With the update of the new 13-inch MacBook Pro, All current Apple notebooks incorporate a keyboard with the scissor key system, leaving behind the controversial and problematic butterfly system.
Sometimes large companies are very slow to make drastic decisions to solve specific problems, and Apple has demonstrated this with the butterfly keyboards of its MacBooks since 2015. Those in Cupertino began to manufacture these keyboards to be able to make MacBooks a few millimeters thinner, but over time they started to give problems. And they have been slow five years to fix it.
The new 13-inch MacBook Pro released on May 4 uses the Magic Keyboard. It incorporates the traditional scissor key mechanism, not the butterfly alternative that has given Apple laptop users so many headaches in recent years.
The change in keyboard layouts for MacBooks started last fall with the 16-inch MacBook Pro. It was the first macOS laptop without the butterfly keyboard so unreliable in recent years. Apple followed the keyboard system change with the 2020 MacBook Air.
With these renovations in a few months, we already have the peace of mind that all the new laptops offered by the company already have the traditional scissor keyboard, reliable and trouble-free.
The history of butterflies
The butterfly mechanism is somewhat slimmer, but much less robust than the scissor mechanism.
Apple's butterfly keyboard design debuted at the MacBook 2015. It jumped to the MacBook Pro line in 2016. And then the complaints began. Keys often stopped working when dust or other debris accumulated under them. As iFixit technicians noted in 2018, “The basic flaw is that these ultra-thin keys are easily jammed by tiny particles. Dust can prevent the keycap from pressing the switch or disable the return mechanism. »
To make matters worse, the butterfly mechanism is so delicate that it often breaks when trying to replace the key caps. And Apple's habit of paste multiple components inside the MacBooks compounded the problem. “The keyboard itself cannot just be swapped. You also have to replace the stuck battery, the trackpad and the speakers at the same time, ”said iFixit.
Apple tried to fix it with repairs
Many keyboards have had to repair Apple for free.
The keyboard breakdowns didn't happen immediately, and Apple claims the problem only affected a small number of users. Still, as the lawsuits began to mount, the company launched a Keyboard Service Program for MacBook and MacBook Pro in 2018, offering free repairs for models dating back to 2015.
But the company kept insisting on continuing to mount such a butterfly keyboard on each and every MacBook Pro and MacBook Air it introduced. With this he was forced to keep adding each new model to the repair program. Even in 2019.
At last he turned to the scissor keyboard
Finally, last year, Apple introduced the 16-inch MacBook Pro with a scissor keyboard mechanism. It was followed by the MacBook Air range launched a few days ago, and now with the last remaining laptop to be renewed, the 13-inch MacBook Pro. That years after the complaints began to pile up, and a few 18 months later that several lawsuits were filed by users. Apple has taken too long to fix this problem.