Do you think the engineering team decides the thickness of laptops or the design team (Ive) impose specs onto the engineers?
This is the same type of corporate structural flaw as Boeing has, just without the loss of life for Apple. They needed to sell the plane without re-certifying, so the management demands some poor engineers work around it while having their hands tied behind their back.
And the discussion about the quote on HN
There is a role for engineering to adjust the vision when necessary to comport with reality. It's not clear that was an issue with these keyboards as it's not clear that anyone knew up front that the butterfly mechanism would have these problems.
It's worth remembering that when Apple launched this keyboard, they didn't just say it's thin, they touted the engineering that went into it. I really, really doubt that this was a situation where the engineering team was banging the problem gong and was overruled. I know that's a popular way of thinking here on HN but I need at least some evidence to believe it.
This looks more like well-intentioned innovation that has just not worked out as well as they hoped, which happens sometimes, even with competent engineers. It's why Apple keeps such cash reserves on hand, so they can try new things and survive the ones that don't work out. Thankfully in this case, laptop keyboards are not life and death products.
Maybe if the head of engineering had had another 6 months to test the keyboard design properly he could have concluded that it wasn't technically feasible. But at the time there was a lot of pressure to release a redesign of the MBP and probably the design of the case was already decided. In the end Apple wasn't able to make a proper keyboard to accommodate the specs but maybe it was too late to go back to the drawing board.
I'm speculating of course, but I very much doubt Apple are complete idiots. It's more probable that some circumstances forced them to release the redesign. It was a mistake of course, they should have only updated the specs of the 2015 model, maybe adding a TB3 port. But you know, hindsight is 20/20.
I imagine Apple has been working on a redesign with a new keyboard, but these things take a couple of years. Specially when the Mac is only 10% of Apple's revenue.
This feels like something Google would do: Take something that's perfectly functional, change it entirely, remove features, make it less functional, have it be buggy as hell, then release it while deprecating the old one. Now, sell it as an innovative new feature.
In short: the keyboard redesign does not appear to have any real reason behind it, and it's essentially change for the sake of change.
Everyone was happy with the Mac Pro towers, a lot of people still use them today. The trashcan design IMO was more of an engineering/design statement at solving a self imposed problem rather than an existing one.
So, if rumors are to be believed, Apple is making a 180 on the new Mac Pro. Let's hope in a year or two we will have a new MBP with a good keyboard.
Tim: Hey X, I appreciate the hard work you're doing. But I've been busy with other meetings and slagging off Zuckerberg again. LOL. Why don't you touch base with Jony Ive and see if you two can't come up with something?