MacRumors notes that Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says that starting with the 16-inch MacBook Pro to release this September, Apple will phase out the butterfly switch from all laptop keyboards. This year’s 13 and 15-inch Pro and the 13-inch MacBook Air will still have the troublesome mechanisms, but by 2020 all models will have scissor mechanisms.
This new keyboard design is said to use a scissor mechanism with glass fibers to reinforce the keys and keep them from breaking. It would also apparently be cheaper to produce. The updated keyboard would allow the keys to travel a bit longer, and it would be a bit more durable.
The butterfly keyboard has been a big problem for Apple for years. In an effort to slim down its MacBooks, it introduced the butterfly keyboard in 2015. Since then, users have complained that the keys would stop working if dust got under them. Apple has introduced a series of measures to prevent that from happening it updated the design with rubber stoppers to keep dust out, and then it tweaked the design with some “new materials” in the mechanism to improve their reliability. Apple has since confirmed the issue, saying that it’s only affected a “small number” of devices, and it launched a repair program.
Users should be happy with this news. Apple faced a lot of criticism over the problem-prone keyboards for well over a year culminating in three class-action lawsuit. As long as there are no inherent problems with the new scissor design, the outcry should die down as the newer models filter into the market.
