
Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard - andrewke
https://ifixit.org/blog/10229/macbook-pro-keyboard/
======
roystonvassey
I am a huge fan of Apple's products and never understood the fuss when the new
Pro Keyboard attracted bad press, reading it on my old, robust pre-2015 era
Macbook.

Until now. I got the new one at my job three months back. And, here I am,
still struggling with and super annoyed with the missed keystrokes (the
buttons are so thin/don't press properly), the almost non-existent 'Enter'
keys (seriously, who messes with the Enter keys! ), the useless touchbar. I
look like a klutz when I have to show code/artefacts to someone because I am
always mistyping or closing windows.

Additionally, the touchbar led me to one heart-stopping evening of infinite
restarts[1].

I am terribly disappointed that they released such a shoddy product,
especially since it's used as a workhorse by thousands of developers world-
wide.

1\.
[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8189417](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8189417)

EDIT: Grammar errors

~~~
apexe
I am in the same boat. Received one at work and can not stand the keyboard. I
requested an older model, but they are no longer providing them. It might seem
dramatic, but I spend my days typing and I need my keyboard to not get in my
way. I have resorted to bringing a USB keyboard into work with me.

~~~
Pigo
I have to know if this story is gaining traction because of the Joe Rogan
podcast. Did you see his hour long rant on abandoning Apple because of this
yesterday? Or is everyone simultaneously reaching this same conclusion?

He was very much a kool-aid drinker, but also a writer, so the keyboard is
apparently a huge deal to him. I've basically never owned an Apple product so
I'm just watching this from an outsiders perspective.

~~~
jasonellis
People have been complaining about the shallowness and lack of travel of the
new keyboard since it came out on the new MacBook, but it's really been an
issue once professionals were forced into it on their MacBook Pros.

As far as the fatal design flaw, the earliest occurrence I know of bringing it
out into the open is when Casey Johnston wrote about it for The Outline in
October of last year: [https://theoutline.com/post/2402/the-new-macbook-
keyboard-is...](https://theoutline.com/post/2402/the-new-macbook-keyboard-is-
ruining-my-life?zd=1&zi=upxf7sl3)

Edit to add: Casey championing this issue is mentioned in the originally
linked article.

~~~
Pigo
So this has been going on for some time, I see. It just seemed like a
coincidence that he was railing on it for an hour and then I see this today.
His shows get like 5 million views, so it seems probable he could steer a
conversation.

------
dleslie
I like machines that are built to take a beating.

My penultimate laptop was an HP Mini 101; I only replaced it on a whim, and
still use it from time to time. The keys have been worn to be smooth, concave
and most are missing the printed text. When I last opened it up to add an SSD
a suprising amount of sand came pouring out; having been taken to many
beaches, tossed in bags, and generally used outdoors it had accumulated a huge
amount of extra material.

I now use a Thinkpad X140e; it's got a rubberized shock-protected shell and a
reinforced body. The keys are in a similar state, the body is cracked and
taped together from wear, and it's fallen down several flights of stairs and
fallen from great heights. (Thanks, kids!) Too many liquids have spilled on
it.

The combined cost of both these machines and the replacement batteries, new
RAM, larger disks that I've added to them is less than that of any mac; and
they've taken a hell of a beating.

Running Linux, of course.

~~~
yonkshi
How’s the Linux battery management for laptops? This and driver compatibility
are usually my biggest concern. I remember 2/3 windows laptops I used were
having trouble sleeping/waking up when lids were shut

~~~
KhalilK
It depends on the model. For my XPS 15 with the bigger battery I can get up to
10 hours working on Python dev and checking out docs. But only when disabling
the discrete Nvidia card, which is relatively straightforward[0] to do after
having suffered setting up bumblebee.

0.[https://github.com/khllkcm/dotfiles/blob/master/.config/scri...](https://github.com/khllkcm/dotfiles/blob/master/.config/scripts/GPUoff.sh)

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Glad I'm not the only one having an awesome experience with Linux on the XPS
15 (a 9560 running Fedora in my case). Some of the stuff I've come across on
the internet seems to imply that it's impossible to run Linux on this thing
and I've had no issues at all!

------
no1youknowz
Apple. This issue is seriously simple.

Take the previous design, you know the one from late 2012 to 2015.

If you must (sigh), take out the SD card, HDMI, USB A, MagSafe and replace
with USB-C. I don't know who suggested this, but whatever.

Don't add in a touch bar. Don't add in an over sized touchpad. Leave the
keyboard alone. The layout of the model is amazing.

I purchased a late 2012 in Jan '13\. It's been my daily driver for 5 years
now, without a single issue and it's an amazing piece of equipment. It allows
me to just get on with my work, rather than focusing on the issues with the OS
(looking at you Windows 10).

Want to make the product much better? Upgrade:

\- the screen to 4k

\- the memory to 32GB

\- the SSD speed and give me options of 1TB and 2TB.

\- the CPU to the latest i7 and more cores the better.

Listen, you can even charge $5k for the privilege. I don't care at this point.
My needs for it just working and allowing me to work without the issues of
running Windows 10 are the only things that matter to me.

\-------

Ok, I understand. We are negotiating here.

\- $6k...

\- $7k...

\- $8k...

\- $9k...

\- $10k... ?

Sure, I'll pay $10k for a PRO laptop. One that lasts 5+ years. I'm happy to
depreciate it over a period of time, because for me. It's not an ACCESSORY.
It's a workhorse!

I really hope someone at apple listens. You guys had an awesome laptop. Then
you made it crappy.

\--------

I'm literally praying to "Lord Jobs" on the other side, that I don't run into
any issues for at least another 3 years and Mojave is my last OS it seems. I'm
_STILL_ on El Capitan!

~~~
testplzignore
1\. Create good product.

2\. Gain market share.

3\. Gradually make product worse without losing market share.

4\. Make product good again with giant price increase.

5\. PROFIT!

Apple is stuck on step 3. Either they don't know that step 4 exists, or they
think they can squeeze more juice out of step 3, or they don't have the
technical ability to do step 4.

~~~
throwaway2048
At least they have implemented the second part of step 4...

------
jarym
Stupid Apple - I blame Schiller.

They won’t support 32Gb ram because it might decrease battery life and
requires them to reengineer the logic board but they’re totally cool with a
fragile ass keyboard GLUED to a battery! Really there’s no way to call this
anything other than insanity.

I remember the media used to talk about the ‘halo effect’ - well I’m someone
who has Almost every MBP between 2002-2012 and every iPhone until the 7
plus.... right now I doubt they’ll make a real pro laptop and so I’m likely
gonna switch to a Dell XPS. /end frustration

~~~
bhnmmhmd
I mostly agree with you. But really, who needs +16GB RAM on their laptop?! I
think the need for more RAM is correlated with the need for more CPU clock,
more powerful graphic card, and a better Motherboard, all of which result in a
huge decrease in battery life (which is supposed to be a laptop's main
strength over heavy, power-consuming PC).

~~~
zero_intp
I need the RAM. Network modeling, network simulation, dev installations of SDN
platforms. This is a developer and programmer forum, right?

~~~
scruffyherder
It's the reason I end up always looking at gaming laptops. I don't really need
a GPU at all, it's nice but not needed. However yeah, Cores & RAM that's what
I need.

------
deathanatos
> _[Apple quietly announced][1] that they were extending the warranty on their
> flagship laptop’s keyboard by four years._

No, they didn't. If you read the very source the article cites for this, you
find,

> _The program covers eligible MacBook and MacBook Pro models for 4 years
> after the first retail sale of the unit._

The original warranty was 1 year[2]; this is a three year extension.

"Extending by 4 years" is just too good to be true. Although, I had no idea
the warranty on MBPs was so _bad_ ; a well built machine should _trivially_
last a year. And now that I Google around, this doesn't seem to really be
unusual on Apple's part. My last laptop had a 4 year warranty, and it lasted
about that long. But my current laptop only had a 1 year standard, and I had
forgotten that I paid $80 to extend it for 3 years. Apple seems to offer an
extended warranty ("AppleCare+") but wants _$270_ for it.

[1]: [https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-
for-m...](https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-macbook-
and-macbook-pro/)

[2]:
[https://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/](https://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/)

~~~
tedmiston
FWIW AppleCare for this price of machine has been the same duration and
roughly the same price since forever, even before MBPs.

What they have quietly changed is now you can only buy it in the first 60 days
instead of the first year which was a big surprise to me buying a new MBP. It
had been the first year for a very, very long time — since inception IIRC. Of
course I learned of this change after I'd already had my machine for more than
60 days. :/

There are a few ways to get it slightly cheaper like F&F discount. You also
used to be able to get it cheaper from a third party store like B&H but it
seems they've cut back on this recently.

~~~
gnicholas
The link from SyneRyder’s comment indicates that you can still buy AppleCare
anytime in the first year. The only thing subject to the 60-day limit is
AppleCare+ (which includes accidental damage).

~~~
tedmiston
Good catch. Pasting here for others:

> As for the Mac, customers who have had their Macs for longer than 60 days
> but less than a year are not eligible for AppleCare+ but are still able to
> purchase a standard AppleCare Protection Plan, MacRumors has learned. _Apple
> is only offering AppleCare+ for Mac on its website, so customers will need
> to call in to Apple Support to make the standard AppleCare purchase._
> Standard Mac AppleCare is priced at $149 to $349, depending on the machine.

------
manigandham
Apple biggest UX failures always stem from putting form before function. There
is a lower limit to thinness/lightness before consumers just don't care, and
it was passed long ago.

There was great progress made with the unibody Macbook Pros and the Macbook
Airs but these latest models are so thin that it's actually annoying and leads
to issues like poor battery life, lack of repair-ability, and malfunctioning
keyboards. Isn't better usability actually more of a luxury then simple
aesthetics?

Based on the timing, this seems like a train set in motion by Steve Jobs but
he passed away and now nobody wants to recognize that it's way off course and
needs a correction.

~~~
_hardwaregeek
On one hand I'm inclined to agree with you. Thin is not always better. On the
other hand I'm holding my 3 pound Macbook Pro comfortably and easily. It's
light enough that I don't have to think about slipping it into my day bag
(something I did think about with the previous iteration) and thin enough to
easily grip with one hand and walk around. When I was traveling, there wasn't
even a question about whether I would bring my laptop. It's just too easy not
to bring.

Sure, there's a bunch of flaws in the design and I hate that they removed the
SD card reader, but it's probably the closest I've seen to the platonic ideal
of a laptop. Something that you can always carry on you, that you can pop open
in short notice and quickly slip back into your bag when no longer needed.

~~~
manigandham
You wouldn't notice if it was 5lbs either, the human body is much more capable
than that unless we're talking about small children. People routinely carry
much bigger and heavier things.

Perhaps if it was still a netbook/macbook air product then it would make
sense, but we also have iphones and ipads now which actually seem to be
getting bigger so there's no reason why the most mobile powerful computing
device must be so small.

~~~
eric-hu
I own a 2012 MacBook pro 15' and work gave me a 2016. The difference is about
1.5 pounds, going from 5.6 pounds to 4 pounds. The difference is big enough
that I've slowly started using my work laptop for most of my personal needs
too, even though I initially wanted to keep my work laptop clean of
unnecessary personal data.

~~~
manigandham
You drop more weight just going to the bathroom in the morning. I find it
extremely hard to believe that a few pounds makes a difference to any
physically capable adult.

~~~
badpun
It does. If the laptop is light enough, you can handle it (grab it, put it
back on the table etc.) comfortably with one hand even while laying away from
it etc. It becomes almost as comfortable to quickly grab as a tablet or a
phone.

~~~
manigandham
Laptops are not designed to be handled with one hand. It's a nice benefit but
it definitely should not be the target, especially at the cost of better
usability, which is the entire issue here.

------
phinnaeus
Realistically, I just can't really see Apple fixing this by introducing a new
keyboard design that's any thicker. As much as I would love to hear "We've
heard your feedback on the keyboards and we've made some drastic changes to
address them in our new Macbook Pro", it just doesn't seem like their style.
What do others think they're going to do for their next release of laptops?

~~~
acomjean
I think they'll gradually improve the keyboard. It won't be great but it will
be good enough.

like the "don't hold it that way" antenna gate problem and the phone bending
problems.. They'll fix..

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_4#Antenna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_4#Antenna)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_6#Chassis_bending](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_6#Chassis_bending)

Honestly, its hard to get off the mac ecosystem though. I have a macbook pro,
and am starting to look at linux laptops. The options don't seem great. older
Apple laptops are pretty well built, so hopefully it'll last a couple more
years...

~~~
mushufasa
System 76 (the small linux-only hardware manufacturer) just refreshed their
Oryx Pro last month, which looks pretty capable and looks from afar to be
really good build quality.
[https://system76.com/laptops/oryx](https://system76.com/laptops/oryx)

I haven't found many/any reviews of it since the refresh -- does anyone on HN
have one who can attest?

~~~
rorykoehler
You can't be serious? The thing doesn't even have a centred trackpad.

~~~
singlow
It has anumeric keypad so the touchpad is in the correct place.

~~~
pmontra
It's the number pad that's in the wrong place. It should not be on the laptop.

I've got a HP with a number pad because no 15" model doesn't have one. I never
use it (the number pad) but I have to shift the whole machine to the right to
have the touchpad and the "real" keyboard in front of me. So most of the vern
is on the right of my eyes. Great design!

~~~
frant-hartm
Different users different requirements.

I bought Lenovo Thinkpad P50 instead of Dell XPS because the Thinkpad has a
full keyboard.

~~~
pmontra
Agreed about the requirements, but do you also shift the laptop right or bend
your arms and shoulders?

I'd sell the numberpad as an external device. People that need it will buy it
and place it to the right of the laptop (or maybe to the left for left
handers, who knows?)

There is another design problem: it could shield the ports on the side where
it is placed.

Another solution: engineer the screen so that it can be shifted 1/3 to the
left when the laptop is open. That will align it with the spacebar and the
touchpad.

About the XPS, I didn't buy it back in 2014 because the then current model had
some thermal problem and because I like 3 physical buttons on the touchpad. HP
ZBooks do have them.

------
tracer4201
I honestly don't understand all these quality sacrifices just to make things
thinner. It makes the product actually feel somewhat cheap and brittle.

The same thing confuses me with smartphones. Everyone keeps making these
bacteria and finger print magnets thinner... the minute you drop it, it's
shattered or unuseable... and so then you're buying a case to protect it from
scratches and shatter... so what's the point of making it thinner in the first
place? Gimmicks IMO just to sell things year over year without adding real
value or actual features.

~~~
coldtea
> _I honestly don 't understand all these quality sacrifices just to make
> things thinner. It makes the product actually feel somewhat cheap and
> brittle._

It's easy: every time people had the chance to buy thinner or thicker
products, they flocked to the thinner ones.

The complaints are random outliers around the internet, but the actual Apple's
sales numbers (record years after record years and reduced sales for thicker
older designs) speak for themselves.

Not just some "vacuous" "non-technie" users either (as the stereotype says).

Can you guess who said the following words about his MacBook Air for example?

Quote:

"I’m have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done
what Apple did with the Macbook Air – even several years after the first
release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and _clunky_
things. Yes, there are vendors that have tried to emulate it, but usually
pretty badly. I don’t think I’m unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and
light.

Btw, even when it comes to Apple, it’s really just the Air that I think is
special. The other apple laptops may be good-looking, but they are still the
same old clunky hardware, just in a pretty dress.

I’m personally just hoping that I’m ahead of the curve in my strict
requirement for “small and silent”. It’s not just laptops, btw – Intel
sometimes gives me pre-release hardware, and the people inside Intel I work
with have learnt that being whisper-quiet is one of my primary requirements
for desktops too. I am sometimes surprised at what leaf-blowers some people
seem to put up with under their desks.

I want my office to be quiet. The loudest thing in the room – by far – should
be the occasional purring of the cat. And when I travel, I want to travel
light. A notebook that weighs more than a kilo is simply not a good thing
(yeah, I’m using the smaller 11″ macbook air, and I think weight could still
be improved on, but at least it’s very close to the magical 1kg limit)."""

~~~
tjoff
"Not just some "vacuous" "non-technie" users either (as the stereotype says)."

Actually, Linus comes off to me as particularly non-techie. He obviously cares
about it enough to get the work done but couldn't care about it more than
that. Not even the OS (outside of the kernel) is of any interest to him
(dissing debian because he thinks the installer is too cumbersome etc.).

Compare the MacBook Air with the lenovo x-series at the time and it's quite
hard to see what the air actually brought to the market except for first in
class non-replaceable batteries and few external ports.

You've always been able to get silent computers, but Linus doesn't have the
interest to research them.

Nothing wrong with that, but very "non-techie".

~~~
coldtea
> _Actually, Linus comes off to me as particularly non-techie. He obviously
> cares about it enough to get the work done but couldn 't care about it more
> than that._

Non tinkerer is not the same as non-techie.

In fact I'd call tinkerers the par-excellence non-techies. They don't do
anything technologically productive (much less write their own kernel), they
just play with tech toys.

~~~
tjoff
Maybe my definition is off but I feel interest is a requirement for techie. A
tinkerer often satisfies that but it is not a requirement no.

Productiveness is orthogonal in my eyes.

------
blhack
I wish apple would just make a line of laptops aimed at professionals. They
could give us back a real keyboard, give us back USB ports, give us back
swappable batteries, and give us back SD card readers (although this could be
microsd at this point).

They could even call it "macbook professional" or something like that.

/s

There is just absolutely no reason for these changes. The lack of USB ports on
this laptop is something that I absolutely have _not_ gotten used to. While
I've been able to make due with the keyboard, I dug my old 2013 MBP out today,
and instead of feeling bulky and old, it just felt good. If the screen hadn't
become so badly delaminated, I'd probably switch back to it full time and just
eat the ~$2300 loss on this thing (or maybe make it a desktop?).

~~~
toomanybeersies
A MicroSD reader would be fairly useless.

Outside of phones, MicroSD isn't really used, and nobody uses MicroSD for
transferring files.

SD cards are still the standard format for cameras, which are the main use
case for SD card slots.

~~~
88
Every SD card I’ve bought in the last few years has just been a microSD card
with full size adapter.

~~~
fooker
Cameras need fast full size SD cards.

~~~
sneak
My full frame RX1Rii shoots 20+MP raw just fine onto micro SD.

~~~
petepete
All will, the underlying technology is the same and the 'micro' just refers to
the plastic shell; the adapter is just a spacer with electrical contacts.

------
vivan
I was one of those annoying Apple evangelists for years. My 2010 MacBook Pro
was my baby and I loved it. Eventually it got to the point where I had to
replace it (after 7 years!) and when I went to look around at the new MacBook
Pro range, I was so disgusted by all the problems that I ended up getting a
Dell XPS 13.

I consider my original MBP and the following models to be some of the best
laptops you could buy at the time. If I could buy a 2015 MBP with a modern
processor I would do it in a heartbeat.

Meanwhile I wouldn't recommend the current range of Apple laptops to anyone.

~~~
ryenus
The 2015 MBP is still available, though not that obviously:
[https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-2015/](https://www.apple.com/macbook-
pro/specs-2015/)

~~~
Elect2
No it's not available. If you click the "Buy" button, it will redirect you to
the newest macbook page

~~~
kalleboo
On the page you're redirected to, select 15" and then scroll down a bit and
it's there.

They're trying their best to hide it, but it's there.

------
yawn_010101
Having interfaced with Apple in a different way (apart from owning a new MBP
and an iPhone X) I'd say the issue is, and continues to be, growing pains.

They're certainly losing the lead in software engineer talent (giving it away
to whom, I'm not sure). But the single most horrible experience I've had with
Apple in the last year was trying to get software published on the App Store.

That's a department that's so large that it's become a classic bureaucracy --
middle managers run amok, pettiness, lack of professionalism, etc.

I was trying to publish a piece of software using their less extortionate
subscription options and I was told by a young woman manager that I would have
to have feature X in order to qualify. I added feature X in a couple days and
got back to her. She was surprised (disappointed?) and then told me I'd have
to have feature X + feature Y in order to qualify.

I have a couple of contacts from the "good old days" and sent a very angry
email. Middle manager woman disappeared, her boss called me and apologized
within a few minutes.

If I didn't have that contact I probably wouldn't have gotten past her.

What has happened to Apple that their dev teams work _against_ devs, compile
times (this is 2018 remember) are now counted in minutes for small projects,
my MBP crashes when plugging in an external monitor, etc?

They've grown too fast. My contact told me that their App Store team is now
interfacing with over 2 million developers. How do you grow to accommodate
that?

Now, what is the _answer_ to all of this? Fix the marketing driven culture.
Thinner isn't better. The number of apps on the app store isn't a meaningful
metric. New languages are cool only if you can actually pull them off. Etc.

~~~
stcredzero
_I 'd say the issue is, and continues to be, growing pains._

 _They 're certainly losing the lead in software engineer talent (giving it
away to whom, I'm not sure)._

I keep on interviewing recent Comp Sci graduates who have a 3.75 or a 4.0 and
who can't tell me how to implement cycle detection -- to the extent that they
could write a pseudocode function signature or some kind of concretely
implementable design. Many of the same grads try to tell me that a null
pointer in a C structure uses no memory and other nonsense like that. You know
what I think? I think the CA grad student population no longer knows those
things, so they are producing undregrads who know even less.

 _my MBP crashes when plugging in an external monitor, etc?_

When my Macbook Pro is "locked" it flashes an image of the desktop screen just
before switching to the login prompt.

~~~
djsumdog
I knew CS graduates who loved parsing theory and could implement some basic C
compilers, and I knew some who didn't know what a SCSI controller was. You get
out of your education what you put into it.

I had someone in an interview in Berlin ask me to write a garbage collector.
In CSC 202, our professor talked about using reference counts. Reference
counts can get leaks if you have two objects referencing each other with to
path to either, but what I didn't realize is that Java hasn't used reference
counts in a really long time. It does a search from each root (typically a
thread) down the object tree; and it breaks things into young/old (eden space
and .. something else) so long lived objects don't get searched as often.

I learned all of that during the interview lunch break when I looked it up on
my phone. One of my good friends wrote a compile time GC for GO and did this
PhD dissertation on it, and he probably would have got this question right.
But if it's not in your field, well the problem space for problems is pretty
fucking large.

Cycle detection? Man I could probably tell you back when I studied minimum
spanning trees and wrote this thing to implement Dijkstra's shortest path:

[https://penguindreams.org/projects/graphmapper/](https://penguindreams.org/projects/graphmapper/)

Off the top of my head, I'd hope each node had a unique identifier and I guess
I'd mark them/store the keys in a hash table. I'd move breath first and error
out if I discovered the same hash/unique key .. which of course would give me
a hash the size of the tree. Unless there's a way to mark the data structure,
you now have a second structure the size of your key space.

I'm sure there are better solutions, but I wouldn't expect a senior program to
know them off the top of their head, unless you're hiring really specifically
for a position writing routing algorithms or looking for a senior airport
transit architect.

~~~
stcredzero
_I had someone in an interview in Berlin ask me to write a garbage collector.
In CSC 202, our professor talked about using reference counts._

Jeez. I think my profs covered ref counting as an introduction, then also went
on to cover mark/sweep and generational collectors. We also covered
compaction, copying and bump allocation. I don't think it took that long. If I
were running a shop that focused on, say Java, I would want to know if my new
hires knew background information relevant to optimizing code running on the
JVM.

 _Cycle detection? Man I could probably tell you back when I studied minimum
spanning trees and wrote this thing to implement Dijkstra 's shortest path:_

Someone should have given you breadth first search and depth first search,
then ran you through how those are components to other algorithms. You should
have been left with those as a "toolbox" such that you automatically spend a
second thinking, "what would happen to that graph if I did DFS or BFS on it."
That kind of toolbox is powerful and gives you all sorts of useful insights.
You are not the only one around here to say, "Man I could probably tell you
back when..." What you should be thinking now is that you were not well served
by some of your teachers. Fortunately, this sort of thing is easily
rectifiable.

 _Off the top of my head, I 'd hope each node had a unique identifier and I
guess I'd mark them/store the keys in a hash table._

Well good on you. You just did better than most of my last 6 interviewees.

 _Unless there 's a way to mark the data structure, you now have a second
structure the size of your key space._

This is the DFS/BFS part right here. Is the 2nd part of your statement likely
to be true, and how often would it be true? Good call on the marking. (EDIT:
Just thought of it: Bloom filter.)

 _I 'm sure there are better solutions, but I wouldn't expect a senior program
to know them off the top of their head_

Cripes! Freshmen used to be able to do this stuff!

 _unless you 're hiring really specifically for a position writing routing
algorithms or looking for a senior airport transit architect._

How about you don't want programmers who will end up debugingg an infinite
loop induced by a data cycle every single time?

EDIT: I actually just wrote cycle detection for my side project in golang the
day before yesterday. It took me 4 additional lines of code. If you have a
shop that uses gob or some kind of object serialization, this may well be
_very relevant_!

~~~
blub
You're trying really hard to find a connection between implementing a GC and
debugging memory leaks... and failing.

The whole freaking point of a GC like say Java's is that an average programmer
can use it without having to understand how exactly it's implemented. Of
course it won't hurt to know that, but it's not at all mandatory knowledge.

One just has to know which situations the GC can't cope with and avoid them.
For Java there's at least one open source dedicated tool for finding leaks, it
nicely explains what one needs to know.

~~~
danieldk
_One just has to know which situations the GC can 't cope with and avoid
them._

Unfortunately, many programmers believe that since Java uses garbage
collection, you do not have to think about GC and ownership at all.

Oracle had to replace the fast implementation of _substring_ that just returns
a slice of a String (O(1) time) by a copying implementation (O(n)), because
too many programmers do not know the basics of ownership/garbage collection
and would accidentally hold on to larger strings.

Seeing the implementation details of reference counting, mark-sweep
collection, and perhaps a generational collector once, makes you more aware of
memory and ownership issues, even if you forget the nitty gritty details
later.

------
hsienmaneja
Apple, please put back in full size up and down arrow keys

~~~
kylec
Put back? They've never had full sized up and down arrow keys on the MacBooks.
What I miss are the half-sized left and right keys - the empty space above
them made it easy to position my hand over the arrow keys without looking.

~~~
tedmiston
I'm with you here — no generation of MB/MBP has ever had full-sized up/down
arrow keys [1][2]. I guess perhaps people are meaning how the left/right arrow
keys went from being half-sized to full-sized? I'd like to half my half-sized
left/right back...

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook)

------
wpdev_63
Classic case of why business managers shouldn't be directing design of a
product.

Business managers sees .2mm shaved off the thickness of macbook pro to
'justify' the premium cost of it over other laptops while a developer/pro user
of the laptop would increase the thickness to gain battery and maybe
mechanical/mesh hybrid keys... I would be more than happy to pay for a pro
version of the current macbook pro.

EDIT----

Instead of apple doing crappy warranty repairs to make up for their crappy
design, they should give us mechanical/mesh hybrid keys and shoot the person
who thought .2mm was worth such a shit keyboard....

 _cradling on my 2016 macbook pro_

~~~
cududa
No. Absolutely wrong assessment. This is a design team running amok after
their own goals

~~~
partiallypro
Thinner for the sake of being thin has been an Apple problem for a while now.

~~~
spiritcat
Thinner for the sake of making other laptops look thick and crappy.

~~~
partiallypro
Maybe at some point that was true, it's not true anymore. Unless you're
getting a gaming laptop, pretty much every ultrabook is only mildly thicker
than the MacBook Air or Pro, some of them are thinner.

------
bluepeter
This is what happens when you do user testing and the users you primarily test
are only internal folks.

Apple, next time: take your prototype, throw a handful of fine sand on the
keyboard and shake... if it can't be fixed by customers (via canister air or
removing/cleaning the keys), then rework.

P.S., I am tying this now on this absolute crap keyboard with multiple letters
sticky and repeating.

------
RandallBrown
Here's my unpopular opinion.

I like the new keyboard better.

I have a 2012 MacBook Pro at home and just recently got the newest one at
work. While I don't love the Touch Bar, I don't hate it like most people. I
don't use any `esc` heavy apps like vim so that's a pretty big factor. The
most annoying thing is honestly the lack of volume buttons.

When I use my old MacBook Pro at home the keys feel slow and spongey. The new
ones are fast and crisp. I guess I've been lucky enough to not have any of
them fail on me.

~~~
MattBearman
I concur, although we seem to be in the minority. I love the feel of the new
keyboard and can type faster on it than my old mbp keyboard.

Having said that, mine has developed the issue of sticking keys, for some
reason it's the g key that repeats for me. I'm happy they've acknowledged this
issue, I'll be getting mine fixed under warrantee.

------
phnofive
Who is Apple engaging in design anorexia for?

Does it drive sales? Couldn’t some other stat be used to pad their
presentations? Any thickness less than an inch is fine with me. I’m not
concerned with whether my laptop fits in an envelope.

~~~
derefr
I don't know why so many people are under the impression that they do thinness
for thinness sake. They do thinness for _lightness_ sake.

The lighter your laptop (or tablet, or phone), the more you'll choose to _not_
leave it behind but rather to just lug it around with you, and so the more
places you'll have it and the more it'll be there to aid your productivity in
random situations. [Also, for phones and tablets specifically, the longer
you'll be willing to hold it up to your face to stare at it before putting it
away due to the "gorilla arm" feeling.]

Sometimes I actually carry my MacBook around in my backpack when I'm just
downtown for a meet-up and have no plans to do any work. I get it out for the
same reasons you might pull out an external Bluetooth keyboard for a
smartphone—e.g., if you want to type a long response to an email, or need to
type a snippet of something that's awful to type on a phone keyboard, like
code. Except that this Bluetooth keyboard happens to have its own computer
attached to it.

(I don't use it at home, though; at home, I use a Hackintosh with a real
keyboard. Which happens to be an Apple Magic Keyboard 2 with the exact same
butterfly key-mech in it that the MacBook and rMBP have. But Magic Keyboard 2s
aren't getting gummed up left and right, because the butterfly key-mech itself
actually works fine when it's given adequate travel height. It makes a huge
difference; you wouldn't even think it's the same key-mech!)

~~~
sohkamyung
> They do thinness for lightness sake.

Would you consider getting something like a LG Gram 15" then? It's thin and
light but appears highly repairable [1]

[1]
[https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/LG+Gram+15-Inch+Repairability+A...](https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/LG+Gram+15-Inch+Repairability+Assessment/79142)

~~~
malloryerik
I'm jealous sometimes of my girlfriend's Samsung ultrabook for this same
reason. I think it's Samsung's answer to the LG Gram and wow, it's light.

If you want a really light machine, don't you have to ditch the aluminum? My
2017 MacBook Pro gets heavy, esp once you add the charger. I take it
everywhere.

------
spyckie2
This is NOT a big issue for consumers. Apple is great at keeping customers
happy, their 4 year warranty extension for replacing the keyboard shows this.

This IS a business issue. It has a quantifiable effect on profit margins for
Apple's macbook, and I would look at it as an investor and see if it effects
Apple's valuation in the short and long run.

The Note 7 is a fantastic comparison - the complete recall did not have to
happen but did because of design choices from Samsung engineers. It could have
been a $200 million dollar issue instead of a $5 billion dollar one.

Similarly, these keyboards did not have to be that expensive to repair or be
so prone to damage, but being that way has a snowball effect on
repair/maintenance/warranty.

It's also a design decision that they're kind of stuck with. They are not
going to go back to their original keyboards (unless they release a mac book
pro classic, which I would personally be estatic about) - and so the increase
repair costs cutting into their margins is a challenge for them to solve going
forward (especially since the brittle-ness is because of the thin design).

~~~
yesimahuman
Not mentioned in this article is how many people also dislike the feel of the
keyboard. Add that to risking an out of commission work machine and it’s a big
deal for consumers.

~~~
aroman
> Not mentioned in this article is how many people also dislike the feel of
> the keyboard

Do you have any statistics on that? Anecdotally, almost everyone I've spoken
to prefers the new keyboard over the old one, ignoring the key stuck issue.

~~~
cageface
None of the many devs I know that have one prefer the new keyboard. I
certainly would take the 2015 version over this 2017 in a heartbeat.

------
michaelcampbell
The horrible user experience that is the Mac Keyboard is so upsetting to me
(granted, I'm a keyboard snob).

The original Apple ][ keyboard was one of the best I'd ever used. The original
1984 Mac keyboard was great. The kb's in the last few years (the Jony Ive
era?) have been so unsatisfying. They _work_ , mostly, but are hardly joyful.

I guess when Jony makes his solid chunk of depleted uranium that doesn't
actually do anything, he'll be satisfied.

------
danjayh
Glad to see him mention the Samsung debacle as well. When my Note 4 finally
gave in to the eMMC problem earlier this year, I upgraded to a new-old-stock
LG V20 instead of the latest greatness, because it was the last flagship made
with a user replaceable battery. Over my Note 4's 3 1/2 year tenure, I
replaced the battery annually. Each time, the battery life performance was
restored to what I remembered from when the phone was new. I don't know what
I'm going to do when the V20 dies, but it'll be a sad day indeed. I just have
such a hard time believing that I'm the only one who wants a rugged (plastic
or metal), repairable phone (the V20 can be [i]screwed[/i] apart ... no glue
here) with a user-replaceable battery.

~~~
dannyw
Even the iPhone battery is user replaceable. Yes, it involves unscrewing
things, but you can do it with a tutorial and $5 worth of tools from eBay.

~~~
tedmiston
"User replaceable" is kind of a stretch given the amount of
disassembly/reassembly required to change the battery. I don't think it can be
considered user replaceable is if requires something 90%+ of users aren't
comfortable doing vs phones where the battery pops in and out.

------
thebigspacefuck
It would be awesome if Apple would release a MacBook Pro Classic, a 2015 MBP
with updated hardware Similar to the iPod Classic that was around for a while
after the iPod Touch was released.

~~~
pokemongoaway
Or just test out their fisher-price ideas on the separate MacBook line before
pushing them on the pro users!

------
ethagknight
I picked up my repaired late-2016 15” mbp this morning from warranty repair
(replacement). The keyboard feels 100% better. Apple replaced my top case,
logic board, and display system for free, out of warranty. I was very
concerned about this computer’s longevity, I’ve even ordered a Razer mx cherry
keyboard to use when at my desk to take some workload off apple’s questionable
design decision, but the replacement keyboard feels much better. I want to be
clear, my desire is not for repairability, like iFixit wants, but for
durability and For Apple to stand behind it. The MacBook Pro is a fabulous
computer, the keyboard and touchbar were mistakes, but I think they have fixed
1 of the 2.

~~~
el_benhameen
How long did the repair take? I talked to a guy at the Apple store who said
they’d likely do it even if the issue is intermittent, but I don’t love the
idea of not having my machine for several weeks.

~~~
ethagknight
It took 4 business days from drop off to pick up, but fortunately I got in
just before the extended warranty was announced. I imagine now it will take
longer, but that’s speculation.

~~~
bbrian
Reasonable speculation, based on increased lead times when they offered
cheaper battery replacements on iPhones. Although, few people would wait long
to get a broken key fixed!

[https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/27/battery-replacement-
wai...](https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/27/battery-replacement-wait-times-
increasing/)

~~~
ethagknight
Imagine having to pick up and replace your W key cap every time you hit it...
no way could it work with it any longer.

------
samgranieri
I got used to the keys on the new MBP. I also don't have problems with it
because I put a really nice keyboard cover on it:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MRKLH27](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MRKLH27)

~~~
BallinBige
TLDR - buy this ^

------
speeq
My 2015 MBP is affected by an earlier production issue where interactions with
the keyboard when opening / closing the lid damages the coating of the display
(just lookup “Staingate” to see pics).

Maybe the thinner keys were ironically meant as a fix for this production
issue in order to save them money on screen replacements.

------
jordache
I'm picturing one of those immensely obnoxious apple videos where ive is
talking about some crap about frivolous keyboard superlatives, with some cgi
fly by of a keyboard... uh.. such crap.

~~~
asafira
It's simply magical.

------
dottrap
I recently was fixing a relative's early gen Macbook Pro which had the same
keyboard as the Powerbook. The keyboard felt soooo nice. I really miss that
keyboard.

------
mancerayder
I obviously don't matter, but I was spending several thousand dollars every
two years on Apple hardware (laptops, and before that a Mac Pro desktop before
it became a small cylinder that I can't upgrade). For one person the total
amount I've spent probably approaches 8-10K in the last 10 years or so.

But not since the new MacBook Pro laptops. As a heavy vim user, the touchbar
is an immediate dealbreaker. As a lover of mechanical keyboards (cherry MX
brown both at home and at work), the keyboard is a dealbreaker. As a taker-of-
photos and Lightroom/Photoshop user, the USB-C-only and dongle requirements is
the final straw (although probably more tolerable than the other two
problems).

There are other people like me (especially on HN). And now the fact that Apple
doesn't seem to care about people like myself, and that they're happy to not
take my money, really makes me wonder if they've gotten too arrogant for their
britches. There really is a sense of Apple waging war against its users (as
the HN parody site n-gate likes to say). I feel like I'm being asked to adapt
to the above annoyances - and for what, an operating system that makes it a
pain to stop processes that auto-update (Adobe), that has ancient versions of
GNU utilities, that has numerous competing / overlapping package managers
(brew and so forth)? Sorry, no.

Today I have a MS SurfaceBook (not without its problems but tolerable) and a
custom build that's lightning-fast thanks to a Ryzen processor and M2 storage
(a US $1600 that Apple would probably sell for $3500). For Unix I use
MobaXTerm (Putty/PuttyCM/X/Cygwin/etc. all glued together) and cloud instances
[edit: and CentOS VMs for work and personal projects; I don't have enough free
time in my life for Linux on the desktop's high maintenance] .

------
bproven
Drop in a thinkpad keyboard (best in the business IMO) - problem solved ;)

Now if I could get a laptop with a thinkpad kb, apple trackpad I'd be set

------
spiderfarmer
I for one am holding off upgrading to see what Apple comes up with for their
next Macbook. There are things that I want to upgrade to with the current
model, like a brighter screen (for working outside), 802.11ac and a fresh
battery, but that's about it. I don't want to risk spending thousands of euros
only to gain frustration day in day out.

------
Exuma
Hopefully they don't get rid of the butterfly keyboard and simply improve it.
I love this Keyboard

------
ashishb
I wrote about my experience while looking for a personal laptop in 2013:
[https://ashishb.net/tech/the-weird-state-of-laptop-
industry/](https://ashishb.net/tech/the-weird-state-of-laptop-industry/)
Little has changed since then. There is still a considerable gap, and no one
is building a developer laptop. What surprises me is the amount of energy
Google is pouring into Chromebooks, they could have made an excellent (GCP-
integrated?) developer laptop instead. For backend engineers to front-end
engineers to mobile developers, it could have become the defacto developer
machine - provided the Wi-Fi, battery, and sleep/wake-up handling is as good
as Macbooks.

~~~
cjmoran
Google _is_ working on making Chromebooks more developer-friendly. Some of
them support running full desktop Linux apps now, but it's still in the
experimental stages and I wouldn't recommend buying one for that specific
feature until it's more mature.

That said, I've been doing light webdev work on a Chromebook using Crouton (to
run desktop Linux alongside ChromeOS, with seamless switching) and aside from
difficulties with the MicroSD slot and apt-get on Ubuntu it's been quite nice.
Getting solid, first-party Linux desktop app support would make Chromebooks a
serious contender in the "cheap dev laptop for light work" space, and I think
Google is working toward that.

Obviously, the hardware is going to preclude you from doing any serious heavy
lifting, but I'm pretty excited to see what they come up with in another year
or two. The battery life on these things is fantastic, plus some of them can
also run Android apps.

Crouton installation instructions can be found here:
[https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton](https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton)

A tip: while you _can_ find ARM distributions of Linux distros and packages,
it'll make your life much easier to get a Chromebook with an x86 processor.

~~~
ashishb
> Google is working on making Chromebooks more developer-friendly. Some of
> them support running full desktop Linux apps now, but it's still in the
> experimental stages and I wouldn't recommend buying one for that specific
> feature until it's more mature.

Why not just make full-fledged Linux laptops?

------
pdimitar
That title is very clickbait but I agree with the article overall: nobody
asked for these keyboards. They should have invested in thinner batteries or
relocated some components in the laptops, or made thinner mechanical keyboards
(Razer has good progress on that).

------
newscracker
Scott Forstall was fired for less serious issues, but Apple has continued to
roll on without firing any other high level executives (directly connected to
technology) in the last few years. Someone needs to take responsibility for
the overall sad state of the Mac, all the software quality issues on its
platforms, and the hardware quality issues.

To outsiders, Apple seems like an opaque and uncaring company, and for good
reasons. What Apple needs is to spend time on self-reflection from top to
bottom and radical thinking to change "the way things are". Until that
happens, I wouldn't expect groundbreaking changes. "Think different" is what
it badly needs. The sooner, the better.

------
ggregoire
Unpopular opinion on HN: I prefer the new keyboard to the old one. Sure it
feels a bit weird the first week, but after 8 months typing with it, I can
tell you I won’t go back to the old one.

And yes it breaks too easily. And the touchbar is useless. But I like the
keaboard.

~~~
usermac
I'm with you man. I walked into an Apple Store and tried the keyboard and said
'no go' but later I said I'd give it a try and it is just fine. Macbook for
two years now.

------
Xixi
I understand this keyboard is brittle, but I absolutely love the feeling of
it: I have a hard time typing on my old MacBook Air after using my newer
MacBook Pro for more than one year now.

If I could change one thing though, I would get rid of that stupid touch
bar....

------
scruffyherder
I have a MacBook 2012 with the same crappy butterfly keyboard that I barely
use as I can't stand it.

I wanted to practice soldering and I picked up a TiBook from a junker, and
somehow by just stripping it down, and cleaning it up I got it working. So I
put it together, and I hate to say it, but for a 2000-2001 design I love it
more than any new laptop I have.

The keys have enough travel to feel like a keyboard, the monitor is nice and
big, and it feels like such a nice machine. Granted with only 512MB of Ram,
and a 500Mhz G4 it's not going to be anything useful today, but It's such a
damned shame that it feels so ergonomically nice.

------
shaniber
I really like the keyboard DESIGN. Initially, I despised the keystroke depth,
because my hands hurt after typing on it. But once I stopped typing so hard, I
found my speed increased, and I didn't have any pain.

That being said... I still despise the keyboard for how fragile it is. The
slightest mote getting under the keys is enough to throw it off, and I've had
so many problems with keys that stop working on the machines around the
office. And don't get me started on the dang touchbar.

All in all, it's not worth the problems. I'm lucky being in IT, as I can put
off "upgrading" my main machine for a while.

------
m_st
While I do like Apple and their integrated hardware/software platform (see my
problems with Dell XPS 15 reported in another comment), this also shows the
problems with a monopole producer of macOS hardware.

I still run a 2009 iMac and a 2013 MBP. The MBP is still fine but I'd prefer
to replace the iMac with a desktop with external screen. But there is no
hardware worth its price!

The Mac Pro is great, but too expensive for hardware from 2013. The Mac mini
has the same problem, but even worse, the existing hardware isn't fast.

This shouldn't happen if multiple companies were in competition for great Mac
hardware.

------
auslander
Not a biggie. They made one design error, but who did not?

And managed it perfectly - free repairs, nothing to whine about, just dont eat
cookies above keyboard and don't take it to the beach, treat your tools with
respect.

------
joncrane
I love iFixit. I used them extensively when I used to run a cell phone repair
shop. I don't read them much any more, but they stick to their principles and
provide amazing insight.

Since the iPhone 3GS, one of Apple's priorities has been to make their devices
less repairable. They have made conscious decisions that actually make the
device cost more, such as introducing pentalobe fasteners for their iPhone 4
partway into it's manufacturing run.

Now that Windows 10 has a built-in Linux subsystem, what advantage do Macs
have any more other than signaling?

~~~
Aloha
I'd gladly pay apple 300 dollars for a copy of OSX I could run on generic PC
hardware.

macOS is for me, largely just easier, for most of the things I want to do, it
'just works' \- in essence, I'm paying up front, for less effort later - at
least thats how I see it anyhow.

Having used the Linux subsystem in windows, I dont think I could do any
serious work in it, outside of say developing a linux console application,
even basic functionality like ping doesnt work (in the version I have) - its
great for lightweight testing, and to have a unix shell that you can use unix
tools in (sed, awk, etc) but its not the same thing as a full unix.

While I'm sure that usability of Linux as a Desktop is better than it was a
decade ago, at a glance, it doesnt appear to be better enough to replicate the
experience I have in macOS.

In the end, I just hope Apple releases better hardware before I need to
upgrade.

------
erikb
The whole analysis loses a lot of it's weight if one considers that since
around 2010 companies actively focus on reducing(!) repairability. For the
producer it's a desired feature. And the market doesn't seem to care that
much. Yes, people complain, but then they still go and buy a new $1k smart
phone every year or two. At least in a professional environment they do the
same with their $1.5k Macbook Pros. Hell, some people buy a new one, because
they don't like the stickers on top of their old one anymore.

------
pier25
> And a battery glued to the keyboard.

Indeed. I needed to replace the battery on a 2014 rMBP and I was quoted $350
because that meant replacing the whole top panel: battery, keyboard, and
trackpad.

------
matte_black
The solution to this while keeping the same form factor is to create a macbook
pro that is waterproof so that a keyboard can be washed out if any dust has
accumulated below the keys.

------
nottorp
The real problem is they have no competition, so they can do whatever they
want. See the person describing their Dell XPS problems somewhere in this
discussion.

All the various stupid decisions and quality problems add up slowly, but I'd
hate for my 2012 mbpro to die right now. I might reluctantly go for something
from Dell or Lenovo with Linux, but I'm sure I'll get a thousand paper cuts
from things I used to take for granted but don't work any more.

------
ken_m
In my org, within 1 year, we have found 4 faulty Macbook Pro laptop keyboards
(2016 15 inch Model). Cost of replacement - $750 per keyboard. Just
ridiculous.

~~~
tedmiston
We have no idea if your org is 4 people or 4 million people to draw any
conclusions from the absolute numbers ;)

------
dev_dull
> _In the meantime, let’s give some other companies a shot. Dell and HP have
> gorgeous, reliable, repairable flagship laptops that are getting rave
> reviews. Right now, I think they’ve done more to earn your business than
> Apple has._

But when these laptops have an error or break, will their manufacturers extend
an extra 4 years to the warranty? Probably not.

And that’s why I keep coming back to Apple hardware. The longevity of it is
unparalleled.

------
dheelus
The entire Apple universe is bizarre. I've not used an Apple product except
for the first gen iPhone but I did love it when I did. Since then, Apple has
been behind the curve on every thing. I want to go back to using Apple since I
really like their stance on privacy and security but feature wise they're
usually 2-3 years behind a Samsung or a Microsoft. And now, this...

~~~
FreakyT
In terms of their computers, there has absolutely been a decline in quality,
but in terms of their other product lines (and you specifically mention
phones), I don't really think this is correct.

I mean in terms of phones, the iPhone X is pretty much top of the line -- are
there other phones that exceed it in a meaningful capacity? Bezel-free design,
face recognition, fake-DLSR like camera effects, etc.

~~~
seabird
There's plenty of phones on par with the iPhone that blow it away in the cost
department. Android hardware has had good screens, good cameras, good specs,
and plenty of screen unlock gimmicks (face recognition unlock was introduced
~3 years ago if my memory is correct), and all of that usually well before an
iPhone ever did; the iPhone's only compelling feature is that the stock
software is kept pretty slim (but even that is slowly slipping away as Apple
loses focus).

What Android hardware _severely_ lacks is manufacturers that aren't bound and
determined to destroy their products with shitware. It doesn't help that the
platform isn't obnoxiously marketed as a social/economic statement, either.

~~~
Gorbzel
Just completely delusional.

The iPhone’s CPU is literally years ahead of comparable Android devices, with
today’s flagship Android devices comparable to an iPhone 6s in terms of
performance. One or two other devices may have a camera that matches Apple in
terms of a spec here and there, but iPhone is still the gold standard. The
fact you call Samsung and others’ garbage face unlocking from 3 years ago
gimmicks might be the most accurate thing in your post, but those never worked
reliably and in no way compare to Face ID.

And then you finish by noting that most Android OEMs require you to use their
shit version of the OS. Well then, real convincing argument when the most
critical part of any computer is garbage. This place is insane...

~~~
damnyou
Try using a Pixel 2 and a 6s side by side.

Actually, try using a Pixel 2 and an iPhone 8 side by side. It'll be pretty
obvious which one feels faster, and it's not the iPhone.

------
mcculley
I am typing this on an early 2013 MacBook Pro and I dread the possibility that
it will die before Apple decides to build a better machine.

~~~
iDemonix
I've got a 2012 MBP which doesn't have much in the specs department, so it
never gets used. I use my early 2015 MBP from work for my work and personal
stuff, I check MacRumours regularly praying that Apple will have come to their
senses and make a proper MBP again.

When I leave this job I'll have the choice between using my 2012 MBP or buying
a 2015 model off of eBay, it's a sad state of affairs, and every power user
that uses a Mac laptop is in the same boat.

~~~
mcculley
The other thing is that they really haven't provided a compelling reason to
upgrade. Sure, I would like a faster CPU with more cores. But what I really
need is more RAM and they don't offer that. My 2013 MacBook Pro has 16GB, just
like the 2018 MacBook Pro. I would love to buy a model just like this with
more RAM and an integrated LTE modem. A faster CPU would be gravy. I would
even be willing to put up with no longer having a real escape key.

------
greggarious
I was given a newish macbook at work, and the touch bar really is grating
IMHO. I haven't encountered build quality issues but little things like not
being able to easily hit ESC in Vim or F5 in Firefox really annoy me. I
probably will get a linux friendly laptop from Dell for my personal use when
my old one finally keeps over.

------
nailer
Joe Rogan (who obviously writes professionally) just went on a huge rant about
Macbook keyboards in his podcast today. 9 minutes in:
[http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/duncan-
trussell-15](http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/duncan-trussell-15)

------
karmakaze
Apple Designed rather than Engineered their downfall. I never liked how
engineering served form more than function in things as simple as thin power
cords that always fail on me. One exception is the 13" unibody. I almost
prefer they did it knowingly for accessory sales because it seems more
rational.

------
eltoozero
Upgradeable, modular machines is the real takeaway, not a drawn out discussion
about keyboards.

The old MacBook keyboard felt fine and is most certainly adequately robust
being of conventional construction.

Though I’d argue the iBook/PowerBook keyboard could be considered better
purely from a modularity standpoint.

ThinkPad keyboard FTW, natch.

------
braindongle
What to buy instead? My 2015 MBP has been a wonderful machine to work on, and
there's no way I'm getting one of these little gray turds. So, I'll be using
Ubuntu for my daily driver, which is fine. But that last generation MBP is
_so_ nice, what other hardware compares?

------
nkkollaw
Personally, my MBP's keyboard failing and Apple Store saying it wasn't a known
problem made me switch to Lenovo (after 5 years with Apple).

I bought a 5kg-laptop that I bought with HDD and 8GB RAM and I upgraded myself
to 24GB RAM and SSD alongside the HDD. It has Philips screws.

------
stefek99
LOL.

I've been to Apple to fix my keyboard (during the warranty time).

A few months later it stopped working again.

This time around - out of main warranty and out of warranty on warranty.

Now apparently the warranty is extended... Well... Thank you.

(not really sure what to think)

Don't take your laptop to the playa I believe.

------
tjoff
_And a battery glued to the keyboard._

That is just _insane_. We just can't trust apple et al to do good designs. It
saddens me that common sense and goodwill isn't valued to the point that they
are actively working against it.

------
douglaswlance
Let it be known that I for one like the new clicky keyboard. It is better than
the squishy ones from yesteryear.

I'm hoping they're progressing toward some kind of haptic keyboard that is
entirely sealed so the MBP can be waterproofed.

~~~
Milner08
I agree I actually prefer the new keyboards and I've not seen any issues yet.
Although my opinion may change if I do.

~~~
douglaswlance
As long as you carry a little can of compressed air in your bag, just in case
a crumb gets into the works, you're golden.

------
solomatov
I was absolutely ok with repairability of 2013 pro models. But what they did
with new keyboard design is awful. I write this now from my Dell XPS 13, not
from my MacBook Pro different models of which I used for > 5 years.

~~~
malloryerik
Writing from my 2017 MacBook Pro. Apart from the keys being louder than before
and my nagging fear of an errant crumb or cat hair I'm happy, typing is crisp
and maybe faster for me than on any other keyboard. I move my hands less. In
comparison my regular Mac keys now feel loose and smooshy, almost as if they'd
been produced by the Haribo Gummy Bear factory. (Not that this is a horrible
feeling. I miss gummy bears; can't they make them out of xylitol or
something?)

~~~
dguaraglia
Have you had issues with OS X? My fiancée's laptop needs to be rebooted every
time it goes to sleep, and both her and my own older (2015) MacBook Pro want
to boot from the recovery partition every time. It's a pain in the ass and a
terrible degradation of experience.

~~~
malloryerik
That sounds awful, but no, I haven't had that kind of problem before. Sounds
like you might want to think of reinstalling/upgrading the OS? I've never
heard of that issue though, sorry.

------
kuon
I always carry a mechanical keyboard (wasd without keypad) and a mouse
alongside my notebook, I'm always amazed by the people who can work on
notebook keyboards and use a trackpad.

------
NE2z2T9qi
Am I the only person on the planet that likes the shallow keys? Although it
took a little getting used to, I can definitely type faster on the newer
keyboard compared to the older one.

------
rawTruthHurts
Considering how many times, according to the media, Apple has been working on
its own downfall, I wonder if they actually meant "upfall" and my entire life
has been a lie.

------
ken_m
In my org already 4 laptop keyboards are faulty within just 1 year.

------
lc94
Macbooks are a joke. If you ignore the CPU upgrades how exactly is the new
Macbook Pros any better than the 2015 one? I would argue they are actually
worse in many regards

------
tjpnz
I bought my 2017 MacBook Pro from an Apple Store in Tokyo back in March. Would
it still be worth buying Apple Care given the new warranty I'll have on the
keyboard?

------
bambax
Products should be taxed based on repairability.

This is where regulations excel, to manage incentives so that socially
desirable outcomes become desirable for individual actors as well.

------
azr79
I'm still using a late 2013 MBPr, this machine is a tank, took so much
beatings, and literally nothing broke in 5 years it runs as if it was its
first day of use.

------
bbrian
Since the battery is necessarily replaced when the keyboard is, I'm hoping my
keyboard breaks after 3.5 years so I get a free battery replacement.

------
codeisawesome
Is the title meant to be a joke?

\- Apple as a company does not have a single point of failure.

\- Arguably the iPhone could be called that; if they stopped selling MacBooks
next year it still wouldn’t be their “downfall” (not that I like this state of
affairs as I like MacBooks).

I don’t really hate the butterfly keys either. I’ve been using it for over a
year now on the pro, and I don’t know if it’s the second iteration, but it
hasn’t failed me yet. I will agree that the first iteration was awful, my “new
MacBook” keyboard broke because I made the mistake of taking it to the beach.

~~~
RobLach
Apple losing the image of quality engineering will effect their entire product
range, with consumers less willing to pay a premium and second guessing
engineering achievements by keeping in mind side effects.

If the next iPhone is 20 grams lighter but I can’t make phone calls after 6
months, will I buy one over a equally powered Android $300 less?

~~~
throwaway5752
I think the story of Coach (now Tapestry, ticker TPR) should be the ghost
story they tell at every Apple corporate retreat. What do they say, "years to
build and seconds to destroy"?

~~~
janekm
What happened to Coach? I seem to have missed that news, and from what I saw
in NYC they are currently moving into extremely expensive real estate so I
thought they were doing rather well?

~~~
throwaway5752
It's generally believed that they diluted their brand by overexpansion into
outlet channels. From 2012-2015 their stock got cut by more than half ($80
down to $30) while the broader market was up ~25%.

I would summarize what happened as they stopped being "cool". The
(subjectively) not so attractive Coach bags covered with "C" branding were
multiple hundreds of dollars and a luxury good. When everyone was wearing one
and you could pick up a cheap last season one at the outlet mall, the cachet
was gone.

The value of the brand is when you can charge more for something of identical
quality, or that people ask for your product by name. Apple's brand is (should
be?) golden to them and they should treasure it. It's not based on cosmetics
but quality, too.

tl;dr - Coach is still around and recovering and making billions of dollars.

~~~
janekm
Thanks for the explanation, I think I had only come across the Coach brand
after they expanded aggressively internationally which I presume came after
the "cheapening" of the brand, which is no doubt a big part of their turn-
around success.

------
megasquid
Genuinely have not had a single problem with my new MBP. Owned it a little
over a year now. I guess I'm one of the few lucky ones.

------
FullyFunctional
hum I'm been ticked since they cancelled the 17" MBP and I am more than a
little annoyed that I lost physical esc and function keys (Yes, I used them -
in Emacs).

It bad enough that I'm now spending a non trivial amazing amount of time on
non-Apple laptops, but soo many apps have no acceptable alternative on Linux,
sadly (I buy Linux version whenever I can).

------
sneak
> _In the meantime, let’s give some other companies a shot. Dell and HP have
> gorgeous, reliable, repairable flagship laptops that are getting rave
> reviews. Right now, I think they’ve done more to earn your business than
> Apple has._

...that don’t run macOS. Not a chance. Do hardware people not realize that
running windows or linux (chromebooks excepted) is a usability or malware
nightmare (or both)?

------
Nerdfest
"The new notebook was universally applauded by tech pundits". Riiiiiight.

~~~
saagarjha
The article was referring to the 2012 Retina MacBook Pro.

~~~
solomatov
IMO, 2012 Retina and its updates were masterpieces of hardware design. I wish
they continue producing them with more up to date hardware.

~~~
foxh0und
Loved my 2012 Retina. It served me all through a Comp Sci degree, and has now
gone to friend who is still studying.

~~~
syshax
Still using mine ($1999 model) and having a hard time justifying a replacement
- especially with all the consternation about the keyboard.

I'm thinking about upgrading when they announce a 6 core, but I'd like to see
the keyboard addressed - and a 4k retina screen would be a nice touch.

------
pi-squared
Why the fuck does anybody still buys a mac!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?

------
traverseda
If you don't need a 4k display or macos, the Xiaomi Probook line is very
pleasent. It's basically a 2012 macbook, but with updated internals.

It's filling that niche quite well for me.

------
bvm
the key on my mcbook ir no longer works, which is rel pin in the ss.

~~~
dredmorbius
I've been known to ... remap various keys in situations like that.

------
chasd00
mine works just fine for me, i would say i even like it. :shrug:

------
bertolo1988
I guess I am the only one happy with the new macpro keyboard lol.

------
jillesvangurp
Overly dramatic; Apple is doing fine. But they are definitely behind in
appeasing the pro user segment with decent hardware and not doing nearly
enough to fix that. I replaced my 2012 model (essentially the last model that
had Steve Jobs' fingers all over it) late last year with the 15" model. So far
so good with the keyboard but not looking forward to having to cash in my
overpriced apple care and lose it for a week or more while Apple does whatever
it needs to do to fix a problem that shouldn't need fixing.

What I want and what Apple sold me are miles apart at this point and they came
very close to losing my business. Technically, I could be up and running using
Linux and not lose a lot of time having to switch tools. Essentially
everything I care about should just work. I do backend stuff. In the end I
chickened out and had to replace my old laptop in a hurry and went for an easy
upgrade to not lose time dealing with a different OS, configuring shit that
shouldn't need configuring, shopping around, etc. That's what it means to be a
pro, I just don't have time for that stuff. I don't even mind the steep price.
I'm totally OK paying 4K for a laptop that I use every day for 3-5 years. Not
a problem. Earns itself back within weeks. I bill more per week.

But I do want quality and performance. I'm getting neither with the latest
model. It's fine but nothing special. Mind you, I have the tricked out version
with the extra GPU memory, faster cpu, etc. But it's 16GB, just like the one
it replaced. Has a slightly faster 4 core CPU, just like the one it replaced.
I guess the SSD is a slightly faster but don't really notice much difference.
The retina screen is nice but I would have preferred a non glossy one. I
clocked my builds before and after and they're about 30% faster on the new
machine. That's appalling for a state of the art laptop replacing a laptop
that was half a decade old.

On top of that the keyboard absolutely sucks. It's loud, flimsy, lacks keys I
need, the arrow keys are tiny, etc. Terrible job in form over function style
design. The touch bar is a nice gimmick but not getting a lot of value out of
it. Definitely not worth losing the function keys over. I don't think I would
miss it.

If I were to shop right now and had more time to do so. I'd be looking to get
one of those nice new CPUs with 6 or more cores (yes, I actually use them), 32
GB, or 64 GB even. Decent cooling so the laptop doesn't throttle itself every
time I need some performance. A keyboard that doesn't suck. And less
dependence on dongles would also be awesome though not super critical for me.
If that means 0.5cm thicker laptop: great. Not a problem.

On a positive note, I know several people that have abandoned Apple. They seem
quite happy with their windows/linux laptops but they seem to be replacing
them fairly quickly as well. My observation with issues they are having is
that competitors still have some catching up to do. You get issues with
trackpads on linux, webcams that are in weird positions (dell), build quality
issues, etc.

All that means in my book that all Apple needs to do is slightly up their game
on the quality front and they'll be fine.

------
majestik
"engineers its own downfall"

Hyperbole much? TLDR the new MacBook Pro keyboard doesn't repair as well as
the old keyboard:

\-- In our eyes, the new design was a repairability flop. We downgraded Apple
from a seven-out-of-ten to a two. \--

We're calling this a downfall now? I feel like we just got trolled.

~~~
exergy
Did you read the rest of the article? It's very well explained, and makes some
really good points. Of course they're biased towards one factor above all
else: repairability. It's right there in the name of the company! But calling
this a troll post isn't justified.

------
dingo_bat
> In the meantime, let’s give some other companies a shot. Dell and HP have
> gorgeous, reliable, repairable flagship laptops that are getting rave
> reviews. Right now, I think they’ve done more to earn your business than
> Apple has.

The laptop mentioned in the "rave review" link is an elitebook 840 g5. I have
been using the 840 g1 as my primary laptop for the last 4 years and it really
is a sturdy device. The hardware is flawless, I haven't had a single issue
with it. However, do yourself a favor and wipe it clean the moment you buy it,
and install a fresh copy of windows. HP's added software is literally poison.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
Windows is so terrible, though. I could never go back.

~~~
repsilat
Twoish years ago I moved from Linux full time to Windows at home and whatever
the Apple OS is called at work.

The Apple one was a pain. Command line tools are almost but not quite right
(zcat in particular just doesn't work) and I found the user experience pretty
annoying at first but passable after that. Still don't really understand how
"installing software" is supposed to go, and lots of struggle against Homebrew
and lots of other software packaging.

Windows had WSL when I got my laptop. Real Linux command-line, nice.
Filesystem performance was crap, and they didn't have postgres at first, but
it was probably a better dev environment than my Mac, with one exception: no
Docker in Windows 10 home. Explorer started getting a bit slow and unstable
after a while, but I was on preview releases.

A couple of months ago I quit my job, and yesterday I formatted my home laptop
to install Linux again (decided to put my hobby project onto a Docker-heavy
workflow) and oh my God it's lovely. Installing packages is fast again,
software compatibility goes without saying, and Unity was surprisingly
pleasant (though I did drop it for i3 because I'm a masochist.) Hard to say
how much of that experience is "Linux is nice" and how much is "I'm a Linux
person" though.

~~~
umanwizard
> zcat in particular just doesn't work

?

I used `zcat` on macOS just today. What issue do you have with it?

~~~
lgbr
The issue with Apple's unix environment is that it comes with BSD tools. A lot
of functionality that you'd expect to work doesn't end up working, which can
be frustrating. You have to go through some pretty annoying steps [1], which
are more involved than the steps required to get a Linux environment on
Windows [2].

1: [https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/69223/how-to-
repla...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/69223/how-to-replace-mac-
os-x-utilities-with-gnu-core-utilities) 2: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/wsl/install-win10](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/wsl/install-win10)

~~~
umanwizard
The zcat that comes with macOS works fine.

Learning how to use the BSD tools is not that hard.

Also, you mean GNU environment I guess, not Linux environment.

------
jlebrech
I'd like a laptop with cherry mx keys, also in future a screen won't be needed
if we use VR so some kind of dock for motion controllers could be a thing.

------
coldseattle
I wonder if most Apple users, and the ones they tested the keyboard with,
simply don't use the machines very much. Their core demographic update their
social media profiles, and sit in coffeeshops, but how many of them write
software? The people here are certainly important for their business, but were
missed when Apple was designing a machine for appearance and not
functionality.

------
ychombinator
Have three of these Macs, apart from the occasional stuck key which releases
when you tap the back of the Mac they've been solid.

I couldn't go back to a normal keyboard on a laptop now, the reduced range of
travel on the butterfly keyboards takes a while to get used to but it's
amazing once you're used to it you just don't want to mash keys through more
than 1 mm of travel to type a letter anymore

