However, keyboard quality didn’t start to decline dramatically until we reached the ultra-light class with the Sony X505 in 2004 and Apple’s influential MacBook Air in 2008.
Why is that, and is there a chance it will change again? JuliaĪll laptop manufacturers have been making their products thinner and lighter since British industrial designer Bill Moggridge invented the format with the GRiD Compass in 1982. There aren’t any for writers.Ī comfortable typing experience could distinguish professional laptops from tablets and Ultrabooks, but Apple appears to be muddying that distinction. However, I find laptop keyboards across all platforms are becoming flatter and slimmer, and the only ones that appear to offer mechanical keyboards are flashy gaming laptops. Also, I have tried the new keyboard and I did not like the feel of it: travel seems too short and rather “flat” for my taste. Apple is facing class-action lawsuits over the new butterfly keyboards’ untimely breakage, and as my computer’s main job is to be a writing tool, I didn’t want to risk ending up with non-functional keys. I recently upgraded to a used early-2015 MacBook Pro Retina because of Apple’s recent redesign of the MacBook Pro, which sliced off a little bit of thickness at the cost of various ports and the very reliable keyboard with scissor mechanism.
