- Apple’s MacBook Air M5 is practically the same
- Eagle-eyed reviewers noticed a small but important difference in the keyboard that eliminates some words
- Alignment with the iPhone and the global market are the reasons
It’s such a subtle and sneaky change that you may not notice it at first. In fact, most reviewers missed this design change in the new Apple MacBook Air M5. It is on the keyboard where a handful of keys no longer have words, only images or glyphs.
How and why this happened is a matter of debate, but Apple’s reasoning is pretty obvious.
First of all, it turns out that MacBook keyboards can look different depending on where in the world you buy them. Even between the United States and the United Kingdom there have been differences. Now, however, there is some alignment.
Article continues below.
On the new MacBook Air M5, these keys have changed:
- Caps lock
- Change
- Delete
- Return
All of them are now represented with glyphs; the words are gone. In the UK, this is how it has been on some previous MacBook Airs, such as the first to feature Apple Silicon, the M1 (although apparently not consistently).
To be clear, there was no situation where, on the previous MacBook Air, we had words and images, so on this new laptop we only have the glyphs.
Aesthetically, it has a cleaner look and shouldn’t present any confusion, especially for touch typists who don’t look at the keyboard anyway.
Lineage of glyphs
Image 1 of 4
If you’re a hunt-and-peck typist, you’ll probably navigate this change well, too. After all, these glyphs should look quite familiar. Apple based them all on the iOS virtual keyboard.
See Delete on your iPhone keyboard. It’s the same. Double-tap the shift key and, yes, you’ll instantly recognize the Caps Lock key on the new MacBook Air.
The same goes for the Return and Shift keys.
It’s not a big deal or the kind of change that will affect a laptop purchasing decision, but it’s interesting to see how usage and design decisions ripple through Apple’s ecosystem and around the world.
Apple and its customers thrive on utility and consistency. These changes are likely to bring with them a small measure of both.
Get Mac familiar
Consistency has another benefit that may benefit Apple’s future market aspirations: it makes it easier to transition to the Mac from other platforms, especially if you’ve been using an iPhone.
An old statistic claimed that 70% of Windows users owned iPhones, meaning there may still be a huge, untapped, addressable market that could base their familiarity with a Mac on how well they know their iPhone.
Imagine if a subtle change could help tip the scales in favor of the Mac, which by some measures still has single-digit desktop market share. And, in case you were wondering, the hot new MacBook Neo features the same keyboard glyphs.
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