I’ve done my homework, and I know Ive doesn’t adhere to “function follows form”, and he has told Gruber personally that he doesn’t do change for change’s sake. That doesn’t mean every design or product is flawless — an impossible goal considering humans are not flawless.
As for the butterfly key switch mechanisms, this wasn’t an example of form leading function. The intent of the butterfly mechanism was to allow depression from any region or corner of the key cap, the goal being to make them easier to depress with off-center finger strikes. That’s a functional goal, not a stylistic form goal. According to Apple their support tickets decreased despite Stern’s article in the WSJ. But regardless, not achieving the goal successfully doesn’t somehow make that an example that Ive believes form is above function.
If Ive claimed that he doesn't do design change for change sake and "function follows form" then he lied. I'm not saying he was simply mistaken about his intentions, I'm saying he's outright lying.
And if Apple claims that butterfly keyboards fail less than scissor keyboards, they're lying too. I can say that with absolute certainty as somebody who worked with an Apple certified repair shop for many years. There were FAR more problems with butterfly keyboards than with anything we'd seen since the Apple Adjustable Keyboard back in the early '90s, and those pieces of junk were usually broken out of the box - no idea why they were so awful, ALPS usually made good keyswitches, but those were horrible.
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