The News Is That They Mentioned the Keyboard’s Reliability at All ⇥ daringfireball.net

John Gruber:

But of course the biggest issue with these keyboards is reliability. Will this updated mechanism fix or at least greatly reduce the number of reliability problems? Only time will tell, but I’m cautiously optimistic. Apple didn’t have to say anything at all about this mechanical tweak. I mean, if they hadn’t said anything at all about the keyboards, we’d all be asking about it, but Apple often ignores questions it doesn’t want to answer. The folks I spoke to today seem confident these updated keyboards will prove significantly more reliable.

I’ve given this thing a little more thought because, as I wrote earlier, the only thing that gives us any indication that Apple has fixed the keyboard this time is their word. But that, I think, is itself newsworthy.

When Apple made keyboard tweaks last year, they insisted that the new silicone layer underneath all the keys was merely to make for quieter typing and had nothing to do with reliability. It doesn’t matter that their own servicing manual gave up its intended purpose; publicly, their stance was only that it was a quieter keyboard. This year, however, Apple directly addressed keyboard reliability in their conversations with media. Even though they didn’t mention keyboards at all in their press release, I still see it as a noteworthy acknowledgement.