How Apple Finally Fixed Their Frustrating Keyboards

The MacBook’s ‘butterfly’ keyboard has been maligned for years, and they’ve finally returned to the old design

Dheeraj Nanduri
Modus

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Detail of the Thunderbolt 3 ports on a 2018 Apple MacBook Air laptop computer with a Gold finish, taken on November 19, 2018. Photo: Neil Godwin/Future/Getty Images

RRecently the MacBook’s Magic Keyboard made its way into the product line. Even before many customers got their hands on it, the keyboard has garnered a lot of fans. Why? Because Apple has finally recognized that they messed up and decided to switch back from the butterfly mechanism to the tried-and-true scissor-switch mechanism.

To really understand how and why the Magic Keyboard appeared, we need to look at the story behind how keyboards have been designed in the past few years.

Why was the Apple butterfly keyboard created in the first place?

Credit: Apple website

The butterfly mechanism was initially designed to improve the user’s typing experience. The intention was in the right place. The execution was what was flawed. The butterfly mechanism made its debut with the refreshed Apple MacBook in 2015 — the successor to the famous all-plastic white one they had many years earlier.

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Dheeraj Nanduri
Modus
Writer for

Observer by habit, Designer by nature. I write on products, advertising, marketing and the design philosophies behind them.