Apple Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over 'Defective' Keyboards in Recent MacBook, MacBook Pro Models

[Bacillus]

When you have two designs before you:
- one that is slightly older, but proven
- one that is new, but failure-prone
... which is the wiser choice?

My opinion doesn’t count, because it’s up to Joni who can’t make mistakes.
But don’t bother him as he is busy with his latest new book on himself, his legacy, his impact on society, his idea’s, the art of design at Apple, and his role in it.
And Phil is laying his mouse upside down...
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That's what's so great about the Touchbar. When your "H" key fails you can just program the Touchbar to give you a new "H" key!

MacOS will soon feature adapt. defective key templates.
AI functionality to detect stickking keys and repplace themm with TouchBarrr equivallentts

 

[newellj]

aha, thanks for the clarification. I come from the age where it was called iBook and PowerBook which made it easier to distinguish.

My first Mac was an SE, which I vividly remember because the data disk on which all our financial information was stored failed. It took a couple of months to straighten out the checkbook. :-\

 

[Lone Deranger]

All this talk of dust. Before this new Apple "improved" keyboard was a thing, all an MB(P) user realistically had to worry about was not spilling his/her drink over it. But now we also have to worry about shedding dead skin cells. Good job Apple. That's thinking different alright! Wonderful progress.

 

[SarcasticJoe]

I haven't done this yet. Will probably try. But if I break it (which I might), I want to be in position where we know what the replacement will be.

You're going to have to screw up very badly to break anything in this simple procedure. Only realistic screw-up I think of is that you just try to yank away the HDD really hard once you've undone the two screws holding it in place, but even then a replacement HDD cable is something like $10 on eBay.

 

[i'mnewhere]

Well it’s definitely much improved. I wasn’t aware of anyone having issues with the 2017 version but maybe there are still some issues.

This is not true. In my experience, having replaced my late 2016 macbook pro keyboard at apple 3 months ago for skicky non working keys, the keyboard which is presumably the latest version is *already* starting to have sticky keys. In no way is it an improvement on the initial faulty design.

 

[mrhick01]

It looks like the keyboard issues are a real problem.

That is a design flaw, even if it's only say... 5,000 keyboards out of 2 million sold.

I respect Apple's design aesthetic, and one of the truths (which I'm not sure is always readily acknowledged in these parts), is that these type of design decisions were the type that Steve Jobs actually wanted. (The Apple IIe, Cube).

He wouldn't want the bad publicity, certainly...so let the aggrieved folks with the bad keyboards and the repair techs complain. Apple needs to be compelled to course correct, and consumers should not allow themselves to be socially engineered into accepting paying premium prices for flawed products.

 

[BEC60]

I will be interested to see where this goes. I have a 2016 MBP with touch bar that I bought from B&H just before Christmas last year. I am having (so far intermittent) issues with the "k" key that are clearly part of this. It hasn't gotten persistent enough yet for me to either go to an Apple store or do the "turn it on its side and shoot canned air at it" cleanup. Yet.

 

[acampagna85]

Watever, aters gonna ate

Oh yea... My "S" key is garbage. Decided to make a video of it:

 

[Lone Deranger]

Oh yea... My "S" key is garbage. Decided to make a video of it:

#applekeyboardgate

This should be a thing. Name and shame.

 

[LordVic]

Oh yea... My "S" key is garbage. Decided to make a video of it:

you weren't hitting it hard enough.

have you tried a hammer?

 

[macs4nw]

Don’t you miss the days when you could toss some of these electronics out of a third-story window and it would still work....?

Aren't you mixed up with those commercials where the cheating boyfriend's sh*t is tossed out the window at him, by the by now 'former' lover?......

I honestly don't remember any 80's VHS-VCRs flying out of a third story window, and NOT smashing into smithereens. If you do you're probably older than I am. Those surely must have been good times.

 

[Digital Dude]

Oddly enough I returned my 2017 15' the other day (not because of the keyboard, but because WWDC is right around the corner), and picked up a 2015 MacBook as a cheap ($600.00US) stopgap for the time being. I was a little concerned that the keyboard would be wonky, but oddly enough it seems to be working just great so far (fingers crossed!). Personally, I would love it if Apple tossed in the Magic Keyboard keys into a MbP. . . By far my favorite keyboard that Apple has made.

It sounds like you did well. My 12-inch MacBook Retina developed the flatten-out keys within 6-months, and I eventually paid for the repair of $375.00. I also have the 'latest' 15-Retina w/2TB SSD, and the keys are slightly better. I still have to tilt it on end and use compressed air to keep the keys working every week or so. I paid about $4500.00 for this one, and no way was it worth it. I have higher hopes for the iPad Pro2 but my Apple MacBook days are over. Now that more of the PC makers' have stepped up the quality, there is no need to look at Apple anymore.

 

[newdeal]

Apple already had a fix, which is the gen 2 butterfly keyboard. The lawsuit is certainly warranted in this case as Apple could've put the gen 2 keyboard for units with the gen 1 keyboard, or make units that had gen 1 keyboard with gen 2 keyboard, not keep making the failed gen 1 keyboard when they already fixed it with gen 2. I say Apple asked for the lawsuit. And I had thought why people didn't sue Apple earlier.

No the generation 2 fixes nothing

 

[jpep]

What are they going to do for the new MacBook/pros? Its too late for the 2018 has they are already produced. just waiting for the June conference.

 

[navaira]

OK. Either this is a big problem affecting tons of users, and then Apple needs to do a recall, or it's a problem affecting a small, vocal minority, and then Apple needs to announce free or low-cost keyboard replacement program. Anything else just looks like head in the sand by now.

 

[TallManNY]

You're going to have to screw up very badly to break anything in this simple procedure. Only realistic screw-up I think of is that you just try to yank away the HDD really hard once you've undone the two screws holding it in place, but even then a replacement HDD cable is something like $10 on eBay.

Cool. I've actually opened that laptop twice now already. Once to put in more RAM and another time to remove the DVD player as it had a stuck DVD in it and it wasn't working. I actually took the DVD player out entirely and just tossed it.

 

[Abazigal]

 

[GregJohn]

Why was that not covered by AppleCare?
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I had removed the cap on the one key. We don’t have an Apple store in our province so it was done by a authorized 3rd party. Apple customer service and an engineer tried to get it placed under the warranty but after a couple days the higher ups sided with the stores decision to.

 

[Zombie Acorn]

This is super infurating, my 2016 macbook pro has been sitting on a desk for a year and a half in clamshell mode most of its life and the keyoard just started failing. Meanwhile the 2015 macook pro that I beat the crap out of daily is still going strong... I blame Tim personally, this keyoard literally sucked so bad.

 

[537635]

That's just it. Machines that aren't used break down, machines that are used break down. It's like there's a shelf life for the new Macbooks, only they made them last a bit less than they should.

 

[Lone Deranger]

That's just it. Machines that aren't used break down, machines that are used break down. It's like there's a shelf life for the new Macbooks, only they made them last a bit less than they should.

Rumour has it that the 2018 MacBook Pros will get shipped with a 6 month ‘Best before’ or ‘Us by’ date. Apparently it is part of Tim Cook’s latest planned obsolescence strategy, because profits weren’t quite high enough.

 

[jasonsmith_88]

This is super infurating, my 2016 macbook pro has been sitting on a desk for a year and a half in clamshell mode most of its life and the keyoard just started failing. Meanwhile the 2015 macook pro that I beat the crap out of daily is still going strong... I blame Tim personally, this keyoard literally sucked so bad.

I'm currently on a 2011 MBP that has seen 10-12 hours of usage every day, and it's still flawless. People made fun of me back then paying for "overpriced" hardware. With time this machine proved to be an engineering marvel and was worth every cent. However, an equivalent 2017 MBP costs double the price I paid for mine in 2011, and has almost no chance of lasting a couple years, let alone 7.

I hope something comes out of this lawsuit as I do want to upgrade. I don't believe it's unreasonable to expect something of this price to last for at least 5 years.

 

[NoIdentity]

I have read a lot of posts in threads in the MBP forum that mention heat issues. AFAIK it's just a theory, but it is a theory that would fit the apparent fact that the MB seems to have a lesser failure rate, based on posts in the MB forum. Although I've read posts from people complaining about hot rMBs, the three I've had have all run quite cool, and many other people seem to have the same experience. Makes you wonder whether heat isn't a major contributor to the failures.

I have a MBP2016 and had not have much of an issue with my keyboard. I got one key once stuck, because of a debrie, but got it unstuck with ease, before this was such a known issue. But I have now noticed something that is only related to heat. Exporting a video had put some stress on my computer and obviously it heated up. The thing is that at this state, keys behave quite differently. The high pitch noise can become prominent and upon inspection they have a different feel than when cold. There is this sticky quality to them. They pop right back, but is different. The intresting bit is that as soon as the machine cools down a bit they return to their usual self.

I thought I would share this bit.

 

[jermwhl]

UPDATE - Shortly after this article came out, I took my 2016 15" MBP /w Touch Bar back to the apple store. My keyboard has been a problem child, out of the box, since day one. I had it into the apple store on 3 previous occasions. This time they finally replaced the entire top part of the laptop (I guess since the keyboard is riveted to the aluminum). I'm not sure if this was a result of the class action lawsuit, of just my persistence of bringing it in four times for repairs. Just to be clear, the 4th time it was out of warranty, but because of the history of the repairs, they granted and out of warranty exception.
I'm not sure if I got a really bad keyboard the first time, but this new keyboard feels different, physically. The play in the keys is a bit stiffer, and the key travel feels (only slightly) longer. And the most important part, the "N" key finally only inputs one character per press.

TL;DR - New keyboard, feels like a different keyboard entirely, problem has been fixed (finally).

 

[cmaier]

UPDATE - Shortly after this article came out, I took my 2016 15" MBP /w Touch Bar back to the apple store. My keyboard has been a problem child, out of the box, since day one. I had it into the apple store on 3 previous occasions. This time they finally replaced the entire top part of the laptop (I guess since the keyboard is riveted to the aluminum). I'm not sure if this was a result of the class action lawsuit, of just my persistence of bringing it in four times for repairs. Just to be clear, the 4th time it was out of warranty, but because of the history of the repairs, they granted and out of warranty exception.
I'm not sure if I got a really bad keyboard the first time, but this new keyboard feels different, physically. The play in the keys is a bit stiffer, and the key travel feels (only slightly) longer. And the most important part, the "N" key finally only inputs one character per press.

TL;DR - New keyboard, feels like a different keyboard entirely, problem has been fixed (finally).

Unfortunately, there is a good chance it will break again. But I wish you the best of luck.