It really is a testament to how "great" design can handicap great products. It's 2019. Computer makers have been designing electronic keyboards for close to 50 years. Typewriter keyboards have been around since the 1870s. For a century and a half we've been designing and building ways of getting alphanumeric characters from brains to machines.
Apple is one of the most valuable companies in history building hardware that a large portion of the professional computer user workforce use on a daily basis. For them to make such an egregious error as shipping fatally-flawed keyboards should teach us two things:
- Humility. We can all make big mistakes and shouldn't rely on track record to assume that everything we're doing now is the right thing.
- Focus. Shifting its focus to design at the expense of human factors cause Apple to make a colossal blunder.
This move back to a better keyboard, along with the Mac Pro (for what it's worth), are hopefully signs of Apple listening to some of its most important -- and seemingly neglected -- customers.
Apple is one of the most valuable companies in history building hardware that a large portion of the professional computer user workforce use on a daily basis. For them to make such an egregious error as shipping fatally-flawed keyboards should teach us two things:
- Humility. We can all make big mistakes and shouldn't rely on track record to assume that everything we're doing now is the right thing.
- Focus. Shifting its focus to design at the expense of human factors cause Apple to make a colossal blunder.
This move back to a better keyboard, along with the Mac Pro (for what it's worth), are hopefully signs of Apple listening to some of its most important -- and seemingly neglected -- customers.