I spent the morning typing on the 2017 and 2018 MacBook Pros, and Apple’s new laptop keyboard is better. Not great, but good enough and more comfortable for long-term typing.
The 2016 and 2017 MacBook and MacBook Pro models had the worst keyboards of any high-end laptop. Not only were they flat, loud, and painful to use, they were actually defective. Apple is now running a free keyboard replacement program for anyone whose keys die because they get a piece of dust trapped under them.
My biases: I hate the earlier keyboards with a flaming passion. At work, I type on a desktop Cherry MX Board 6, a mechanical keyboard with huge throw. At home, I use a 2015 MacBook Pro. On the road, I alternate between a Microsoft Surface Book and a 2016 MacBook (not Pro), the one with the worst keyboard only because it’s really lightweight.
Apple’s 2017 keyboards are shallow and very loud. Your fingers land HARD at the bottom, with a harsh, metallic clack. If you’re a hard typist, the way I am, then the keys can be loud enough to interrupt conversation and your fingertips can feel a little bruised at the end of the day.
The 2018 model is softer, in both senses of the term. The keys definitely still click, but they’re noticeably less noisy. That feels like it’s done by putting some sort of cushioning at the bottom of the keypress. That doesn’t make the keyboard feel mushy; it was too flat and hard before. Rather, it makes it feel a little bit more forgiving, and so more comfortable for long-term typing.
I have to moderate your expectations: if you like a Lenovo or a Microsoft laptop keyboard, something where the keys really press down, you still won’t like this keyboard. It is shallow. It is not as good as the 2015 MacBook Pro keyboard, which was excellent. But it is not quite as painfully clacky as the previous generation, and your keystrokes don’t land as hard.
The big, open question left is whether the 2018 MacBook Pro keyboard is more durable—less defective—than the 2016/2017 units.
Seen edge-on, the 2018 model’s keys look a little bit tighter in the case, like there’s less room between the case metal and the key plastic, which might prevent dust from getting in. But if the problem is that Apple’s butterfly switch design is inherently defective, well, you’re just going to see a lower but still unacceptable rate of keyboard failures.
Compounding the problem, Apple is twisting users’ arms by killing off the last MacBook Pro with an unassailably great keyboard. It has both a better keyboard and USB-A ports, which is why it’s going for $1,300 on eBay, even though it has an aging processor.
The improved keyboard (and much faster performance) makes me less hesitant to recommend the 2018 MacBook Pro, as opposed to the absolute dogs of the 2016 and 2017 models. But I still wish Apple acknowledged that its flat-keyboard experiment was a bad idea, and spent some time talking to those of us who love to type.
