“Apple has faced a consistent stream of criticism for the keyboards, which were first introduced with the Retina MacBook in 2015,” Jame Sanders writes for TechRepublic. “The keyboards have a reputation of failing to register keystrokes, or registering the same keystrokes twice, due to dust or other particles becoming trapped in the butterfly switch mechanism the company devised in order to reduce the thickness of MacBooks. A group of aggrieved customers filed a class action lawsuit against Apple in May over the keyboards.”
“In a teardown of the newly-released MacBook Pro, iFixit noticed a curious addition to the keyboard—a thin silicone overlay placed around the butterfly switches for each key,” Sanders writes. “The Verge indicated that an Apple representative told them during the release event that the ‘new third-generation keyboard wasn’t designed to solve those [dust] issues.’ However, iFixit noted that an Apple patent application published in March describing effectively this silicone overlay design characterized it as a ‘contaminant ingress prevention and/or alleviation [mechanism].'”
iFixit posits that the quieter response from the keyboard is a side-effect of the anti-dust silicone membrane, and that ‘the quiet angle is, quite literally, a cover-up,'” Sanders writes. “Given the lawsuits, it could be problematic to announce that the issue is fixed.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: So, the prevailing theory is that the sticky key issue is fixed or, at least, improved, but Apple can’t come out and say it due to legal reasons.
Time will tell.
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