04/13/19
After waiting years for Apple to release a decent laptop, I finally gave up and ordered a Surface Laptop today. It's a new 1st gen, 2017 model (i7-7660U, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, burgundy red) for under $800.
I'm a bit surprised at my own decision, which I think sheds a bit of light on just how badly Apple has lost their way.
On the surface (ha), my reasoning in straight forward: I want a portable laptop to work for a few hours at a time in a coffeeshop, maybe to take on trips. It should have a sharp screen, a good keyboard, 5-6 hours of real battery life, and ok performance. I'm not looking to edit videos or play heavy games on it.
The last laptop that fit the bill was the previous-gen MacBook Air, and it fit it to a T. I still use my 2012 model, which I originally purchased for $1,700. It has worked ok for the past 7 years, but using a non-retina screen in 2019 is inhumane.
I was hoping Apple would simply address that with the 2018 model - just slap on a retina screen, put in new processors, and keep everything else the same, especially the keyboard.
Setting aside the price - while obscene, I was ready to pay the Apple premium if the right product existed - the main thing that drove my decision was the keyboard.
The Butterfly Effect
It's hard to overstate how important a good keyboard is. As a software developer, it's an essential tool for me. I'd argue that
the keyboard is perhaps the most important component of a PC, followed by a large and sharp screen.
A suboptimal keyboard has a direct and huge impact on my productivity.
The Apple butterfly keyboard has a double-whammy: Not only is it uncomfortable to use with comically short key travel, it continues to be plagued by reliability issues.
The real head scratcher for me is why Apple decided to make the tradeoff: between producing a marginally thinner and lighter laptop and one with a decent keyboard. There's no question that I would have ordered the first unit if the MacBook Air was a quarter pound heavier but came with the old keyboard.
Stuck in a Design Trap
I have been hoping the next design refresh would resolve these issues, but on further reflection I realize Apple has painted themselves into a corner they can't easily escape from.
Apple's engineers aren't dummies. The opposite in fact. If they could produce a good keyboard with the current constraints, they would have by now. It's been over 5 years.
If the next model is thicker and heavier, Apple will be hammered by critics, who will (rightly) see this as an admission of guilt and error, and potentially opening them up to big class-action lawsuits.
Apple's only course is to keep on denying the facts and churn out marginally thinner and lighter devices. I believe they will eventually solve the reliability issues, but I don't see how they can possibly improve the key travel without a quantum leap in space-saving technology.
Doubling down on the Wrong Path
“No matter how far you go down the wrong road, always turn back.” -- Someone wise.
How did Apple get themselves into this self-inflicted mess?
It started in 2012, when Apple released the retina MacBook, an impossibly thin and light laptop with a terrible (1st gen) keyboard. They dramatically improved it the next year, and if they had kept it at that, all would have been well.
That itself wasn't the problem, the fatal mistake was deciding to
carry the butterfly keyboard over to all other models.
Even with everything I said, the retina MacBook is still a great design today - it is the thinnest and lightest notebook you can get with decent power, with the tradeoff being a poor keyboard. That's not a bad tradeoff for a device you expect to use relatively infrequently.
But it is a terrible tradeoff for a daily workhorse.
They took a design that was
optimized for one particular set of constraints (thinnest and lightest possible), and moved it without enough thought to products with very different constraints.
Note that when the previous-gen “chiclet-style" keyboard was introduced, it went the other way: First appearing in the MacBook Pro, then carried to the MacBook Air. Recall also that the first-gen MacBook Air compromised on battery life and power, but not on ergonomics.
Creativity Loves (the right) Constraints
The work of design is to make the best tradeoffs given a set of constraints. Some constraints are the goals you want to achieve (“make the thinnest laptop possible” or “make the most powerful laptop possible"), and others are simply dictated by available technology (“lithium-ion batteries take up X cubic mm per watt”).
Here's the lesson: It's critical to define the right constraints before undertaking a design.
And just as valuable: It's important to revisit and question the (often unspoken and implicit) constraints imposed on a design.
The worst thing you can do is to solve the wrong problem perfectly.
Related: Design, Business, Tech.