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Robo
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
 
2019-08-19, 12:51

Quote:
Originally Posted by kscherer View Post
There is only one place left on laptops where there is room for true innovation, and that is the keyboard space. I mean, really, what else can you do? Battery tech could use a lot of improvement, but that has always been the case and that technology will be driven by some other purpose first (like cars or what not). Ax processors won't be "innovation" so much as technology independence. Screens? Not much to do there other than adopt new tech (like OLED or micro LED or something). Ports? They'll get spiffier or go away. There is room in wireless, but I think innovation in that space is software driven. The Tx chips are clearly giving Apple a competitive advantage and there is plenty of room for growth in that space.

As far as the design of the computer, however, the only space left is that keyboard. I know a lot of you roll your eyes when I say this because you want your Apple Tactile Pro keyboard to magically pop up out of the computer when you open the lid, but you are not the future. The kids of today who are growing up with little more than short-throw clicker keyboards or—more likely—virtual keyboards are much more open to innovation in this space. That butterfly keyboard is going away, just not in the direction you want it to go. The Touchbar is just the beginning. That whole space is going virtual, and it won't be Apple that is first, although they are well positioned. I truly believe it is working in the labs—with Force Touch and everything—and will be present on the next major industrial overhaul of the systems. It will start at the high-end and work downward over the course of 3 or 4 years. It will virtually eliminate one of the most vulnerable places on a laptop while simultaneously bringing new UI possibilities to the forefront of portable technology. It will eliminate the need for multiple keyboards for different regions (pick your language and the keyboard automatically adapts); it will replace a multitude of external devices (audio controllers, etc.); it will enable advanced drawing techniques, signatures, Apple Pencil support, and the virtualization of whatever fancy new editing interfaces developers can come up with.

And people will piss and moan (understandably in some cases) because the haptic feedback of mechanical laptop keyboards will be gone.
2015 "12-inch MacBook" Apple might have been working toward that future, but I'm really not sure 2019 "apology Mac Pro" Apple is. I think Apple understands now, perhaps more than they did in the past, that they can't just tell Mac users what they want. If anything, the furor over the low-travel keyboards underscores the importance of a good keyboard to Apple's customers.

And even in 2015, the keyboard was the very first thing discussed in the 12-inch MacBook's introductory video, with Ive stating that "a full size keyboard is the most familiar, comfortable, and accurate typing platform." And I think Apple genuinely believed that, and still does. I'm sure they've tested touchscreen keyboards in the labs. If they were ever to switch to a depthless keyboard, I think it would have been on their thinnest notebook. And even then, in that most constrained space, they tried their damnedest to make a physical keyboard work. I think that's telling.

Even on the iPad, a physical keyboard has been part of Apple's vision for that product since the very beginning. Why? I think it's because Apple has done a ton of testing and they know that typing on a screen isn't great for most people. It's fine for short bursts but you're not going to want to write a novel on it. You're not going to want to write code on it. Do you think the software engineers at Apple would be enthusiastic about replacing their MacBook Pros with ones with screen keyboards? And yes, it's possible that "the kids of today" are going to be totally okay with losing tactile feedback in their keyboards, but I'm not sure they're the ones buying $3,000 MacBook Pros. Or buying a hundred MacBook Pros for their company.

The MacBook Pro is, ultimately, a tool. People want tools that fit them, and that's not, like, a failure of their imagination or anything. A keyboard is, as it turns out, a really good tool for doing a lot of the things people want to do with MacBook Pros. Apple's free to make some crazy vision-statement keyboardless MacBook Pro, but that doesn't mean that people are going to buy it. I'm not sure "Apple's going to keep pushing toward an all-screen future whether you all like it or not" is a very good take considering Apple just discontinued one of its three laptop lines due to an apparent lack of demand.

I'm not even saying a book-style computer with two screens (or one giant bendy screen) would necessarily be a bad product. I just don't think it's a MacBook Pro.

When talking about potential innovation, saying "as far as the design of the computer, however, the only space left is that keyboard" is pretty reductive. And even if we were to assume that the only space left for innovation was the keyboard, there are ways to innovate besides turning the whole thing into a flat glass surface.

I agree with you that having eighty-odd apertures on the top surface of the MacBook's logic-and-battery case is undesirable, I just disagree that a touchscreen is the only way to address that. I wouldn't be surprised if future MacBook keyboards had a cover (not necessarily a key mechanism) similar to the Smart Keyboard's cover, to prevent dust and crumb ingress entirely and potentially make it more spill resistant? If you think about it it's kind of odd that we've made such strides towards making notebooks way lighter and more portable and yet they can still be fried in an instant if you spill a drink on them.

and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong
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