Apples butterfly keyboard failed by prioritizing form over function

In today’s digital age, it sometimes feels like hardware has taken a back seat to the software that drives our devices. Button of the Month will look at what some of those buttons and switches are like on devices old and new to appreciate how we interact with them on a physical, tactile level.

Apple’s butterfly keyboard switches are some of the worst buttons to grace a modern device: unreliable, prone to breaking after coming in contact with a tiny bit of dust or grime, and incredibly difficult and expensive to replace.

But the deeper issue isn’t that the butterfly switches often break; it’s the flawed design goals that led Apple to make a bad button in the first place. Apple chose to make an entire keyboard full of buttons that resulted...

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