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Comment by solardev | Hacker News Reader

Is this the guy responsible for the Intel Macbook Pros becoming a useless single-port monstrosity with unusable keyboards? I think his personal motto was "Make it as thin as possible without sacrificing usability, then forget the second half and make it thinner just because I said so."

If so, good riddance! I wish Apple would go back to being an engineering company instead of a boutique advertiser.

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I know I’m in the minority but I really love my work 2019 MBP’s butterfly keyboard. I’m a very light typist, maybe that’s why, I dunno. I’ll miss it when it’s gone. I have a personal M1 MBP, and while I like it more in almost every other way, the keyboard is just ok by comparison.

I loved the feel of the keyboard (contrary to some) but durability and redundancy were god-awful.

I'm in the same camp as the two of you!

Sure, I've had mine replaced 5 times, but I love the actuation/feel of the keys. It was/is light years ahead of any other 2mm or less keyboard I've tried.

I'm legitimately considering buying an M2 Macbook Pro 13 so I can have the final iteration.

Aside from the reliability.. For me the step was too fast too quickly. I skipped one generation of laptops, so for me it felt really weird. I think that right now I'd like it. But if they'd re-introduce it, I'd simply refuse to buy for a few years because of the issues.

I didn't realize anyone actually liked those! Thanks for sharing.

As someone with a very particular keyboard preference (Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop), I know what it's like to find that one keyboard you finally mesh with. It's tough when that happens to be built in to a laptop.

At least there'll probably be a lot of those flooding the used markets soon...

Apple was originally an arts-based company, and much more concerned with design over engineering.

As for what Jony Ive came up with, his Wikipedia page has a lot of detail: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jony_Ive

I wouldn't say that's true. The Apple II was actually the more flexible and engineering focused of the 1977 Trinity with it's multiple expansion slots and built in assembly monitor. It was very much a computer for hobbiests because that's what Woz personally wanted.

I dunno, their designs for the last decade or so, before the most recent years, have been entirely unimpressive. Yeah, they're supposed to be known for it, but IMHO their outputs were pretty ordinary and caused a lot of usability issues. Disposable trash-can desktops? Pro laptops with no ports? iPads that bend every which way? iPhones that didn't have working antennas? Whoever was responsible for those, whether it's Ive or anyone else... I just hope Apple is using this separation to turn a new leaf.

So much of design is subjective, but my particular problem with them is that they emphasized form over function so much that their products were unusable in the end. I remember needing a new laptop for a few years, and kept looking at the Mac ones year after year but unable to type on them.

Then, whatever happened in the last 2-3 years has been AMAZING. I thought Ive had already left in some capacity and that was why. Finally, usable pro machines again (still wish they had a USB-A port). I look forward to what they will produce without being under a bad design dictator anymore.

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