At Apple’s recent keynote, there were a number of interesting announcements from the fruit company around a number of their product lines. The focus, rightly so, is around Apple Watch for now, but it is the newly announced redesign MacBook keyboard that has me the most intrigued.
I’m not a keyboard aficionado, but it is something I constantly use every day. I use Apple’s keyboards, Microsoft’s latest Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop Keyboard & Mouse, and Lenovo’s last-generation keyboard on the ThinkPad X220 and have never been able to settle on a single model or type of keyboard.
The smaller distance, larger keys, and metal click all makes the MacBook keyboard one of the most interesting. Most of what I use right now uses the scissor mechanism and the new butterfly mechanism looks to be a marked improvement in many key areas.
So I’ll wait and play with one at a store in the future. Whether Apple brings this new mechanism to the rest of their line, I am not sure.
2 replies on “Interesting Keyboard”
After so many years with not a lot of changes in keyboards it’s interesting that the keyboard is where designers are making so many alterations to miniaturize laptops. I suppose something has to give. Like you say: you spend all your time interacting with the device through the keyboard you’d think they’d be a little more conservative in their redesigns. Who wants a laptop that requires them to tote along an USB or Bluetooth keyboard along just to type?
I wish we could have a sorta full sized, light weight, thin machine. Best of all worlds?
That’s what intrigues me so much about the new keyboard on the MacBook. They’ve made it thinner, but in doing so they’ve made it more stable and are using metallic parts for the “click”. I hope it is different, but a good different (with the needed amount of time to get up to speed).
Design is always about making decisions and compromises. The question becomes if they made the correct ones.