in Apple Watch but, ....
...
You should! The damn things are like potato chips -- once you start you can't stop (except they're a lot healthier!!!). And it might even get your butt outside to get some exercise!
Years ago people had no interest in "car phones" and only bought and used them for emergencies. Then they saw what they enabled...
My latest little joy is opening my garage door from my watch. (It doesn't have a keypad outside and so it saves me carrying keys or going around inside.) Another is setting a timer while I'm cooking or need a reminder.
It's the myriad little things that add up...
Agreed. I like the advantages but I stopped wearing watches 30 years ago, so breaking the habit of not wearing anything is going to be very hard.
For fitness, I can make do with a band of some sort and had one in the past.
However, I think the big push for me could definitely be in the health area.
If the rumoured constant glucose monitoring can be pulled off with sufficient accuracy I would get one on pre-order. That is one of the Holy Grails of non-invasive health wearables.
I'm also interested in glasses wearables but for both watches and glasses I need things to slim down more, together with better battery technology before they all the dots can be joined in my particular case (unless they manage to crack the glucose monitoring first).
type 2 Diabetes is 80-90% a lifestyle disease. Losing fat (either worn or eaten) by eating healthy along with daily exercise make it unnecessary to monitor glucose because that fixes the cause rather than merely treating the symptoms.
It can go undetected for years as many people are unaware of the symptoms but being able to check blood sugar levels non invasively would be a real breakthrough and beneficial to everyone.
In my particular case it would be for a case of severely unstable type 1 diabetes and especially for nocturnal hypoglycemia with insensitivity and diabetic neuropathy.
The great thing about a watch solution is that it wouldn't be a simple measuring device but AI could be used to better analyse each wearer.
Matching AI with accurate, non invasive continuous glucose monitoring would be a game changer.
I'm optimistic that we'll see it sooner rather than later
And "A product being thin and being defective are two different things. Same
thing with key travel. Lower key travel isn’t a defect, even if some
people don’t prefer it." is just nonsense.
Sorry, that response is nonsense. The keyboards are designed to be thin and have low key travel and work perfectly out of the box. There is nothing defective about that. They have a propensity to stop working properly when debris makes its way into the mechanism; that makes it a poor design, but not a defective one. Some people may not like the feel. That doesn't make if defective, either.
A product being thin and being defective are two different things. Same thing with key travel. Lower key travel isn’t a defect, even if some people don’t prefer it. Too often with this whole butterfly saga personal preferences and actual product defects have been conflated. Since there are Windows laptops as thin as MacBooks that seemingly don’t have similar keyboard issues it’s difficult to say thinness is the reason the butterfly keyboard was problematic. The latest rumor we have says nothing about the laptops getting thicker.
Totally agree - I’m not a fan of the new keyboard feel, but I got used to it. Feel is a preference. Sticking, malfunctioning keys is a defect.
I’m not sure that Ive was ‘responsible’ for the keyboard, at least not directly. True, His design style is minimalist, but from an aesthetic point of view the keyboard is the same. The reduced travel allows for other changes, but I can’t see Ive demanding less than 0.8 mm key travel for keyboard aesthetics.
Either they didn't adequately test the keyboard to uncover the issues, or they uncovered them at such a late point in the process that a change was impossible because it would have required a major redesign of the entire product. We’ll never know, but I hope it’s the former.
I think you under estimate him: Ive's design ideology went far deeper than mere aesthetcs. It incorporated the entire package all the way through. Part of that became thin, light, minimalist designs even, sometimes, at the expense of practicality and functonality.
The full function keyboard with adequate travel for accurate, effective touch typing went the same way as the headphone jack in order to make the entire package a smidgeon thinner, lighter and more minimalist. It had nothing to do with how the keyboard or headphone jack looked.
What is your evidence that the headphone jack was removed to make the iPhone thinner? Everyone claims decisions they don’t like are because of Ive’s so-called obsession with thinness. Yet no one provided actual evidence.
I echo Henrybay... Apple should replace the butterfly keyboard ASAP and banish them completely from the line!
I know I wouldn't buy a 'butterfly' Mac or keyboard. And I'm an 'Apple Guy.'
And let's make the MBP a bit thicker, now that Jony is history, to allow for some more ports so I don't have to carry dongles. I don't mind a solid piece of hardware for my hard-earned money.
I agree.
There is no way I would buy a butterfly keyboard laptop -- the keys suck then they fail. And I can buy a whole new Windows laptop for the cost of repairing the stupid thing.
And I also agree with a thicker laptop -- well, sort of. I wouldn't recommend making all existing MacBooks thicker. Rather I would recommend that Apple put out a new series of "full function" laptops with high end keyboards (with actual travel!), full ports and a 15"-17" screen -- basically a workstation that can travel when/if needed. Think about it: The only thing unique about any MacBook is the OS and Apple's ecosystem -- everything else is essentially off-the-shelf hardware and easily designed and produced. ... Thin and light are nice and are needed by some, but they also introduce inherent limitations.
If adding an additional mm to the MBP meant it had a more reliable keyboard (or even one that could be separately replaced) I'd be all for it. Doing so wouldn't necessarily add significantly to the weight but would improve the repairability and longevity. Like I said above, I suspect Apple didn't switch to the butterfly mechanism because it was better, rather because it was thinner and they could cut a mm off the thickness (or add that much. more battery, since what people care about is battery life.) That would explain the claims that the butterfly keyboard is more expensive, too. Unfortunately, what we ended up with was a premium laptop with a critical component that is subpar and impossible to replace without doing major surgery on the device.
John Gruber claims there were leaks from inside the company that Ive was responsible for the keyboard. Even if he pushed for it the fact the the company shipped it (either believing it was good enough to ship or not doing proper testing to find out there were problems) is a failure leadership up and down the line. Dan Riccio runs Mac engineering. Jeff Williams runs operations. One would assume employees in their orgs were involved in engineering and manufacturing this keyboard. Did they just not do enough QA testing? I have a hard time believing anyone (including Ive) would intentionally sign off on a keyboard they knew was defective. So the only conclusion I can come to is the testing they did wasn’t good enough and didn’t catch problems. And that blame can be laid at the feet of many executives, including Tim Cook. As CEO the buck stops with him.
I tend to believe the Gruber claim that lays the butterfly keyboard on Ives because: Despite the well known criticisms of the butterfly keyboard (no feel, breaks a lot and VERY expensive) Apple not only stuck to their guns but even doubled and tripled down on it. It was like a religion to them -- faith in the failed design despite overwhelming evidence.
Why do I blame Ives? -- It is a typical Ives' design (thin, light, minimalist) -- Ives is a God at Apple and the only person with the power and influence of keeping Apple stuck to that failed design. It always mystified me that Apple was so stuck on this keyboard -- it seemed that office politics of some sort had to be driving it. That somebody very powerful in the organization (who could not be challenged) was backing it.
Ives had a design ideology that produced some good things -- some truly great things -- but some occasional clunkers. But he had the power and influence at Apple to drive even the clunkers. A genius like Ives needs somebody sitting behind it to offer occasional guidance and keep them on track. When Apple lost Steve, Ives lost that somebody.
First of all his name is Ive, not Ives. Second, neither Gruber nor anyone else has provided evidence that Ive was fine with shipping a defective keyboard (because thinness matters more than all else). Third, neither Gruber nor anyone else has provided evidence that Ive alone decided if products shipped. Dan Riccio is in charge of hardware engineering (mechanical design) and Jeff Williams is in charge of operations (manufacturing). Gruber was us to believe that both of those men (one who many have tipped to be the next CEO) would sign off on a defective keyboard out of obedience to Ive?
A product being thin and being defective are two different things. Same thing with key travel. Lower key travel isn’t a defect, even if some people don’t prefer it. Too often with this whole butterfly saga personal preferences and actual product defects have been conflated. Since there are Windows laptops as thin as MacBooks that seemingly don’t have similar keyboard issues it’s difficult to say thinness is the reason the butterfly keyboard was problematic. The latest rumor we have says nothing about the laptops getting thicker.
None of that makes sense -- as most of it is irrelevant nonsense meant to prove a point. Who cares what "evidence" Gruber presented? LOL... We all know what we have seen and this poorly designed product has Ives finger prints all over it.
And "A product being thin and being defective are two different things. Same
thing with key travel. Lower key travel isn’t a defect, even if some
people don’t prefer it." is just nonsense.
Of course being thin does not automatically make something defective and nobody ever said or implied any such thing. But a design error that impairs people to use the machine effectively is as much a defect as a manufacturing error. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a vendor defend a product that doesn't work by saying "But it was designed that way!" LOL... And, marginalizing those touch typists who demand a quality keyboard changes nothing.
There you go again with Ives....his name is Ive.
“We all know what we have seen and this poorly designed product has Ives finger prints all over it.” Again. That’s not based on anything but a narrative out there that Ive (and only Ive) is obsessed with thinness above all else. Again where is the evidence? Has Ive said this publicly? Also I never said the keyboard was a manufacturing error. I said low key travel isn’t a defect, it’s a personal preference and that personal preferences are being conflated with actual issues/defects. Even if there were no defects people like Marco Arment and John Gruber would be complaining about the keyboard.
A product being thin and being defective are two different things. Same thing with key travel. Lower key travel isn’t a defect, even if some people don’t prefer it. Too often with this whole butterfly saga personal preferences and actual product defects have been conflated. Since there are Windows laptops as thin as MacBooks that seemingly don’t have similar keyboard issues it’s difficult to say thinness is the reason the butterfly keyboard was problematic. The latest rumor we have says nothing about the laptops getting thicker.
Totally agree - I’m not a fan of the new keyboard feel, but I got used to it. Feel is a preference. Sticking, malfunctioning keys is a defect.
I’m not sure that Ive was ‘responsible’ for the keyboard, at least not directly. True, His design style is minimalist, but from an aesthetic point of view the keyboard is the same. The reduced travel allows for other changes, but I can’t see Ive demanding less than 0.8 mm key travel for keyboard aesthetics.
Either they didn't adequately test the keyboard to uncover the issues, or they uncovered them at such a late point in the process that a change was impossible because it would have required a major redesign of the entire product. We’ll never know, but I hope it’s the former.
Whatever Ive was involved in or did/didn’t want the fact is the company greenlit this product to be manufactured. But there’s no way the chief of hardware engineering and chief operating officer would allow a product they knew to be defective to ship. The only logical explanation is not enough testing was done to uncover issues. So Apple thought the keyboard was fine when it wasn’t. And the company can’t just change designs on a dime so they tried to fix the existing design as best they could before a new design was ready.
This article makes no sense. If the scissor keyboard is better, then Apple would adopt it on the MacBook Pro first - not as a minor change to only the Macbook Air. The article goes on to say that the scissor keyboard is much cheaper to produce, and since the MacBook Air is the cheapest notebook that Apple makes, if Apple is in fact intending such change ... that the change is entirely about saving some production costs on a low-cost machine, leaving the more expensive Butterfly design for the Pro models.
I quite like the new Butterfly design - it takes a little getting used to, my error rate is a little higher until I adapt from my desktop keyboard, but after a bit, it can be very fast and nice to use.
Tech blog forums exist in their own little universes. What is declared useless and unusable by tech blog forums is often quite popular in the real world. For example, tech blog forums declared that a round face on a smartwatch was the ONLY proper design. Android watches had round faces so they were declared superior to the Watch. Only that didn’t happen in the real world did it. The Watch now completely dominates the smartwatch market. In tech blog forums all it takes is a single criticism to declare the entire design faulty, the “pile on” and “me too” paradigm.
Don't round faces dominate the smartwatch segment?
I thought Apple's rectangular offering had less than a third of the market. The biggest problem seems to be that people haven't come round to non-round faces just yet. So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.
What’s your source for this?
Certainly not Apple.
Why on earth would I turn to Apple for the answer?
Of course not!
What is strange is that I provided a link to where the information probably came from so you know it wasn't Apple.
Because Apple is the only one who has the answer.
Here is the original question again:
"Don't round faces dominate the smartwatch segment?"
To which Rogifan asked for a source.
I gave one.
The off topic point basically ended there, but...
You chime in with the source certainly wasn't Apple.
I asked why the source would be Apple.
You reply with 'because Apple is the only one who has the answer'.
I'm going to leave things as they are because there is no point taking things further and It is not butterfly keyboard related.
I think @rogifan question for source is more likely from this sentence of yours “So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.”
No one will doubt that cheap smart watch could dominate market share :roll eyes:
No. That is impossible.
Rogifan read the article that contained the rumour and participated in the thread.
"Reportedly, thousands of the $10,000 gold edition of the Apple Watch remained unsold. Overall, WSJ says that Apple sold around 10 million Apple Watches in the first year -- but that this was a quarter of what they'd expected. "
No need then, to ask about the source of the rumour. Rogifan was well aware of that.
Also, my comment on that rumour was simply a supporting reference. Not key to the issue I was speaking on which was purely simply round faces. And 'cheap vs expensive' wasn't key either.
As I said, I didn't mention any rumours on Apple Watch and round faces (although they exist too).
Oh, you’re talking about one edition of watch released 4 years ago that nobody thought would sell. Gotcha. But takes it into context of what you wrote
”The biggest problem seems to be that people haven't come round to non-round faces just yet. So much so that there were even rumours here the other day about Apple Watch sales falling well below internal expectations.”
..that doesn’t make any sense. You’re saying people haven’t come around to non-watch faces and then quote the rumor of the original Apple Watch sold 4 years ago as evidence
It doesn't matter which year or model was included in the rumour. The point was that sales supposedly fell well below what Apple expected, which makes your claim of 'nobody thought [Apple Watch] would sell well' nonsensical because you are arguing against the rumour with nothing to support it (not even a rumour). Or do you categorically know that subsequent sales met or exceeded expectations?
The takeaway from your affirmation, though, is that 'nobody' obviously didn't include Apple itself!
But isn't it time to get back to butterfly keyboards?
Well, it does because you said people haven’t come around to it, implying present term so quoting a rumor of sale of an original Apple Watch launched 4 years ago - of an Edition that no one predict will sell no less - is very weird logic to says the least. If you don’t understand why that is weird then you have more problem than I initially think.
Oh and I didn’t claim “nobody thought Apple Watch would sell well”. Please quote me directly where I said that. I think you’re talking way out of your league here. In simple English you’re talking about something you simply didn’t have a clue about. Maybe that’s why your logic here is very weird to me. I said “nobody thought that Apple Watch Edition would sell well”. Very big difference, like an Atlantic Ocean big.
You are correct on one thing: I have very little interest in Apple Watch but, ....
...
You should! The damn things are like potato chips -- once you start you can't stop (except they're a lot healthier!!!). And it might even get your butt outside to get some exercise!
Years ago people had no interest in "car phones" and only bought and used them for emergencies. Then they saw what they enabled...
My latest little joy is opening my garage door from my watch. (It doesn't have a keypad outside and so it saves me carrying keys or going around inside.) Another is setting a timer while I'm cooking or need a reminder.
It's the myriad little things that add up...
Agreed. I like the advantages but I stopped wearing watches 30 years ago, so breaking the habit of not wearing anything is going to be very hard.
For fitness, I can make do with a band of some sort and had one in the past.
However, I think the big push for me could definitely be in the health area.
If the rumoured constant glucose monitoring can be pulled off with sufficient accuracy I would get one on pre-order. That is one of the Holy Grails of non-invasive health wearables.
I'm also interested in glasses wearables but for both watches and glasses I need things to slim down more, together with better battery technology before they all the dots can be joined in my particular case (unless they manage to crack the glucose monitoring first).
type 2 Diabetes is 80-90% a lifestyle disease. Losing fat (either worn or eaten) by eating healthy along with daily exercise make it unnecessary to monitor glucose because that fixes the cause rather than merely treating the symptoms.
It can go undetected for years as many people are unaware of the symptoms but being able to check blood sugar levels non invasively would be a real breakthrough and beneficial to everyone.
In my particular case it would be for a case of severely unstable type 1 diabetes and especially for nocturnal hypoglycemia with insensitivity and diabetic neuropathy.
The great thing about a watch solution is that it wouldn't be a simple measuring device but AI could be used to better analyse each wearer.
Matching AI with accurate, non invasive continuous glucose monitoring would be a game changer.
I'm optimistic that we'll see it sooner rather than later
All good points! Please take good care -- real good care -- of that.
And "A product being thin and being defective are two different things. Same
thing with key travel. Lower key travel isn’t a defect, even if some
people don’t prefer it." is just nonsense.
Sorry, that response is nonsense. The keyboards are designed to be thin and have low key travel and work perfectly out of the box. There is nothing defective about that. They have a propensity to stop working properly when debris makes its way into the mechanism; that makes it a poor design, but not a defective one. Some people may not like the feel. That doesn't make if defective, either.
Anything is defective if it does a bad job at doing what it was supposed to do -- even if its due to a design flaw rather than a manufacturing flaw. In this case, the butterfly keyboard did a bad job out of the box and then later some tmes failed completely.
I echo Henrybay... Apple should replace the butterfly keyboard ASAP and banish them completely from the line!
I know I wouldn't buy a 'butterfly' Mac or keyboard. And I'm an 'Apple Guy.'
And let's make the MBP a bit thicker, now that Jony is history, to allow for some more ports so I don't have to carry dongles. I don't mind a solid piece of hardware for my hard-earned money.
I agree.
There is no way I would buy a butterfly keyboard laptop -- the keys suck then they fail. And I can buy a whole new Windows laptop for the cost of repairing the stupid thing.
And I also agree with a thicker laptop -- well, sort of. I wouldn't recommend making all existing MacBooks thicker. Rather I would recommend that Apple put out a new series of "full function" laptops with high end keyboards (with actual travel!), full ports and a 15"-17" screen -- basically a workstation that can travel when/if needed. Think about it: The only thing unique about any MacBook is the OS and Apple's ecosystem -- everything else is essentially off-the-shelf hardware and easily designed and produced. ... Thin and light are nice and are needed by some, but they also introduce inherent limitations.
If adding an additional mm to the MBP meant it had a more reliable keyboard (or even one that could be separately replaced) I'd be all for it. Doing so wouldn't necessarily add significantly to the weight but would improve the repairability and longevity. Like I said above, I suspect Apple didn't switch to the butterfly mechanism because it was better, rather because it was thinner and they could cut a mm off the thickness (or add that much. more battery, since what people care about is battery life.) That would explain the claims that the butterfly keyboard is more expensive, too. Unfortunately, what we ended up with was a premium laptop with a critical component that is subpar and impossible to replace without doing major surgery on the device.
John Gruber claims there were leaks from inside the company that Ive was responsible for the keyboard. Even if he pushed for it the fact the the company shipped it (either believing it was good enough to ship or not doing proper testing to find out there were problems) is a failure leadership up and down the line. Dan Riccio runs Mac engineering. Jeff Williams runs operations. One would assume employees in their orgs were involved in engineering and manufacturing this keyboard. Did they just not do enough QA testing? I have a hard time believing anyone (including Ive) would intentionally sign off on a keyboard they knew was defective. So the only conclusion I can come to is the testing they did wasn’t good enough and didn’t catch problems. And that blame can be laid at the feet of many executives, including Tim Cook. As CEO the buck stops with him.
I tend to believe the Gruber claim that lays the butterfly keyboard on Ives because: Despite the well known criticisms of the butterfly keyboard (no feel, breaks a lot and VERY expensive) Apple not only stuck to their guns but even doubled and tripled down on it. It was like a religion to them -- faith in the failed design despite overwhelming evidence.
Why do I blame Ives? -- It is a typical Ives' design (thin, light, minimalist) -- Ives is a God at Apple and the only person with the power and influence of keeping Apple stuck to that failed design. It always mystified me that Apple was so stuck on this keyboard -- it seemed that office politics of some sort had to be driving it. That somebody very powerful in the organization (who could not be challenged) was backing it.
Ives had a design ideology that produced some good things -- some truly great things -- but some occasional clunkers. But he had the power and influence at Apple to drive even the clunkers. A genius like Ives needs somebody sitting behind it to offer occasional guidance and keep them on track. When Apple lost Steve, Ives lost that somebody.
First of all his name is Ive, not Ives. Second, neither Gruber nor anyone else has provided evidence that Ive was fine with shipping a defective keyboard (because thinness matters more than all else). Third, neither Gruber nor anyone else has provided evidence that Ive alone decided if products shipped. Dan Riccio is in charge of hardware engineering (mechanical design) and Jeff Williams is in charge of operations (manufacturing). Gruber was us to believe that both of those men (one who many have tipped to be the next CEO) would sign off on a defective keyboard out of obedience to Ive?
A product being thin and being defective are two different things. Same thing with key travel. Lower key travel isn’t a defect, even if some people don’t prefer it. Too often with this whole butterfly saga personal preferences and actual product defects have been conflated. Since there are Windows laptops as thin as MacBooks that seemingly don’t have similar keyboard issues it’s difficult to say thinness is the reason the butterfly keyboard was problematic. The latest rumor we have says nothing about the laptops getting thicker.
None of that makes sense -- as most of it is irrelevant nonsense meant to prove a point. Who cares what "evidence" Gruber presented? LOL... We all know what we have seen and this poorly designed product has Ives finger prints all over it.
And "A product being thin and being defective are two different things. Same
thing with key travel. Lower key travel isn’t a defect, even if some
people don’t prefer it." is just nonsense.
Of course being thin does not automatically make something defective and nobody ever said or implied any such thing. But a design error that impairs people to use the machine effectively is as much a defect as a manufacturing error. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a vendor defend a product that doesn't work by saying "But it was designed that way!" LOL... And, marginalizing those touch typists who demand a quality keyboard changes nothing.
There you go again with Ives....his name is Ive.
“We all know what we have seen and this poorly designed product has Ives finger prints all over it.” Again. That’s not based on anything but a narrative out there that Ive (and only Ive) is obsessed with thinness above all else. Again where is the evidence? Has Ive said this publicly? Also I never said the keyboard was a manufacturing error. I said low key travel isn’t a defect, it’s a personal preference and that personal preferences are being conflated with actual issues/defects. Even if there were no defects people like Marco Arment and John Gruber would be complaining about the keyboard.
Sayng a decent keyboard versus a crappy one is just a "a personal preference" is like saying having an I3 instead of an I7 is just personal preference. You should be in marketing.
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And it might even get your butt outside to get some exercise!
Years ago people had no interest in "car phones" and only bought and used them for emergencies. Then they saw what they enabled...
My latest little joy is opening my garage door from my watch. (It doesn't have a keypad outside and so it saves me carrying keys or going around inside.) Another is setting a timer while I'm cooking or need a reminder.
It's the myriad little things that add up...
Despite the well known criticisms of the butterfly keyboard (no feel, breaks a lot and VERY expensive) Apple not only stuck to their guns but even doubled and tripled down on it. It was like a religion to them -- faith in the failed design despite overwhelming evidence.
Why do I blame Ives?
-- It is a typical Ives' design (thin, light, minimalist)
-- Ives is a God at Apple and the only person with the power and influence of keeping Apple stuck to that failed design. It always mystified me that Apple was so stuck on this keyboard -- it seemed that office politics of some sort had to be driving it. That somebody very powerful in the organization (who could not be challenged) was backing it.
Ives had a design ideology that produced some good things -- some truly great things -- but some occasional clunkers. But he had the power and influence at Apple to drive even the clunkers. A genius like Ives needs somebody sitting behind it to offer occasional guidance and keep them on track. When Apple lost Steve, Ives lost that somebody.
It seems like someone in Apple railroaded it through. For the sake of saving a few measly millimetres they ruined the best laptop keyboard in the business. The sooner they bring back the good old scissor mechanism keyboard the better.
For fitness, I can make do with a band of some sort and had one in the past.
However, I think the big push for me could definitely be in the health area.
If the rumoured constant glucose monitoring can be pulled off with sufficient accuracy I would get one on pre-order. That is one of the Holy Grails of non-invasive health wearables.
I'm also interested in glasses wearables but for both watches and glasses I need things to slim down more, together with better battery technology before they all the dots can be joined in my particular case (unless they manage to crack the glucose monitoring first).
I’m not sure that Ive was ‘responsible’ for the keyboard, at least not directly. True, His design style is minimalist, but from an aesthetic point of view the keyboard is the same. The reduced travel allows for other changes, but I can’t see Ive demanding less than 0.8 mm key travel for keyboard aesthetics.
Either they didn't adequately test the keyboard to uncover the issues, or they uncovered them at such a late point in the process that a change was impossible because it would have required a major redesign of the entire product. We’ll never know, but I hope it’s the former.
Here’s a simple solution. Remove one USB-C and replace it with a MagSafe port. How hard is that? Best of both worlds.
Who cares what "evidence" Gruber presented? LOL... We all know what we have seen and this poorly designed product has Ives finger prints all over it.
But a design error that impairs people to use the machine effectively is as much a defect as a manufacturing error. I can't tell you how many times I've heard a vendor defend a product that doesn't work by saying "But it was designed that way!" LOL...
And, marginalizing those touch typists who demand a quality keyboard changes nothing.
Ive's design ideology went far deeper than mere aesthetcs. It incorporated the entire package all the way through. Part of that became thin, light, minimalist designs even, sometimes, at the expense of practicality and functonality.
The full function keyboard with adequate travel for accurate, effective touch typing went the same way as the headphone jack in order to make the entire package a smidgeon thinner, lighter and more minimalist. It had nothing to do with how the keyboard or headphone jack looked.
In my particular case it would be for a case of severely unstable type 1 diabetes and especially for nocturnal hypoglycemia with insensitivity and diabetic neuropathy.
The great thing about a watch solution is that it wouldn't be a simple measuring device but AI could be used to better analyse each wearer.
Matching AI with accurate, non invasive continuous glucose monitoring would be a game changer.
I'm optimistic that we'll see it sooner rather than later