
‘MAYBE IT’S a PIECE OF DUST’ - AlexeyBrin
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2017/10/17/johnston-macbook-keyboard
======
y7
HN thread on the linked blog post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15496745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15496745)

------
theak
I've also found the new 2017 MacBook w/ Touchbar keyboard to be extremely
problematic. Many of the time the keys that I press don't work and I have to
press them again. Tried compressed air, but to no avail :(

Meanwhile my 2012 MacBook still has a perfectly functional keyboard and has
never had these sorts of issues before...

All on a brand new $3k laptop. This computer has caused me so many problems.

~~~
peterwwillis
What on earth would cause you to buy a $3,000 laptop? Are you a mechanical
engineer?

~~~
irrational
Well, if he works at a place like I do - my company pays for all of my
hardware and software so I never take cost into consideration. My boss
wouldn't approve it if I got too outrageous though ($3000 would not be
considered outrageous).

~~~
nikanj
All factors considered, that's like the cost of one week's work. And you'll
probably use it for 2-3 years, 5 days a week, so around $20 per work day.

~~~
EA
By that math, many companies would save hundreds of millions of dollars a year
if they could save $14 per employee per day in laptop costs.

~~~
irrational
Heh, I work for a Fortune 150 company and almost everyone has a macbook pro
(at least judging by what I see in meetings and walking around campus). I
can't even imagine how much would be saved if everyone used cheap Wintel
machines.

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tsm
We seem to be at this awkward stage in the simplification of technology.
Consumers no longer want to engage in maintenance and minor
repairs—peterwwillis above points out using compressed air on your keyboard
and taking care of your mouseball used to be standard, and I remember
slightly-but-not-very tech-savvy people adding RAM, swapping a hard drive,
replacing a keyboard, etc. However, the reliability of devices hasn't quite
reached the point where we can get away with zero maintenance.

Improving reliability is hard and this is HN, so I'm in favor of gently
reminding consumers that a basic understanding of how things work is useful—in
laptops, in cars, in home improvement. And I wish companies would make more
maintainable and repairable products. I've been using old Thinkpads for years
since I can replace individual parts that fail. I also bought an old Jeep
Wrangler to learn how to do the same with cars.

~~~
Cthulhu_
> I remember slightly-but-not-very tech-savvy people adding RAM, swapping a
> hard drive, replacing a keyboard, etc.

I'd argue those were still early adopters, a part of the 10% or even 5% of the
world that owned a computer at the time.

~~~
jhoechtl
It's getting increasingly difficult to swap those things as they are more and
more soldered on or the case cant be opened.

------
busterarm
The thing that's notable here is that it's Daring Fireball calling Apple out
here...

That aside, I'm glad I put one of the silicone skins (from Uppercase) over my
keyboard from day 1 and leave it on 100% of the time. I mostly use an external
keyboard anyway, but at least I feel somewhat protected.

~~~
robert_foss
Agreed. Rarely has a negative word about any Apple product been written on
Daring Fireball.

Normally the only reasons to read it is if you want to feel good about an
Apple purchase you've already made.

~~~
alsetmusic
> Agreed. Rarely has a negative word about any Apple product been written on
> Daring Fireball.

I pulled these from the front page of DF today, 2017-10-18. While John Gruber
clearly writes an abundance of positive Apple stories, your charactarization
is inaccurate.

THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM OF USB-C > USB-C is a dual disaster… Now that all modern
Apple MacBooks are USB-C-only, USB-C’s problems are MacBook problems, too.
[https://marco.org/2017/10/14/impossible-dream-of-
usb-c](https://marco.org/2017/10/14/impossible-dream-of-usb-c)

IOS IS RIPE FOR PHISHING PASSWORD PROMPTS [https://krausefx.com/blog/ios-
privacy-stealpassword-easily-g...](https://krausefx.com/blog/ios-privacy-
stealpassword-easily-get-the-users-apple-id-password-just-by-asking)

IPHONE CHARGING TIMES BY CHARGER > I’m on the side that this is Apple cheaping
out.
[https://twitter.com/dwlz/status/917443870509715456](https://twitter.com/dwlz/status/917443870509715456)

Cultural Insularity and Apple TV > It’s not enough to make a better set-top
box. It has to be obviously better. I don’t think Apple TV’s current lineup
makes that case.
[https://daringfireball.net/2017/09/cultural_insularity_and_a...](https://daringfireball.net/2017/09/cultural_insularity_and_apple_tv)

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schpaencoder
Retire Ive, I've had enough with thin. There is no point in going further with
this guy. I want a laptop with a mechanical keyboard.

~~~
amiga-workbench
I don't think there is any sense in shrinking laptops any further, it's just
compromising repairability, thermal management capacity, battery capacity and
input device haptic feedback.

I miss socketed CPUs on laptops, I've upgraded the CPU in many of my old
ThinkPads over the years to get some more life out of them. Of course,
disposable computing is more profitable...

~~~
ctdonath
The only reason to stop shrinking laptops is that the physical UI can only get
so small before UX suffers - and that includes making it thick enough to hold
onto. Leverage that limit by continuing to shrink components so we can fill
the remaining space with more battery.

They physical overhead (size, weight, cost) of socketed CPU/RAM/etc just isn't
worth imposing on 99.99% of users who will never make use of that capability.
This is exacerbated by the increased synergy of the components: a major part
of Apple's success comes from managing the interconnectedness of all things,
all carefully balanced for exact purposes - _not_ generalized for 3rd-party
parts swapping (for which failures get blamed on Apple, not the cheap POS part
you thought might work).

You want a lightweight high-quality device with long battery life? You're not
going to get it with CPU sockets and access panels.

By now, most users have learned that computers ARE disposable: come end-of-
life, vanishingly few will want to futz around with upgrading parts at cost of
time spent, only to extend the life of a machine straining into obsolescence.
We all dearly want to hang onto those old familiar machines, but fact is by
the time a product hits that point you don't want something running the best
of 5-year-old+ tech, you want the next generation with better everything.

I keep coming back to a rule of thumb: for something used heavily, daily, is
it worth $X/day? An iPhone X over 3 years is $1/day. A robust MacBook used for
work is certainly worth $3/day. Come practical end-of-life, it has more than
paid for itself. ...and that's why Apple has made it so easy to switch up to a
new machine, and abandoned notions of component upgrades. If coffee costs more
during that time than the hardware in question, get a new one and sell/donate
the old (making the switch even cheaper).

~~~
amiga-workbench
System modularity allows me to be self reliant when it comes to my hardware
conking out a day outside the warranty period. I simply will not be beholden
to a third party for servicing. I will get the component next day delivered to
me, or I will pull something out of my parts bin.

I'm grateful for the fact that if my motherboard kicks the bucket I can just
unplug my SSD and read it in another computer, my data isn't lost.

This rat race of planned obsolescence and software bloat lighting a fire under
consumers asses is getting very old. A piece of hardware is obsolete when I
decide it is, not the manufacturer.

------
praptak
I found it worrisome that Gruber's post is on top of HN rather than the
original, much more informative post.

~~~
untog
The original post is a day old now - it was discussed on HN in depth:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15496745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15496745)

I'd agree though that this Gruber post doesn't really add anything of note to
the original post. I suppose the fact that even an Apple diehard like him is
drawing attention to is worth noting, but that's about it.

------
notacoward
I've had my TBMBP for just over six months. Already had to flush out the
keyboard with compressed air twice because of stuck keys. Apparently I'm one
of the lucky ones, because that actually worked. I've had at least a dozen
laptops before, every one more than twice as long, and _none_ of them have
ever had this problem even once. ___Not even the super-cheap super-tiny
netbooks_ __so don 't blame the technology. The technology to do better has
existed for years. This is either shoddy design or shoddy manufacturing, and
if I had to pay for this thing myself I'd be livid.

------
mnx
If my $5 keyboard started inserting double spaces (without being flooded, or
otherwise damaged), I would blame (and check) software, down to BIOS, before I
thought it's a mechanical failure.

------
artursapek
That's what ya get for blindly buying everything Apple makes. The moment I
checked out the keyboards on these new laptops in the Mac store was the moment
I switched to Linux on Thinkpad.

------
scarface74
I'm in no way a Apple Hater. I follow Apple blogs and listen Apple podcasts, I
never get any work done during an Apple keynote and I've had 4 Macs, and Apple
//e, countless iPods, iPhones, and iPads over the years.

But I can't for the life of me find anything appealing about any of Apple's
Computer offering aside from the Retina iMacs.

The MacBooks just feel limiting to me compared to a good Windows laptop with
multitouch trackpad. Currently I'm a fan of Dell's midrange and high end
2-n-1s

------
3pt14159
I've actually had far more problems with my previous keyboard for my previous
MBP (which was amazing for the 5 years I had it aside from a dead pixel I got
3 years in and the keyboard woes).

I would constantly break keys. Especially the arrow keys which were smaller.
It was mind boggling to me that I was typing enough to have to replace keys.
The new keyboard feels so much more robust and solid. I just wish I could put
the touchbar into emoji mode after pressing a touchbar shortcut.

------
csomar
Isn't it important that we have like the number of failure out of the total? I
mean, given a few millions laptops, it is almost guaranteed that some of them
will go terribly wrong. If those who go wrong are very vocal, this might gives
the impression that the Macbook Pro sucks.

I'm typing from the 2014Pro and it is the best keyboard my hands have been
working on. I tried the 2016 at the Store but I don't think that is eligible
for a review.

------
ssijak
I have macbook pro with touchbar. My letter B started behaving just as his
space. Sometimes it would print twice on one hit, sometimes 0. I removed the
button and cleaned everything and now it is fine.

------
peterwwillis
So buy a different computer?

I can't be the only person who remembers when a can of compressed air was a
part of performance tuning, or when your mouse ball got its regular
maintenance.

~~~
sp332
If a can of compressed air could have fixed the problem, this wouldn't be a
problem. You should read the linked article, it's good.

------
Fuxy
Well apple has been cruising on past successes ever since Steve Jobs died in
my opinion and it seemed to work just fine for them but they seem to be
getting a bit lax in their QA these days.

Well that's the story of almost every major company though. They make a great
splash become famous and big then they start slacking off and cutting corners
to increase their profits as much as possible.

It takes quite a lot of conscious effort to not fall into this pitfall and not
many companies can do it.

------
VeejayRampay
Every time I see news like this one about Apple products and what seem like
obvious defects, I can't help but imagine the same situation with Google or
Microsoft as the party at fault.

~~~
larrik
I'm not sure what you mean, but when you pay through the nose for "the best
quality", this stuff matters.

------
benevol
You can't just criticize Apple. Have some respect.

------
tgb
I just manually fixed my mouse's scroll wheel middle click functionality from
doing this 'double click' problem. You can take apart the switch and bend the
spring a bit manually to get it back to shape. I don't know how the Mac
keyboards work, but I'd be taking to Google to find a similar solution. Then
again, my mouse was long out of warranty. Sad that the store assistants have
to stupidly run through the diagnostic tests when that's obviously not the
kind of problem here.

~~~
sp332
You should read the linked article. You can't remove the spacebar without
breaking the mechanism. The solution to a broken spacebar is to replace the
whole "top" of the computer which will cost $700 when out of warranty. That's
why they ran so many diagnostic tests first.

~~~
tgb
Okay, sorry I read the article linked and not the article linked by the linked
article that was hidden in the title of the first article. It was completely
unclear to me that there even _was_ a second article; it looked like just a
few paragraphs of mini-rant.

~~~
sp332
Yup, a good reason to observe the rule to only post original articles, and
kill this one.

