[GordonS]

Interesting. The 2017 Macbook Pro is the first Macbook I've ever had, and I find the keyboard terrible. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but I just struggle to type on it, often finding letters missing from the words I've typed, and the keys never being where my fingers expect them to be. The key travel just feels wrong too.

By comparison, I also have a very cheap Asus netbook (13", I think) - it was about £100 compared to about £3000 for the MBP, and it actually has a better keyboard!

[microtonal]

It is interesting how polarizing the butterfly mechanism is. I absolutely love it. I can type more accurately and faster on it (they keys feel more stable) and I dread when I have to use an external keyboard with the old scissor switches or a pre-butteryfly MacBook. My colleagues who have a new MacBook Pro also prefer the new keyboard. The only large downside seems to be that it breaks more quickly.

Of course, in the end it is a matter of taste. It would be nice if Apple could find some compromise between the new and the old design. But Apple being Apple, they will stick to it ;).

[latch]

This is like saying the Xbox 360 is polarizing. It's not that some people love it and some people hate it. It's that some people get a working one and some people get a broken one.

There's enough complaints about broken butterfly keyboards to conclude that the failure rate is significantly higher (across both the first and second generation).

[falcolas]

My experience between a 2015 MBP and a 2017 MBP tells me that the problem is the lack of a tactile difference between keys. Unless I'm focusing really hard, there's very little to tell me without sight where my finger is on a key.

This results in hitting 1 instead of ~, losing my place on the keyboard on a regular basis, and being completely unable to find the arrow keys by touch. Perhaps my typing is a bit sloppy, but it works just fine on the 2015 MBP, with a tiny fraction of the errors I encounter on the 2017 MBP.

[izacus]

Yeah, I went from 2015 to 2016 MacBook Pro and the keyboard is way way worse. I use several keyboard and this new one is the only one where I regularly make typos (which is very frustrating when typing passwords).

[taneq]

> I find the keyboard terrible.

> I can't put my finger on it exactly

Sounds like that's your problem!

[frabbit]

He was fumbling to find the words.

[jacobolus]

How long have you had it? What’s your typing style?

Finding where the key tops are is largely down to familiarity/practice, and it’s possible your netbook had smaller-than-standard key spacing, which then might take some time to readjust to the standard key spacing.

I’m sorry Apple made the key tops bigger and the gaps between keys smaller on this version though, as smaller key tops with wider spaces between tend to help train your fingers to find the right keys and reduce errors from accidentally hitting a corner or edge of the neighboring key. The change to the arrow key layout is IMO a serious regression.

I also think the key travel is a bit too shallow, but after a while most people can sort of get used to it. The new snappier tactile feedback is pretty nice. I wish they could figure out a way to make a keyboard with the old amount of key travel (or even slightly more), very reliable, but with the new tactile feedback which hearkens back to full-travel clicky switches of the 70s and 80s.

Many people used to rubber domes and cheap laptop keyboards end up with a typing style where they really mash the keys down hard into the bottom of the stroke. This especially comes about when people use the cheapest type of rubber dome boards (e.g. the ones that came with most PC desktop computers in the 2000s, including Macs) which need to be pressed all the way down to actuate, and sometimes actuate unreliably unless the key is pressed very firmly; using such a keyboard for any extended time ingrains incredibly damaging habits.

If you try to do a hard mashing style of keypress on a key with extremely shallow travel and not much cushion at the bottom, you’ll put a sharp impact on your fingers with every keystroke, and cause quite a bit of strain. It’s kind of like what happens if someone habitually runs wearing shoes with thick padded heels, landing on his/her heels with every step, and then switches overnight to running barefoot on concrete, without changing running form. Ouch!

If this describes your typing style, try to figure out a way to type with a lighter springier kind of stroke, ideally with your forearms and palms floating in the air above the keyboard instead of resting on any surface. Try to type with just enough force to reliably actuate the key, but not much more. (Irrespective of which type of keyboard you are using.)

Edit: in response to otempomores’s dead comment: this is not intended as an apologia (maybe try reading more carefully?). As a long-time keyboard nerd, I’m just sharing some of my impressions of the changes (positive and negative), and providing some hopefully helpful additional feedback/advice, most of which should be broadly applicable beyond this particular keyboard.

[GordonS]

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed response!

I've had the netbook for 1-2 years, but I only use it one every few months or so. Still, it's a joy to type on for such a small device.

The Macbook I've only had for 6 months or so, and I only use it once a week or so (I work mostly on Windows, but need to build iOS apps). I should also have said it's the 13" version.

TBH, I don't really want to try change my typing style to suit the MBP; that kind of reminds me of Apple's infamous "your're holding it wrong" response to users complaining of aerial issues with one of the iPhones from years back :)

I regularly work on quite a few different keyboards (6, I think!) and indeed have worked on several over the years, but this is the only one I've ever had any real issue with.

[jacobolus]

> The Macbook I've only had for 6 months or so, and I only use it once a week or so

The once a week part might make it extra difficult to adjust. I’ve seen reports from several people who found the new Apple keyboard uncomfortable/weird for the first few weeks of full time use, but then got used to it well enough.

Switching between a full-travel desktop keyboard (of whatever type) and a very low-travel keyboard could be a pretty jarring transition.

Personally I prefer a keyboard with longer travel distance, and generally despise all laptop keyboards. The new Apple laptop keyboard is for me not really significantly better or worse than previous Apple laptop keyboards or than the better PC laptop keyboards. It’s a bit different – a nicer tactile response, but less travel distance – but for me those are roughly a wash.

Have you considered using an external keyboard with the laptop? I generally prefer to use an external keyboard if I have any significant amount of typing to do.

As for “holding it wrong” – many if not most people I have watched type have quite terrible posture and typing style, which is why so many end up developing repetitive strain injuries. 40 years ago, typists were likely to go through serious typing training at a secretarial school, and learn ways of sitting and typing which tried to accommodate human practice to the shape of the typewriter so that it was possible to be efficient while not injuring themselves. Nowadays people tend to learn in an ad-hoc way by just picking up the device and figuring it out for themselves. I constantly see people sitting slouched, their arms reached way out in front of their bodies and palms or forearms resting on the table, with wrists flexed uncomfortably upward, etc.

Most of our furniture (and definitely our computer keyboards!) are not very well designed for human anatomy. Ideally keyboards would be split into two pieces, tented upward at the middle, and detached from a display so that the keyboard part could be kept close to the torso. Each half of the keyboard would be better designed to put as many buttons as possible within very easy reach, and aligned with the fingers instead of an arbitrary staggered grid dictated by the implementation details of 19th century typewriters. The screen could be placed slightly below eye level, tilted slightly upward, and at least 2.5 or 3 feet away from the face. Logical keyboard layouts would be fixed to be more efficient and convenient. Etc.