Apple Now Prioritizing MacBook Keyboard Repairs With Quoted Next-Day Turnaround Time

[smithrh]

The unwritten -but very well understood by most - human rule of not talking crap.

 

[CWallace]

How does that account for the number of people posting on this forum and on social media (such as Twitter) with keyboard issues? I wish I could feel confident in buying a new Mac. If it wasn’t for the keyboard issues I’d be buying a new Air.

As another person noted, Apple ships over two million MBPs a quarter so those figures would mean Apple is servicing 100,000+ keyboard issues (not necessarily failures) per quarter.

Samsung, Dell, and HP keyboards actually work in the first place.

Oddly enough, we have yet to have a 2016, 2017 or 2018 MBP yet to suffer a keyboard failure whereas we have with our Dells and Lenovos over that same period. And our MBPs are the machines that get the most "use and abuse" as they are used by our devs who type directly on the keyboard where the PCs are mostly used by folks who dock them closed and use external keyboards so the only time the built-in one gets any use is at meetings.

I sometimes wonder if having keyboards that don't have as many problems would be a better way to achieve higher customer satisfaction and would alleviate frustration?

Hence why they keep tweaking the design over the years.

Valid point. Apple has no incentive to continue to produce something that was critically flawed. The interesting thing about the butterfly design is that, despite all the tech media attention, I've yet to see anyone provide a convincing explanation of where the flaw in this specific mechanism is supposed to be. It's all just reports of repair issues (sticky keys, keys that work intermittently, keyboard failures) that can happen with any brand of laptop keyboard using any type of key mechanism.

The issue appears to be the butterfly mechanism metal is very thin and can be warped by coming into contact with very small bits of debris. The inner membrane put into place with the 2018 refresh was an attempt to keep debris from getting into under the keys as well as likely to help make it easier for any such debris to be blow out via compressed air (as opposed to being driven deeper under the keys where it could warp/jam them).

 

[CE3]

I have a bad feeling that they're not going to redesign the keyboard in the next MacBook Pro redesign.

I don’t. My 2018 MacBook keyboard is working just fine so far, but I think this design has had enough problems and bad press that the next generation will be significantly revised.

 

[forerunnerg34]

Why would you buy a computer like that?, the keyboard failure is a matter of time (or luck), and has no fix. I don't think people enjoy bringing the computer to service again and again for the same problem.

 

[gnipgnop]

Nope, we're not talking about manufacturing defects. We're talking about a design defect.

A design defect would also be measured in how often it caused failures or repairs. If the number isn't higher than the accepted industry standard then there's no case. I would point out that all the types of problems people say they have with butterfly keyboards are exactly the same as what people complain about with Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer keyboards etc. There's nothing unique about laptop keyboards needing repairs unless the total number is unusually high.

 

[Analog Kid]

Ok, you seem really smart. You might not know the answer to this but it’s worth a shot, if I buy a 2018 MacBook Air what are the chances that the keyboard will fail? are we talking higher than normal?

I ain’t so smart, I just have a preference for hard numbers rather than emotional outbursts.

Based on the Apple Insider data, it seems the chances of the machine failing at all is lower than previous models, but if a 2018 does fail the reason is slightly more likely to be due to the keyboard.

 

[ElRojito]

When I worked at the Genius Bar these were the most commonly failed repairs. If you are a customer looking to get this done, don’t get your hopes too high — a lot of geniuses are no longer trained hands-on, so it is possible your Touch ID won’t work or sit the same or the repair will be botched.

 

[iAVERY]

This is why I love Apple.
They are always working to put customers first.
You won't get this level of customer care from a Samsung, Dell or HP.

Do the Deell or HP noteebooks have brokeen keeeyboards though?

 

[rumplestiltskin]

This wouldn't have happened if Tim Cook were alive.

 

[Analog Kid]

I do appreciate the actual numbers, and I expect there's the common pattern at work here, of, if there's a place to congregate and complain then you will be exposed to a skewed higher percentage of complaints than if you sampled users in general. But I do think there is a substantial problem, and it's particularly galling, because for years Apple's laptop keyboards were the gold standard. The flip side from the numbers (which are necessarily estimates), is I've heard numerous second/third-hand reports of people having minor problems with the new keyboards and simply living with it, rather than taking it in for service (if your keyboard dies, you have to take it in, but if it merely doesn't register some keypresses sometimes, many might just suffer in silence) - so those don't show up in the repair numbers, yet are still causing people grief. Yes, that's anecdotal. But the "actual numbers" are estimates - it's not the kind of data Apple is going to release.

I would expect the silent sufferers to be at least partially captured by the Consumer Reports data.

I also would have expected to see an uptick in service requests among the silent sufferers when Apple started their free repair program-- not those who didn't want the hassle, but those who were trying to avoid the expense. AI didn't see much of a bump.

There are silent sufferers with every generation of product-- I don't see anything to support the idea that there are more of them now. I do, however, see a noted trend toward being critical of Apple and their prices and a societal fear of being exploited by greedy corporations. I see "it's unacceptable at these prices" more often than just saying "it's unacceptable".

I think the key is the "second/third hand" reports. We keep hearing people reporting on other people's problems and absorbing it as a belief that there are multiple failures. I read a lot of comments saying this is a real problem and they'd never buy this product because of it-- so they have no first hand knowledge of the product quality, only what they've absorbed from other sources.

There was an increase in failures in 2016 which was real even if it wasn't huge. "Butterfly keyboard" got a bad name. It looks like the failure rate is back to historic levels but "butterfly keyboards" remain and thus the problem "isn't fixed".

And then you have threads like this where increased scrutiny brings increased reports:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ipad-pro-2018-bending-issue.2167913/#post-27055342

"How do I know if I have the problem."-- Are you a victim? Look closely, you might be suffering and not even know it.


Your "gold standard" comment gets to what I think is the more important issue: the short throw keyboards feel awful to type on. Failure or not, I don't find them pleasant. Some what we're hearing may be "it works, but I still hate it". In which case calling it a reliability problem hides the real problem.

 

[needsomecoffee]

The issue appears to be the butterfly mechanism metal is very thin and can be warped by coming into contact with very small bits of debris. The inner membrane put into place with the 2018 refresh was an attempt to keep debris from getting into under the keys as well as likely to help make it easier for any such debris to be blow out via compressed air (as opposed to being driven deeper under the keys where it could warp/jam them).

Plastic not metal. May be made brittle given prolonged exposure to heat thereby increasing risk. Knee-jerk silicon membrane response may exacerbate life-time failures while helping with short-term dust. This really is going to be a text book case for engineering design decision making (or lack thereof given Jony's apparent dictatorial rule).

 

[Webster's Mac]

This is why I love Apple.
They are always working to put customers first.
You won't get this level of customer care from a Samsung, Dell or HP.

Try business class from Lenovo/Dell. You can get onsite service. That's even better than having to take a machine to a store.

 

[gnipgnop]

The issue appears to be the butterfly mechanism metal is very thin and can be warped by coming into contact with very small bits of debris.

The overall keyboard depth is thinner due to the butterfly mechanism not needing to travel as far as the scissor. The butterfly hinge itself is made out of plastic.

 

[Falhófnir]

Of course, if the Unshaky software works wonders, then that means it's not actually a hardware design problem. It's a software problem. Debouncing is just a calculation for what the system should ignore after a keystroke.

If it is a firmware issue after all this time, it's quite jaw dropping in itself that Apple didn't pick up on that and issue a fix immediately (presumably a software fix was the very first thing they tried?).

 

[Morgon]

The 2015 MBP GPU is fine in 2019.

While I actually doubt that (although it may be more accurate to say that the 2019 GPU isn't much better than the 2015 GPU, which is not the same thing as your message), I didn't say anything about the GPU.

The CPU and RAM options of the current iterations are the things I need for my workload, which are not available in the 2015 MBP.

 

[cmaier]

If it is a firmware issue after all this time, it's quite jaw dropping in itself that Apple didn't pick up on that and issue a fix immediately (presumably a software fix was the very first thing they tried?).

it’s not a software issue. All this app does is detect when you hit the same key twice too fast, and stops the second one from appearing. It doesn’t do anything for the case where the key fails to register a hit. It’s a band-aid. They did the same thing with the TRS-80 40 years ago, back before they knew how to make reliable keyboards.

 

[Juicy Box]

Hence why they keep tweaking the design over the years.

They might be tweaking in the wrong direction.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

I'm sure others have said it already, so I'll pile on: replacing the crappy keyboard with another crappy keyboard isn't 'fixing' or 'addressing' anything. It's just stringing people along until they are out of warranty, and out of luck. It used to be that MacBooks would last for a lot longer than Windows machines in view of updates making them unusable. Now it's keyboards, screens, stuff that make the resulting system unusable if they do break. Unusable, irreparable, unforgettable.

 

[biziclop]

If you have the keyboard problem, this will almost certainly help:

Unshaky

It's a app/service that debounces keyboard presses.

Google it.

It has made my two MBPs usable again.

Sorry for the big text, but Unshaky had been a game-changer, trying to spread the word.

https://unshaky.nestederror.com/
https://github.com/aahung/Unshaky

 

[SamuraiArtGuy]

Seriously, all this effort, research and pain, to save what? .5mm in height?

When my old MBP (Core Two Duo - Ancient!) gave it up, I went out of my way to get a pre-butterfly, pre-touchbar used MBP. So bugger all this noise, and get back to me when you redesign or replace the keyboard with one that works.

But we all know that waiting for Apple to admit they screwed up on a design, it's waiting for hell to freeze over.

 

[mikethemartian]

This is why I love Apple.
They are always working to put customers first.
You won't get this level of customer care from a Samsung, Dell or HP.

Are they increasing overall resources devoted to customer repairs or are they just pushing repairs for other issues down the list?

 

[Zdigital2015]

The 2015 MBP GPU is fine in 2019.

I am pretty sure the people seeing significant speed gains with their workflows using the Core i7 2.6GHz or the Core i9 2.9GHz along with a Vega 16 or Vega 20 would disagree with you and would not give you their current model for a 2015.

 

[Awesom-0]

This is why I love Apple.
They are always working to put customers first.
You won't get this level of customer care from a Samsung, Dell or HP.

Is this sarcasm?

 

[project_2501]

I remember in the early days the abuse and denial from irrational apple-defenders.

Now it's universally agreed the issue is not just real, not just widespread, but really really bad.

I know Apple Watch these forums (because of a legal case, a data request showed they had personal data from here) .. and so .. Apple ... apologies publicly, compensate us not just for the not-fit-for-purpose laptops, but also for the corporate passive aggression we've suffered at your hands. Ethical wholesome company, my ass.

Despite all that - fix the keyboard, go back to the 2015 classic, and I'll buy your next MacBook Pro. As will many may others.
[doublepost=1556054477][/doublepost]

Is this sarcasm?

Apple service .. in detail:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2017-macbook-pro-13-non-tb-review.2056971/

 

[Glockworkorange]

This new keyboard is a menace. Even the 2018 model is giving me issues with the occasional key stick, and sometimes registering multiple keypresses (happens a lot with the delete key, actually).

Twice for me.