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Butterfly keyboard users with NO issues - how often does your laptop get hot?
- Thread starter ajmicek
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I think it definitely has an effect. My 2016 took 11 months to fail. My laptop got hot during intense photoshop and final cut pro sessions.
What I mean is, did the whole keyboard stop working altogether, did individual keys fail, did it gradually become more and more unresponsive over time etc..?
For all the hundreds of issues I've read about including mine, certain keys stopped working. For example, if you hit the R key it would either not type anything or type multiple Rs with one press.
It seems the consensus is that its debris entering into the mechism and blocking (and eventually) breaking the very delicate butterfly components. Even Apple alludes this with their KB article that directs owners to old the laptop at odd angles and blow compressed air
Definitely, the infamous "speck of dust" stuff! I appreciate your accurate summary. I think Apple has really successfully set the narrative with blaming dust, and I'm unsure if that describes the full picture.
So, the heat theory I have heard about has two parts:
- Keys in certain areas (spacebar, B, N) seem to fail more often than others. These keys are quite close to the CPU (check out the location, from iFixit).
- Some people have no issues with the keyboard and others have repeated replacements that don't fix their problem.
This all may point to heat. It may not!
Unfortunately, soliciting feedback from those who have had NO problems is like selection bias in reverse. So it may end up being a rather unsuccessful survey. After all, who is trolling forums about their butterfly keyboard if it works perfectly? : )
I thought they were plastic, my bad, but I still believe the mechinism is still incredibly fragile
I put mine under a significant load for an extended period of time several times per week. The fan spins up and the case gets quite warm, but the keyboard works perfectly. It's a late 2016 touchbar model.
It definitely could be both heat and dust!
I'm interested in how successful the "speck of dust" narrative from Apple has been, nearly to the exclusion of other theories of etiology of key failure. That's why I brought heat up.
It seems that, in the discussions here at MacRumors and the ones started by Casey Neistat, Dustin Curtis, and Casey Johnston -- there are keys on these keyboards that fail FAR more frequently than others.
Dust has an equal chance of falling into any one key, right? So if it was dust, I do not think we would see these patterns of failure, where specific keys conk out.
That's what got my attention when others were talking about heat playing a role.
Yup. Excellent reasoning and likely why dust isn't the real issue.
I had noticed that when the machine got hot, one of my keys consistently stopped working or worked intermittently. I bought a table top laptop cooling pad (with large fans that spin underneath it) to keep the laptop cool. This seemed to have helped decrease the frequency in which keyboard issues arose.
At last, the keyboard still malfunctioned. My best guess is that heat gradually distorts the keyboard's underlying mechanism to the point where it becomes unusable.
Your observation that it happens consistently with certain keys likely point to the fact that certain areas of the computer's internals are hotter than others (eg. CPU, battery areas).
Lovely machine, but unfortunately have a clear issue with the way the keyboards are designed. From the various forum threads and posts, I'm not confident that the top case replacement adequately fixes it and have been deferring this until this past week.
Sadly, the underlying problem is still present (ie. the design) and I don't think it's fixable. The 2018 revision will likely still have this problem if the design is not fundamentally different. Given the limits of what Apple can do in testing it behind the scenes versus having millions of people using it on a day-to-day basis, it'll be hard to iterate out of this one.
On a related note, I was at the Apple store and saw shelves full of this
. I think someone forgot to close the shelf.The CPU/GPU are located in the upper half of the logic board, which itself is located in the upper half of the laptop. The major heat development should be under the number keys, not the lower key rows.
I'd interpret this as the issue being partially dependent on user behaviour. Yes, that is part of that equation, but so is the average exposure to dust/dirt and frequency/force with which the keys are activated.
Trying to do a representative survey on a forum is already problematic in itself
Your comment got me thinking!
I had simply "eyed" it up when others were talking about heat areas and where the keyboard is, so instead I've made a gif. It shows 2017 13" from the bottom, and then as though you had x-ray vision and could see up through to the keyboard above; then it shows important chips highlighted (CPU in red box at the center of the computer, at the center of the heat pipe (image credits: iFixit, Apple).
It is definitely true that the heat pipes run close to the number keys.
But wouldn't it be hottest at the center, at the source of the heat?
Your comment got me thinking!
I had simply "eyed" it up when others were talking about heat areas and where the keyboard is, so instead I've made a gif. It shows 2017 13" from the bottom, and then as though you had x-ray vision and could see up through to the keyboard above; then it shows important chips highlighted (CPU in red box at the center of the computer, at the center of the heat pipe (image credits: iFixit, Apple).
It is definitely true that the heat pipes run close to the number keys.
But wouldn't it be hottest at the center, at the source of the heat?
I got MBP 15'' 2017 with Touch Bar about 3 weeks ago, one of the keys is already acting up - number 9 is the key with issues - right above the heat pipe - weird thing though, laptop never went over 55 degree of celsius on CPU. I'm using external display though, so maybe a GPU could produce some heat for the "9".
Maybe/maybe not, but think about it. Even if heat is a cause, it still boils down to an inferior design of the keyboard because other keyboards do not suffer from such a design. At the end of the day, something is causing the keyboard to fail.
Bummers on the keyboard failure though that sux
This is an assumption that warrants investigation. You can't just assume that this is the case.
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On a related note, I was at the Apple store and saw shelves full of this
View attachment 763364
Funny, but they have likely kept these in store well before any keyboard change.
I think I see what you are saying! Namely, the larger surface area of the spacebar would collect disproportionately more dust, and if dust were the primary etiology of failure, then spacebars would fail more frequently. Which they do!
Unfortunately, keyboard cover use affects both operating temperature (heat) _and_ exposure to dust... and those who use them have had failures, as well.
I've gone in circles on this heat versus dust thing for so long -- we'll probably never know what really is causing the failures, but I sure am curious.