Appl Still Hasn’t Fixd Its MacBook Kyboad Problm
wsj.com
wsj.com
There was an iPhone, an iPad, a MacBook Air, and a MacBook Pro. If you wanted the experience of an Apple phone, you bought an iPhone. You didn't go around asking if you should buy an Xr, Xs, or X, 9, 7, or iPhone googol. You went to the store and bought an iPhone. The product categories were clear. The vision behind them was clearer. Everything just made sense. And it worked too!
Apple doesn't make sense anymore.
I have a top of the line MacBook Pro 2016 that I can't type on. I am the professional these machines are meant to target. My use case isn't "hardcore" or "niche." It's that of most entrepreneurs, programmers, and designers. I wanted a machine that I could carry around in my backpack with good-enough battery life that could let me work from a coffee shop. Nothing fancy. Nothing complicated. Just a machine that a woman can use at a coffee shop with her soy latte.
What I got for my thousands of dollars is a machine that can't be used without its cradle. The keyboard has stopped working correctly despite weekly cleaning. I am worried that the screen will stop working too. And I don't have the time to take my machine back to the store and get it replaced because I'm so busy that I can't live without my computer.
Apple was supposed to be the company that made computers for people who do stuff. Now, it's a dividend machine that happens to make crappy computers.
When you are next time in one of those coffee shops, I suggest you to look around to spot people with latest macbooks. Then ask yourself what category of users they belong to. And whether their primary use case is the same as yours.
This has come up before when I criticize Apple's current product line. I think it's an Apple-specific no true Scotsman fallacy. I buy their products. I own an iPad.I will own an Apple Watch. I had an iPod. I've had three MacBooks. I've used iMacs since I was a little girl. My school had the sunflower iMac way back when and it was the best computer I had ever used.
I think I'm fairly representative of their userbase.
> a little bit of programming, lots of design stuff.
> very few of them like the newer machines.
Serious design people seem to be moving to Windows, programmers - to the same direction, sometimes to Linux.
Computer users I guess?
I have a Macbook air from 2013 that I have put through much worse conditions. The battery isn't doing too good, but the keyboard still works fine.
I don't think I'll buy another Mac unless they start putting usability over being 1mm thinner. I would happily have a slightly thicker Macbook Pro, to have a usable keyboard.
thinner unfortunately wins every time.
I own a top of the line BTO 2017 and 2018 MacBook Pro 15".
A large part of the reason the Mac touchpad works so well is tuning in software. I doubt you could come close to tuning it as finely under Linux, but it works well enough.
That being said, the X1 touch pad with Synaptics software can't match a Mac touchpad. If you're not willing to make a compromise on this specific requirement then stick with your Mac.
Ah but they're both called Apple Pencil
I'm not making this up
But back then, people were complaining that there weren't enough choices. A lot of people wanted a bigger phone than the single iPhone size, but at the same time a lot of people would have stopped using iPhones if the single product offering grew to the Xs MAX size.
While I do miss the simplicity of the choices, I'm one of those people who most likely would have switched to Android if I couldn't get a small iPhone. I think the one flavor of MacOS is the most important place where they should offer just one model, and fortunately they still do.
Apple products have always had weird quirks and defects. Always. All of them. The joke about Apple was to make sure you ALWAYS got AppleCare, because the odds of a failure within three years were high and for most repairs you were looking at a minimum of $300. Any repair of a logic board was $600+.
I've been using a Mac as my primary machine since the Intel transition in 2006. Every single one has had an repair bill covered by AppleCare that was larger than the cost of AppleCare itself. The video card on the logic board on my first Core Duo iMac failed at some point. $800 repair. My polycarbonate MacBook had the super drive fail. That was like $250 alone. Something else failed with that one but I can't remember. Battery or trackpad maybe. My MacBook Air from 2012 — the screen delaminated — $300 for a new screen + labor that I don't recall. Had it replaced right before the warranty expired, but it's happened again with the replacement as well. And it will eventually happen to every single MacBook Air ever made.
Mac products are not designed to last (that's not saying that they can't, but they aren't designed to). They are not designed to be repaired. Never have been. They are designed to get you into a 3-5 year upgrade cycle. Once you realize that it's actually quite freeing because you just don't worry about it the same way you don't worry about the quirks in a leased car. You buy a $3,000 MBP and keep it for three years. You sell it for $1,000 when the warranty expires and get the new one for $3,000. It ends up costing you $55/mo forever, but you always have a new model MBP. That's the Apple model, and that's the way it's always been. If you want a computer that's designed to last you get a ThinkPad or a business-grade Dell/HP.
The combination has me struggling to figure out what we buy.
I have three iMacs from a Strawberry second gen, one of the last white polycarbonate models (first core 2 duo?) and a 27” iMac in the enclosure with the really thin edge.
I have an iPhone 4 which doesn’t run anything I am interested in using, an iPhone 6 which is way overdue for a battery replacement.
To get close to the type of problems you have, I’d have to talk about the various Wintel laptops I have had over the years which ended up failing due to external or internal power supply issues, GPUs that just stop working, and batteries that just give up.
I have come to accept that Apple is forever, and I only rent time on a Wintel.
It's not perfect but allows me to work.
I have a 2016 MBP and after about 3-6 months I started getting stuck and repeating keys. I was going to take it to the Apple Store to get replaced, but just sort of struggled through it for another 3 months or so as I missed appointment after appointment because I was busy. The problem is now entirely gone and all the keys click the same. I actually had this same thing happen with another 2016 MBP. With enough use, the keys break in and no longer stick.
This is, obviously, a ridiculous solution—if you can even call it that. But an aged keyboard is actually more reliable than a new one.
The fix for this wasn't just adding in a layer to keep the dust out, but getting tighter tolerances on the butterfly mechanism itself and designed around the expansion issue or using different/better materials.
I have an original keyboard without the membrane on my main machine and I've been thinking about taking it in to get the upgraded one. But I really don't want to go through breaking in another keyboard if I get a new one with a few wonky keys.
If anything what Apple really needs to do is find either a new material or a new manufacturing process that allows for more expansion of the key and mechanism under heat stress without sticking. This doesn't fix the particulate issue, which ultimate triggers the problem, but it does allow for a lot more particulate to accumulate before the problem renders the keyboard unusable.
My understanding is that the best they can upgrade you to is if you're on the v1 keyboard is the v2, as the battery shaping on the v3 bottom case doesn't align with the 2017 logic board, so they can't actually upgrade you to the keyboard with the rubber crumb condom.
I hate how addicted I am to Apple's still-glorious desktop UI, font rendering, and trackpad dynamics. Their other hardware choices make me detest their brand. But there's no other way to get my "fix."
"Best laptops that don't sacrifice functionality for thinness."
bb bb b b b b b b b bb b b b b b b b b b b b b
k k k k k k k k k k k k k k k kk kk kk kk kk k k k
b b b b b b b b bb bb b bb b b bb b b b b b b
k kk k kk kk kk kk kk k k kk kk k k kk kk kk kk k
this has been happening for more than six months. earlier in the laptop's life time, I could get these problems to go away. now I cannot.
I don't trust that it won't break again, so I switched to Linux on a Thinkpad (and all the hassle that entails) after 14 years of using Apple laptops.
Like you, I have found continued use to be a solution for the first problem. To speed up the process you can press down very hard on an affected key. My guess is that this eventually breaks apart any particles that were blocking the key from working.
I haven't found a solution to the second problem though.
At this point, I'm on a 2012 MBPr and I keep on deferring to the next year and waiting to see if it's resolved. They are pushing me ever year to say F-it and build a hackintosh.
I'm holding out some hope for the new rumoured 16" to come back to the original 2012-2015 design, but I know Apple is belligerent and will release an even thinner design!
My dream spec would be:
- the 2012-2015 chassis
- improved 4k oled screen and bezel less design
- arm processor which will do away with throttling and fans
- no touchbar
- 2012-2015 keyboard
- 2012-2015 touchpad not the massive one in newer models
- magsafe
I can wait a couple of years, but in 2021... Apple won't get my money anymore.
Not all of us.
I was saving up for a high-end MBP but the 2018s came out with essentially the same design and little public acknowledgement of the keyboard flaw, so I ended up building a rather beefy hackintosh with that money, instead.
I miss the portability, but gained power, thermal headroom, the ability to upgrade/replace individual parts, and a ton of expansion. It is glorious. And I paid a fraction of what I would have paid Apple.
That said, I cover my build here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19433038
I've had too many hackintosh headaches in the past decade.
How many people on the Apple engineering team are just screaming to work full time using nothing but iPads? How many Apple designers are waiting to get rid of their iMac Pros and switch to using whatever Photoshop version is available on the iPad? Or do you think Apple would give them Windows desktops to work on?
The folks that have invested in the Apple ecosystem are the most fucked - it's difficult to actually replace each part, and I don't begrudge anyone for deciding that spending $$$ instead of time is a good trade off.
Despite various issues with the new mac design, it was a good step forward and by most measures makes the previous generation feel old by comparison. Yes maybe they're over-optimizing for lightness and thinness, but these are indeed important aspects of a portable device and should not be ignored entirely.
They just need to correct the balance a bit more toward the middle, not go back in time.
By what?
I mean I get why people have preferences for the things you mentioned, but I'd call them appeals to "comfort and familiar" not "state of the art."
I personally think my 2015 Macbook keyboard feels pretty good. I also spend a heck of a lot more time typing on my Macbook than one-handing it, so the whole "thinness matters more than usage/responsiveness/reliability" thing doesn't really make sense to me as a tradeoff. I can't think of single time I've ever pulled out my Macbook and thought, "this keyboard isn't cutting it anymore."
But even if we decide that 2015 keyboards are all rubbish, other keyboards on other laptops being sold today do not have so many problems that users have literally written software to combat them by suppressing keystrokes. I don't care what design Apple regresses to or who they want to copy, but they need to start copying someone.
To my mind, it's pretty obvious that this is a architectural problem with the core design of butterfly keyboards. After multiple generations of the same problem, it doesn't look like it's a manufacturing defect or an anomaly. It looks like the butterfly keyboard is just plain and simple bad design. Apple wants to talk about being brave, they should be brave enough to throw out the keyboard and put in something else, even if that something else is just a carbon copy of a standard, modern ultrabook keyboard. I understand that the butterfly keyboard was very hard to build, and I'm very impressed with the tech that went into it, but if you want to make an exceptional product you have to be willing to occasionally kill your darlings.
Can you explain in detail why you believe this to be true? Once they hit the natural thickness limits of a keyboard device there really hasn't been any meaningful change. I periodically interact with a range of them and the only thing I can say for a certainty is that the older keyboards feel better and I have to check the system profile to know what the rest of the hardware is like.
I'm not a design expert by any means so I probably can't give as good of a detailed account as others could, but I know when I use my 2015 macbook pro after using my 2018, or after using an XPS or pixelbook, it feels much older than 3 years.
For sure, as noted I'm all for that. I don't think we need to move back to 2015 to accomplish that though.
High action keyboards will continue to be phased out by thinner devices and more touch. Many will lament it, but I don't see moving back.
Maybe it's just in my head, as I noted I'm not a design expert, I mostly just know how it "feels." And to me the 2015 design does feel outclassed by most any ultrabook around this year, including modern macbooks.
Not if you want desktop performance comparable to a Core i7/i9. The ARM64 A## chips can perform like desktop chips but they can't sustain that performance without thermal throttling. To offer sustained performance they'll need cooling (and probably also more cache, deeper pipelines, etc.).
ARM64 is not really that much more efficient than X64. It's slightly more efficient due to simpler instruction encoding but it's not huge. Instruction decoding is not the majority of the silicon on a modern chip.
Went to Dell XPS 13. Awesome Machines. Run Linux great. Got given a Thinkpad T407 and fell absolutely in love with the keyboard. It may not be perfect, but comparing side by side with the MBP 2017 one, it’s so much better that I can’t believe I put up with the MBP one.
I moved to Mac in 2001 after frustration with Windows ME and then XP. Now, I’m having frustration with multiple hardware generations on Mac, and it’s clearly time to make a change. To say I’m in the walled garden is an understatement.
Getting out of the Apple ecosystem is going to take time , plenty of money, patience, and I assume lot’s of sacrifice (I really don’t want to give up my trackpad). I don’t even know where to start, but I suppose buying a new laptop and finding a good distro (thinking Deepin) to put on it will be the best starting point.
Edit: And then he saw the P1.
I do love and think my MB Air trackpad is superior, but it's never been a deal breaker when I use my Lenovo at work.
The Thinkpad feels...older... like a comfortable friend that's been around a long time. Works great, but the Dell feels more modern. The touch stick... awesome if you like them. (pointy device in the center of the keyboard, can't remember the name).
I may be missing your point, but if you enjoyed the iTerm hotkey feature on OSX you should take a look at Guake[0] which is available on most linux distros.
I think the thing that most attracted me to the Mac ecosystem (for a long time) was the underlying shell (I do mainly data science, security and shell / sysadmin style work). Now that Windows is headed in this direction...
For all of these - I really wish for a faster video card in all of them. I like to run two P2715Q Dell 4k monitors for my work (thinking about the newer 34" ones), and all of these machines lag somewhat with that. (No, I haven't tried the EGPU for the Mac yet).
I had to call Apple support yesterday to register an AppleCare Protection Plan agreement. The way this works is you first get routed to someone who takes some notes about your case, then that person sends you to the correct specialist.
Anyway, after waiting on hold a short while (Apple lets you choose your genre of on-hold music or wait in silence... though normally they call you but for some reason they kept getting my voice mail so I had to call them), the woman who picked up starting asking me for information.
Thwack, thwack, thwack I hear as she’s typing, like fire crackers going off. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore so I said: “that is not an Apple Keyboard you’re typing on!”
“Nope,” she said. “I spilled water on my Apple keyboard earlier today and it stopped working, so I pulled out this old PC keyboard I had. But I hate it. I texted my husband and asked him to go buy me a new Apple keyboard.” (It seemed like she was working from home.)
So I told her some people really prefer those mechanical switch keyboards, that they probably wouldn’t stop working from a bit of water, but maybe her Apple keyboard would start working again when it dried out. “I hope so,” she said, “Because I really prefer it for typing and my husband balked at the $100 cost of a new Apple keyboard.” (Obviously she meant an external Magic keyboard and not a MacBook PoS keyboard.)
(Aside: I’d consider it a public service if the WSJ would make this article available for free. I love the toggle switches! I was unable to make an outline.com link but I could read it by following the link from a Google search in an incognito window.)
Significant portions of their phone support staff work remotely; they’re called at-home advisors. Seems to be a really well-run program.
1) https://twitter.com/bookofjoe/status/1110952654757347330
2) https://twitter.com/bookofjoe/status/1110952697426034688
3) https://twitter.com/bookofjoe/status/1110952738685440000
4) https://twitter.com/bookofjoe/status/1110952781270126594
Sci-Hub can make the argument that the material it makes available is largely publicly funded research, which the public paid the creators for already by funding that research. That argument doesn't apply to the WSJ.
Then the N key started repeating.
Unbelievable. I cannot imagine the pain of a frequent typer on the keyboard.
> NoScript detected a potential Cross-Site Scripting attack
> from https://www.wsj.com to https://stags.bluekai.com.
> Suspicious data:
(URL) https://stags.bluekai.com/site/4454?ret=html&phint=serverDomain=www.wsj.com&phint=primaryProduct=Online Journal&phint=pageName=WSJ_Multimedia_Collection_Appl Still Hasnât Fixd Its MacBook Kyboad Problm&phint=section=WSJ_Collection&phint=contentChannel=WSJ_Collection&phint=articleType=WSJ_Multimedia_Graphics&phint=contentType=Multimedia&phint=isSub=WSJ_free&phint=edition=North_America_USA&phint=__bk_t=Appl Still Hasnât Fixd Its MacBook Kyboad Problm&phint=__bk_k=Apple keyboard,Apple butterfly keyboard,MacBook keyboard,MacBook Air keyboard,MacBook Pro,MacBook Air,AppleCare,Apple keyboard problem,Joanna Stern&phint=__bk_pr=https://news.ycombinator.com/&phint=__bk_l=https://www.wsj.com/graphics/apple-still-hasnt-fixed-its-macbook-keyboard-problem/&limit=10&bknms=ver=2.0,ua=0dd7c7d553f2517fa22a86fdfb24611b,t=1553703693224,m=4b4e4ecaab1f1c93ab1f1c93ab1f1c93,k=1,lang=07ef608d8a7e9677f0b83775f0b83775,sr=1920x971x24,tzo=420,hss=false,hls=false,idb=true,addb=undefined,odb=undefined,cpu=4b4e4ecaab1f1c93ab1f1c93ab1f1c93,platform=1c17637dbf2f8edebf2f8edebf2f8ede,notrack=,plugins=4b4e4ecaab1f1c93ab1f1c93ab1f1c93,cn=38593d014c984362435c7473ff6387ce&r=16711535Doubt it. Both me and my manager have 2016 MacBook Pros and we both have had issues. I at least have randomly repeating B's. Not sure what my manager had, but he seemed to be more affected/annoyed than I was. Luckily I have external keyboards at the office and home, so I can avoid using the keyboard and not break it even further.
The butterfly keyboard itself wouldn't be so bad were it not for the failures. It wouldn't be as good as the old MacBook Pro keyboards, since whenever I use my old 2011 MacBook Pro, I am surprised by how nice the keyboard on it feels.
Still in denial.
Unfortunately the extended warranty programme [1] still does not include MacBook 2018. Now they have acknowledge it, at least there is hope this will change. I could never understand why Apple don't have some internal guidelines on it, even if it was out of warranty they could have fix it for free as Standard Procedure, without actually admitting it was a problem. Instead they try to charge people outrageous repair price on it.
Keyboard, TB3 Charging, Internal Display Connector, Trackpad False positives, and numbers other small things I can't remember. I am hoping 2019 Apple will have a MacBook Pro redesign that fixes all of these issues.
[1] https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-m...
>If you believe your MacBook or MacBook Pro was affected by this issue, and you paid to have your keyboard repaired, you can contact Apple about a refund.
I hope so too, but I'm not optimistic unless there are leadership changes. They've triple downed on this and it's still an issue. We definitely won't see scissor keys again, Apple isn't going to undermine their narrative like that, but I hope whatever comes after the butterfly was developed in a completely separate building than wherever they house the butterfly keyboard team. Poor engineering from the start, embarrassing half measures since, Jobs would have cleared house years ago.
I now have a 2017 MBP and I hate these keys. The H is always sticking (no spills even) and the keys don't have that nice soft feel to them. I've interrupted a meeting or two with how loud this keyboard is as well... Definitely a step in the wrong direction IMO
The repair program doesn't really solve anything. I'm willing to bet most MBP owners do not have a second Mac to keep working while it is being repaired.
Also, at least in Mexico, Apple is being super strict about which machines go into the repair program. I know a couple of people with keyboard problems that were told there was no problem with the keyboard.
For anyone working for extended periods of time, you will benefit greatly from having an external keyboard. Preferably one that tilts up in the middle. Why anyone would want a bigger laptop that they use at home to type on the laptop's native keyboard is beyond me.
If I wanted a big mechanical keyboard on my desk at home and a nearly unusable keyboard when I'm elsewhere, I'd get an iPad and a desktop. I want a laptop.
If you want a less portable computer so that you can type at work and at home on its keyboard, you'd be missing out on the _much_ better desktop keyboards that can be had instead.
Yeah, since those repeating letters will drive you up the wall without one.
Not to mention the weight and tangle of all the dongles and needing to store them when moving around....
The keyboard and port situations are both pushing the MacBook far enough out of that "close the lid and go, no worries" sweet spot it used to fall so solidly into that I'm eyeing other options, but I have some very bad memories of both battery life and trackpads on non-Apple machines, and my (limited!) interactions with such more recently haven't made me optimistic.
If you're doing CPU/IO intensive development work, they all fall down so quickly that I don't think it matters on the differences. It's really a browsing/videos metric, which is relatively unimportant to me when buying a workstation class laptop. I don't think I'd buy any laptop based on battery life as a primary factor, and the overall usability situation for most stuff on the market isn't as grave as it used to be (which your post accurately recalls).
I've owned the XPS15 with 6-core 8th gen Intel (maxing out the scales at 97Wh battery) and have a Thinkpad X1 Extreme. I've had MBPs in the past too.
For the touchpad on Thinkpads, I think they're pretty good if you're on Windows, most are anymore with MS Windows Precision drivers as the Thinkpads use. For me, a major driver for me towards these is the Trackpoint.
Depending on your usecase, my favorite machines on the market today are the X1 Extreme (development), X1 Yoga (consulting/development), Samsung Notebook 9 Pen 13" (home), and Macbook Air (home).
Some opinions in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19485178 "Linux touchpad like a Macbook: progress and a call for help"
(I recall opinion was X1 was about as good as you get on a PC)
I've found most laptop keyboards at least adequate, the MacBook that I'm forced to use for work is the first one that is objectively terrible. I've been told the ones <= 2015 were better in the keyboard department.
(I dislike the keyboard covers for pro - too much flex and too little travel).
Long key travel, large layout. Makes programming comfortable again.
Gaming laptops in general seem to be nearly "no compromise" products. Battery life is as good as it can be - they max-out the watt-hours permitted by airlines. Keyboards can be massive. Screens, sound systems. Recently the weight has been reduced through clever hardware engineering:
https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/new-alienware-a...
This form-over-usability-and-function madness has to end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KuVvb9DTaU
It's insane what a mac user must go through even to attempt to repair this themselves. Another reason it's important to support right to repair, https://repair.org/.
There's also a lawsuit for the keyboard defects:
https://www.classlawgroup.com/apple-macbook-pro-keyboard-def...
Personally, I'm in love with my new XPS 13 and wouldn't touch a Macbook Pro.
Class-action lawsuits.
More flimsy products combined with more glamorous marketing to distract.
The penultimate generation MacBook Air keyboard is still my favourite typing device, and it’s what I use today.
I would pay Apple double the price of their current MacBook for the same thing but with the old keyboard, and the MagSafe connector.
I can’t say the same for the WSJ.