I think it's the marketing copy most people are taking issue with with.

They tried a new design, which was horrible to use and had a high failure rate. They continued to claim the new keyboard was amazing, and stubbornly continued to use this crappy keyboard long after the problems were apparent.

And now they are touting a "normal" keyboard mechanism as if they've invented something new and wonderful... only Apple could get away with such transparent BS.

"The refined scissor mechanism with 1 mm of travel delivers a responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience."

What in that says "invented" "new" or even "wonderful?" It seems like you're reading into the text what isn't even there.

Well, they are calling it the "magic" keyboard. How does that strike you?

I assumed that was because it’s the same key-mech that’s in their (external, Bluetooth) Magic Keyboard. Where it itself was branded “magic” just in reference to its two sibling peripherals, the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad.

IIRC, the peripheral line itself was started with the original Magic Mouse, which was branded as such because it didn’t have separate external actuatable buttons, but rather was just a smooth surface with a multitouch digitizer on the top half + a single actuatable microswitch underneath the shell†. Apple wanted the image of it “magically” figuring out when you left/right/middle-clicked (despite no L/M/R buttons) or scrolled (despite no scroll-wheel.) Also, the “plug in to pair” experience might have contributed to the claimed “magic”—it was a fairly unique approach to pairing at the time.

† Which is a design with some real benefits, like being easily disinfectable, with no crevasses close to the hand for filth and germs to accumulate in. (There is a crevice on the Magic Mouse, but it’s on the bottom, where your hands will never touch it.)

There is also a bit of “magic” in the Magic line of peripherals that’s not in the hardware itself, but rather in the OS: when the Magic line of peripherals—Apple’s first Bluetooth line of peripherals—was introduced, Apple added a feature to macOS where macOS will “train” the Apple EFI firmware to recognize devices paired in macOS itself, such that the firmware will later attempt to connect to such paired devices on boot. This means that e.g. holding Option on your Bluetooth keyboard to select an alternate boot device on an iMac would actually work. Which was kind of necessary, as those are the peripherals iMacs shipped with.

It strikes me as completely in line with their other peripheral offerings such as the:

- Magic Mouse

- Magic Mouse 2

- Magic Trackpad

- Magic Trackpad 2

- Magic Keyboard

- Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad

The previous sentence: "Now features the new Magic Keyboard."

"Refined" is also an adjective that has a definition close to "new and wonderful". It's not just a word to bring out an emotional response to make people feel like buying the thing.

They refined the scissor mechanism. It's an improved scissor mechanism with better key stability than previous scissor keyboards on their laptops (so sort of the "best of both worlds" between the butterfly keyboard and their old scissor keyboard). The new mechanism is also used in the Magic Keyboard and 16" MacBook Pro.

"Refined" means made better. This is better than the previous keyboard, and also features 1mm of travel, making it better in that sense than any of their previous keyboards.

Imagining a word to mean what you want it to, and then reacting negatively to that, that doesn't say as much about Apple as it does the observer.

> What in that says "invented" "new" or even "wonderful?"

Uh... "refined"?

Refined doesn't mean any of those words. Here's two definitions from Google:

> with impurities or unwanted elements having been removed by processing.

> developed or improved so as to be precise or subtle.

It basically just mean improved, which most people would agree.

In fairness, that keyboard switch style hasn’t had 1mm off travel before, so don’t you think “refined” is somewhat accurate?

I read that as "elegant" not "made better". It's possible that people could read it either way.

Yes, that's by design; it's a purposefully ambiguous choice of words that be read either way depending on what the reader's subconscious wants to hear. Either way, they don't have to admit that they were wrong, customers that hated the old now now feel relieved and vindicated, and people are probably more likely to buy the new one. That particular choice of words is probably the result of millions of dollars of marketing psychology, focus groups and A/B testing.

Where does it say "we stuffed up, and in response to your feedback we've gone back to basics"? Sometimes, people want to hear acknowledgement of error.

Are you seriously expecting them to say "our previous product was bad, this one is good"?

When has any tech company ever done that?

A good value trade in program would have been nice. I managed to sell my 2017 15” for a bit under $2000 CAD to upgrade to the current 16”. I would have rather dealt with Apple than deal with hagglers and low ballers.

Last time I remember that happening was Porsche's recent launch of the 992 generation 911, in which they poked fun at the fried-egg headlights on the 996. If they can do it, so can Apple. They are both Jedi-level marketing orgs.

That takes courage.

I mean Domino's managed to pull it off.

They did basically say that in the live announcement of the 16” MBP, but remember they still sell some models with the old keyboard, plus millions of people still will be using that one for years to come, so there’s no way they will disparage it for the next few years at least.

They said that when they announced the extended warranty program on the old keyboard. People who want to hear an acknowledgement of error can go back and read that, if they missed it.

People want to hear wailing and gnashing of teeth, which is silly.

It’s marketing man. Next you will be complaining that the burgers look a lot better on the billboards compared to when you unwrap them, or that the shirt looked a lot better on the mannequin than when you put it on, or that car ads always show their car speeding on an open road instead of stuck in a traffic jam during the morning commute.

Ignore the marketingese and don’t let it bother you so much. The important thing is that they listened to their customers and created a better product as a result.

I dunno, we expect people to be honest in every other aspect of their life. Why shouldn't marketers be honest too?

We do not expect people to be honest in other aspects of their life. Just look at the cosmetics industry. Politicians with their campaign promises. Management with their corporate right-sizing and synergies. Kids and Santa Claus. (haha!)

Anyway, I consider fake reviews to be dishonest .. I consider this to be more like "putting a positive spin on it".

> They tried a new design, which was horrible to use

I actually liked typing on the butterfly switches, the only thing I did not like was the left/right arrow keys being bigger.

Well it isn't normal, and it isn't the old Keyboard either.

Despite having Double the Key Travel of Butterfly ( 0.5mm to 1mm ) It still felt the same as butterfly. The old Scissor had 1.3mm, while only 0.3mm difference, it felt night and day.

The new scissors also claims higher stability. Although I doubt this has anything to do with the design but rather of the "height" of the key be lower.

It is indeed new, but I know if it is wonderful yet. I haven't had a long period of time to try and use it.

Marketing aside, thank god we're back to normal. Some things are just better left alone and don't need innovation (vim comes to mind). Refinement sure. I love my 2014 MBP keyboard.

They deserve flak and they are getting it. It doesn’t have to be logical. It is emotional. They also created an emotional brand.

Somehow I think Apple can handle it. Anyone wasting energy complaining is only doing so because they are waiting to buy again.

It makes as much sense defending them as it does yelling at them about a keyboard.

I dunno, I used to buy Apples because they had great hardware for a fair price (premium, sure, but if you're in the market for a premium machine...), but my last two machines have been a Dell and a Surface. It's different trade offs, but '\_o_/` I was never wedded to their operating system anyway.

I held off buying a new MBP replacement for two years now thanks to the massive criticism over the butterfly fiasco. I'd say the complaining was useful and had an impact. Not wasteful at all.

To be honest, yes, I'd like them to say "we messed up, and we finally recognised that, so we're fixing it".

I think it would be amazing if the most valuable, most design-focused company in the world admitted to everyone that they made a mistake. It would do a lot towards allowing everyone else to make mistakes without beating themselves up over it. After all, if the thousands of specialist engineers, paid billions in salaries, given the best equipment in the world, in a company that really (and I mean really) values design, can make a mistake, then it's kinda OK that your home page looks a little crappy on mobile.

They did that when they actually started fixing it[0].

[0] https://www.tomsguide.com/us/apple-macbook-keyboard-service-...

Wasn't that the dust problem, though? Admitting that there's a problem when people are taking out class-action lawsuits against you seems a little late to me. And again, rather than a "we're so sorry, we made a huge mistake" speech, it's more of a "we're such an amazing company, we're going to fix your faulty laptops for free!" speech.

>To be honest, yes, I'd like them to say "we messed up, and we finally recognised that, so we're fixing it".

Exactly. In Steve Jobs days he would have either jokingly admit there was a mistake or at least say something that people dont like it ( hence admitting there is a problem ).

The new Apple put up a big middle finger and didn't act until there are class action.

Even with the fix, I'm ddisappointed in their response. II had a 2013 MBP that worked great for years and years, and was excited to finally get a maxed out MBP about eiighteen months ago. The ffirst year was great and then this damn keyboard started doing its thing. I'm deliberately leaving the keyboard errors in place for this comment, they aren't typos. Yes, they havee the keeyboard replaceement program for the enext 3-4 years. But then you have to be wiithout your workhorse for a week while they replace it, and then what, you'll probably have the same problems a year later. (Incidentally, I have a job switch coming up wiith some tiime off - my plan was to use that time to send in the laptop for repairs theen when my clieint isn't relying on my availability, but now that plan is shot wiith the Apple Stores and malls being closed.) And yes, I can fix this by just buying the 16", but this computer was expensive and was supposed to last me at least 3-5 years. I'm supposed to iincrease my spending to Apple? A sane program would be to buy back this lemon at a heffty price so I can buy the new one and be made whole.

Marketing spin is not clear communication. It does not deserve praise. It's not mandatory, either.

None of:

> MacBook Air now features the new Magic Keyboard, first seen on the 16-inch MacBook Pro. The refined scissor mechanism with 1 mm of travel delivers a responsive, comfortable, and quiet typing experience. The inverted-T arrow keys help you fly through lines of code, spreadsheets, or game environments.

says anything about "fixing problems that people wanted fixed" or "doing what people asked for." That would read:

> We used a lower-travel keyboard with a butterfly mechanism and alternative arrow key layout on recent models, and you said you didn't like it. We listened. The MacBook Air now features a proven scissor mechanism with a return to 1mm travel and classic inverted-T arrow key layout.

They're implying that they've come up with something new, which is a lie. That's not perfect.

As far as I can tell, this is the first keyboard with 1mm of travel that Apple has made. Before the recent butterfly debacle, their keyboards had as low as 1.2mm travel (on the iMac keyboard) or more. The much-maligned butterfly design got down to 0.5mm travel.

So this scissor design with 1mm of travel seems to be something new. The inverted-T arrow keys are not new, but the scissor mechanism itself is, a refinement of previous designs.

To be completely honest, they should describe the keyboard as "a lot less bad than the previous keyboards, but not quite as good as the ones before them".

The two sentence above clearly oversell the product: "refined", "delivers", "help you fly", plus all the details for something that is already known... It's not because everybody is doing glorified marketing, which often results in being deceptive, that we have to be okay with it.

> Did you really expect a bunch of public self-flaggelation? They are telling us clearly that they did what we asked for. Perfect.

What ? No. They are telling us they refined it, not that they fixed their mistake. It's not perfect, it's lame and cheesy.

Does refined not mean that they took out some of the bad parts? That's about as close as you can get to admission of a fuckup as you can get in sales copy

>Now that they fixed it we should be happy about it.

No, we moved on and do not care. There are many companies that make laptops and keyboards. 5 years too late.

Honestly, Apple's marketing has always been worse than the other companies when it comes to sell basic things as a revolutionary, life changing progress.

IMO, when you see car companies 2020 model gets 3 more horsepower or 1 more MPG, it’s better to consider how difficult that was rather than simply expecting it. Even a slightly better toothbrush is a positive life change. We have normalized progress, but even seemingly incremental progress is making the world a better place.

Further, it can take revolutionary change to maintain incremental improvements. Filling HDD with say Helium has a lot of knock on effects hidden by the spec sheet.