In Defence of Apple's Butterfly Switch Keyboard
When Apple first released the Butterfly Switch keyboard on the MacBook in 2015 it split opinion. Some hated it, while a some loved it. Like most things Apple, it was an elegant engineering solution to a design problem: that of reducing the depth of the uppercase of their laptops so that they can be made thinner and to free up internal space for other engineering options such as increase in battery size. Along the way Apple not only solved the problem but, in my mind, also created a superior typing experience. Shame about the fatal flaw.
Let’s set aside how it typed for the moment. While the butterfly keyboard achieved its objective, it failed to account for real-world use. Most users expose their laptop (usually inadvertently) to all sorts of gunk. Tell me that you haven’t typed on your laptop while eating Cheetos or tried to blow the crumbs of a muffin or cookie off the keyboard. Just look at your laptop keyboard now and see how oily those keys look.
That was, of course, the butterfly keyboard’s Kryptonite: crumbs. And other particles small enough to get into the space between the keys and the aluminium chassis under which they emerge. Then keys start getting stuck, feeling gummy or become just plain unresponsive. That, of course, is disastrous for a laptop. How else would you communicate with the machine to get things done? A broken keyboard is a broken laptop.
I bought a MacBook when it was introduced by Apple and in less than a year, keys started flaking out. First to go was the space bar, probably because it is the largest key with the largest gap (in absolute terms) for debris to find its way into the key mechanism. You can tell from the time it took from purchase to the time I wanted to physically throw the MacBook out of my second storey window that I keep my workspace relatively clean, and as a rule do not eat at my desk. (Drink is another story.) The internet is replete with stories of people’s MacBooks, then MacBook Pros having keys that stopped working properly.
Apple replaced the top case of my MacBook under warranty. The components in these machines are so optimized for space that the keyboard itself does not come as a separate part. But that’s beside the point.
So after telling you about the frustration I have had with the first generation Butterfly Switch Keyboard, why is the title of this essay “In Defence of Apple’s Butterfly Switch Keyboard”?
It’s because I love it. I love what the engineers at Apple had achieved with what must have been a tremendous effort of countless design decisions. I get a pleasurable reaction both emotionally and intellectually when I discover some element of a product that had been designed and engineered with sublime attention to detail. Especially with hidden or non-obvious elements. And the Butterfly Keyboard Switch, despite its fatal flaw, reeks of it.
My first computer was the Sinclair Spectrum in 1982 followed by the Oric-1 a year later. The former had a rubber membrane keyboard in the chiclet style and the latter hard plastic keys that are like the buttons you find on an HP financial calculator (raise your hand if you know what those are!). After that I started using a slew of IBM compatible machines with their clickety mechanical keyboards, and a whole string of Apple keyboards from the Apple ][, through their first wireless monstrosity, and all the Magic Keyboards ever sold. Then there were all the Dell PCs, Silicon Graphics workstations and Windows laptops in between. The point is this: in the last 37 years I have had the privilege of using almost every kind of keyboard ever shipped with a computer, and a great number of those that weren’t. I even pumped over $100 for the vapourware TextBlade.
In the pre-Butterfly Switch era, Apple laptops used the scissor switch which pervaded (and pervades) the industry. They are cheaper than mechanical keyboards, because the mechanism has fewer moving parts and is easier to manufacture. But more importantly, these keys have a low profile, which is a challenge for mechanical keyboards - perfect for laptops.
What we have lost from mechanical keyboards is the “click” — the audible and tactile point at which the key has registered the press. That click is not only satisfying, but also improves accuracy by reducing the number of misfires — presses of keys that have not travelled enough to register. To reduce the error rate, you would have to press the keys fully. I have sat beside colleagues who banged their keys so hard on these scissor keyboards that their whole desk reverberated.
The Butterfly Keyboard brings that activation click back to a low profile keyboard. To me it is the modern love child of a clicky mechanical keyboard and a low profile laptop keyboard. And this offspring is an improvement over both. Because of the short travel, these keys require far less energy and time to activate compared to either. And despite the short travel, you know when you have activated the key.
The keys are also larger than the last generation of Macbook Scissor mechanism keyboards, but still separated from each other. In the early MacBooks the keys nestled against each other, separated by bevels down their sides. The problem these early laptops posed is the increased likelihood of hitting the key next to the one you want. Spacing the keys away from each other solves that problem. But if they are spaced too far apart, more effort is required to type as you stretch to hit the keys. (If you have been typing on the Butterfly Keyboard and go back to the pre-Butterfly keyboard with their smaller, further spaced keys, you will know what I mean.)
But to make the keys bigger would require engineering the switch so that there is little difference between hitting the side of a key and hitting it dead on. In the scissor mechanism I imagine that to make the keys larger would require a larger scissor mechanism which would in turn would result in a higher profile. The solution that the Apple engineers came up with not only resulted in exactly that goal, but one side effect was that the keys wobbled less in their seat. This is such a pleasure to a touch typist. When cogitating the next sentence to type with your fingers on the home row, your brain can concentrate rather than play with wobbly keys like playing with a wobbly tooth.
And finally, the key surfaces are not flat but are very slightly concave, just enough that if you touch type, you can feel when your fingers have found the center of the keys. If you are not a touch typist, then perhaps all of this engineering is less important. But if you are, I suspect you will agree that Apple had created the best short travel keyboard ever.
It’s a shame that it was shipped with that serious shortcoming mentioned above. Perhaps under time pressure they had released it a couple of design iterations too soon. Regardless, even solving the debris issue in the 3rd version wasn’t enough to save the Butterfly Mechanism Keyboard from dying a premature death.
I just hope it won’t go the Betamax route and disappear forever.