Following an assortment of complaints about some of the mechanical issues involved with the butterfly action keyboard on the 2016 and 2017 models of its Touch Bar MacBook Pro notebooks, Apple appears to have included a membrane under the keys to keep debris from getting stuck underneath.
The cool cats at iFixit offered the following comments after opening up one of the new notebooks:
This flexible enclosure is quite obviously an ingress-proofing measure to cover up the mechanism from the daily onslaught of microscopic dust. Not—to our eyes—a silencing measure. In fact, Apple has a patent for this exact tech designed to “prevent and/or alleviate contaminant ingress.”
Apple introduced new Touch Bar MacBook Pro models last week with faster processors and more RAM, as well as a redesigned keyboard the company touts as quieter. A keyboard that isn’t as noisy addresses one complaint from users, but Apple isn’t talking about the other major complaint: failing keys.
iFixit also released the following video regarding the membrane:
The mid 2018 Touch Bar MacBook Pro has been available for only a few days, so it’s too early to tell if the redesigned keyboard improves overall reliability. Apple has also stated that “This new third-generation keyboard wasn’t designed to solve those issues.”
This could be either a partial or full fix for the long-standing issue and time will tell.
If you’ve gotten your hands on the new 2018 Touch Bar MacBook Pro and have any feedback to offer about it, let us know what you think in the comments.
Via The Mac Observer and iFixit