Hacker News Reader

Comment by tsm | Hacker News Reader

We seem to be at this awkward stage in the simplification of technology. Consumers no longer want to engage in maintenance and minor repairs—peterwwillis above points out using compressed air on your keyboard and taking care of your mouseball used to be standard, and I remember slightly-but-not-very tech-savvy people adding RAM, swapping a hard drive, replacing a keyboard, etc. However, the reliability of devices hasn't quite reached the point where we can get away with zero maintenance.

Improving reliability is hard and this is HN, so I'm in favor of gently reminding consumers that a basic understanding of how things work is useful—in laptops, in cars, in home improvement. And I wish companies would make more maintainable and repairable products. I've been using old Thinkpads for years since I can replace individual parts that fail. I also bought an old Jeep Wrangler to learn how to do the same with cars.

View on HN

I have never had to use compressed air on any of my keyboards to keep them working. Only to clean them up. And over the >20 years I've spent interacting with keyboards more or less daily, the only issues I can remember were direct results of fairly long use: broken keys (on the flimsier keyboards) or gunk buildup below the key. And those took years to happen.

The keyboards TFA discusses are all under 18 months old, some under 6.

I'm currently typing on a wireless Apple keyboard I bought in 2009 which I don't think I ever did any maintenance on aside from changing the batteries. I'd be aghast if I had to "do maintenance" on a keyboard less than 2 years old.

I think that's a big part of the issue here, Apple's previous keyboards[0] worked and were reliable (possible dislike of short key travel aside), the replacements were not exactly appreciated when released, that they also turn out to be pathologically unreliable compounds the problem.

[0] which IIRC they used from the first polycarbonate macbook up until they replaced it in the first-gen touchbar MBP, both on laptops and on "standalone" keyboard products

I think the issue is that the new keyboard is turning out to be significantly less reliable than the previous generation. No keyboard should require cleaning with compressed air after only a few months of normal usage, that is simply poor design.

While there may be some degree of "laziness" or whatever on the part of the consumer, I think more if the issue lies with the manufacturer.

Why don't people change their car oil on their own anymore? Probably because you need expert knowledge and a few hundred dollars worth of equipment to do it, depending on your car make/model.

Changing ram and cleaning your keyboard isn't what it used to be. You need tiny spudgers and tiny tiny screwdrivers with non-standard heads and (occasionally) willingness to void your warranty.

> Consumers no longer want to engage in maintenance and minor repairs

Those aren't the same consumers. There are more of them now.

Casey Johnston writes for The Wirecutter and used to work for Ars Technica. She did a review video (which I won't bother digging up since this thread is dead) surveying different keyboard technologies. She doesn't need a reminder to learn about how her keyboard works.

Edit: in retrospect, that's why the "original sources only" rule is important. Half the comments here wouldn't even have been made if people had started there.

People never wanted to do that maintenance. Steve Jobs had advocated for "plug in and use" sealed boxes almost since Apple was a thing. We're just much closer to that dream than ever now, so anything else becomes less tolerable.

> I remember slightly-but-not-very tech-savvy people adding RAM, swapping a hard drive, replacing a keyboard, etc.

I'd argue those were still early adopters, a part of the 10% or even 5% of the world that owned a computer at the time.

It's getting increasingly difficult to swap those things as they are more and more soldered on or the case cant be opened.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com