Petition: Apple recall and replace defective Macbook Pro keyboard design
change.org
change.org
I looked at them with a magnifying glass. The C-clamps that hold them in aren't broken. They just are stretched an extra micronanometer such that they don't hold the spoke anymore. It alone wastes a bunch of my time every minute as I have to fix the keys as I type a line of code, but the anger it provokes is even more distracting.
If I could go back in time five month ago, I would've simply bought a Macbook Air which still has the older keyboard. My previous computer was a 2014 Macbook Air and it's the best computer I've used. The battery lasted longer as well.
Another surprising quirk of the Macbook Pro is how hot it gets. I can't watch Netflix with it perched on my belly in bed like I did for three years with my Air.
It's comical how much I hate this computer. If I wasn't roughing it on minimal expenses in Mexico, I'd sell it and get a new Air. I'm glad I didn't sell my old Air because I guarantee inside of three months I'll be using it over this MBP. It just needs a new battery but there aren't any Apple stores here.
That said, I already replaced a machine with this keyboard due to failing keys and now have a silicone cover over the keyboard of the new one, which inarguably degrades that experience. I'd rather have an okay keyboard that works than a fantastic one that doesn't.
We are also both heavily invested in iPhoto (which is why all our machines still run Mavericks).
A recent ThinkPad running Bionic has objectively been the best computing experience I have ever had.
Some X% of the people petitioning there would be actual users of the model in scope (Macbook Pro 2017 and beyond). And Y% of those people may actually have this issue.
Problem is, nobody would ever know X and Y, and its really bad to speculate. It makes the whole petition basically a guessing game.
Realistically speaking, the only outcome would be to force Apple to take note, or at best issue a statement. Either way, the keyboard is not going away. It would be announced that it would get "better over time" - which it would have anyways. Its hard to do worse than this going by the feedback.
I currently have a broken 'S' key (a couple of the very fragile teeny tiny clips have broken off the keycap) after just a few months - Admittedly, becaue a liquid spill rendered the 'S' intermittently unresponsive, so I removed the keycap to clean with alcohol, which did at least fix the contacts, so the key works, but broke the keycap. Hopefully I can get a replacement keycap to keep me going until probably the liquid spill (a splash of beer, countered immediately with turning the laptop off and upside down in front of a fan overnight etc) starts corroding.
But regardless, the most egregious fault is that the keyboard can't be replaced without also replacing half the laptop, at excessive cost, not to mention the affront of having to pay again for the same crappy keyboard.
This is unacceptable, as the keyboard is one of the few moving parts on the device, and the one most exposed to external dangers.
Looks like the same might be happening to my six month old MBP, along with the keyboard going, which I’ve been really careful with, so yeah, Apple laptops aren’t in my good books right now!
When I did it, they said they would only do it up until 3 years after the purchase date of the Macbook but there are people in that Facebook group who have had theirs changed for free with a little bit of arguing.
Mine falls within the repair window so I’ll be taking this up with them again. Thanks
The keyboard and trackpad will stop working after about a year. It happens because the trackpad ribbon cable sits on the battery, and as the battery heats and expands it destroys the ribbon cable. This design flaw was introduced in the 2015 line.
When you take it to Apple, they say you can either pay $500 to get the keyboard and trackpad replaced, or pay $100 for them to swap out the ribbon cable. Mind you, that ribbon cable only costs $10 if you order it online and swap it out yourself.
Here’s a youtube video that shows how to fix it. It has tens of thousands of views:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0AVoXTd-N0Q
And there are tons of these fix-it videos on youtube for this specific issue. Lots of people are having this same exact problem. Apple does not acknowledge that this is a problem.
Overall I prefer my 2017 15" pro to my 2015 one mainly because it is thinner, supports USB-C charging, and the screen is much much better
So disable it?
This petition may not amount to anything, but I'm sure someone in Cupertino has taken notice. Apple has "we know what's best for our customers, better than they do" engrained in their culture, and when it comes to design decisions, sometimes they are right, but I don't see how anyone there could justify a defective or unreliable (at best) keyboard being the right thing for any of its customers. You know what would take courage? To publicly acknowledge the issue and do right by your customers. That takes way more courage than removing a headphone jack.
Unless a recall actually happens (not likely, but I'm really hoping so), we'll never know what--if any--kind of impact this petition has had, but I'm hoping it will cause Apple to (at minimum) go back to the drawing board on this thing and give us a better keyboard the next time around. They should also expose the keyboard to more rigorous testing (that includes dust and other air debris). I just hope the keyboard I have lasts until I'm ready for an upgrade because I don't see myself spending $700 on a repair when this is already the most expensive laptop I've ever purchased (and the $700 is a gamble considering you could get an even worse keyboard).
The sad thing is, back in 2006 I was in the US Military stationed in Baghdad, and I had with me a cheap $600 Dell laptop. That thing survived sand storms that would leave the inside of our tent (and all of our belongings) covered in dust (even with the laptop lid closed and inside of a locker). I highly doubt this keyboard would have survived that deployment. It's sad that a low-end DELL computer from 2006 had a keyboard that's more reliable than Apple's top of the line notebook. If it weren't for macOS, which I love probably more than Apple does, this whole keyboard saga would have caused me to ditched Apple laptops and go with Lenovo.
At the time of this writing, 16,778 people have signed the petition. If each one of those people are a MBP owner, and let's round down the average cost to $2000, that's $33,556,000. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the 5.8 billion in Mac revenue in Q2; however, the Mac business seems big enough to at least please the thousands of customers who feel cheated.
Everyone will hate it but... it will be reliable and amazingly thin.
Maybe use too much power?
If it’s programmable (and they did a decent job of making the touchbar programmable), it could be an incredible tool. And while getting the haptic right is probably tough, I wonder if it could be in reach now (I love the Magic Touchpad 2, and that’s not much smaller than a keyboard. Although keyboard will need to give some cues as to where the keys “are”...)
The howls of the anti-touchbar crowd would just be the icing on the cake...
i could not imagine trying to do this for an entire keyboard.