Apple will reportedly launch its next-gen MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops with the new scissor keyboards in the second quarter of this year. According to the latest investor note from renowned analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the devices will have a number of cost-cutting measures (referred to as ‘cost optimizations’), but none of that will apparently matter to the end-user.
Apart from the revamped keyboard, the exact feature sets of the aforementioned models are yet to be revealed. But, MacRumors, which first reported on the subject, speculates that the MacBook Pro model might be the much-awaited 14-inch variant that Kuo, in one of his earlier research notes, claimed would replace the 13-inch model this year. As for the MacBook Air, it will likely retain the 13-inch display.
The move to scissor keyboards is expected to be a major boost for the reliability of the upcoming MacBooks Pro and MacBook Air models, given that the current models are still equipped with notoriously unreliable butterfly keyboards, which can suffer from sticky or unresponsive keys after prolonged use.
The latest 16-inch MacBook Pro that was released late last year already comes with the scissor keyboard, so the switch to the more reliable technology for the rest of the lineup will be a welcome change for prospective buyers. All the MacBook Pro users in our team, including Akshay and Rachit, can definitely attest to that.
In case you don’t know it already, Apple in 2018 initiated a free keyboard repair program for its MacBook models equipped with butterfly keys – after customers filed a class-action lawsuit against the company for knowingly using a flawed keyboard design since 2015. According to the lawsuit, the MacBooks had serious issues with their butterfly keyboard mechanism, which gets jammed with the slightest amount of dust or debris, rendering them almost unusable.
