The arrow keys and touchbar make that machine completely unsuitable for writing code, at least for me. My right hand needs to unconsciously lock on to the arrow keys, and that's just impossible with that layout. There's nothing to grab on to. My new iMac keyboard sits in a drawer collecting dust solely because of the arrow keys.
And the butterfly mechanism is unproven and untrustworthy, I don't care how many times they update it.
They need to go back to using the same keyboard mechanisms for both their desktops and laptops, and they need to go back to the old arrow key layout.
This is the first time I've seen somebody else complain about the arrow keys and I completely agree.
It's by far the most infuriating aspect of this new keyboard.
Another thing that I have a hard time explaining is my inability to orientate myself on this keyboard; several times a day I have to move the laptop around, look at the keys and "reset" myself to the keyboard. I don't know what that's about but I've only ever experienced it on this keyboard.
My personal machine is a 2014 MBP which will be replaced with something other than a mac once the time comes.
I hate my MBP arrow keys, but unless I'm doing a little work from home or in a meeting I never use the keyboard, instead I have a full size apple keyboard that I love and use with the macbook in clamshell mode hooked up to a dell 4k.
I'm probably not buying a new macbook pro for a long time... it's just not worth it to have such a high end machine that I use as a glorified traveling mac mini.
For my next work upgrade I am requesting a linux laptop.
RT. I upgraded to the late-2018 MBP from a 2013 MBP and after three months of heavy dev usage cannot get used to the new keyboard layout (specifically arrow keys) and touchbar.
Really wish Apple would start offering touch bar as an option when you purchase!
There is some claim that they've fixed the keyboard issue.
Aside from that, across 2 MacBook Pro's and a MacBook Air, I've had 0 keyboard issues. I don't know if I've just gotten lucky, kept my keyboard clean, or what, but it just has never been a problem for me.
The failure rate of the butterfly keyboard design is clearly orders of magnitude too high and is the sort of thing people should genuinely lose their jobs over (and perhaps they have). But "orders of magnitude too high" might well mean one or two percent, rather than one or two tenths of a percent; outside the company, I don't think we have any reasonable estimates of the failure rate, just anecdotes. My work laptop has no problem, although its lid is usually closed; my home laptop, a MacBook Escape, also has had no keyswitch problems, although I mostly use an iPad for portable work now. Most of my coworkers have new butterfly-switch keyboards and I don't hear of significant issues; I've talked with a couple Mac IT people at different companies and they haven't experienced huge failure rates, either. This is, again, all anecdotal, though; some people will come back and say "I'm in an eight-person group and three of us had bad keyboards."
And the butterfly mechanism is unproven and untrustworthy, I don't care how many times they update it.
They need to go back to using the same keyboard mechanisms for both their desktops and laptops, and they need to go back to the old arrow key layout.
I will wait another year until 2020.