
The MacBook keyboard fiasco is surely worse than Apple thinks - jlangenauer
https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-macbook-keyboard-fiasco-is-surely-worse-than-apple-thinks/
======
SkyPuncher
I absolutely love developing on my Macbook, but I will not upgrade from my
2015 MBP until they get their head out of their ass.

The 2015 design literally needs no improvement. It's weight is fine, its
thickness is fantastic (still allows for fullsize ports), it has a MagSafe,
and a great keyboard. I think the only thing I could possibly look for
improvement on is a slight shrinking of the bezel. A 15" is just a tad too big
to work comfortably on an airplane.

I had a new MBP for my job and could not stand the thing. It was a terrible
experience. I ended up having to get an external keyboard because my finger
joints were hurting from typing on the keys, the touchbar was utterly useless,
the touchpad was too large for it's own good (and constantly failed to do palm
rejection) and the lack of Magsafe was terribly inconvenient.

~~~
steve19
I really, really want to upgrade my 2015, and really don't want to switch to a
non-mac. Apple is not getting a cent until they fix the hardware.

~~~
minikites
Is there a plausible series of events that would lead you to buy a non-Apple
laptop? Your statement doesn't carry much weight otherwise, Apple still gets
your money in the end.

~~~
lmorchard
FWIW keyboard failures, lackluster upgrades, and the touchbar that looked
gizmo-y but not useful led me to try a Dell XPS laptop a few years ago after
nothing but Mac for 15 years. Windows is pretty good these days and nearly all
my stuff works in WSL. I'm not going back.

------
mikestew
At first I said the keyboard issues were what kept me hanging on to my
mid-2012 MBP. Hey, I'm still otherwise buying Apple stuff, though, right? And
supporting devs who make macOS software, too, huh?

But here's the thing: that seven year old laptop is getting long in the tooth,
and in the increasingly likely scenario where it dies tomorrow, I look at my
Linux options. At first there was a solid chance of keeping me on an Apple
laptop, even if I'm just holding on to the one I've got. Now? Umm, best ship
something that the has a better track record fast, because that cooling fan on
the '12 is getting more noisy by the day.

EDIT: you know, it just occurred to me how my wife and I got started on buying
Apple kit. Somewhere around 2002-2003, I got tired of dicking with the music
players of the era. Worked at Microsoft at the time, and bought into the
"Plays for Sure" fiasco, with predictable results (it didn't "play for sure"
even back then). Alright, g-ddamnit, get in the car, we're buying iPods. Long
story, short, I was so impressed it began our downhill slide into Apple
Fanboi-ism.

Now I wonder what will happen if I replace my personal daily driver MBP with a
Linux box? 'cuz I'm not doing iOS dev right now and don't _have_ to have a
MBP. Just one little change because of dissatisfaction with status quo, and it
might go either way.

~~~
tracker1
Thinking the same... my 5yo desktop at home is a hackintosh, and my laptop is
a 2014 (iirc) rmbp (last one with nvidia graphics). 95% of everything I use is
cross platform with Linux options (thanks electron). If I can't hackintosh my
next computer, it will run Linux, and it might anyway. I'm just tired of Apple
short-sheeting their computer systems. They're spending all their time on
their money making iOS devices.

------
ntsplnkv2
This issue is currently keeping me from buying a Macbook Pro right now.

I'll take a slightly thicker laptop with a working keyboard. I don't mind them
making it slim, but a keyboard has to work. Not taking the risk, especially
given how expensive it is to repair macs.

~~~
__d
They could just re-release the mid-2014 15", and I think they'd sell a bunch
of them.

Add a motherboard update to new CPU and make it expandable to 32GB RAM, and
they'd fly off the shelves.

~~~
tracker1
Yeah, would be happy with their 2010-2012 layout for keyboard/trackpad...
2014-2015 for trackpad interface and USB A/C and headphone jack. Modern CPU
and 32-64gb ram.

At this point, next laptop may well be a linux box... likely going the same
when I replace my desktop later in the year.

------
js2
> So here’s some anecdata for Apple. I sampled the people at Basecamp. Out of
> the 42 people using MacBooks at the company, a staggering 26% are dealing
> with keyboard issues right now!

Apple employs quite a few more than 42 people using these keyboards... how are
its own employees not going berserk?

~~~
steve19
I assume they have techs on site that will replace the keyboard in a couple of
hours, with a known good batch.

~~~
js2
This piece argues:

> The fact is that many people simply do not contact Apple when their MacBook
> keyboards fail. They just live with an S key that stutters or a spacebar
> that intermittently gives double. Or they just start using an external
> keyboard. Apple never sees these cases, so it never counts in their
> statistics.

That probably wouldn't be the case for Apple's own employees.

~~~
beart
I'm not sure that's a safe point. I've had problems with my corporate provided
machine in the past (non-apple) that I let linger because I can't afford to be
without it for repairs, less I miss a pending deadline.

------
charlesism

        Is Apple going to accept that they’re currently 
        alienating and undermining decades of goodwill 
        by shipping broken computers in mass quantities?
    

I imagine the majority of people who work for Apple understand that. That
doesn't necessarily mean the company will respond appropriately. That conflict
is what happens when employees lack faith that doing the right thing (for the
long-term health of the company) will benefit their own careers. I think
that's what is happening at Apple. Individual employees know better, but the
company makes a lot of bad decisions, even so.

------
hinkley
One of the disadvantages of corporate ordering I think is that you're much
more likely to get a bunch of machines from the same production run. If
something is wrong with that batch you'll see an inordinately high number of
failures, or you might luck out and get a good batch and see no problems at
all.

One at a time, you could end up with one machine with each of the failure
modes for that manufacturer, or none at all. But with a batch you could get
the same problem over and over.

Long ago we ordered 10 ThinkPads for a project. Two summers later a hard drive
failed. Then another. And another. By end of summer, about 7 people had needed
to rebuild their machines for the exact same reason: bad hard drives. On the
plus side, we were exceptionally good at rebuilding by the 4th one. So when
mine was #6 I hardly flinched. But I still lost a day (encrypted drives make
everything take a lot longer).

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camgunz
There have been a ton of bananas sales on MBPs and MBAs with the new keyboard,
but I never even entertained the fantasy of buying one because this keyboard
is completely unusable. Everything else is tolerable: bendgate, magsafe, no
usb-a, giganto trackpad, half battery life. But I just really, really need a
quality keyboard. I need it to work (incredible that I need to say this), and
I need it to not destroy my fingers, hands, and wrists.

Frankly, buy a Razer (Blade or Stealth, either one). They're the new top of
the line IMO, and have been for years.

~~~
hu3
Have you tested the Blade's mechanical keyboard by any chance?

Razer got me tempted with that one.

~~~
camgunz
Yeah I found one at a best buy. It was perfectly adequate, no x220 keyboard
certainly, but very acceptable. Caveat, I used it for like 5 minutes.

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potta_coffee
I won't purchase another MacBook, that much is certain. Unless they go back
and make something good, of course.

------
yanneves
I've been developing on a RBS (Razer Blade Stealth) 2019 since the beginning
of the year, absolutely love it - felt like the instant upgrade from my
late-2013 MBP I was craving, even trackpad and keyboard are improvements imo

will write up on my blog properly after 6 - 12 months daily use

~~~
mikkelam
are you running hackintosh? Or a linux flavor? Also how is the track corners,
are they easily tappable?

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cjcampbell
I certainly do not love the keyboard (or touch bar), but I get by with it just
fine and don't see it as a deal breaker. We have not had any keyboard-related
breakage on our 2016, 2017, or 2018 MBPs, and I haven't encountered anyone in
my personal orbit that has had major issues with these machines.

This is not to dismiss any of the breakage that is happening, but to say that
it is still possible to have an enjoyable development experience on this
machine.

That said, I would love to see the real data about quality and customer
satisfaction with this design. And given the changes in repairability, it
would be important to understand how maintenance and repair cost to the
consumer has changed. I suspect that this data could be used to lobby changes
in Apple's warranty practices (both for keyboards and broader issues).

------
hinkley
Every time I'm on a conference call and someone has one of the new macbooks,
we tease them about typing angry. They are so goddamned loud.

I had my 2015 repaired recently for $400 because I'm waiting for the 2019
macbook and hoping they've gone with a different keyboard design.

~~~
cseelus
The 3rd gen ones with membrane from 2018 are much more silent though.

~~~
whymsicalburito
"much" is a strong word. They are still so so much louder than the older
models.

------
caymanjim
The real cost to Apple is long-term/permanent loss of customers, and not just
MacBook customers. I've never been an Apple zealot. For a while, they simply
offered the most functional products. You paid through the nose, but the
products worked well out of the box, were sturdy, and offered innovative
solutions.

Over time, I amassed a full collection of Apple products: iPhone, MacBook,
iPad, Apple TV. They worked together seamlessly, and in their first
iterations, offered something that had little if any competition.

For the MacBook, which has always been computationally weak for the price, the
big win for me was the hardware. OSX/MacOS are nice and all, but I've always
been a browser-and-terminal developer, so having Unix under the covers is a
minor perk; I can just SSH into a Linux machine to do any serious work. What I
wanted from the laptop was a good user interface. The MacBook was sturdy,
elegant, fairly light, had a great touchpad, great battery life, great
display, and while I was never a big fan of the keyboard, it was perfectly
fine in earlier models.

The new MacBook keyboard is completely defective. Brand new, it has a poor
feel to it, keys stick, the TouchBar is unwanted and buggy. I've worked with
at least a dozen of the new models, and they're all like that. I had one
completely replaced by Apple, and it died within days.

The problem for Apple is that now I've bought a ThinkPad. I needed a reliable
machine, Apple didn't offer one, so I researched and bought something else.
Now, after blindly wandering the Apple forest for a decade, I've realized that
the rest of the world has not only caught up, but surpassed Apple, across the
board.

I'm not going back. I'm probably never going back. Now I have a Google Pixel
phone, which is way better than the iPhone. I'll likely get a ChomeOS-based
tablet when my iPad finally dies.

Without the MacBook to tie everything together, and with the realization that
for years I've been paying twice as much for hardware as I should, and that
the competition has more than caught up to Apple's early innovations, they've
lost a customer across the board.

I'm not skipping just this bad batch of MacBooks, I'm ditching Apple entirely.
And I'm not the only one.

------
visarga
I recently gave up on a slim keyboard MBP and now use a Linux desktop and a
mechanical keyboard. The desktop is almost as good and the keyboard experience
much better.

~~~
philippeback
Same. No MBP for me, given the current sorry state of affairs.

------
minikites
>Is Apple going to accept that they’re currently alienating and undermining
decades of goodwill by shipping broken computers in mass quantities?

Most people will keep buying Apple computers because they've accepted the
Apple "lifestyle" (ecosystem) and think Windows or Linux are gross. Having a
poor product doesn't hurt your sales if your buyers perceive the other options
are worse.

~~~
tpush
Yup, was a bit surprised to hear some people in the Apple (developer)
community apparently being actively repulsed by other platforms or software
not made by Apple.

I think periodically giving the other side a fair look can only be good
though, if just to see what Apple could do better compared to other vendors. I
say this as a general fan of Apple's hardware (holding on to my 2013 MacBook
though...)

~~~
no1youknowz
I have 3 different machines in my home. Mac, windows and linux machines.

I've been a user of linux from roughly 2005? A user of Windows since 2001 and
a Mac user since 2013.

\- I sigh deeply, deeply when I am not on my 2012 MBPr macbook.

\- I have zero problems with my macbook.

\- I am much more productive when I am on my macbook.

I am not going back to a daily driver of either Windows or Linux.

My next stop will probably a hackintosh and that's because of Apple's
shenanigans with the newer models.

~~~
tracker1
Been running Hackintosh for almost 2 years now for my home desktop. Somewhat
ageing i7-4790K w/ 32gb ram, gtx-1080 and samsung nvme. Lack of current GPU
support has me stuck without Mohave update possible. When I upgrade in July or
so, will give hackintosh a try (if I can get a modern GPU to work), or will
just use Linux. Almost every tool I use is cross platform or Linux already.

------
sitkack
I am typing this from a Mid-2012 Macbook Air. I have a Macbook Pro 2017 right
next to me that I detest using. I'd love to rage-smash the keyboard, but my
employer would probably bill me for it.

------
taylodl
I have a 2012 MBP. In my particular situation I no longer see the need for a
laptop. I'm now thinking I'd be better served by an iMac + iPad. The iMac I've
used at work is just awesome.

------
internet_user
mid-2015 MacBook keyboards were the best. Just bought another refurbished 2015
pro simply because of the keyboard.

Don't think I'll ever use the new keyboards. Terrible to type on.

------
autotune
The USB-C issue alone is resulting in me returning a recently purchased $2K
DongleBook Pro for an earlier version without all of the issues.

------
chendragon
I have both types of keyboards (pre-2016) and the 2016 Touch Bar 15" MacBook.

In my experience there are about three failure modes, some of which you can
fix by yourself. However, since the keyboard replacement program started I
just stopped trying to fix them myself and instead brought them in, because
they give you a free new battery too.

1) The key gets physically stuck up and won't press down. You can fix this
sometimes by just smushing down the key and crunching whatever crumb was in
there down.

2) The key doesn't respond or needs to be pressed hard to respond. This one is
hard to fix, but what I tend to try is to get some 70% isopropyl alcohol and a
q-tip. Remove the keycap, and dab repeatedly hard and fast with an alcohol
soaked q-tip on the round button dot thing. The idea is to get the alcohol in
under the dome, and have it dissolve/pump out whatever was stuck in there. A
few q-tips worth of alcohol shouldn't reach the logic board, but don't pour
alcohol on there directly. When in doubt blow on it, let it dry out, and try
again.

3) The key repeats. This one in my experience is easily fixable with the above
alcohol and q-tips method.

I've used these methods on a 2016 13" touch bar (problem 2) and a 2016 15"
touch bar (problem 3; put in little effort and gave up and elected to get a
free new battery). Both were purchased used for cheap, and the 15" touch bar
had previous coffee in the keyboard, as I later found out (a little.), and it
surprisingly worked fine for about a year until it became unhappy. I've also
had a 12 inch MacBook from 2016 that was just fine, even after eating crumby
food while using it on vacation.

Based on these experiences, I don't think the new keyboard design rolled out
in 2018 with the silicone membrane solves anything but 1), the least
frustrating of the three.

I haven't had a dead keyboard to destructively tear down yet, but from
observation it appears that the keyboard is made as a plastic sheet with
traces on it, and a little metal dome that pops up and down to make or break
contact with the traces. Over the domes, there's another cover sheet that's
not completely sealed, because it has cut outs for the key hinges and a little
weep hole for air to come out when it's pressed. I think the dirt is going in
through these. Perhaps if they move to capacitive sensing, or add a little nub
under the metal dome and replace the switch layer with the pressure-sensitive
sandwich from the older kinds of keyboards, making it so that the part that
sucks dirt in doesn't have to make contact but just pressure, this would be
resolved better.

The thing is, when typing I really do enjoy the newer type a lot more since
the lower key travel requires much less force to actuate than the older ones.
The actuation point is also much more precise due to the metal domes vs the
rubber ones in the older ones.

------
vladimir-y
"... than Apple says" as thinking and saying is not the same thing.

