You can hate it, you can love it, but you sure as heck can’t ignore it. I am talking of course about the effect that Apple has on the consumer electronics sector, evident from the cult like following it enjoys and the massive mainstream popularity.

With a market capitalisation of almost a trillion dollars, the company has a great deal of influence on the direction the entire market is headed in. It might not always be the first to invent things or even the first to bring a product/service to the market, but they sure know how to make things mainstream.

Apple also doesn’t shy away from doing away with older technologies. In fact, they have been doing this since they started rebuilding their company after Steve’s return in 1997.

They were the ones who got rid of the floppy drive back in 1998, then the physical keyboard in phones when they launched the iPhone in 2007, then the CD, DVD drives starting in 2008, the headphone jack in 2016 and more recently, even the standard USB ports.

Now, some people are suggesting that they should do away with something that has been there since the beginning of computers themselves. The keyboard.

The Butterfly Keyboard

Image Credits: Apple (The keys don't actually fly.)

Apple has always strived to make their devices as thin, and as light as possible and they might have sacrificed in some important areas (battery life, etc) to make that happen.

When Apple launched the totally new 12-inch MacBook in 2015, it did away with the traditional scissor mechanism keyboard and introduced its new keyboard with a butterfly mechanism. The thin design demanded such a change.

In 2016, they brought this thin keyboard design to the MacBook Pro line as well but it has received huge criticism from fans all over the world. In fact, in a growing number of cases, some keys in the keyboard just stop working.

Apple is also facing a class action lawsuit for this flawed design. Apple may address this in the coming refresh of its Mac lineup in September. But is Apple looking to kill the keyboard altogether like it did the other things?

Killing The Keyboard?

The redesigned MacBook Pro lineup in 2016 not only got the new keyboard design but it also got something called the Touch Bar. It basically replaces the function keys with an OLED touch screen bar along the top.

The idea sounded good but after almost two years, it is clear that it is more of a gimmick at this point and not many people take full advantage of the Touch Bar.

But if some of the patent filings from Apple are any hint, they might be planning to replace the entire physical keyboard with an OLED touchscreen panel. That would allow them to design even thinner laptops and do away with yet another legacy technology.

Of course typing on a physical keyboard feels better and might even be faster but I think we thought the same about physical keyboards on our phones, and now look at us! Apple is sure to meet a great deal of outrage if they do it though, just like they always have.

What’s The Alternative?

There is a saying which goes, “If something ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”. I think it might apply to the situation at hand. The keyboard has served us well for decades now and that’s the reason it has managed to stick around.

So, there is no apparent need for it to go away, even if the touch screen keyboard would provide more benefits. The physical keyboard just works.

And laptops and desktops are getting more and more irrelevant anyways as smartphones and tablets are getting smarter, more capable, and eating away at the traditional computers’ share year by year.

So, maybe Apple should just leave the keyboard alone until the laptops and desktops become obsolete over the coming decade and the ‘problem’ is solved on its own!