henrybay

About time. iTunes is impossible to navigate in its current form. Split it into smaller, focused and more manageable pieces. 

Thank goodness. I love Touch ID and am glad it will stay on the next iPads. 

I also love Touch ID on my iPhone 8. In fact, I like it so much I refuse to buy an iPhone without it. 

I did did try an iPhone XR for 10 days but swapped it back for an 8 because I missed Touch ID. I also worry about the safety of Face ID and beaming infrared laser spots into my retina tens of thousands of times a year. 

fastasleep said:

I really don’t understand why people equate key travel with a quality typing experience or responsiveness. I’m finding quite the opposite to the point where using someone’s previous gen keyboards as I did yesterday feels super odd and less preferable. I absolutely love the new keyboards. 

Because key travel is as important to typing as it is to playing on a piano. Sure, Steinway could make pianos with ultra shallow key travel but the experience would be horrible. 

They keys on Apple’s butterfly keyboards feel more like buttons than keys. You click them rather than push them. There is no real feedback. Just a flat, finger numbing experience. 

It’s such a shame because Apple used to make the best notebook keyboards in the business.  But their obsession with thinness has turned an enjoyable typing experience into a pain - especially when typing anything longer than an email. 

You forgot to mention the one feature that makes the new MacBook Air unuseable for many people. 

The keyboard. It’s attrocious. It offers so little keytravel that it’s like typing on a flat surface. There is insufficient feedback to provide a satisfying typing experience. You need an external keyboard (with decent key travel) to make the MacBook Air a useful tool. Which defeats the whole purpose of thin and light. 

Apple please replace these ridiculously flat, unresponsive keyboards! They are ruining your MacBook products. 

It does make sense for Apple to push towards a single type of port that does everything because it would be convenient. But this assumes that the industry will agree to a single standard, which is not likely in the short to medium term – hence all the legacy debates.

The keyboard issue, however, is different. Because by reducing the amount of ‘tactile feel’ in its butterfly keyboards, Apple is fighting against millions of years of human evolution. We are, by nature, tactile creatures who like to grasp, feel and touch things. The older MacBook keyboards were almost universally loved because they provide just the right amount of responsive feedback. The new versions feel flat and deadening to the touch.

If Apple believes they can condition users to like these ultra flat keyboards, they are mistaken. 

The airlines have, for decades, tried to get flyers used to less and less legroom – but the cramped feeling never goes away. Flyers just ‘tolerate’ the lack of legroom more – in the same way that many MacBook users just ‘tolerate’ the lack of key travel on the butterfly keyboards.