Apple acknowledges keyboard problems with recent MacBooks
engadget.com
engadget.com
This really should concern Apple. Professionals are the ones requiring the latest equipment, purchasing the highest-margin products with the highest price inelasticity (not looking for discounts), the ones most likely to advertise through word-of-mouth, and the ones contributing the most to brand value. Apple should only look at how they lost the gaming community back in the mid-2000s to Windows, and the rise of today's e-sports and streaming industries led by said professional gamers, to see what kind of impact losing just one professional community has in terms of opportunity cost.
I doubt Apple could ever be successfully commoditized because of the strength of their existing moats, but given Apple's discounts of late and inability to successfully innovate in professional hardware, they're heading more towards Wal-Mart and less towards Harrods, and that may lead to additional headaches or intangibles down the line (anti-trust worries, higher support costs and other operational expenses, decreased customer satisfaction), which all gives the impression Apple's golden age has come and gone.
But I think Apple is coasting on its fundamentals and trying to monetize (cannibalize) a bunch of intangibles that led it to meteoric success in the first place, and that would worry me as an AAPL shareholder (I'm not one). At least in the field of package management, Linux is doing some pretty interesting things; 'snap' is pretty interesting: https://snapcraft.io/, so are AppImages: https://appimage.org/, and this is in addition to the regular updates to 'apt' or 'yum' that are officially supported by distros. Meanwhile, 'brew' still dominates the OSX landscape because Apple can't be bothered to create its own package manager. When was the last time Apple updated native UNIX-like tooling? I had heard it was around OS X Lion (basically when Steve Jobs died).
You didn't have your MacBook Pro spontaneously reboot because of the NVIDIA problem? I don't know if it was the driver or the hardware but it wasn't fun.
In fact that was why I returned the XPS 15, the OEM version of Ubuntu 18.04 (which did have correct sleep/hibernate behavior and worked well with the OEM battery) couldn't detect the NVIDIA Quadro P2000 card at all, which I wanted to run CUDA with. That persisted after about three factory resets, so I was like kthxbai.
Although IDEs seem to cause frequent reboots, but using Jupyter is far more stable.
We used to be an Apple shop, and we had a lot come in due to that issue.
But Linux has something like that now, and Apple has been staying still. It's not perfect, it's still fragmented, and a lot of fundamentals like fit+finish Linux will likely never get right. But it exists and it didn't exist before. And it's toyable/open-ish for the most part, so it'll last and won't change against your wishes without you being able to fork it or stay on an older version, and for professional users who devote a lot of time to their setup, software warts like that that I can whack with a stick without letting out the magic smoke in my computer are more bearable than things I can't fix and out of my control, like my keyboard not working because Apple likes thin laptops.
Next up, airpodbatterygate.
Apple fundamentally do not care about professional users. They are either ignorant or indifferent to the ways that their service model fails to meet the needs of professional users.
If my MacBook Pro dies, which I really hope it doesn't because it's great, and I want to back up my iPhone to local storage, I might get the cheapest Mac Mini I can and use it as a storage device. Yea, I can't move something like that to Linux as long as Linux mobile backups are not great. No, I won't pay for iCloud, and I won't use my MacBook Pro dying as an excuse to buy a new MacBook Pro or an iMac like I might have before. On the side, I may be purchasing a thousand dollars in PC parts and running Linux on desktop, and using my MacBook Pro to just SSH into my desktop using OpenVPN and dynamic DNS through AWS Route 53, and using it as a mobile battery-powered shim, which can be much more easily commoditized. Maybe my MacBook Pro dies and I use a Thinkpad as a replacement to SSH into my desktop, and I learn to love Thinkpad: https://geoff.greer.fm/2019/03/04/thinkpad-x210/
I should hope Apple doesn't want that. Apple should want me purchasing the Mac Pro or the iMac Pro, and maybe complement that with the MacBook, and some AirPods and an iWatch to boot. The buying decision shouldn't be like pulling teeth, and since it is, I think Apple has lost a good deal already.
I will say my personal pain tolerance for this kind of stuff is low. I will personally invest a great deal of energy to future-proof my personal infrastructure. But I don't think others are too far behind as long as Apple keeps increasing or maintaining the cost of being an Apple customer over time.
When I owned Macs the first time between 1992 - 1998, the ecosystem around MacOS was clearly superior. The second time around when it was my secondary computer 2005-2010, there was really no differentiator.
That being said, if I were in need of a better personal computer today, I would get a Mac Mini just because.
Apple is still selling the Mac Pro that is unchanged from the 2013 model for full price. It's abundantly clear that they either don't know what professionals want or they don't care.
Oh, and any sort of ability to integrate or do anything with my iPhone (non-jailbroken) on my Linux machines would be a big plus.
Also, I've got some non-jailbroken iPhone for development and I have no issues with installing ipa's on it from GNU/Linux. I didn't need more though, so haven't tested anything else, but working app installer makes me think that other simpler things should work too :P
Isn’t that kind of big deal?
Software support - well, yes, but it's within the application makers and power users reach to fix it. There's a common myth that "Apple touchpads work on magic", while in fact neither hardware nor the driver is so special. It's just the apps.
At first I loved the keyboard but it started to misbehave within the first months of use. Now it's unusable without Unshaky (key repeating blocker written specifically for this case by some other poor Apple customer). The battery never lasted very long but now it seems it's broken too. Oh, and the specs, heavily underpowered considering it's price.
I need something to do the work on so I can't just send it out to repair and wait a couple of weeks to get it back. At first I considered getting myself some cheap laptop for the interim period but once I started to look for other options I decided I'm not going back.
I'm buying a ThinkPad and selling the MacBook when it's repaired, even though it's probably not worth half of its initial price now. It got under my skin so much I just want to get rid of it.
Rant off.
I keep saying this, but every time I try non-Apple stuff I run screaming back. when I felt like my 2013 MacBook Pro was getting long in the tooth last year, I got a X1 Carbon 6th Gen. Now I'm just counting the days until my wife won't get cranky if I buy another computer. It's big things and little things. I had to reinstall Windows because random background crapware was causing battery life to vary wildly doing the same thing. (Not even third-party crapware, just like Windows randomly deciding to chew through your battery scanning for viruses or indexing stuff.) The screen developed a cluster of dead pixels within six months. The depot service replaced it for free, which was nice, but the new one has a uneven backlighting in the lower right corner. (Lenovo's Q&A for its LCDs is shit.) Oh, and the bezel is just a sticker that is starting to lift and peel. The LTE card has never worked right, despite repeated driver updates. At first it would just die during sleep, more recently it's started conking out while I'm using it. The touchpad is just okay. Windows is unpredictable crap these days. I replaced the stock install with LTSB which is a bit better. But random shit just won't work. The taskbar will randomly refuse to hide, then you'll have to play a game of "guess notification icon is preventing the taskbar from hiding" (it's usually Windows Defender). Edge fails in basic things like searching PDFs (and won't let you use a separate PDF plugin or set PDFs to auto-download instead). Chrome, meanwhile, eats up your battery.
Apple has a high-profile fuckup every now and then, but at least it tends to be one thing that affects some defined set of machines you can work around, not pervasive random shit Q&A that you can't avoid.
You're right though, Apple has been going downhill. I used to get a new Apple laptop every couple of years, and held off on the 2016-2018 for the reasons you mention. But at least I have hope for Apple. My iPhone XR is just about perfect, totally trouble free. I have zero hope for Lenovo, etc.
7 years later I’m still using them (work and personal) with no issues or battery life problems (original battery). The keyboard feels good, the trackpad is amazing, I love the MagSafe charger, and a decent screen.
Upgrade the internals, give me a better screen, and if there is space a bigger battery all in the same form factor and as a professional it would be a no brainer purchase.
They can feel free to experiment/innovate with the MacBook and MacBook Air lines of laptops. But the MacBook Pro should utilize tried and true technology that has been successful on a different MacBook line for a few years.
Everything feels just right with the old one. The size of touchpad, tactile feeling of the keys. Only downside I feel is; old one feels a tiny bit heavier now.
This is what gets me. Yes I get Apple wants to make a super sleek ultra-thin machine. But that's what the "Air" brand is for! In a Pro line you can sacrifice some weight and thickness. It's not as if the Apple of today even cares about SKU bloat anymore.
My pet peeve with the MacBook Pros is the thermal throttling. I run into this ALL THE TIME, and I'm not even that heavy of a user. Start doing anything slightly taxing when charging the battery from zero in a room that's over 25 C ("summer") and the heat from the charging will kick it into throttle-o-rama.
Second pet peeve is battery life. They cut down the battery life from the FAA maximum on the recent generations because hey, "safari web browsing and Pages productivity hits our 10 hour goal". That doesn't help me compiling shit in Xcode! I recently bought an old PowerBook G3 to play with MacOS 9 and that thing almost gets the same 4 hour battery life my MBP 2017 does on a 20 year old New Old Stock battery.
I agree about thermals. Better venting should be a priority! That is one thing they should improve on the 2012 MacBook Pro form factor.
I find it slightly odd that the 'money men' would risk the brand value by not gold-plating the apology. Every mac owner should have been sent a willy-wonka ticket good for a replacement in a macstore and the macstore guru's should have been shipped almost infinite supply of replacements.
When Apple stuffed up the powerplug, the regulator forced them to fix it for free, for almost any walk-up. They can do this when made to do it.
The point is: A Rolls-Royce brand would want to do this unforced. I'm sorry sir, the walnut burr finish is not up to standard and we have scheduled three appointment slots of your choice to pick from, to replace it, and a free 1000km full service and valet to apologize is how you make ex-mac fanatics turn into glued-on-for-life fanatics.
Cheap at the price. Chump change on the bottom line.
Instead? we get nickel-and-dime treatment. Deny, Delay, Obfuscate.
I think the feel thing is arguable and the touchbar is a matter of taste. Apple has to look at the market as a whole to see what works for the whole customer base, and the fact is a lot of people who don't post on HN hate function keys because they can never remember which does what.
The mechanical issues are really not acceptable though. It just affects too many machines too consistently. Even if yours is fine now, it could have an issue at any moment. They need to bite a Mac Pro sized bullet and fix this properly.
[0]https://www.wsj.com/graphics/apple-still-hasnt-fixed-its-mac...
Well, I do. It's not even that it's pretty pricey for what's inside. The lone fact that you can't get a macOS laptop with a better CPU or battery life than what it's offered with a maxed out MacBook Pro is a joke.
I wound up buying an iMac as my new primary personal machine because I'm terrified to shell out the money for one of these disaster MBP's.
But I bought one of the new 2018 models, and I have recently developed a sporadically repeating key or two, which is driving me up the wall. It's a real shame, because everything else about the machine is amazing. And now I'm soon going to have to take it back and get it fixed – because it doesn't seem reasonable that a £3000 machine should have any issues of this sort.
There are people who didn't have issues with the Samsung Note 7, but I think we all agree that there was a problem.
He's 2/2 with this issue. The statistical likelihood of that if the issue only affects a small percentage of laptops is very low.
I've always adored the MacBook Pro line since they were so solidly built. I've dropped a pre-unibody model where it got it a big dent in the chassis but it kept on trucking for years. Quality like that is worth paying for. "Keep away from dust" is not worth $3000.
Sometimes I think Apple only intended for this laptop to be on display in a sealed box.
As someone who was a huge Apple fan, they have really gone downhill lately.
1. 2016 MBP came with some of the keys extremely clacky. large very audible snap noise on ~10% of keyboard keys. Went away after ~10 days use (was about to return it).
2. months later something small got underneath the spacebar. few days later, spacebar no longer worked on right hand side.
3. replacement came. few months later another piece of dust/particulate got under the spacebar. Being much gentler this time I got the particulate out of the way without breaking the space bar. I've since sold the computer.
Note: I never eat near my computer so I don't know were these particulates came from.
I noticed it was especially reproducible when the machine was under load / hot. Almost like the ambient heat was melting glue inside or something. Either way, utterly ridiculous for a machine that cost about 3k.
Companies like iFixit and Simple Mac might disagree.
They believe the butterfly keyboard system
(which allows for very thin yet stable keys)
is inherently fragile
All that pain for negative gain.
FWIW, I had a 2016 that had no issues until a key suddenly fell off. I now have a 2018 i9 that has no issues. I actually prefer this keyboard to the 2012-2015 keyboards but it's a shame about the reliability issues.
I, too, like this keyboard over the old one. There seems to be less key-wobble and it feels way less mushy. That's my biggest criticism with the old MacBook Pros. The keyboard was too mushy.
I think the keys are slightly bigger and more square, too. Or there's less gap between them, or something.
[0] On the occasions I go to BestBuy, I walk around the laptops pushing down on the center of the keyboards. Yep, all flex.
The two times I've had to send my laptop in, it was overnighted to Apple, fixed in a day, and overnighted back. The third time that I went to an Apple store, they did a same-day return and replace for a year-old Late 2016 MacBook Pro.
(Oh, and the trackpad palm rejection has never worked properly the way it used to on older models, instead causing the cursor to jump around randomly when you type; software settings don't help at all, in spite of many condescending comments on the internets. Faulty or nonexistent palm rejection is a widely reported issue that there is no reliable fix for, aside from using an external trackpad or mouse. It really is the worst trackpad I've ever had the misfortune of using.)
I bought a 2016 MBP and it was defective the day I bought it. Swapped it out for a new one and that one experienced the issue within a few months. Had it repaired. Now it’s doing it again.
I have a 2017 MBP for work. Same issue about a year into usage. All my coworkers have had the exact problem with theirs.
Go into any Apple Store and you’ll likely see multiple “geniuses” using compressed air on these machines to “fix” the issue.
I won’t be buying another Mac portable computer until they actually admit and address this stupid keyboard design.
Even I got it for the CUDA compute.
I went from 2017 MBP /w keyboard and display issues to 2017 razer stealth, which I didn’t like (heavy, keyboard not to my liking, fans makes contact with chassis when carried from corner, Ubuntu didn’t run on it very reliably even after tweaking). Then I got 2017 Google pixelbook. I flashed coreboot[0][1] on it and installed Ubuntu (audio doesn’t work so I have usb-c audio adapter) - couldn’t be happier: keyboard is excellent, it’s light, it was relatively inexpensive (for low end i7, 512gb , 16gb ram), it’s silent (no fans), display is 3:2 aspect ratio (I think) and it’s not 4k, hardware feels nice and solid. Other than audio issue, Ubuntu runs solid on it after some tinkering. If you’re willing to tinker with it s bit - google totally nailed it on this![2]
[0] https://www.coreboot.org [1] https://mrchromebox.tech [2] https://www.google.com/chromebook/device/google-pixelbook/
I'll never buy another Apple machine with the butterfly keyboard. MacOS isn't worth it. And the lack of synergy means I'd probably drop my desktop Mac too. I could finally get something with some graphics grunt.
I really hope Apple realises this keyboard design has to go. Now.
Oh and with trackpad palm rejection that actually works properly.