Apple Got a ‘Dishonorable Mention’ at the Oscars

Apple may have finally fixed its long-standing keyboard problem with the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, but it’s clear that it’s still going to take some time for the company to live down the bad reputation that its MacBooks got over the years of the butterfly keyboard debacle.

Last night at the Oscars, Academy Award winner Taika Waititi took the opportunity to take a swipe at Apple over its MacBook keyboards, which he described as “impossible to write on.”

Waititi’s comment came during a Q&A session with reporters, where he was asked what he thought writers should be asking for in their next round of negotiations between the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood producers, to which he quickly responded with: “Apple needs to fix those keyboards.”

It wasn’t just an off-the-cuff remark either. Waititi actually took up almost a whole minute of the session, although it seems clear he was trying to be a bit tongue-in-cheek about it, at least in the sense of hyperbolically exaggerating it into a much bigger issue.

“They are impossible to write on, they’ve gotten worse and make me want to go back to PCs, because PC keyboards, the bounce-back onto your fingers is way better — hands up here who still uses a PC — you know what I’m talking about. It’s a way better keyboard, and those Apple keyboards are horrendous. Especially as the computers, as the laptops get newer and newer, the latest one, the new iMac, the keyboards are worse, and I’ve got … some shoulder problems, I’ve got … like a sort of loose … tendon that goes from the forearm down into the thumb — you know what I’m talking about, you guys who are writing — and what happens is that you open the laptop, and you’re like this. We’ve just gotta fix those keyboards. The WGA needs to step in and actually do something.”

Despite the way the comments were delivered, though, it’s clear that there was a germ of seriousness in Waititi’s complaints, and he’s certainly far from alone in finding recent MacBook keyboards frustrating, although notably his comments weren’t on the reliability problems that have plagued Apple’s recent keyboards, but more so on the general feel and responsiveness of the keyboards. This was also a common, albeit less serious complaint about the butterfly keyboards, which had less key travel as a result of Apple’s insistence on making the newer MacBooks as thin as possible.

Apple first introduced the new butterfly keyboard design with its 2015 12-inch MacBook, and then later decided it liked the technology so much that it brought it to its 2016 MacBook Pro lineup, and continued to stubbornly insist on sticking with the design in the face of obvious keyboard problems that led to petitions from irate users and even class-action lawsuits alleging that the keyboard was “prone to failure” and that Apple knew about it and was deliberately misleading customers.

While Apple tried to make iterative changes to improve the issues with its keyboard designs, it finally acknowledged the problem, apologized for the problems, and began offering free repairs for affected MacBooks. However, Apple recognized that the problem was serious enough that it actually went so far as to advertise free repairs for new models as they were released, hoping to placate users who were nervous about the butterfly keyboard by letting them know that at least if their keyboard did have a problem, Apple would stand behind fixing it.

Late last year, we finally heard news that Apple was planning to abandon the butterfly design once and for all, returning to the older scissor-switch design with a few modern tweaks. Apple’s 16-inch MacBook Pro that arrived in November was the first version to feature the ostensibly better and more reliable keyboard, and while it’s unclear if Waititi has tried that model yet, we suspect not, as most non-technical people have better things to do than upgrade to the very latest Apple technology on release date, even when they can easily afford it.

While the 16-inch MacBook Pro is currently the only one to feature the improved keyboard design, Apple is widely expected to release a new 13-inch MacBook Pro soon that will likely also herald a return to the scissor-switch design, likely followed by new MacBook Air models later this year, so our long national nightmare of bad MacBook keyboards may finally be coming to an end.