Apple has launched a new MacBook Pro today, and we expected this one. It’s been months of rumours and finally, the new 16-inch MacBook Pro is here, with new keyboard, larger screen and a few little extras.

Keyboard issues

In April 2015 Apple released the new MacBook (which has since been discontinued) with the much thinner “butterfly” style keyboard, which coincidently has much less key travel than older keyboards.

In 2016, Apple launched what we basically had up until today and it caused a lot of issues or people. The ‘new’ style MacBook Pro was launched at the end of 2016 in October, it was much thinner, the keyboard was redesigned to have much less travel and all the ports (and MagSafe) were traded in for USB-C which has its positives and negatives. But the biggest issue was the keyboard, it wasn’t clear at first but a few weeks and months down the line the issues started to arise.

In February 2017, 4 months after release MacRumors reported that users with new MacBook Pro units were starting to see issues.

A growing number of customers who have purchased a 2016 MacBook Pro are running into issues with the keyboard, including non-functional keys, strange high-pitched sounds on some keys, and keys with a non-uniform feel. There are dozens of threads both on MacRumors and on the Apple Support site.

MacRumors (2017)

Later on

In short, a lot of reports circled the internet, with the likes of Joanna Stern from The Wall Street Journal doing a whole piece on the issue – as did Casey Johnstone from The Outline

It basically took until June 2018 for any word to come from Apple regarding this issue, when the company launched a repair program for affected units. In June, 9to5Mac reported on the issue.

“Today we launched a keyboard service program for our customers that covers a small percentage of keyboards in certain MacBook and MacBook Pro models which may exhibit one or more of the following behaviors: letters or characters that repeat unexpectedly or don’t appear when pressed or keys that feel “sticky” or aren’t responding in a consistent manner.”

Apple, speaking to 9to5Mac

Then in July 2018 Apple releases a new high end version of the MacBook Pro with a third generation version of the keyboard, which was supposed to resolve the issues.

MacBook Pro, but refined

Now at the end of 2019, Apple has finally taken one step to improving the keyboard experience on MacBooks once and for all, at least just for the larger MacBook Pro for now, the 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air still have the older butterfly keyboards for now.

Today, the new larger 16-inch MacBook Pro was announced and as we reported yesterday, the rumours are true.

The new MacBook Pro is on sale today for the same starting price as the 15-inch at $2,399 and this actually replaces the 15-inch in the lineup.

As discussed above, the keyboard issues from the past few years which have plagued Apple should be a thing of the past as Apple has updated the keyboard to a new “Magic Keyboard” which ditches the butterfly arrangement for the same setup as older MacBook models.

Also, the arrow key layout returns to the inverted ‘T’ setup which is exactly the same as the older models.

The MacBook Pro now has a physical escape key and the Touch ID sensor is now separated from the Touch Bar and now serves as the power button for the laptop.

Specs

Specs specs specs, Apple has really pushed the boat out on this one, the 16-inch MacBook Pro can now be configured with an Intel 9th generation 8-core i9 processor, up to 64GB DDR4 RAM and up to 8TB of SSD storage. For video memory, the AMD Radeon Pro 500M can be had with up to 8GB. Also, the battery is now 100Wh – which is the largest battery capacity allowed on flights in the USA.