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Apple Launches Repair Program for Faulty MacBook and MacBook Pro Keyboards
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damn, yea he's had some issues with his things. I would be mad about the June-september new update for 2018's also. They should of said it was coming like what they do with all their delayed products a few months out but no. Wanted to clear out some of the already built computers before having another option for something better. Not good
Yeah, I have to mostly agree with him. To be fair, some of these changes might have been due to component availability, but Apple certainly could have warned/noted/held-off, etc. Lots of companies do this, but I guess I hold Apple to a bit higher standard based on their history (which we probably shouldn't do, as they aren't the same-ol'-Apple anymore... they are now a more moral-less corporate entity run by business geeks).
One of the big things he said later in the video is about the pricing stuff. It's absolutely correct that the devices and computers were rapidly getting better under Jobs as well, and actually in some cases, dropping in price. Yet Cook has the audacity to blame the price increases on products improving. What company doesn't improve their products each iteration? That's just part of their job, not something you get to charge extra for each iteration.
I agree with him that Apple has treated the MacBook Pro crowd horribly over the last 5 years or so. Part of that was design mistakes, but a lot of it just the new-Apple corporate ways. Rather than doing the right thing, they probably now have MBA suits running formulas to try and decide just how much screwing they can get away with in each situation w/o too negatively impacting the profits.
For all Jobs' negative traits, at least I think he fundamentally loved technology and technological advance for its own sake, and while certainly wanting to make a profit, wanted to be sure the customers had something great and a great experience. The soul of Apple, if you will. That is what I feel has been eroding (sometimes quickly) at Apple over the last decade or so.
That said, I do love my new Mac mini. I sure hope I don't have issues with the T2 chip! I maybe don't run things as hard as he does, but do have an eGPU and such.
I have a 2009 MacBookPro that I'm going to replace with a MBP 2nd gen because of budget. I use mostly as a HD with Hubs. I find it amazing how we're willing to pay so much for stuff that doesn't last. The only issue we've had - aside from getting VERY slow - as the battery will no longer hold a charge; and it's the 2nd battery!
You're actually doing quite well if the only thing that went wrong with your 2009 Unibody is that it needs a third battery. My 2009 is on its 3rd battery. The batteries on the power hungry Unibodies never really lasted that long. For the kind of things I do on a laptop, I could only get 2 to 3 hours out of my Unibodies. Those batteries declined pretty swiftly.
My MBP (1,1), bought in 2006, still runs, though the user replaceable battery is about gone - it's the third battery I've bought for it, but they can no longer be found anywhere. Anyway, point being, that old laptop is going on 13 years old. That was the kind of machine Apple used to produce, and is why their resale prices were traditionally high. I doubt that reputation will continue much longer. I don't use the machine much anymore - it is slow and I suspect the old HDD will fail soon. Apple stopped supplying system updates 6 or so years ago, so I have it double booted with either OSX Lion or Linux Mint 17.1. Linux still supplies security updates, so it is the only partition I allow on the internet.
I'd have to look into the details more, but wasn't that a different kind of battery tech... with way less sophisticated power management and charging tech? I think it was just a reality of laptops at the time. I was in grad-school and always had to sit near power outlets in longer or back-to-back classes.
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Yeah, my son has a 2017 MBP, so we'll see how this plays out. He's a bit too young to realize the impact of these issues, at least until they likely start happening. When that time comes, I'm just going to be sad that this is the impression of Apple he'll be left with. I use it from time to time and can't really stand it. I'd never buy one. (I'm ***SO*** glad the new mini came out!)
Ok sorry but if i buy a new 2019 macbook does this mean i am covered for the keyboard till 2023?
My understanding is that yes, Apple now covers all the laptops with the butterfly type keyboard for 4 years. The problem is that most of us keep/use our machines for longer than that, and it's a crazy-expensive repair.
If your keyboard lasts 4 years, I really don't think you need to worry about it suddenly dying on you. They may have some problems, but the mechanism itself is not fragile. I beat the crap out of one of my MBPs and got a chance to look at the mechanism up close. It's pretty sturdy. Whatever happens to cause the problems isn't due to fragility.
And I did beat the keyboard pretty good (on a 2016). I broke off one of the keycaps typing very hard (intentionally), but it didn't break the mechanism underneath. That keyboard only gave me problems in the first year and mostly in the first few months.
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Yup, see here: https://support.apple.com/keyboard-service-program-for-mac-notebooks
A 4 year warranty on anything is pretty awesome, especially when that warranty repair would give you a new battery too. I've plenty of other stuff on my laptops blow up on me somewhere around the 4 year mark. The keyboard is the least of my concerns once I get to 4 years. I'm praying for the logic board, the GPU, the wireless card/chip. I've lost computers through all of those routes before. I can always plug in my own keyboard if something happens. I can't plug in my own logic board.
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I don't think it being fragile is the issue, though. The problem is that it is too easy for dust, a crumb, etc. to get under a key and make it stop working correctly/consistently. That could happen at any point. So, I'm not sure it lasting 4 years means a crumb won't get in at 4 years + 1 week.
Also, there seem to be a number of people on their 3rd or 4th keyboard replacement, so say you go 2 years, get it replaced, then another 2 years, and just squeak under the deadline... it might happen yet again in another 2 years.
One thing that puzzles me a bit in that repair statement, is the "for 4 years after the first retail sale of the unit." Does that mean the first retail sale to you? Or, the first time that machine was sold, so if you bought it refurb from Apple, you might not have 4 years from your time of purchase?
The dust and crumb thing isn't what people think it is. I normally support everything that iFixit does, but they milked this issue for all it's worth and everyone on MacRumors can repeat verbatim that all it takes is a single speck of dust to ruin the keyboard.
That's not actually true and it's also not really what they found. They placed a grain of sand with tweezers in the exact spot that would impede the butterfly mechanism from activating. For it to remain jammed, the piece of debris would have to be solid enough to resist being crushed if you gave it a hard press. iFixit carefully placed a solid piece of debris where it could cause havoc and everyone ran around screaming that iFixit proved that a single bit of dust is all it takes.
If you remove a keycap and look carefully, it's pretty easy to understand how this all works. The butterfly is actually a version of a scissor switch. Both operate on the same principle. The mechanism isn't what actuates the switch. It just stabilizes the keypress. Both types of keyboards are just fancy rubber dome keyboards with key scaffolding for smoother action. You could rip out the scissors and butterfly mechanisms out of the respective keyboards and end up with basically the same rubber dome keyboard.
Dust won't hurt a rubber dome and the only way they're going to impede a butterfly switch is if you've got major dust bunnies which seems unlikely unless you leave one sitting open for a year in a warehouse. Soft and dust-like debris isn't going to be a problem so it's a mystery why Apple never pushed back on the dust hypothesis. I personally believe it might be because they think the truth might actually feel worse to most people. The truth might be that in the majority of cases it doesn't matter what you do. You either have a lemon or you don't and people are more likely to buy a product when they feel like they're in control of the situation.
Not surprising. There are a lot of MBP's out there and if the problem has to do mostly with manufacturing issues resulting in bad batches, I'd expect that people who got bum units were more likely to get another bum unit because they likely would have been picking up a supply chain sibling of their faulty machine. Also, users aren't always as innocent as they claim to be. I'm sure most of those cases are pretty legit, but there have to be a few in there who aren't telling the whole truth.
It's 4 years from the day you purchased it from Apple.
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What is it, then?
I've been using Apple laptops since the PowerBook 100, and there has never been a keyboard with this kind of problems (actually, on any laptop I'm aware of, even by other makers). Something is fundamentally flawed to have this many issues.
Far from being rare (as Apple claims), I only know a few people who haven't had problems. And, holding a laptop upside down at an angle and using compressed air as a recommended 'fix' seems to indicate debris is at least partly to blame in many of the situations.
Nobody but Apple can answer that and they're not talking, but I really don't think it's dust and crumbs based on what I've seen. My money is on manufacturing yield issues combined with heat causing the butterfly scaffolding to warp slightly to cause the keycap to misalign.
I get the feeling you seem to think I'm saying there are no problems, which I'm not. There are problems, it's just not as ubiquitous as people think and a 4 year warranty more than satisfies any risk I would feel in the issues not being fully resolved. I mean come on, four years is an amazing warranty. Any laptop that is used rigorously on a daily basis is on borrowed time at 4 years anyway.
Hard debris causing problems, yes. Ordinary dust, no.
The way debris can stop the switch scaffolding also makes me think this is a manufacturing QA isssue. With the exception of the spacebar, it's not that hard to pop off a keycap to get at the exposed butterfly mechanism so you can clear a chunk of very hard debris with a pair of tweezers. It'd be idiotic for Apple to do all these topcase replacements when a tech can pop off the keycap and clean out the jam with a pair of tweezers.
So holding the laptop upside down and using compressed air might push off a blocking piece of debris, but anything that's going to be dislodged by compressed air is unlikely to have been a permanent problem anyway. The handful of times I've had jams on my 2016, I simply gave the key a hard press and wiggled it clockwise and counter-clockwise a few times.
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Maybe it's some combination.
I don't have the data, but just from people I know, follow on social media, hear on podcasts and YouTube videos... it actually seems quite ubiquitous. While they don't all totally fail, almost everyone experiences issues we've never experienced in the past with keyboards.
I've used many (actually most) computers past 4 years. Yes, I suppose they can fail in some manner (I've had the dreaded GPU issues of past MBPs), but it has never been the keyboard.
But, even that, or the compressed air 'fix' aren't something I've ever had to do with a keyboard in my 30+ years of heavy computer use in all sorts of environments.
I think the reason this has caused so much fuss, is that Apple has always had quite good keyboards, so it is an issue that should have never been the case in the first place. Then, Apple acting like it isn't a big deal, and continuing to use it for so many years, just magnifies the outrage.
Your posts are awesome. Thank you.
Just to comment - if AppleInsider's sources are right, these new keyboards have less repairs than older generation laptops.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...em-to-improve-reliability-and-thats-not-great
"Overall, the total number of service calls is lower for both the 2016 and 2017 MacBook Pro, versus the older models, even including the keyboard failures."
"It turns out there was a problem, and is worth discussing. And, it is one worthy of a repair program. But, it is not an "epic fail" or any other declaratives that we've seen lately."
https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...-at-a-faster-rate-than-the-butterfly-keyboard
"Tom Warren of the Verge tweeted that "Apple is trying to fix its broken MacBook keyboard design again," but like most reports taking aim at Apple's butterfly keyboard, there was no effort made to quantify the issue. There isn't data showing the MacBook keyboard is "broken." Instead, it remains a nebulous complaint that is suggested to be an industry-worst failure rate without any real data supporting that."
"But MacBook keyboards also had key failures and other issues before the introduction of the butterfly mechanism in 2015—in fact, our data shows they were actually less reliable than today's MacBook Pros."
"It has become the new iPhone 4 AntennaGate or iPhone 6 BendGate: a reason to take joy in a problem that's not clearly even a problem for most users, and also one that's not at all unique to Apple, even if the media narrative frames it as if it were."
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I know my wife and I are loving our 2017 MBPs. We eat next to them, treat them like we did our 2015 airs. No problems. People we know at college, a relative with the same keyboard - no problems. Not that this is scientific at all, but if it was anywhere near the "My keyboard failed for the 420th time! The office I work in, 90% keyboard failure rate!" you'd think it would be a bit more prevalent.
I think Apple still does have quite good keyboards. Keyboards fail, the last generation, if AppleInsider is right, failed more frequently - people were just less vocal about it and it got a lot less press coverage. New keyboard design? Press, attention, $$$$. Who would pay $3000 for a terrible keyboard?! One way to get a lot of attention here is post stuff like that.
My wife is doing a PhD on hers. She's written a LOT on it over the last year and few months. All day long.
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Well, there also seems to be a lot of confusion over this, from what I've seen.
Yes, it appears the overall failure rate is lower based on some data Mike W. at AI was able to obtain from an Apple Store sources (and project, then, to the overall). I wouldn't doubt that for a couple of reasons...
Each generation has made improvements - again, overall - that impact outright failure. So, even if the keyboards are failing at a higher rate, the overall repair rate might be lower.
But, how do we define failure here? When you're at a meeting and your 'c' key stops working until you get home and blow it out with an air can, is that a failure? Not to Apple and those statistics. It's only a failure if it outright stops working and can't be fixed with the air can, etc.
So, again, out of that anecdotal group of people I know or have heard of reporting failures, maybe 10% of them had to have replacements (some more than once). But, like 80-90% of them had temporary failures.
You might say... it's just temporary and didn't require an Apple repair. Fair enough if that is your criteria. But, I've never had a keyboard act like that over decades. So, while it isn't a complete (recorded in Apple's stats failure), it's a failure in comparisons to past products (from Apple), and many competitors, and certainly a failure in terms of interrupting my productivity.
I'm sure there is some media sensationalism going on (as is the case with most media these days). But, are all the podcasters, YouTubers, bloggers, in the tech (and related) worlds lying when they report having had an issue? Are all the people I know who've bought one making it up to create some added drama? I have my doubts.
I (fortunately) only have a personal sample-size of one, in that my son bought one. Knock on wood, he hasn't had a problem yet (though it's only been like 6 months or so, I guess). I'm happy about the 4-year repair extension, but I've never seen an Apple product I've bought as only a 4-year investment in the past (maybe an iPhone, but never a Mac). I don't think my son was thinking that way, either.
I might have bought one, but never liked the keyboard even before the failure stories started showing up. Even if it were as good or better in terms of quality, it still is a quite divisive keyboard in terms of ability to type well on it. I guess, in that regard, to each their own. But, given the prevalence of Apple's laptop line, I'd think they would (even if no issues happened), want a keyboard more of their user base actually liked.
So, this is kind of a double-whammy. Complaints about the reliability on top of complaints about the general dislike of it (for typing). I'm sure the latter has amplified the outcry, but from the evidence I've been able to gather, I think it's fairly widespread in comparison to what Apple is trying to claim.
Yep, who knows. I would love to see the official statistics. That said, I get it that people don't like this keyboard. I'm still getting used to my Magic Keyboard 2. Dang thing has little to no travel. (Yeah, I know my laptop has less, lol). But it seems like everyone is going that way these days.
I think the only reason why the 4 year warranty came out was to repair Apple's reputation that had been "stained" by the press reporting that these keyboards were "defective" and even if the stats showed they had better reliability than previous models, every user that had an issue would make headline news. That's why I think the 4 year warranty came out. But who knows. I wouldn't put it past a company to mitigate a problem to save $. Though Macs, if I remember right, were pretty low on Apple's profitability charts.
I've used mostly Dell laptops in my lifetime (I'm 33). I've had to replace 2-3 Dell keyboards. I realize laptop keyboards fail. I also think it is pretty stupid to make a keyboard that difficult to replace. But I love Mac OS and I love the build quality of Apple. :/
So the only one of my friends who has not had a keyboard failure in a post 2015 design (who owns one) just had his 2016 in for
This has to be costing apple a mint.
- screen replacement due to faulty ribbon cable (cable can't be replaced independently of screen - go go apple repairability!)
- new keyboard/case due to 7 key repeating
- new battery
This has to be costing apple a mint.
What a useless "Study".
No metric for the total population of machines sampled, and i'll bet dollars to donuts that there are far more 2014 machines still in the field than 2016-2017. They're also older and thus have more wear and tear on them...
Ok. I just want to point out something you brought up as being the reason why I take some of the testimonies about people's "worst ever" experiences with these keyboards with a grain of salt.
You said that Apple's always had great keyboards and I've even heard other people say that Apple used to have the best in class keyboard.
I've never heard people talk about previous Apple keyboards in such glowing terms until recently. I'm sure some people really mean it, but some of these people are recalling memories that have been revised by an echo chamber. I don't think they're doing it consciously. They're just getting their memories bumped by people whose opinions are being bumped in turn by someone else's YouTube/Internet Rant/Blog Post/Comment until we end up with a bunch of people forgetting that it wasn't all sunshine and roses yesterday.
Being a keyboard enthusiast, I remember the introduction of the earlier generation of Apple keyboards quite differently. Lots of people reviled either the flatness of the previous generation of Apple keyboards, lack of sculpted keys, or the shrunken size of the keycaps. People no longer have negative associations with the word chiclet keyboard, but when it was first being thrown around, it wasn't meant as a compliment.
If we go a generation before that, it puts us in the territory of the godawful iMac keyboards with the equally awful puck mouse and people seem to conveniently forget that Apple was responsible for those. (My apologies to people with small hands and quirky tastes who actually liked that generation of Apple peripheral. I know you're out there. You do you.)
For the record, I do believe some people are having some terrible experiences. I also believe that some people are helping each other revise the past and contribute to the pile-on.
So don't do that. I think the compressed air thing is a lame suggestion that would only help a really small percentage of people. For everyone else, it's a placebo to give them some sense of control over their machines where they have none.
Plenty of keyboards in the past 30 years have had some pretty notable issues, just not so much amongst the mass produced units in the past 20 because almost every mass produced keyboard in this era was a rubber dome keyboard made for durability and cost savings rather than the experience. If you go into keyboard enthusiast communities where people are swapping tips on boutique keyboards that aren't mass-produced, you'll find that there are a lot of issues out there in keyboard-land and yet keyboard enthusiasts put up with it because that's the price you pay for wanting manufacturers to leave their safe spaces to produce something you'll find interesting. Keyboards are not as easy to design as people think they are.
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HI, I have 2017 15 MBP, it has the third top case replacements due to keyboard issue. How can I check that which version of butterfly keyboard got it? Of course I don’t want to disassemble the mbp...
I am curious because the current keyboard is significantly quiter and softer...
I am curious because the current keyboard is significantly quiter and softer...
I don't think it's possible to swap a pre-2018 keyboard for a 2018+ one.
Apple swaps 2016 and 2017 keyboards for the 2017 version, 2018 and 2019 keyboards for the 2019 one AFAIK.
Not sure about the 2015 original 12" MacBook tho.
Fair point, and I probably should have qualified my statement a bit. I was primarily talking about laptop keyboards, as I think most of us with desktops and Apple keyboards we didn't like (cf. old iMac) just replaced them with some USB keyboard we liked better (same with the mouse). Of course, Apple also had some legendary (great) keyboards earlier on, too. (ex. Apple Extended II)
The 'chiclet' keyboard, I suppose I agree to a point. It did take a bit of getting used to, and some of us complained a bit, I suppose. However, once one got used to it, it was pretty good and fast to type on. Not quite as good as more substantial keyboards, but there were enough positive tradeoffs that many of us eventually stayed there.
I think one of the reasons for the difficulty, is that when you have to move between keyboards, anything too odd is problematic. I had a PB 100 (Sony made, with the slightly smaller keyboard). It was an awesome keyboard, but because it was different, it messed me up every time I had type on a regular keyboard.
Can someone get as used to and fast with the new butterfly keyboard? I suppose. It might be similar to the above, where it's hard to move from one to the other.
But, the failure thing (as far as I recall) is a new thing. I don't remember even the worst of these keyboards being unreliable.
As a side note, I currently type (w/ my desktop) on an Apple Magic keyboard. I don't think I'm as fast on it, though. I'm considering getting something like a custom like a CODE Keyboard ( https://codekeyboards.com ) for when I have lots of typing to do, and then using my Magic Keyboard when doing something like recording (video, podcast, etc.) as the quiet (relatively) factor is nice.
Hmm, that's the Apple recommended 'fix'. It seems to work, from what I've heard, much of the time.
What are people supposed to do when a key is repeating or not working? I've never had to deal with that, I guess. (I guess maybe one laptop I had years ago, a bracket under the spacebar let loose and I re-attached it... and it was never quite 100% perfect again in feel. But, that's the worst problem I ever had with a keyboard.
It's funny you bring up the legendary AEK II, which is one of my favorite keyboards of all time... but that too has problems. It relies on the troubled ALPS switch which is well known for key repeats. I've owned many ALPS mechanical boards and many of them have at least a minor keychatter problem. The version of the ALPS switch used in the AEK II's were dampened and more stable and tended to be less problematic, but weren't immune to ALPS chatter.
The common variant of ALPS chatter is not hard to fix though... if you know how to do it. Sadly, most people don't and they dump a perfectly good keyboard.
Indeed, tweaking your mechanics isn't very easy to do. Some people do it more easily than others, but I can see the ultra flat style of keyboards coming out today to be a nightmare for a lot of people. I didn't start liking the butterfly switches until I learned how to tweak my mechanics on them. And this is where I have a problem with a lot of the commentary on the butterfly keyboards. Many of the loudest voices have little first hand experience with them. Tapping on them in the store or trying it for a few days doesn't count.
Some people who are repulsed by the keyboard would actually end up enjoying it if they gave it a real chance. I said this same thing to other people when the chiclet keyboards first came around.
If people talked about other computers and keyboards as much as people talked about Apple, I think you'd find that while serious, this isn't an exactly a unique circumstance. I've had to repair broken switches in two Unibody MBP keyboards before and I had to replace an old Sony Vaio laptop's scissor switch board with a new one last year. All of them have weaknesses.
From what I've written above, I'm sure it'll be no shock to hear that I'd totally encourage you to get something like a CODE keyboard. I switch keyboards whenever I'm in a rut or bored. If you're not well versed in mechanical keyboards, stick to to the more common configs or better known names because it really is more common to run into keyboard issues once you get into small production run high-end keyboards.
There are also lots of people who reported that it doesn't work too, but I'm giving much weight to what I've heard one way or another. From my first hand experiences, I just don't see how that's anything more than a placebo fix for most people. Here's a photo from my 2016 MBP. There's plenty of dust and debris in the key well if you look closely. (Sorry kinda gross). At the time this was taken, it had been a year since I last had a key jam, but it clearly was not a year spent in a dust free environment.
I've never used compressed air on a key jam, but there are two things I think the compressed air might be doing.
- If the key is jamming because the keycap is misaligned, forcing air through it could temporarily realign the keycap, but it'd only be a short term fix if there is a loose binding or a warped butterfly as the underlying reason for the misalignment.
- If there is larger debris impeding one of the butterfly levers, it might dislodge it, but I'm not a believer that this is all that common.
- It might not be doing anything. Some of the jams were pretty easy to clear. Just pressing it in a different spot a few times or giving it one firm press was sometimes enough for me, but this suggests either an alignment issue or soft debris in the way of the lever that gets crushed.
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