Why does the MacBook Air M5 keyboard look different? Blame your iPhone

• Apple's MacBook Air M5 is largely the same
• Eagle-eyed reviewers noticed a small but important keyboard difference that removes some words
• Alignment with the iPhone and the global market are the reasons

It's a change so subtle and crafty that you might not notice it at first. In fact, most reviewers missed this design switcheroo on the new Apple MacBook Air M5. It's on the keyboard where a handful of keys no longer have words, just images or glyphs.

How and why this happened is a subject of some debate, but Apple's reasoning is fairly obvious.

First of all, turns out that MacBook keyboards can look different depending on where in the world you buy them. Even between the US and UK, there have been differences. Now, though, there is some alignment.

Article continues below