lorin schultz
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Apple updates 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros with new Intel chips, enhanced butterfly keyboa...
It seems like a great idea -- I always thought a virtual keyboard would be the ultimate experience -- but the Touvh Bar has actually changed my mind.Eric_in_CT said:I like the comment here about Apple training us to be ready for no-moving-part keyboards.
Consider the iPhone home button.
All glass, not an actual button, but has a taptic engine to shake when pressed.
Feels EXACTLY like a button that clicks.
Only rarely is my phone ever OFF.
Press your home 'button' when the phone is fully-OFF. It turns to stone! It's like a marble counter top!
Power back on? Button!
No doubt people are in Cupertino right now typing on glass-top (like an electric stove) keyboard prototypes, with iPhone button circles for every key, with individual taptic feedback engines, under each key. Nice.
I still remember the glass trackpad intro videos on the 3 months they spent getting the texture of the glass right, or asking "what does a click FEEL like?"
It would be fun if they hired me to type: "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" all day!
Cheers!
Eric.
Edit 1 : The touchbar is practice for what flat-glass keys should LOOK like, and the Home Button is practice for what flat-glass keys should FEEL like.
Edit 2: Perhaps in System Prefs -> Keyboard, one can dial up and down the haptic feedback on keys, and vary one's own "click-feel", just like mouse-speed. Niiiiice.
Because there are no physical boundaries, there's no way to locate a key by feel. Because the keys change depending on what you're doing, it's much harder to remember where particular keys are situated on the display. Both result in having to constantly look at the key display instead of the screen. It's much slower and less intuitive than a traditional physical keyboard.
My impression of a virtual keyboard as something that seems like a great idea but really isn't in real life was confirmed some months ago when I inherited an old iPad. I dislike typing on it so much that I find myself putting it down and grabbing my laptop.
Whether my feelings are intrinsic to the concept or the result of years of conditioning is still an open question. I'm prepared to be persuaded.
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Apple updates 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros with new Intel chips, enhanced butterfly keyboa...
I tried. Apple Stores here are booking ten days out. I booked an appointment while things were slow, but a week later I got another project and had to cancel the appointment because I couldn't be without the machine. When the project was done I went to book again, but the earliest appointment was still a week-and-a-half away so I didn't bother.fastasleep said:
Have you still not just gotten your keyboard fixed?lorin schultz said:
I just moments ago finished sending feedback to Apple letting them know that at least one buyer of a $5000 laptop is refusing to buy another one until I can be sure the keyboard is reliable.Brandon916 said:
I agree with you. They freaking need to get off their high horse and admit this keyboard is a complete failure. It's dragging their reputation and name down. The design is crap.ireland said:Third or fourth revision for a keyboard design Apple imply has basically no issues? They are being too proud here. Scrap the shitty design and go back to keyboards with some travel and with higher reliability.
The most expensive computer I ever bought has been the most frustrating machine I've ever owned because of the keyboard. Now Apple says "Don't worry, the new keyboard, despite being the same fundamental design, is better." Really? Define "better." Better enough for me to risk another six grand out of an audio engineer's salary? Not a chance. Once burned...
By stubbornly refusing to let this turkey die, Apple is discouraging me from buying another high-ticket item. That doesn't seem like a good strategy.
That doesn't really affect the fundamental premise of my comment, though. Even after it's fixed (and assuming it STAYS fixed -- others have reported needing two or even three replacements), I'm still going to have lingering doubts about the reliability of this design. In my world, coming up with >$5K for a computer is a major budget challenge. This experience makes me much, much less likely to drop that sum on another MacBook Pro. I've gone from a position of assuming the hardware design is sound to wanting to see proof before buying. -
Apple updates 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros with new Intel chips, enhanced butterfly keyboa...
I just moments ago finished sending feedback to Apple letting them know that at least one buyer of a $5000 laptop is refusing to buy another one until I can be sure the keyboard is reliable.Brandon916 said:
I agree with you. They freaking need to get off their high horse and admit this keyboard is a complete failure. It's dragging their reputation and name down. The design is crap.ireland said:Third or fourth revision for a keyboard design Apple imply has basically no issues? They are being too proud here. Scrap the shitty design and go back to keyboards with some travel and with higher reliability.
The most expensive computer I ever bought has been the most frustrating machine I've ever owned because of the keyboard. Now Apple says "Don't worry, the new keyboard, despite being the same fundamental design, is better." Really? Define "better." Better enough for me to risk another six grand out of an audio engineer's salary? Not a chance. Once burned...
By stubbornly refusing to let this turkey die, Apple is discouraging me from buying another high-ticket item. That doesn't seem like a good strategy.
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Apple updates 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros with new Intel chips, enhanced butterfly keyboa...
Talk is cheap. Show me what's been done. Explain how it's better. Show me the testing methods used to weed out lemons.AppleInsider said:[... ] Apart from addressing Pro-users' voracious appetites for processing performance, the newly revamped MacBook Pro models also address keyboard issues that have continued to dog Apple's butterfly keyboard design.
The company has maintained that its butterfly design is used without problem by the vast majority of its users and that its notebooks achieve overall quality levels that are the best it has ever delivered. However, it has worked to continued to improve the design of its ultra slim butterfly mechanism so as to substantially reduce issues users may experience with unresponsive or double-typing keys.
Knowing that only a small number of users are affected is only comforting to shareholders, not the few who drew a bad unit in the keyboard lottery. After two and a half years of putting up with a dysfunctional keyboard on the most expensive computer I've ever owned, it's gonna take more than a promise to make me drop over $5000 on the same fundamental design again. Even if I really, really do want an 8-core i9 burning a hole in my jeans (and my wallet).
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New global smartspeaker data shows Apple's HomePod remains a bit player
The UI in general is one of the reasons I'm not particularly enamoured of Apple's audio products.elijahg said:
[...] the accessibility of the controls is still pretty awkward.
In the case of headphones, where there may not be room for more than a couple of control points, things like triple-click to skip backwards may be forgivable. On a full-size device with plenty of surface area, it's absurd. There's no reason not to include separate buttons for common functions.
Even just double-clicking to skip ahead is a nuisance. About every third or fourth try I wind up pausing playback instead of advancing. I don't know if the device does a poor job of distinguishing between single and double pressing or if I'm just "holding it wrong," but either way it's an unnecessary annoyance when it would be so easy to incorporate separate buttons for each function. That would even allow for a feature I consider a deal-breaker by its absence: FF and REW, so I can back up a bit rather than having to restart a track, or advance to a particular point within a track.
Apple's obsession with minimalism is sometimes to its detriment.
