If you’re planning on investing in a new M6 Mac mini or M5 Ultra Mac Studio, you might be buying a new Apple Magic Keyboard along with it. Apple has updated its keyboards, too: Certain keys have had their labels changed to symbols instead of names.
Apple introduced these changes with the MacBook Neo and M5 MacBook Air, so the company is basically catching up on normalizing the keys. The Tab, Caps Lock, Shift, Delete, and Return keys no longer have their respective word labels. Instead, they have arrow icons:
The switch to the graphical labeling is an effort to standardize its keyboards. Apple’s non-English keyboards used symbols, and implementing them in the English keyboard streamlines the production process. However, Apple did not update the keys on the $129 wireless Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad that has a Lightning connection for charging.
Speaking of the production process, it appears that the Magic Keyboards have not been affected by the worldwide RAM shortage (/sarcasm), so their prices have not changed:
If you prefer not to go with an Apple keyboard, you have plenty to choose from. Check out our guide to the best keyboards. Maybe you should even consider a mechanical keyboard instead of an Apple one.
