Perhaps the redesigned keyboards won't be so bork-prone
GADGET PRODDERS at iFixit have taken apart the keyboards on Apple's new MacBook Pros and uncovered dust covers below each butterfly fly mechanism key.
While Apple's MacBook Pro models for 2018 have mostly had internal upgrades, notably with Intel's Coffee Lake processors, Cupertino's engineers have given the butterfly keyboard a tweak as well.
With its shallow key travel, the butterfly keyboard - which made its debut on the 12in MacBook and 2016 MacBook Pros - divided opinion among macOS fans. The 2017 MacBook Pros brought in a second generation butterfly keyboard, which had a slightly better reception.
But there was a problem; the butterfly mechanism meant the keyboard failed at nearly twice the rate the keyboards on older machines.
Dust, crumbs and lint clogging the shallow travel of the keys were found to be a culprit of such keyboard problems, with reports noting they caused keys to get stuck and fail.
So it comes as no surprise that Apple, with its reputation for tech that 'just works', has taken steps to bust the dust problem.
When it revealed the MacBook Pros last week, Apple noted that its tweaks to the butterfly keyboard were to make tapping away on the keys a less noisy affair, with Cupertino not acknowledging any reliability issues with its previous generation MacBook Pro keyboards.
Yet the thin layer of rubberised silicon material that sits around the updated butterfly mechanism, according to iFixit's fiddlings, looks like it's pulling double duties in keeping out dust and muck, as well as toning down the click-clack nature of the older butterfly mechanism keyboards.
Given how secretive the firm is, we're not surprised Apple didn't go all mea culpa on the problems its users have reportedly had with the butterfly keyboards, but from now on it looks like dust won't be busting MacBook Pro keys. µ
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