[dethac]

The thing with keyboards is that... well, for one, scissor switches are perfectly acceptable (the ones in the 2015 MBP and older, and pretty much all laptops today). Further, the thickness of the scissor mechanism can be made to be REALLY small. See: Acer Swift 7 (9.95mm thick, total), the XPS 13 (11.6mm thick, total) the X1 Carbon 6 (15.95mm thick, total), and pretty much any other Ultrabook. This is compared to the MacBook Pro, which is 14.9mm thick. Note that the X1 Carbon has TDP-up configured to 25W vs 28W on the MacBook Pro and the XPS 13 has TDP-up configured to 26W. Point being, thermal constraints did not force a keyboard redesign to fit the new form factor.

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.

[pier25]

Maybe you are right. That would be consistent with the trashcan Mac Pro redesign.

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.