Hacker News Reader

Comment by drewg123 | Hacker News Reader

I wish they actually sold parts, and not assemblies.

My fiance has an original 13" M1 MBP. She spilled a drink, and about 1/3 of the keyboard is non-functional. To replace the keyboard (which has to be a ~$100 part), Apple Service says they need to replace the entire laptop shell. I think they wanted roughly $800, or nearly the price of a used MBP of the same specs.

View on HN

This is a design flaw of all macbooks at the moment. Basically the keyboard is riveted into the top case and the battery is stuck to that as well. That means they have to pretty much transplant the logic board and the screen into another shell and stick a new battery in it as well.

This is the very definition of a shit show.

I have a 14" M1 MBP which I am selling next month as I have already switched to a ThinkPad T14 gen 3 running Windows 11. This is the keyboard replacement process for that: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Lenovo+ThinkPad+T14+Gen+3+Keybo...

It’s design for manufacturing, not design for repair. There are tradeoffs everywhere in hardware design. I’m guessing that by building the MacBook this way they greatly increase the rigidity of the keyboard. If instead they had made the keyboard a separate module in order to facilitate easy replacement then it’d either be way less rigid or it would need an additional backing plate which would increase the overall thickness of the computer.

Sad thing is, Apple used to make keyboards that were even easier to replace than Thinkpad ones:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/PowerBook+G3+Pismo+Keyboard+Rep...

It’s not sad that Apple keyboards are much, much higher quality now than they were in the Powerbook G3 days.

The models that were redesigned for M series CPUs actually do not have riveted in keyboards. The 13” M1 MPB is like that only because its design is a holdover from the Intel era.

Here’s a video of the KB being replaced on an 2021 16” model. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sd1cwO5Y5RY

Replacement keyboards can be had for $30 according to Google, though I don’t know if that’s an official part or not.

Have you tried looking at the service manual? The only replaceable FRU is the top cover with keyboard and battery assembly. Nope.

$30 - but not much fun getting it out...

Still, it's an improvement over the previous gen and hopefully indicative of a trend.

For some it's also worth the trade of not having to daily drive Windows. It is for me, and I say that also owning a ThinkPad. There's also Linux of course which I find good for "single purpose" machines (e.g. a "study pod" laptop), but making it my primary OS would take a number of changes that I'm not likely to get short of developing my own custom tailored DE.

Apple does do keyboard only repairs; but Apple has a policy that they never do partial repairs. Your laptop is sent back as it came, or fully repaired.

I’m not saying it’s right, but drinks trigger small indicators inside the chassis warning the technician that the board may have taken liquid damage. From Apple’s perspective, even if the board appears to be still functioning; it cannot be warrantied and should not be considered reliable (to them, it’s as good as broken).

On Apple’s scale, I do somewhat get it. You don’t want to give someone back a “repaired” laptop that burns out later from latent damage. But it’s still… expensive and overly cautious.

Edit: I guess it’s somewhat a matter of perspective on what the repair is meant to accomplish. For you, it’s “I want a working keyboard.” For Apple, it’s “fix all potential consequences of water damage and make it safe to use again.”

Imagine if car repairs worked the same. Oh you damaged the front bumper on the curb? Sorry we're gonna have to do a full engine replacement as the chassis might have flexed and cracked the engine block despite it running perfectly fine.

It's frankly ridiculous what people consider acceptable behavior from apple.

Cars are going in the same direction.

One Rivian had a fender bender that cost $41K to fix: https://www.thedrive.com/news/rivian-r1t-fender-bender-turns...

Tesla is making their cars with huge single castings and structural batteries, making any repair to those components prohibitively expensive.

Explanation of the post above:

MBP = Mac Book Pro

Reply on news.ycombinator.com