henrybay

rogifan_new said:

MplsP said:

GeorgeBMac said:

stevenoz said:

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.

chasm said:

henrybay said:

Um.....I think you forgot the Butterfly Keyboard

One more time ... as near as anyone can figure out, something less than five percent (and possibly much lower) of the butterfly keyboards have repair-worthy, non-user-caused issues. This may well be much higher than other keyboards, and I'm not saying Apple shouldn't take steps to address this, but ... this is very far from Ive's worst design.

jdw said:

StrangeDays said:

Nothing like one of the world’s most talented and successful designers retiring to bring out all the do-nothings from the internet, to rant and rave on forums about how they know best despite never having, you know, done anything. Armchair executives at their finest. 

I’ll be glad when the dust settles and everyone slithers away. 

It's interesting how you all too often bash your fellow Mac enthusiasts in this forum (no doubt along side the 3 people who clicked Like on your post), and yet you carefully avoided direct criticism of the article itself, despite the fact that the article was harder on Ive than anything anyone in this thread has said.  What part of "His worst work is in building mice that are refined down their most basic design elements until they are just really shitty to use" in the article did you miss or ignore?  ANSWER: all of it.

Of course, I am not trying to encourage you to criticize the article because you criticize others too much as it is.  Instead I am trying to get Apple-worshipping folks such as yourself to back off casting stones at fellow Apple enthusiasts.  You slam my fellow Mac fans by calling their writing "gibberish."  You know we are Apple fans (how many Apple haters really read AppleInsider religiously?), but you willingly insult by telling some people to "buy a Dell."  You want all who do not promote your preferred narrative to "slither away."  How awful.  And yet, this is how you write your posts in nearly every thread.  You seem to enter the forums not to write comments about an article but to hunt down others you disagree with and tear them to shreds.  And sadly, here in the AppleInsider forums, you are not alone.  Many follow your lead in making certain claims about Apple that defend Apple as if it was sheer perfection send down from Heaven, and then comes an article that doesn't fit your narrative but yet you still bash your fellow Mac users and seem to overlook what the article says, most likely because you prefer to give the same preferential treatment to AppleInsider as you do Apple.  Why not give your fellow Mac lovers a break for once?

I myself don't think exactly like you or anyone else.  I am my own person.  And there's nothing wrong with that, so long as I am not casting stones at others in a vain attempt to build myself up selfishly.  Diversity is good when we Think Different yet stay positive and try to build up others.

I think the lack of MagSafe is a loss indeed, regardless of reason.

I think a single port on the MacBook is inadequate, and had it two of those ports it might have been an otherwise perfect machine for it's class.

I think the lack of an SD card slot in "Pro" MacBooks that can easily accommodate it is an unnecessary minimization that tarnishes the word "pro."

I think the butterfly keyboard stinks when it comes to tactile feedback and durability, and so do many pro-Mac, pro-Apple tech writers.  And 1000 people coming to me telling me how much they love that keyboard will in no way magically make my fingers love it.  And yet, if Apple could create a keyboard with the same key "stability" yet with more tactical feedback, pretty much everybody would love it, and almost no one would have a negative thing to say.  Imagine that.

I loved the design of the round Apple mouse that Ive designed but hated using it such that I ended up purchasing a rather ugly translucent plastic attachment that assisted my brain in properly orienting the thing.  In other words, I ended up having to hide Ive's beauty because the base design wasn't practical for me.  That remains true even if others come along and say it was practical for them.

I think Jony Ive contributed to about as many Apple successes as failures but the intense design-focus of Jobs caused him to love Ive because Jobs knew design is very important at Apple and you can't always get design perfected in a way the public will always buy it.  I love my G4 Cube even to this day, along with many other Ive/Jobs creations, and I couldn't care less if those items didn't sell well back in the day -- I loved and still love them anyway.  I even own Ive's $299 "Designed by Apple in California" book and love it.  So I have likes and dislikes when it comes to Jony Ive, but I am not quite so negative about Ive as the article article appears to be, and I disagree a bit with the article when it comes to the design importance aspect.  Operations and Tim Cook are key to Apple's success in the 2000's, no question!  The article is right about that.  But the great differentiator about Apple is uniqueness in design tightly fitted with amazing ease of use.  So long as Apple can continue to understand the Jobsian vision of Technology and Liberal Arts, giving important functionality and usability along side great design and at a realistic price, Apple will continue to thrill and delight the rest of us.  

But consumers are not stupid.  They can see when the Mac is being blatantly milked when the price is high and functionality is lacking due to excess minimalism. Whether the departure of Ive will remedy the functional and design deficiencies present in the current Mac lineup is something only time will tell.  We who love the Mac can only hope so.  But it could end up being the new Mac Pro mentality applied across the entire Mac line -- proper cooling, great functionality, speed and even expandability, but at a cost the rest of us can no longer afford.  Whether the current upward pricing trends are influenced by Trump Tariffs or not is something I do not know.  But prices that are too high are too high regardless of reason.  That would be a break with the "starting at just $499!" iPad sales pitch Steve Jobs gave us back in 2010.  Jobs knew how to milk tech but he also knew tech needed to be priced in a way the masses could afford.  Apple has always been comparatively more expensive than the competition, and most of us have lived with that for decades and still loved Apple anyway.  We've loved Apple through those decades because there have always been high value products that were reasonably priced and offered great features too.  Apple clearly feels the future of notebooks is the MacBook with just 1 port (or maybe no ports at all); but that future, even now in 2019 with wireless gizmos galore, is still far, far away.  Indeed, USB-A is still all the rage, despite USB-C having been released YEARS ago.  

Excessive minimalism does no one any good.  It's time to design for people in today's world, at prices everyday people can afford.  With great features, a great design and reasonable pricing, coupled with Apple's reputation for great support, comes good will, and with good will, loyal fans and perpetual praise.

There once was a time that I was on Guy Kawasaki's EvangeList that I loved everything about Apple and had not a single ill word to say.  I took issue with the Windoze crowd who always spoke negatively about my beloved Macs, and I sought persuade everyone within my influence to buy Macs, not an inferior Bill Gates rip-off OS.  Macs at the time were more expensive than PCs but the Macs gave you more hardware features than the stock PCs, giving much more bang for the buck, in addition to a superior OS experience.  Quite simply, I was "that Mac guy" everyone knew about.  But these days, I have both good and bad to say about Apple products and that saddens me.  I long for an Apple where can once again scratch my head in vain to find any negatives.  Maybe that's too much to ask, but the fact here is that there's still room for improvement in Cupertino.  Apple is not perfect.  There's always room for positive change.  Perhaps the departure of Ive will be a part of that.