Apple Hit With Second Class Action Lawsuit Over 'Defective' Keyboards in Recent MacBook, MacBook Pro Models

[corebeliefs]

Yes. You say that like it's a bad thing.

A company with a great product will have a great stock price. A company that focuses on a great stock price may or may not have a great product, and it will eventually turn on them. As an Apple user, I would like a great product, not just high stock. I'm not an investor in the company, I'm an investor in its products as a user.

Think about Amazon putting its profits back into its operations for all those years. The stockholders didn't like it at the time, but now look at Amazon.

 

[Soccertess]

Wish they would just update the old retina MacBook Pro chassis with the latest hardware. Get my SD card slot, ports, MagSafe and a proper keyboard back. Not going to miss the touchbar at all.

So true!! Couldn’t have said it better.

Hardware under Tim Cook has gone downhill. He keeps trying to cut costs to maximize profits.

 

[corebeliefs]

I'll take my faster processor, faster RAM, faster SSD, and faster I/O interfaces instead.

You're paying 80% of the price for the 2015 model, that's 4 generations behind. Seems pretty silly.

Silly unless you want a keyboard that is 100% effective.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I just hope Apple engineers are on it and develop something functional

Probable solution: deprecate keyboards, spinning it as antiquated technology that throw back to typewriters. Spin "the future" of laptops as keyboard-less laptops. Maybe try to position Siri as dictation assistant ala Star Trek "the future." Sprinkle in some "solid state" references too.

Build in a special keyboard jack, proprietary to Apple and offer a separate keyboard (sold separately of course) for those that must hang on to the past for only $699 or $899 if you want to be able to use capital letters too. Make SOME control on that keyboard essential so that no consumer can readily try to make do with a generic USB keyboard.

Keep the price of the keyboard-less laptop the same... or maybe raise it because it is helping to "force" us (clinging to floppy discs or horse & buggy) fools to "the future."

Make it so only an Apple keyboard can be purchased for it for several months, jacking up average revenue per new laptop sold. Stockholders love those increases in ASP and we consumers really don't care- we'll pay anything.

Rally the legions of fans to shout down anyone who offers any crits on losing the most ubiquitous input device that "just works" in favor of trying to make Siri work as a full "the future" replacement.

Spin "thinnest MB ever" because that's most of what we consumers care about short of "...but who makes the most profitable _________?"

Then, start planning the deprecation of the antiquated battery, screen, hinges, glass, etc so that eventually we can pay full price for just an empty box and more to buy parts separately to buy back functionality that used to come built in.

With each deprecation, spin "thinnest MB ever."

Record revenue. Max margin revenues. Zero repair liability for getting people to buy an empty box product. Geniu$$$$!

All (barely)

 

[dohspc]

They will offer a three year repair program were they "repair" the defective parts with more defective parts. At the end of the repair program they will just put the affected laptops in obsolete status so they don't have to repair them anymore. Case dismissed!!

 

[CarlJ]

There's nothing wrong. The keyboard isn't defective - it's just food debris get under the mechanical keyboard and the keys stop from being pressed down.

"There's nothing wrong. These airbags aren't defective. They're purposefully designed to kill the driver and passengers in case of an accident, to avoid costly hospital bills."

Designing a keyboard that can't handle dust and crumbs - very common occurrences in the real world where keyboards are used - is idiotic. Designing such a keyboard into the machine in such a way that it can't be replaced without swapping out the entire top half of the computer is astoundingly idiotic. They designed a lovely museum art piece when the specification called for an actual working computer. It's nearly unbelievable, because for many years Apple set the standard for excellent laptop keyboards - I'm typing this on a 2011 keyboard that is rock solid and still going strong, despite numerous real-world run-ins with dust and such.

And what they seemed to have gained from this, aside from the ire of many of their customers, is the ability to make the laptop ever so slightly thinner. Which, after a certain point, nobody is asking for. It's like they're in some sort of perpetual limbo dance contest, seeing how low they can go. They've sacrificed so much, to get that next 1/8" that nobody else cares about. We've lost ports, MagSafe, key travel, and then the reliability of the keys themselves.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I would imagine a lot of testing was done in the lab with machines pressing keys. Not an environment where dirt would easily accumulate.

Note that no robot owners of MBs are participants in the class action claims. Yet another advantage of robotics (no bodily oils, no food crumbs, etc).

If only we can figure out how to make it so the robots get paid, so they can buy Apple products hand over mechanical fist. Then, we could finally exterminate those pesky living consumers who dare expect good and ongoing value for their money... sometimes resorting to suing our Savior to try to get something for nothing. How dare they!

 

[Hustler1337]

This wouldn't have been so much of an issue if Apple stopped soldering/glueing/bonding the crap out of every single component or making some components hardcoded to only work with that particular device to make them irrepairable or non-upgradeable.

Their greed for money has come back to bite them in the ass. I hope it costs them dearly to fix a problem they've created themselves.

 

[DanBig]

Part of the problem is the way the butterfly is hinged. The thin piece of plastic holds the two halves together. Overtime this thin area stretches out which then impedes the switch from making a clean contact.

I've seen four systems now with this problem and it's clearly a defect in the part. You can blame both the plastic mixture used and you can blame the design of how this works.

While really gets me is the fact such a likely failure point was made harder to replace, using rivets instead of screws! If I was designing the keyboard I would have used a sliding keyed plate so I would only need a few screws so the keyboard could be easily removed, and I wouldn't have glued the battery cells down either!

Forget about 3rd parties fixing the keyboard, just think of the costs it will cost Apple when they have to redo all of these systems! Apple dug a deep hole here and I don't see a way out for them thats going to be cheap!

 

[Hustler1337]

Probable solution: deprecate keyboards, spinning it as antiquated technology that throw back to typewriters. Spin "the future" of laptops as keyboard-less laptops. Maybe try to position Siri as dictation assistant ala Star Trek "the future." Sprinkle in some "solid state" references too.

Build in a special keyboard jack, proprietary to Apple and offer a separate keyboard (sold separately of course) for those that must hang on to the past for only $699 or $899 if you want to be able to use capital letters too. Make SOME control on that keyboard essential so that no consumer can readily try to make do with a generic USB keyboard.

Keep the price of the keyboard-less laptop the same... or maybe raise it because it is helping to "force" us (clinging to floppy discs or horse & buggy) fools to "the future."

Make it so only an Apple keyboard can be purchased for it for several months, jacking up average revenue per new laptop sold. Stockholders love those increases in ASP and we consumers really don't care- we'll pay anything.

Rally the legions of fans to shout down anyone who offers any crits on losing the most ubiquitous input device that "just works" in favor of trying to make Siri work as a full "the future" replacement.

Spin "thinnest MB ever" because that's most of what we consumers care about short of "...but who makes the most profitable _________?"

Then, start planning the deprecation of the antiquated battery, screen, hinges, glass, etc so that eventually we can pay full price for just an empty box and more to buy parts separately to buy back functionality that used to come built in.

With each deprecation, spin "thinnest MB ever."

Record revenue. Max margin revenues. Zero repair liability for getting people to buy an empty box product. Geniu$$$$!

All (barely)

Apple have (almost) already done that. It's called the iPad Pro

 

[Acronyc]

keep 'em coming.
And for those who say their keyboards are fine...just wait

How long should we wait? I’m 18 months into using my 2016 MBP and haven’t had any keyboard problems.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Apple have (almost) already done that. It's called the iPad Pro

But then again, "What's a computer?" commercial.

Biggest problem with the iPad Pro: it is priced wayyyyyyy too cheap to wash MB revenues. Apple needs to jack up that price... for Apple... for AAPL... and to make us consumers that care about Apple profitability above all else happy.

 

[corebeliefs]

How long should we wait? I’m 18 months into using my 2016 MBP and haven’t had any keyboard problems.

Another poster said that his large company had a 14% failure rate. That's still many thousands of users.

 

[rodpascoe]

I just hope Mr Cook gets fired and is replaced with somebody more competent and less of a Mac hater.

More competent? He's done an amazing job during his tenure, Steve Jobs personally selected him to be his replacement. They're coming close to being the most profitable business ON THE PLANET.

And as for Mac hating, he loves the Mac, he's been quite vocal on it.

Back on topic, interesting statistic from the head of my local Apple store. The new butterfly keyboard has LOWER return rates then the previous MacBook Pro keyboard.

 

[Sedulous]

Maybe in the very least this will make Apple think about hardware design that is not so stupid.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Silly unless you want a keyboard that is 100% effective.

Mine has been on both of my new MBPs. In fact, they've been just fine for the majority of users. If it was as huge of a problem as some here seem to believe, you'd have seen mass recalls and it publicized all over national news.

The reality is that only a very small number of users have been impacted by this.

 

[Saturnine]

What a shame that users are having these problems.

I had this exact issue and, what’s more, tiny plastic pieces snapping off from underneath the keyboard got caught between the keys and the screen caught deep scratch-like pitting.

Fortunately, I took my laptop to the Genius Bar who agreed to an in-warranty repair of both the screen and keyboard.

Having received the laptop back, I’m pretty sure they essentially replaced the whole thing. All my files were still present so I assume they moved my logic board into a new laptop.

 

[Radon87000]

MOAR PROFITS at any cost.

 

[MartiNZ]

That song is awesome!

Tim should make that song available on itunes.

I guess it's the risk when you are an early adopter, just sucks for those who put so much money down. I wish Apple designed their products for replaceability and self-repair. Hopefully they lose and pay big!

Yes, great effort on the song and video, very cool and inventive way to complain

These keyboards are just bad news all around: uncomfortable to type on and actually defective with real instructions to use compressed air? That smacks of holding it wrong a little too much, with the same no one else's does that obvious response. We need to see videos of Apple pressing the spacebar on other machines with the same issue, like when they did finger acrobatics to try to show other phones losing signal. At least butterflygate sounds quite nice.

 

[project_2501]

Good.

Apple staff and senior "executive liaison" people treated us appallingly.

We wrote to Tim Cook many times and were ignored.

I really hope apple gets the karma it is due - throughly and deeply.

 

[ChrisChaval]

glad I got my 2017 MB Air

got a working keyboard, got all the ports and magsafe, too

forced innovation that I call

apple stumbled 1 step forward falling 4 steps backwards

 

[DataChris]

"I Am Pressing The Spacebar and Nothing Is Happening..."

Bwahhhahh that video wins the Internet!! (sadly I had to hit the space bar 35 times to type that).​

 

[miamialley]

Hmm, I've had my MBP for a year and a half and haven't had a keyboard issue. I wonder why.

It's actually my favorite keyboard ever.

 

[brdeveloper]

Yeah, except with hardware 4 generations behind, and still not cheap.

But still way cheaper than the touchbar models.

 

[DrMotownMac]

I wonder whether Steve Jobs would have shipped a computer with this keyboard (or the touch bar, for that matter). Based on anecdotes of his time as CEO, I imagine he would have called the keyboard and touch bar "pieces of ****" and then promptly fired the "bozo" responsible for them. He reversed course pretty quickly on the failure products (Mac G4 Cube, iPhone 4 antenna, etc.). At the very least, I think he would have eliminated the butterfly keyboard and touch bar from all Macs going forward and then acted like they never existed. The dumbest thing Apple can do would be to continue with those features in the next generation MacBooks and pretend like there's nothing wrong.

The butterfly keyboard and touch bar are like New Coke back in 1985... an interesting idea, but clearly a mistake and the company reversed course very quickly. Hopefully, Apple will understand this and treat this whole keyboard/touch bar thing accordingly. If you can invent a new keyboard that is truly BETTER (and at least as reliable), then go for it. Otherwise, go back to the formula which has been successful for you in the past.