6 ms·
Keyboard travel was fixed in 2020. I have the last Intel MBP, spec'd to last, with a physical escape key and Touch ID, and I love it.
by torstenvl 5y ago
Keyboard travel was fixed in 2020. I have the last Intel MBP, spec'd to last, with a physical escape key and Touch ID, and I love it.
- ksec 5y agoKeyboard reliability was fixed and switch back to scissors or what they called magic keyboard. But the Key travel distance is still not the 1.5mm used in the pre Butterfly era.
- endymi0n 5y agoHaving used all three of them, I'd say the fixed version is finally good enough. 2015 was one of the best laptop keyboards I've ever used, but the new one is 80% there. It's nowhere near close the disaster inbetween.
- rbates 5y agoReliability isn't as good for me as the 2015 MacBook Pro. My 2019 16" doesn't register presses that are near the edge of the keys like the 2015 model did. Perhaps it's related to the travel distance. It is my biggest issue with the 16".
- modulusshift 5y agoThis was the selling point for the butterfly keyboard when it was introduced, actually, that no matter where you hit on the key it would be equally responsive.
- eyelidlessness 5y agoAnecdata FWIW: I upgraded directly from a 2014 (same keyboard as 2015 that everyone praises) to the first 16". I did notice a difference at first but adjusted within less than a week, never had any complaints after that.
- cassianoleal 5y agoMy own anectada: I owned a 2015. It now belongs to my son. I also own a 16" with a Magic Keyboard. I had a butterfly along the way that was a total nightmare. Going from the butterfly to the Magic felt absolutely incredible. I now own an M1 MacBook Air (mainly for the better and quieter performace, and the lack of TouchBar), and its keyboard feels about the same as the 16", so pretty good. After a long time, I was helping my son with stuff on the computer, and as soon as I typed a couple words I was blown away by his keyboard. It's better in every aspect to the newer ones. Magic Keyboard ranges from good to very good. The 2015's is superb.
- eyelidlessness 5y agoI’ll supplement my anecdata to say… I gifted my other old 2013 which had the same pre-butterfly keyboard, erased my data after I had already gotten used to the 2019. I did notice the difference in key travel then. But it didn’t bother me when I went back to the 2019 after. I honestly couldn’t say I’d prefer one over the other, besides current familiarity/muscle memory.
- allenu 5y agoI have the 2020 Intel one as well. I think the key travel still isn't what it was in 2015 or earlier, though. They are still too shallow for me. It's minor, but I do feel I bottom out too quickly on them. It feels like tapping on glass after a while.
- nazgulnarsil 5y agoIt's insane to me that manufacturers still haven't figured this out. Reducing the travel by .1mm is extremely worth it if you can give a slightly squishy/springy bottoming out with a rubber gasket. It dramatically reduces typing fatigue.
- jacobolus 5y agoIf you need a rubber gasket at the bottom to avoid “fatigue”, that means you are smashing your fingers down too hard and can plausibly injure yourself with or without the gasket. This feature of typing style can be improved with practice. Try to use a light springy touch with only slightly more force than minimally necessary to actuate the keys. Try to keep the palms floating in the air (rather than resting on any surface) while actively typing. More helpful in keyboard hardware would be greater key travel distance and a sharper tactile snap. (Trying to solve keyboard injuries with rubber at the bottom of the keyswitch is similar to wearing heavily padded running shoes then smashing heels into the ground on every step, relying on the shoe padding to absorb some of the shock. The better way to avoid ankle/knee/hip injury is to get a less padded shoe and fix the gait to have gentler steps and use the tendons/muscles to absorb the shock instead of cartilage etc.)
- nazgulnarsil 5y agoWhy should I spend time training myself when we could just design equipment to be more easily usable. Minimalist shoes fell out of fashion, and serious competitors mostly never used them.
- tw04 5y ago
- Hamuko 5y agoIt was fixed but not brought back to its former glory.
- handrous 5y agoHaving briefly had to use an old Pro from when they still had DVD drives in them (which I used way-back-when but hadn't touched in a long time), I can authoritatively say that the "former glory" is a solid two generations behind the very-flat newer keyboards. Even the one it replaced (2012?-2015?) wasn't as good as those were. Felt great to type on. I don't think nice-feeling keyboards are compatible with extreme thinness.
- duffyjp 5y agoI own a 2011 Macbook Pro I still use daily. I have Apple laptops going all the way back to the PowerPC days and use current ones through work but that DVD equipped unibody generation has the very best keyboard. By far.
- Hamuko 5y agoI have a 2011 MacBook Pro and a 2019 MacBook Pro, and the keyboard in the 2011 MacBook Pro still feels so good even after 10 years.
- Redsquare 5y agowow.....
- pivo 5y agoI agree that they felt great to type on but at least for me typing speed was much slower. Going back to my 2010 (I think) MBP now, typing still feels great but it also feels like typing in molasses.
- asenna 5y agoI have the 16" MBP (late-2019), really annoyed with the heating issues. Any time I do anything intensive, like edit raw images in Lightroom, at some point temperature rises which makes some "kernel process" pretty much hog up all the CPU and the machine starts lagging severely. Looked up online and this is quite common.
- downWidOutaFite 5y agoYea it's especially common when running external monitors. The conspiracy-minded would say Apple wanted to leave a reason for MBP buyers to upgrade to M1 laptops.
- awill 5y agoUsing any external monitor requires turning on the discrete GPU. I'm sure that's a large part of the problem.
- muro 5y agoWhy would that be required? The embedded GPU should be good enough for many things.
- cassianoleal 5y agoPoor drivers. The same reason why the discrete GPU pulls around 20W just for being on with an external screen, even if the screen is black. Apparently not an issue: * in clamshell mode; * on Windows via BootCamp. According to some reports in the MacRumours forum [0] this is fixed in Monterey. [0] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-is-hot-noisy-with-an-external-monitor.2211747/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/16-is-hot-noisy-with-an... Edit: Not quite a fix. Apparently they introduced a Low Power Mode that helps bring wattage and temps down by essentially preemptively throttling CPU and GPU or something like that.
- Aeolun 5y ago
- Joeri 5y agoKey travel isn't back to what it used to be, but it's moving down everywhere so apple at least isn't far behind. I went from a T series thinkpad to an M1 air and the keyboard was a clear downgrade, but in practice I find it to be "good enough". Apple: .7 mm - butterfly keyboard 1 mm - current mac scissor keyboard 1.3 mm - old mac scissor keyboard Thinkpads: 1.8mm - T series thinkpads (aka the ones with the good keyboard) 1.5mm - last year's X1 carbon (the thin and light) 1.3mm - this year's X1 carbon
- jagger27 5y agoFor added reference, the beloved 7-row ThinkPad keyboards found in laptops like the T410 and T420 have 2.5mm key travel. Kailh Choc (low profile) mechanical switches have a total travel of 3mm. Cherry MX switches (and most clones) have 4mm travel. Some clones are a little more or less.
- mpalczewski 5y agoI miss the 0.7mm travel. Less work for the fingers. Faster typing. Too bad they couldn't make it reliable.
- NovaS1X 5y agoI know it's completely subjective, but I'm currently on a work provided 2018 mac with the 0.7mm travel and I despise it. I have far, far more typing errors on this keyboard than I do on pretty much anything else. I'm excited to try the new 1mm keyboard.
- Aeolun 5y agoI have it too, but to say I love it would be a stretch. It really doesn’t feel like max spec machine most of the time.