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Comment by saintx | Hacker News Reader

People make a lot of noise about the missing function keys. But the keys that I miss the most on my 2018 Macbook Pro are the "E" and "SHIFT" keys.

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I donn't miss any keeys, somee eeveenn work twice as eefficieennt.

Dudeee, samee!!!

Agreeed

This freaks me out soo much

Wait til the CMD key loses responsiveness. Hate having to CMD+V multiple times to paste something. Maybe I should just reprogram the option key or go back to my old Mac where all the keys work flawlessly.

This is the most annoying part of their keyboards.

Didn't copy or didn't paste. Or both.

How do you like pasting a TAB into your text editor/terminal every time you want to switch windows?

Just switch to vim keybindings

I have lost responsiveness in both my CMD key and the E key. Apple agreed to replace the front panel of my MBP for free, so at least there's that.

I also plan on getting it fixed, but from what I understand, Apple is putting the same keyboard in so the issue will just reappear after a few months.

For others who have the annoying keyboard issue being hinted at here (double key-press) and who, like me, can't be without their machine for weeks on end while they ship it off to get a new keyboard, I've been able to fix the issue by using Unshaky: https://github.com/aahung/Unshaky

The repair program in the US is currently on a <48 hour door-to-door turnaround. Still unworkable for some people, but you can get your laptop repaired in two days of PTO.

For m, it's "" ad "" kys.

I once saw a heat map of the Macbook Pro keyboard after a while in use. Heat spiked around WEASD location. Maybe it's where the CPU is located, but the extra heat could be why those keys always seem to be the ones that go (mine were s and d, and e sometimes). But you never know..this other Macbook Pro is from Mid-2014, and keys work fine.

Or lots of people playing FPSs on their MBPs?

I think the OP meant literal heat, as generated by the CPU or other internals.

Yes, but zelos suggests that the reason these keys are problematic might not be related to heat but due to them being used more.

I did mean actual heat, but the commenter's observation about WASD also probably contributes to why those keys in particular go bad. I don't know whether the heat source underneath them or the WASD gaming use is more of a factor though.

Seems unlikely given how bad Macs still are for gaming (and how expensive they are compared to other laptops which are better equipped for it.)

I don’t think “heat map” means what you think it means.

Makes sense if you thing about it. Which user cohort needs the lowest possible latency for keyboard input? Gamers. And which keys are the most used in games? WASD. So it’s logical that these keys would be the closest to the CPU to minimize signaling latency!

Is this a broken keyboard joke?

It's probably referring to the fact that the keyboards with butterfly keys fail a lot, with dust rendering some keys unresponsive.

And I just learned that the E key sits on top of the CPU on some models, and that the heat could be the core of the problem.

The CPU core?

T and N went first for me

It's like a global monte carlo letter frequency measurement experiment

Yeah. My "F" key broke in a way that isn't fixable without replacing the whole thing (one of the ultra tiny pins that keeps the keycap in place snapped off). At least you get two shift keys.

F for your F key.

https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/612924-five-years-ago-ca...

The arrow keys are the biggest pain point from me.

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