Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty | Hacker News Reader

Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

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212 pointsgreen-eclipse167 comments

After months of suffering with this, with an out warranty 15" MBP 2016 that was relegated to desk duty with an external keyboard, I heard about this program. I made an Apple Store appointment for the next day (a Tuesday); they checked it, warned me it could be a week or more because of a holiday that week. Thursday morning I had a call that it was ready. Total cost: $0 (according to the invoice the parts were over $800, including a mainboard replacement to fix a loose USB-C port). It was a basically new machine when I got it back.

I'm still sore over this kbd design, but its otherwise been a good laptop and their no-questions-asked handling of it was great.

I had a similar experience. Struggled with several keys either "not pressing" or "double pressing". After a while I took it in, they gave me an estimate of 5 days for repair, and called me after 4. No charge, no fee, no questions. Once I got used to the butterfly keys I didn't mind the low travel distance, and now that my keyboard is in proper working order, I have no issues with it. Still wish there was an escape key though...

You can set caps lock as escape key in System Preferences since one of the last OS versions. For me this works even better than the original escape key position since it’s on the home row.

This is what I do for my work computer but it makes memory muscle when switching machines super annoying. Give us back real keys on the top row. And if Apple really wants to be trendy with dynamic keys then make the top row physical buttons that are each their own displays so we truly get a usable, yet capably dynamic, top row. That would be innovation and not stifle those who rely on those physical keys to work proficiently.

I don't know if it's possible with third party software (I use a hardware programmable keyboard running QMK), but I map it to tap for escape, hold for ctrl. If you use vim keybindings for your editor it's glorious.

That’s what I’ve been doing too! I’m an Emacs user, and this setup has been glorious. I actually use an external keyboard, and I still use this setup.

I’ve been using Karabiner to remap: https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/index.html

Yes Karabiner is great for that. I do the same thing except I have it act as Hyper when pressed in conjunction with another key. That's how all my shortcuts are triggered.

No questions asked after years of denying there was even a problem.

The reliability of these products was sacrificed before a golden idol of Jony Ive on the altar of Thin. I find it interesting that this program is announced more or less at the same time he announced his formal retirement from Apple.

He did many fine designs for the company, but like any superstar, at some point they can do no wrong and it becomes impossible to criticize them within an organization.

This program has existed for over a year.

The year for which, according to WSJ, Mr Ive has "probably" not done any work for Apple.

... felt the need to quote "probably" because otherwise it will be missed in speed reading.

This was my experience. My battery was having issues and indicating service was needed, but they refused to only replace the top case since they claimed there was a "logic board failure" that caused my A and S keys to skip and repeat. It took hours of escalations and phone support to finally convince them to replace the affected parts, and of course we now know (and I always suspected) that it was never the logic board in the first place. Not sure where they came up with that conclusion originally.

Apple's repair service, and the Apple Store in general, have gotten much better in the last six months or so.

Two weeks ago I brought my Apple Watch in for an out-of-warranty repair on a Thursday night. I was told it would take 10 business days. It was ready the following Tuesday.

Their laptop service has always been top notch. Years ago I took in a White iBook for a case change (free because it was a known defect) and the guy told me that the HD that came with the laptop (Seagate) had a high failure rate and they would swap it for free but he noticed I already upgraded my HD. "Do you want the HD anyway and you can place it on a external case?". Hell yes!

You think so? I remember back in university, Apple would overnight ship my laptop to fix it. The last time I went to Apple, they wouldn’t even replace my faulty charger without me complaining to the manager.

My daughter was in the Apple store the other day with a faulty charger. (It wasn't the problem she went to ask about.) They wouldn't even speak to her about the problem she wanted to talk about until they went and got a new charger for her. They said it was just better to get that out of the way first. So her experience was excellent.

How is everyone's Apple store experience so radically different?

I reckon it's at least in part down to how busy the particular store is. The one near me is always absolutely rammed and to be honest the service there isn't exactly great.

It's also down to how potentially dangerous something can be. Depending on what actually fails, a charger could electrocute you, and it's cheap to both make and replace ("here's a new one"). A butterfly keyboard won't kill you and it's hell to replace.

A wall charger is exceedingly unlikely to electrocute you.

Far more likely to burn your house to the ground. Which will still get lawyers and executives to pay attention.

Different stores are different.

Different people are different.

My experience with Apple hardware repairs has been top-notch, but your mileage may vary.

I think you're being downvoted because you missed this part:

in the last six months or so

>have gotten much better in the last six months or so

Are you sure it is 6 months and not 6 weeks, as in after Angela Ahrendts left.

I made the mistake of paying the $800+ for the bottom clamshell replacement needed to fix the keyboard one week before they announced this program.

The Apple Support page says

> If you believe your Mac notebook was affected by this issue, and you paid to have your keyboard repaired, you can contact Apple about a refund.

I'd say you have a good chance to get your money back.

Apple is usually very good with this sort of stuff.

My wife bought a MacBook two months before OS X came out, so she had OS 9. When OS X came out, Apple sent free copies to everyone who bought a computer in the last 90 days.

Presumably it was more of a PowerBook than a MacBook, since OSX came out in 2001ish and MacBooks didn't exist till they switched to Intel in 2006.

Sorry..

You're right; I remembered it wrong. It was an iBook. 10GB hard drive and a built-in DVD-ROM. I wish I hadn't sold it years later.

Or they could just announce their product schedule that they know months/years in advance so the customer could make an informed choice.

No credit for fixing the problem they deliberately create.

I guess you've never heard of the Osborne Effect

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect

I believe you can claim it back?

Apple is usually cool with this kind of stuff. Contact them.

So you go to a very specific store that is only available in a the big cities to repair your laptop ordered via Internet? Isn't their an on-site service for Apple? I.e. the repairer comes to your office or home? I find it hard to believe you pay so much money only to get a service of this kind and waste hours traveling to some special Apple store.

Also, what happens in countries like Poland, where Apple products are sold officially through Apple certified resellers(iSpot etc) but there are no official Apple Stores in the entire country?

There will be Apple Authorized Service Providers in Poland, although nowadays Apple makes it hard to search for somebody else.

https://locate.apple.com

According to the link, one of your options is to “Mail in your device to the Apple Repair Center.”

Apple really is good about taking care of problems. It's easy to complain about the price, but when my Samsung screen stopped working, I had to buy a new phone. When my iPhone screen started glitching, I got it fixed for free in less than two hours. Things like that make paying the "Apple premium" a little more palatable.

Unless your product is affected by an issue they decided to never recognize, which in that case you can merrily go fuck yourself because Apple won't lift a finger. Happened to me with an old iMac that developed dust smudges inside the LCD panel due to faulty sealing of the screen.

I owned an Apple Watch for about 2 months before the screen separated from the watch body. The front-line service rep didn’t know what to do about it and took it into the back to show a store manager, who decided it was impact damage and thus not covered by warranty; a fix would have cost something like 70% of the list price for the watch.

Instead of the repair, I bought a $20 Timex that’s served me faithfully ever since.

FWIW, I had the watch face separating issue as well. I had mine replaced at Best Buy (well, not actually replaced there, but they were who I dealt with). You should call back and see if you can get yours replaced. It was a well known flaw.

Too late now; it was over a year ago and in another country; Didn’t bother keeping the dead watch when I moved. I also had enough time with it to discover that I, personally, didn’t get much value out of the “smart” features.

This happened during a hurricane evacuation and I went to an Apple store several states away while waiting for the airport at home to reopen so I could find out if there had been any damage (fortunately not). Of all the people I dealt with during that experience, Apple’s employees were uniquely unsympathetic to my situation, and I decided I didn’t want anything to do with them ever again.

The proximate cause was probably an impact as I treated it like the sports watch it was advertised to be. The separation wasn’t a failure of the glue, but a crack that traveled around the weak part of the glass where it is curved downwards to meet the bezel. There was a tiny nick that was the nucleus of the fracture that could have been caused by anything (in my case, probably some clay on a tennis ball).

The biggest issue for me was that I didn’t want to have to baby something that fragile, especially when it’s supposed to be a fitness object. And the completely professional, but uncaring and robotic, way their representatives handled the situation.

We had a similar experience with my wife’s iPhone 5s, which she has held onto for ages because she loves the small size.

The screen developed a glitch where a few rows of pixels were inverted. We went to the Apple store to see if the screen could be fixed, and they found and gave her an identical new unit for no charge. “This way you’re also getting a fresh battery and everything will last longer.” They hooked up the old phone to the new phone and has everything copied over, we were out in less than an hour with “her phone” made brand new for free.

This was after the 5s was no longer on sale in the US. Maybe we just got lucky and they had some leftover inventory, I don’t know.

Whatever the reason, I felt that was impressively good customer service.

I’ve had consistently good experiences with the Apple store support across 3 countries (over two continents) and it’s the main reason I still buy apple products, specifically iPhones, despite them going down a path I don’t like for the last 4 years.

Apple of 2015 was, really, at the top of the game, I wish I had bought a 2015 retina MacBook when it was new. :(

Great, but if it's like my 2016 MBP, it will stop working properly again in 2 months.

Add to that, that the keycaps break. They have teeny-tiny clips on the top edge, which just break after a while, and they just lift off, sticking to your finger, or just shift slightly, enough not to 'click' when you press them.

I'm not a particularly heavy typist (though it sounds like it on the butterfly keyboard, compared to my previous 2013 macbbok pro), but I've now had about 8 keycaps replaced in the lasst year.

edit: OK I was going to edit out the multiple-letters, but not this time, as this is actually quite typical of typing on this 2016 mbp, so illustrates the problem.

Serious question: how much force do you type with?

The reason I ask is that I see many, many people stab laptop keyboards with a ridiculous amount of force. It actually bothers me like someone is banging on my skull, particularly for the bad keyboards you have (which includes the latest MBP).

I learned to touch type in high school. At first, believe it or not, it was with manual typewriters. These actually require a lot of force, so much so that once you go to a computer keyboard (or even an electronic typewriter) there's really no going back.

Low-profile keyboards (including laptops) need the lightest amount of touch to register a tap. Low profile also needs very little travel.

At my best I could probably type at 70+ wpm. I haven't measured in awhile but it's probably worse (with sufficient accuracy). Coding uses a lot of symbols that a QWERTY keyboard just isn't optimized for (and typing speed doesn't tend to be the limiting factor anyway).

In years and years of coding and typing on computer keyboards I've had almost zero problems with RSI or carpal tunnel or any of that. When I was typing much more (vs coding) with standard keyboards, I actually did get a little sensitivity/soreness along my ulna and the outer edge of my hand (going up to my pinky finger). It had the feeling of being inflamed (in that something cold on it relieved it). But after decades of typing that's it. And I haven't had that in years. That's pretty good.

Anyway, bringing this back around... I wonder how many keyboard reliability and RSI issues can be attributed to essentially "bad" typing habits like too much force.

Even without a lot of force, the new MacBook keyboards just sound like they're being abused and typed on with a ton of force. I make a conscious effort to type softly. My typing speed suffers a bit, but I don't get the anxiety that sometimes is triggered from typing hard and my body assuming I'm in some crunch mode.

I have a 2015 MacBook Pro and while there's noise when I type, you can barely hear it. I've used my SO's 2018 MacBook Pro with the new keyboard and it sounds (and feels) like I'm putting a ton of force on the keys when I'm not.

It's simply a flaw with the new keyboards. They're loud and fragile. It seems both of these criticisms are met with equal hatred amongst the community.

I'd like to add that the old MacBook keyboards can take quite the beating. I've seen people using 2011 and 2012 MacBooks while practically pounding on the keyboard and they have never had issues. I occasionally type hard on mine as well, but I've never had a fear of breaking the keyboard. I'm too hesitant to blame the way someone types when A) the keyboard is clearly a regression in feel, sound, and durability as well as B) the way people have typed hasn't been much of an issue with MacBooks in the past.

Agreed, a lot of people pound the holy living snot out of their keyboards. Old or new, it doesn't matter.

However, with the newer keyboards, even if you are a relatively light typist, it still sounds like you're pounding the holy living snot out of your keyboard.

Apple addressed that somewhat with the rubber membrane in the latest generation, but we're constantly having to ask people to mute themselves when we're on a conference call and they're typing.

Otherwise, it sounds like gang warfare throughout the building, and I need to reach for my 33dB NR earplugs.

This is interesting, thanks. I just got a Macbook Pro with the new keyboards and I'm really liking the lighter force and travel of the new keyboard. It just feels easier to type on. As I've gone back and forth with my 2012 Macbook Air (transfering data and settings), the 2012 keyboard has begun to feel mushy and deep.

That said, the new keyboard is much louder than the old one. Even light presses produce a loud "click" type noise that the older keyboards did not.

I miss the IBM XT & AT keyboards from when I started working programming in the 80s. That was a keyboard that you could take into battle.

Even the Selectric typewriters in high school had lighter keys than those things, but those were the gold standard for computer keys back in the day. Even if the buckling springs made your neighbors deaf.

Yeah, I like to beat on the keys a bit. My 2011 MBP keys feel OK, but I really hate the feel of the newer Mac keys.

Thiis is literally the only keyboard where I've had keycaps break, and I started on Sinclair ZX81 which maybe gives an idea how many keyboards I've used. I learned touch-typing at school on mechanical typewriters too. I've broken several with spills, but this is the only mechanical break.

Yup I had this. At first I was able to fix it by bending the clips back but eventually they just kept popping off.

Took it to Apple and they replaced the top case but it took about a week and considering it's the machine I use to do work, it was frustrating.

I remember them saying to me something along the lines of, "is now an okay time to leave it with us?" and just sort of saying "well it's not like a better time is going to pop up" heh.

My A S and C keys letters are totally warn out and white and the light shines through a good part. I get a new laptop each year (pass old down through business) and this degradation happens pretty quick. must be oil from fingers. though I like to think I'm pretty clean and my laptop is too..

If I turn my macbook upside-down, 8 key caps will fall onto the floor. It’s comically bad. Had the whole keyboard replaced a year ago for the same problem.

This happens to me as well. In time those keycaps become loose and start falling out. And it's way to easy to snap them off when replacing.

My report:

I just got a new MacBook Air a few weeks ago, to replace an aging MacBook Air. Retina display is a huge upgrade, and USB C is great (I don't miss the mag safe charger as much as I thought I would). The keyboard though ...

Week 1: For the first week the keyboard was great (although more clacky sounding than the older model).

Week 2: The R key started misfiring. Press the R key 10 times, you only get 8 Rs on screen.

Week 3: I was about to bring it in to get replaced, but then the R key started working again.

Great that Apple has acknowledged the issue, and as soon as the R key misbehaves again, I will be bringing my MacBook Air in for repair.

The misfiring, along with the clacking noise makes the overall experience of the newer keyboard feel "cheaper" than it's predecessors.

I recently got a new MBP as a graduation gift and had the same experience with you. Everything was going great until about a month in when the space bar started randomly double pressing, sometimes putting periods mid sentence. It's in the shop now. Coming from using an already pre-owned Thinkpad Yoga for many years with a perfect keyboard, this is crazy for a product like this.

If I was in your boots, I would be quite upset. I can deal with some minor hiccups here and there, but the R key is quite crucial. I would weigh trying to do a repair anyway just to guard against against a probable future occurrence...

I’ve had many of these machines. It’s very likely only a matter of time before that R key gives you trouble again, or one of the surrounding ones.

Rumour now has it that Apple will make the almost unprecedented move of abandoning this keyboard design [1]. Technically, they might be replacing it with a newer design (vs the old chiclet keys which IMHO were actually great) but still...

One can't help but note the timing of Johnny Ive leaving with this move. If it comes to pass (and it is just a rumour at this point and there are a lot of false Apple rumours because clickbait).

Johnny Ive does seem to be obsessed with thinness to the point of ludicrousness. It's said design is the art of compromise and any design is a compromise. To me the 2010+ Macbook Air was essentially a "perfect" laptop. Powerful enough, with enough ports but also quite cheap (under $1500) and light. Size, weight, cost and power are all axes for compromise. This was largely replaced with the 12" Macbook, which sacrificed pretty much everything to shave off another millimeter or two. One USB-C port.

It's almost unprecedented that this form factor (13" Macbook Air) would be resurrected yet it was. Is this tantamount to an admission of error with the 12" Macbook? Was it effectively a rebuke of Johnny Ive's "thinness above all else" philosophy? Is the new keyboard (if it happens) a furhter admission of error?

I don't know of course but I'm hopeful that the current trend of terrible Apple design will reverse.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/4/20682079/apple-butterfly-s...

I'm a little surprised anyone is surprised by this story. Apple has a long history of making questionable engineering decisions that end making their products nigh unusable and then steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the issue until evidence becomes too hard to deny. It happened with the iMacs multiple times, with the phones multiple times, with the MacBooks multiple times... By now we should know and not give them the unreasonable amount of credit we, but I should really say the tech press, gives them.

The “tech press” - even the Apple press were complaining about the quality of the keyboards from day one. In John Gruber’s initial review when they first came out he said he didn’t like them as did Marco Arment. They are two of the most well known Apple pundits. At least Marco slso complained about the iMac monitors before he got the iMac Pro.

Gruber doesn’t upgrade his computers as often as Marco but he does usually get review units. So he doesn’t get to comment on long term issues with them. He famously still uses a 20 year old Apple ADB keyboard.

Apple doesn't always do this. But they do have a pattern of sometimes doing this, when they feel like the thing they delivered is just fine, and they are blind to the problems that are being reported by the industry.

And when that happens, and people scream louder, then Apple digs their heads under the sand just that much deeper.

It can take a pretty earth-shaking size disaster before Apple finally wakes up and smells the kitten poop [0], and decides to actually do something about it.

But once Apple does finally decide to do something about it, they're usually pretty good about bending over backwards to try to repair that part of their damaged reputation.

Usually.

[0] All young creatures are stinky, it's just the nature of being young and small and in the hypergrowth phase of their life, and lots of input results in lots of output. But somehow kittens seem to be particularly stinky at this phase. One tiny kitten can stink up an entire large five story house. Been there, done that, narrowly avoided officially giving the name "Stinky" to our then-kitten, which would have stuck with her the rest of her life.

Another way to look at this is that Apple takes risks, which sometimes don't work out. But sometimes they do, and so Apple tends to give new features or products enough time for the answer to become clear.

I'm old enough to remember the outcry when the "chiclet" keyboard style replaced the older mechanical keyboards across the line, even for desktop machines. Those complaints faded in time, and now apparently people remember the chiclets fondly compared to the new keyboards!

For what it's worth I just got a laptop with the new keyboard and although it's louder, I love the feel of it. But--I have not had any keyboard problems yet. If I do, I'm sure I'll be pissed about it. (Hoping that I won't though...)

I would love to know how much this whole keyboard disaster has cost Apple, in constant replacement costs (material, man hours) and reputation/lost sales. The stubbornness to have stuck with this for half a decade is what fascinates me.

Can there be any doubt this is what precipitated Ive’s departure? This keyboard is a disaster. They ended up replacing the entire inside of my laptop when my space bar broke. Then I had the logic board replaced again a few months ago after it was bricked by an update. Worst computer I’ve ever owned and I’ve owned the likes of e-machines, gateway and cheap netbooks back in the day. Each repair exceeded the cost of AppleCare. I’m basically on my third laptop with the original case and I don’t think my situation is as bad as some of the other people complaining on HN. They’ve probably lost significant money on these MBPs in addition to the market share they’ve ceded to Dell and Lenovo.

> Can there be any doubt this is what precipitated Ive’s departure?

That this precipitated his departure is doubtful.

Ive has had one foot out the door for a few years.

This keyboard has been a disaster for a few years. If it’s true that Ive was the one pushing it then it would be ignorant to think that this failure hasn’t had an impact on his standing within the company. This is a massive failure. We are talking about a part that experiences more physical wear and tear than any other in the computer and that requires a logic board replacement as part of the repair process. That’s absurd. How do you think it impacts the margin when a significant number of units are coming in for one or more repairs? Executives get fired for these kinds of failures all the time. Depending on some of the dynamics behind the scenes, I might want him out for this or at least put on a leash if I’m on the board.

A lot of Ive's later designs have been a disaster.

I dropped my iPhone XS Max from a tiny height. It being made out of (not great) glass, the backside immediately shattered. Oh well. What shocked me was how incredibly stupid the phone was put together. The back glass (unlike the front where the screen is!) can not be replaced without replacing the whole phone.

The whole case you mean?

No. The. Whole. Phone.

"Thankfully" Apple was kind enough to only charge me $500 for the replacement phone rather than the $1300 it cost to begin with. But one thing I can assure you. I will never buy a (in total) $1800 phone again.

I have two generations of the butterfly keyboard and I can say that the version with a silicone membrane is vastly superior. The keys feel much better, they rattle less for virtually silent typing.

iFixit found that the membrane also made a big difference in terms of limiting the impact of dust: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/7/19/17592138/i...

I have sent two of the pre-membrane keyboards in for repair, but haven't had an issue with this new one. I haven't tried the one or two revisions since the membrane has been added, which are reported to be better still.

My silicone membrane keyboard has broken twice already in 6 months.

This is good to hear. I resisted for a long time then finally upgraded at the end of last year to a 2018 15" MBP. I happen to really enjoy the keyboard.. I'm glad I missed out on the previous revision.

I have a 2016 13" MBP which I believe does not have the membrane. Any idea if they'd replace it with a membrane version of the keyboard or if they would just put in the exact same one as before?

Unfortunately, I can say with near certainty they would not put a newer keyboard in an older machine.

Are they replacing the old keyboards with new ones?

Will this make my 13" 2016 MBP better? I don't have any permanently "sticky" keys but on occasion something gets in there and the key feels weird for an hour or two before it somehow "clears" itself out. If I went through the trouble of sending in my laptop, would the keyboard be replaced with a newer keyboard with the "membrane" or would they just slap the exact same keyboard in?

This was the case with my 2015 MacBook a couple of years ago. The “geniuses” were refusing to fix the keyboard free of charge until they realized I was aware of the law suite and their attitude suddenly changed to “we will fix it for free because we have a great customer support”. I garantee there are people who didn’t know better and paid for it. And I highly doubt that “it’s a small percentage of the customers” affected as that page claims.

I don't understand why the workers would do that. There is no incentive for them to get you to pay for it. I worked retail for 8ish years and I was usually as good to the customer as my company would allow. It would be bizarre for me to try to hoodwink a customer out of a free repair I am authorized to provide, because I felt some bizarre loyalty to my corporation.

I suspect that it was because at that stage Apple was still in denial about the issue.

When you have millions of customers, even a "small percentage" is still a pretty large number.

Why is this being reposted? Has something changed recently or is it the same as before? I'd like them to extend it beyond four years to be honest, would go some way towards making up for this sh design

It keeps expanding to more and older MacBooks

Ugh. I really want to upgrade my 2014 mba. Four gigs of ram doesn’t cut it anymore and my eyes have grown tired of the screen. I love the size, battery life, I just don’t know what to get next.

There are a lot of refurb 2015 MBP's on the market since many people upgraded to newer machines. They're the last run before the butterfly keyboard, you can find up to 16GB memory and 512GB storage—some of them with dedicated video as well (if the 15" size is what you're after). And substantially cheaper than new models.

Mind you I think this is t he run with the battery issue.....

I didn’t know there were 16GB options. I thought I got the best last generation MBA at 8gb and 512. It’s my primary machine and I still love it.

I have a MBP 13" 2015 with 16 GB RAM and a MBP 15" 2015 with 16 GB RAM. The 13" was actually bought in begin of 2017.

Ah, as I wrote in the other comment it must have been my mistake, not checking the actual store and just going straight to the refurb store.

The only problem with the old hardware is that it can't go over 16GB of RAM. And over time, things have slowly gotten to the point where -- IMO -- even 16GB of RAM is no longer really enough for simple baseline usage.

If you want an Apple laptop with more than 16GB of RAM, then you don't have much in the way of options. This is a problem that has only been fixed with the latest generation of hardware.

So, you have to pick your poison.

But either way, at least it's not Windows, or PC hardware.

I don't know what you mean by baseline but I have 8GB or RAM in a 2014 MBA and it's perfectly fine for most any tasks that I do. I've rendered heavily layered 1080p video in After Effects without any sort of problem. I doubt it can handle 4K video but for me 8GB definitely works as a "baseline".

I do a lot of data science tasks in Python and R and 8GB is definitely a show stopper a lot of the time. It makes life easier when I can just write naive code that loads all of our training data into memory.

I like to work locally when possible but often have to move things to our 512GB servers for speed. For GPU heavy stuff I'm running things on our Nvidia machines only but lots of non-GPU tasks are still memory bound.

16GB or better 32GB would allow me to go to the server probably 25% and 50% fewer times, respectively. Which would be great!

Yessir. I'm typing this comment on one such model.

I've also been eying up some refurbs for my own personal purposes that a local shop is hosting. I'm just hoping they don't vanish before I decide to take the plunge.

Spec: https://ibb.co/r3Q9bmt (workplace-owned machine I've had since 2016, so not sure the price at the time of purchase)

My mid 2014 15" MBP came with 16GB

I bought mine from Apple's refurb store, and come to think of it their probably just wasn't any for sale there at the time. I forgot that not all models are on there.

If one believes the rumors the 2019 Air that will ship this fall will be first macbook with new keyboard type.

Intriguingly, once iPadOS drops, an iPad Pro with a Brydge keyboard (https://www.brydge.com/products/brydge-12-9-ipad-pro-keyboar...) might work out pretty well as a modern notebook.

Then again, once iPadOS drops, iPads will have mouse support, so Brydge will probably come out with an even better keyboard case that actually has a trackpad. Probably best to wait and see.

Rumour has it a new MBA model with scissor switch keyboards will be released later this year [0].

Whether it's true or not, or if it will be an actual improvement remains to be seen but it might be worth the wait.

[0] https://9to5mac.com/2019/07/04/kuo-new-keyboard-macbook-air-...

To be clear, according to Apple, these keyboard repairs are free.

My time isn't free. The fact that I have to deal with this at all makes me never want to buy another Mac and I have been a heavy user for at least 20 years. Super annoyed.

This. I have 7 distinct repairs so far. Every one of these involves a back up, checking in at the Apple Store, explaining what the issue is, having the staff run “diagnostics” only to find nothing wrong with the computer, my having to tell them that this has become routine and that I want them to take my computer in for repairs, having them call me back a few days later with a repaired computer, retrieving the computer, reinstalling the image.

I just want my money back.

I had my display start to go and I just called support instead of going into a store. The rep just next-day’d me a box with shipping label and I got it back in a few days.

All you have to do is convince the support rep that you know what you’re talking about.

It sounds like the "diagnostics" are faulty. If they ended up fixing your problems (as suggested by your "distinct repairs" comments, so they can't have just sat on the device for a phone days then said "yep, we fixed it") then it sounds like they do further tests once they've accepted it for repair, and where those tests highlight a genuine problem, in which case they should probably do those tests initially instead, or at least not make you have to argue with someone at the store when you've already had to stop work, get it to the store etc.

The goal of their diagnostics is to a.) upsell/make you pay up for "repairs" you may or may not need b.) avoid doing work under warranty

Same shit for car dealers and other places involving consumer goods. This all driven by corporate setting quotas for employees to meet (knowing full well they can't be met unless certain non-spoken shortcuts are taken...).

No it's not. The diagnostics are just basic, front-level diagnostics that they do for all machines to check off a few boxes. It's unfortunate when you're in the small percentage of people that have an uncommon problem but their current diagnostic system lets them accommodate and repair 99% of the issues people come in for quickly with 1st tier repair staff. It's not ideal but they're not trying to screw you over. Apple has some of the best and most highly rated support in the industry.

I had a 2015(?) MBP with GPU issues, as (eventually) documented by Apple. On their support page they describe the error you might see in the console logs. There it was.

It passed Diagnostics with flying colors. So I showed the tech that I was able to reproducibly hard crash the laptop by playing a video on the Apple site in Safari, and after the force restart the same error would appear.

They still were "reluctant" to fix it under that program (though they eventually did).

Companies like Dell and Lenovo just ships fault element if it's possible to replace it yourself and in many cases it is possible to replace keyboard without to much hustle. Not to mention their on premise warranty which usually cost somewhere around AppleCare plan. If I am working on a hardware, 9 hours a day 5,6 or even 7 days a week I don't have time to sit in Apple store for hours. Even worst, in country where I am currently there is no Apple stores, period and that's in the middle of Europe not some remote island somewhere on Pacific. Here there are only third party services accredited by Apple to do fixed and they always say "14 working days for fix" which is unacceptable.

They do that if you paid for the premium warranty options, it's not included by default -- it's typically depot service for everything by default.

Yeah and premium warranty option from Apple aka AppleCare doesn't change anything apart from longer support and some discounts on parts. Time of service stays the same. For the cost comparable to AppleCare I can have premium service package from Lenovo with on premise service.

I paid for premium service from Dell (Alienware actually, but they were owned by Dell by then), which was around the same price as AppleCare. Someone came out to my house the next day and fixed the computer on the spot, replacing a part. This was for a part that failed because I was stupid and didn't have the computer plugged into a surge protector. After that, setting up an appointment, going to an Apple Store, waiting in the sea of people, and having to send in my computer, only to have to come back to the store later isn't exceptional in the slightest.

Both Dell and Lenovo are getting worse when it comes to easy repair though. Newer Thinkpads have been nightmareish for keyboard replacements.

It is even worse when there are no Apple Store nerby, only Apple certified resellers, which is my case.

The last time I had a problem with my MBP's screen, it took almost a month to be fixed.

A failing keyboard is enough reason for me to wait for a version which they fix all these issues. Even if it only breaks for a "small percentage of users", it wouldn't be nice to wait almost a month without my work machine...

It depends on your reseller. Here in Austin, we have Austin MacWorks (see https://austinmacworks.com/).

Apple actually sends them hardware to be repaired that is so old that they can't fix it themselves, because they don't have the necessary spare parts and experienced technicians on staff. Both of their hardware technicians have over 30 years of experience repairing stuff, and have every single certification that Apple has.

For everything Austin MacWorks can't fix in-house, they are very good about getting that stuff out to depot and getting it back ASAP, and they will do your backups and restores for you, if necessary.

If I have a simple problem, I'm happy taking that to the Apple Genius bar directly. For everything else, I don't trust anyone but Austin MacWorks.

Totally fair point. It is a hassle and a regrettable that the keyboards have this problem. It's a design flaw.

But at least they are doing the right thing. Hopefully the new keyboard design fixes the flaws.

Plus if you paid in the past, you can ask Apple for a refund.

I'll be holding on to my 2012 MacBook Pro until they switch to a different kind of keyboard. If they don't, then I'm getting a Surface instead.

If you don't care about the default telemetry and ads, switch to Windows 10 with WSL. I was a die hard Mac user for a decade and since switching I haven't looked back. Windows is a different beast than it was 10 years ago, and having the whole ecosystem of hardware and software at your disposal is fantastic.

I still am trying to figure out what WSL has solved for anyone. It works fine for the little tutorials they use to showcase it, but on any real project it is just as bad as what many of us have had to do for the last 10 years if we were stuck with Windows: use a VM with all the problems it brings like using extra CPU and memory, poor filesystem performance, duplicating tools and configs in both the Windows and Linux environments, etc.

I'm not sure what your threshold is for a real project, but I've been using it for multi-stack dev environments with no trouble at all for the past year. You shouldn't use it to host a production environment, but I'm not sure why you would want to. What it solves is you don't have to use the minority, poorly supported windows ports of your language runtime, if it even has one. Many smaller languages I've tried don't support windows at all, and many NPM libraries have terrible bugs in windows (hard coding posix paths/environment variables, etc). WSL allows you to skip all of that trouble and use windows without changing any of your workflows or having to learn a totally new shell. The upcoming 2.0 release should be even better.

I'm definitely not running a production environment. But imagine this scenario:

I've got my Linux shell with various tools like GIt, JDK, NPM, NVM, Maven, etc. All the config files are setup in my Linux home in the VM. But the whole point of WSL is that I can use the nice GUIs available on Windows. So now I've SourceTree for Git, IntelliJ, WebStorm, etc running on Windows. And they all need the same tools installed like maven, Git, JDK, etc.

First problem is that the I now have to duplicate all the tools in both Windows and Linux - all sorts of fun problems when they get out of sync. Same with the config files which are always screwing up due to differences in line endings and path slashes.

But the worst of all is performance. If I compile some huge multi-module Scala and Java project completely in native Windows, it takes five minutes. Doing it in WSL bash takes 15 minutes. And having my IDE in Windows doing it on the code that's on the Linux WSL filesystem takes 60 minutes, assuming it even works with all the path and line ending problems as the tools are sometimes called in Windows, sometimes called in Linux.

Exact same problems with python apps, Node apps, and everything else that is common these days.

It's absolutely no better than what I did 10 years ago when I had my company spend $200 for VMWare Workstation license and I ran Fedora or Ubuntu VMs with Linux, but still tried to use Windows for half the build. Same with Cygwin...

> But the whole point of WSL is that I can use the nice GUIs available on Windows.

I think the point is that you can have a linux environment on your windows machine without running your own VM, not that you can use GUIs for your platform back end. If I just wanted GUIs I would use Mac OS. The real godsend of WSL is that we poor souls who are forced to use windows machines at work can finally have a development environment that isn't a second class citizen (assuming you aren't a windows platform developer). I'm not sure that it's fair to say that WSL doesn't solve anything for anyone just because it doesn't fit your workflow. I run node, haskell, and python in WSL and VSCode remote development extensions provides me with a full featured IDE for each of those environments, along with git integration if I should need it. Usually I just open up a terminal when I need to use git. Anyway, the next version of WSL will host a full linux kernel, so it should be easier to use X forwarding if you need linux-native GUI applications.

One example, Qiime[1] can now run on windows via WSL. Much faster than the previous best solution, which was virtualbox.

[1] https://qiime2.org/

I blocked telemetry through hosts file blocking as detailed here, might be helpful to some. https://www.thurrott.com/forums/microsoft/windows/thread/dis...

If you do care about the telemetry and ads, try a Linux computer

As well as the other methods in this thread, check out Windows Privacy Dashboard. It's got a simple toggle to turn off almost everything ad/privacy/telemetry related you can think off.

https://wpd.app/

Unless you live far from any Apple Stores, shouldn’t this warranty program mean that you can upgrade without worry? These laptops effectively require “regular maintenance” (sort of like replacing balding tires on a car); but by buying one of the affected notebooks, you’re getting a free subscription to that maintenance. It’s like using a rental car long-term—whenever the tires wear out, you bring it back to the rental agency and they replace them (or give you a different car.)

The problem is that Apple has often been replacing logic boards when this type of thing happens as well. Some people see it as a good thing, but it usually results in the complete wipe of data.

Also there's obviously the idea where a keyboard shouldn't be failing after months of moderate use. Somehow, this seems to be a fairly modern problem as we've been making keyboards for 40+ years now.

> Somehow, this seems to be a fairly modern problem

With keyboards, yes, but gunk getting stuck in your mouse used to be a big problem, back when mice had balls. :)

Before even that, in PC towers and notebooks with active cooling, they used to be built without dust grates in front of the ventilation fans. The fans themselves used to gunk up!

The real “modern problem” is that you basically can’t clean a MacBook keyboard, since removing any key-cap has a 90% chance of permanently damaging the butterfly key-mech underneath. (I think the main improvement with the successive revisions of the butterfly key-mech is that they don’t snap their pegs off as easily when you remove the key-cap, so you can—in theory—clean them. If you’re a trained repair tech.)

> The problem is that Apple has often been replacing logic boards when this type of thing happens as well. Some people see it as a good thing, but it usually results in the complete wipe of data.

You should have backups anyway. Especially with Time Machine it's dead simple to keep good backups.

Dead simple and 100% free. I seriously do not understand how every person with a Mac is not using Time Machine. It is the best, easiest, and most dummy-proof backup solution I've ever seen. The world somehow made a better dummy.

Time machine is glacially slow, and it is finicky to use with network storage, and doesn't play nice with non-macs. Newer portable Macs had been annoying to use with most existing external storage until rather recently because of Type C.

I have to disagree on all points. If you leave it on, you don't have to worry about its speed because it's always up-to-date. The first backup may be slow but you shouldn't be waiting until an emergency to do that anyways. I have also had 0 issues backing it up to my Synology. I literally enabled Time Machine on the Synology, enabled it on the Mac, and I've never had to worry about it again.

The warranty program is only for four years, while these computers last longer. My MBP from 2010 has been usable to this today. However, I just bought a used 2015 MBP to replace it, as that is the last model with a working keyboard and the possibility to upgrade the SSD aftermarket.

Somewhat off-topic pipe dream, but I wish Apple would up their Linux support. I would get one of these [old 13,1] MBPs in a heartbeat to run Ubuntu on it should I be able to put a stock Linux on it. Unfortunately hibernate and audio still do not appear work[0].

[0] https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux

Wow. I regularly get repeated "e" keypresses and for the longest time just assumed I was getting worse at typing (even though it was only "e"...). Glad to see it's an actual thing and I'm not crazy. Yes I probably should've Googled it but it wasn't that much of a nuisance

This has been the perfect solution to my double press problems. https://unshaky.nestederror.com

On a related note, has anyone else had issues with the iPad Smart Keyboard after 15+ months?

Bought mine for the 10.5 iPad Pro and at some point I started getting Accessory Not Recognized messages, then it would stop working unless I removed and reattached it, then it finally died entirely.

There are reports of similar experiences in the Apple Support Communities and on Reddit, and Apple reportedly created a program to replace some of the keyboards [1]. But when I contacted Apple I was told my keyboard was out of warranty — effectively $180 of electronic waste after just over one year of use.

[1] https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/17/05/08/apple-offe...

Sounds like the trouble with old NES cartridges: corroded contacts. (They sometimes started working when you reseated them enough times, because moving them in and out of the connector was scraping off a little bit of the corrosion.)

If that’s the problem, the real solution should be the same: cleaning the keyboard’s contact pads (and maybe the iPad’s contact pads as well) with a q-tip and a bit of isopropyl alcohol.

I have the previous gen 12.9" iPad Pro and my keyboard has just started giving me the not recognized messages and occasionally not working. It hasn't died completely yet but I'm giving it to my son and he'll mostly just use the pencil doing art stuff so it's not that big a deal personally.

Still, it's sad to see so much Apple tech being life-limited due to aging batteries or what not.

My iPad Pro 12.9 smart keyboard also failed in this way.

Fortunately the Apple store replaced it for free (Vancouver BC Canada) saying there was a quality program about these keyboards. Apparently it is not the connector, but the flex cable that connects the iPad that fails.

Yes, my wife and I have gone through three keyboards among our two iPads. The first two I had to pay to replace, the last one, failing less than 6 months after purchase, Apple replaced themselves. Not been a great experience.

Try taking a pencil eraser (preferably the white high polymer type) and cleaning off the contacts on the back of your iPad. Worked wonders for mine.

My daughter wants a Macbook when she leaves for college next month- no Apple store within a 8-hour drive. Does anyone have experience getting this type of stuff fixed through whatever arrangement Apple has with a typical University? Is Applecare an absolute requirement in this type of situation?

Depending on where she goes to uni, they may have an authorized repair facility on site. I was just able to use the on-site facility at Berkley and have used the one at ASU in the past when appointments at the local Apple stores are all filled.

You can also mail in items for repair which, in my experience, has been just fine except that you need to get a suitably padded box to send it to and from. Apple will typically ship it once you do it the first time and then you can just keep that one and re-use the last one they send you if you need to send it in multiple times.

I think that this was mentioned during the tour last year, but holy hell is it hard to find this info from Apple- they want symptoms and an AppleId...

Just do a search on the Apple website. She'll have to have an Apple ID to make any kind of service reservation so that's expected. Google also has a pretty thorough list of most of the Apple Authorized service centers in any area.

Yeah, Google listed them, but all I could find from Apple themselves was non-US locations since I don't have an AppleID. Seems weird to me.

Apple doesn't typically have an arrangement with a university. Apple does allow you to send the device in/get it shipped back to you though if there is an issue. There may also be a certified Apple repair store near your daughters university.

Depends on the University. UT Austin does have such an official relationship with Apple -- I knew the guy who did all that work, and he had 30 years worth of certification on various hardware and software from Apple.

He was also the guy who was certified and licensed to do all that same kind of work on Dell. He spent > 90% of his time working on Dell stuff, and was very happy when he got a call to come work on Apple stuff.

Yup, one guy for the entire campus of 50,000+ students, and 20,000+ faculty and staff. It amazed me, too.

There are a couple right off campus, thanks.

If you can wait until September that’s the month some people predict there will be a new MacBook Air with a new type of keyboard that goes back to the original design.

Don't make recommendations based on predictions. That's a terrible reason to wait for a necessary purchase.

Yup. Most predictions in this business don't hold a lot of water, especially when it comes to anything that Apple hasn't already publicly committed to and just hasn't announced a shipping date.

But they do offer a small education discount ($50 or so on the cheaper hardware) and almost always have a "Back to School" promotion in which they also throw in some sort of accessory for free.

For the last two years (at least), the "Back to School" promotion launched in the middle of July and offered a free set of Beats headphones, which had a retail price of $200-300.

Sure, and that's a valid reason to wait. Waiting on rumor and conjecture, though, is almost always a bad idea.

Thanks, if there's an official announcement of the announcement in the next couple weeks we may wait, but I'm not going to stand in the way of checking another box on the go-to-college-checklist otherwise...

In the list of eligible models:

"MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2019, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)"

I'm certain they previously would have specified that model with "Touchbar" rather than the number of thunderbolt ports...

RIP Touchbar!

Of course, that also means that they are killing at least one or two of the Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Because there's no way they'd add one or more T3 ports on top of already having four of them.

So, maybe you don't want to be so glad to see that designation.....

I hope you are right, that would be fantastic! So long and thanks for nothing, Touchbar!

Ok! this is least they could do, and it's something that I'd appreciate and expect from a company like Apple. Finally!

They could really recognize this problem earlier.

I'm quite glad I've held onto my mid-2012 15 inch mbp all these years. I had the latest 2019 model for a job and it was a distinct downgrade. The 2012 model isn't much heavier or slower, has all the ports I need, and they keyboard feels relatively solid. I hope Apple will come to their senses and pull an iPhone SE, releasing the design from 2012 with updated internals. FaceID would make it perfect.

Yes! I have a 2011 MBP that is going strong. I never had a problem with it. My 2018 MBP from work has been switched out twice because of the keyboard and the screen just going dead.

I’m not sure I have an issue, because I always use an external keyboard. Will Apple still fix my keyboard, or does it have to exhibit some issue?

Dropped mine in earlier this week at a London Store. Currently a 7-10 day turnaround for repairs.

> The program covers eligible ... models for 4 years after the first retail sale of the unit.

After 4 years, if you then pay to have the keyboard replaced, do you get an additional 4 year warranty on the keyboard?

Does this entail a replacement keyboard with their "new" keyswitches or just service if you happen to have a key start sticking?

Dang, I bought AppleCare just for this issue.

But then again, the peace of mind I get for the next few years is probably worth it.

I don't know a single person who likes these keyboards or the Touch Bar.

I'm impressed that Apple would continue to replace devices without a warranty. Really shows their dedication to their customers, not many other companies would continue to drop so much money on devices they don't have to support.

They're being threatened with/ have multiple class actions underway about these keyboards not being "fit for purpose", spent months, years denying that it was a problem. I'd slow down on the cheerleading just a little.

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