With new 13-inch MacBook Pro, Apple waves goodbye to the butterfly keyboard

The oft-criticized butterfly keyboard design is now a part of Apple’s past. With today's newly updated MacBook Pro, which also improves performance and increases storage, Apple has removed the oft-criticized butterfly keyboard from its lineup once and for all.

The new 13-inch MacBook Pro can ship equipped with Intel’s 10th generation processors. It has Core i5 options at 1.4GHz and 2.0GHz, and with Core i7 options at 1.7GHz and 2.3GHz—all quad-core. The new Intel chipsets come equipped with upgraded Iris graphics, which Apple claims could offer as much as 80-percent faster performance than their predecessors.

Some of the laptop’s various configurations also come with faster memory—3733MHz. Buyers can pick 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB options at purchase.

Apple has also doubled the storage options without raising the price—something it has done across many of its products lately. The entry-level storage configuration for the 13-inch MacBook Pro is now 256GB, with options up to 1TB.

Beyond those changes (and the replacement of the butterfly keyboard with the scissor-switch Magic Keyboard), it’s the exact same 13-inch MacBook Pro as before. The screen is the same size, with the same resolution, despite rumors that the 13-inch model would go up to 14 inches. Apple recently replaced its 15-inch MacBook Pro with a 16-inch version that has smaller bezels. Not so here.

It’s the keyboard change that is most notable. The butterfly design that permeated the MacBook lineup over the past several years was controversial; some users liked the typing experience, others hated it. But more critically, it seemed prone to hardware failure.

After complaints of repeated failures, Apple launched a repair program to replace keyboards for free through authorized repair shops and Apple Stores. It also released a few small revisions, each apparently intended to improve reliability.

But after several years of trying to make the butterfly design work, Apple has gone back to the tried and true by bringing the scissor-switch Magic Keyboard to the entire lineup. The 13-inch MacBook Pro was the last laptop Apple sold new that had a butterfly keyboard. Now, no MacBooks in the lineup have it.

The new Magic Keyboard’s typing experience closely resembles that of pre-butterfly MacBooks. Like the butterfly keyboards, though, it still has a Touch Bar, but it does have a physical escape key.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro is available for order now and will arrive in Apple retail stores and other retailers (those that are open, anyway) by the end of the week. Ship dates for online orders currently range from May 7 to May 28, depending on the configuration.

Listing image by Apple