Indeed. I was pleasantly surprised that in this thread it was almost entirely people who aren't Keyboard-Calamity-Deniers posting for once.
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Movie Director Taika Waititi Tells Apple to 'Fix Those Keyboards' at Oscars
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You and a thousand (loud) people? Assuming a total of ~50 million butterfly switch devices were sold, that's 0.002% of the total customer base. That's less than Dell's 5% average laptop defect rate. Come back to me when you find at least 2.5 million people having problems with it.
Like I said, overblown. It's just another Antenna-gate.
No one is saying this.
It makes sense for some to downplay the issues because not everyone is a professional writer. For Taika Waititi, it's hard to overstate how serious the issue is. That being said, if you don't write for a living, the severity is greatly diminished.
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If it's your livelihood, it's not overblown. Also, Waititi is not complaining about a defect, he's complaining about a conscious design decision.
How do you know the numbers and how is life on that African river?
- MBP keyboard failure occurred a while ago. Was using Magic keyboard and trackpad at my desk as a workaround.
- Finally took it in for repair
- Bought a Mac Mini so I could keep working
- Liked the Mac Mini better
- They broke my Macbook during repair, had to send it to repair center
- Got my Macbook back (faster than expected! 48 hour turnaround)
- Never want to go through it again. Returned my Mac Mini, then bought another identical Mac Mini w/ Macbook Pro trade-in so I don't get stuck with store credit
- Never buying another Macbook until they fix the damn keyboard
I defended the Macbook Pro keyboard as "not that bad" ... until it finally happened to me.
It's not fun when every time you type in your passphrase it gives you an error because of keypress doubling.
Profit or durability. Choose one.
Under Tim Cook's reign he's making products with high profit and low durability so you upgrade more often. If you don't like that then get a Thinkpad that have keyboards that still work fine on 2008 and earlier models.
Under Tim Cook's reign he's making products with high profit and low durability so you upgrade more often. If you don't like that then get a Thinkpad that have keyboards that still work fine on 2008 and earlier models.
Estimate. Apple sells about 20 million Macs per year. Butterfly mechanism was introduced in 2015. 4 years *20 = ~80 million. Subtract iMacs and non-butterfly switch Macs, so maybe about ~50million.
How's life sleeping on a concrete mattress?
I know I am 100 percent in the minority here, but I own both the new 16” and a 2017 15” and I prefer the butterfly to type on. After using the butterfly for 2 years, and having had the keyboard replaced due to a stuck key, I was fully expecting to absolutely love the 16” keyboard. I have to say, trying them side by side, I prefer the butterfly. But I totally understand the frustration with its reliability issues and the annoying stuck keys. I ended up using a thin, silicone keyboard cover and never had an issue after that. It’s weird though, I get a lot more missed keystrokes on the 16” scissor than I do the butterfly. I really wish they had mastered the butterfly design because it is a far more accurate keyboard to type on. And it’s not like they didn’t try. It’s just a flawed design. And it’s a shame, because going back and forth between the two, I didn’t realize how much I actually liked the butterfly until I went back to the scissor. In a way, I feel like I get just as many missed keystrokes with the scissor that I did with stuck keys on the butterfly.
I wonder if Taika has considered just using an external keyboard that works better for him? They all use USB, no biggie. You should only be typing on a laptop on the go, not all day. Laptops are terrible ergonomics, you end up in a Gollum like posture after a while.
I will never understand why people live with hardware issues when they can simply return the product for replacement. “Everybody” knows that Apple offers Apple Care abs and warranty replacement for actual issues. So why let something replaceable drive you insane? That’s insane!
It reminds me of Federighi’s description of how the Mac Pro team came to the realization that they screwed up with the trash can: “We all went on our own emotional journeys, I’d say. There were periods of denial and acceptance. We all went on that arc.”
Some here haven’t made their peace with the bottom line: however well intentioned, overall the butterfly keyboard was a failure. Sometimes Apple screws up. Start over and do better.
There does seem to be an issue with the length of time it takes Apple to recognize there’s a fatal error and course correct.
Disagree, I basically took back my 2015 MBP from my daughter and told her to take my 2019 MBP solely because of the keyboard. I’m handling 200+ emails a day, the constant double clicks, missed clicks, the noise when I’m in video/teleconferences made the keyboard unusable..
so I ditched a quad core i7, 16gb beast because the keyboard sucked...
I do all my writing on an older MacBook (or iMac with a good keyboard) for much the same reason: because the butterfly keyboard feels like banging your fingers on a solid piece of plastic. It’s trash and has been from day one.
The reliability issues came later but the key travel and feel sucked all along.
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The reliability issues came later but the key travel and feel sucked all along.
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I’d say the man would do well to check out ergonomic external keyboards if he has RSI. And laptops are really not great ergonomically in the first place -- unless you put them up closer to eye level and plug in an external keyboard and mouse (aka, turning into a desktop machine).
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Well since you're busy making up arbitrary numbers... Every single person I know that owns a butterfly keyboard-based MacBook needed repairs (happens to be 5 people). That's 100% failure rate to me, so I'm going to say it's 99.9% of the install base (excluding you). See how meaningless my number is? Stop making generalizations, it does nothing to prove your point.
if it were just a few isolated cases of bad luck we would not see users with multiple switch failures on the same keyboard. We wouldn’t see people complaining of replacements failing one after the other. And we wouldn’t see respected tech journalists or bloggers writing first hand accounts of failures.
In reality we are seeing multiple journalists, writing first hand stories about multiple replacements with multiple key failures on their own Macs. Apple must be really really unlucky to have these rare occurrences all happen to the same handful of visible users over and over again.
People who care about keyboards care about their keyboards.
That's why I use a RAZR BlackWidow Chroma, probably the best keyboard on the market today (IMO obviously). I went back to the model M for a while and the keys were too heavy. Head over to Best Buy and try one today.
That's why I use a RAZR BlackWidow Chroma, probably the best keyboard on the market today (IMO obviously). I went back to the model M for a while and the keys were too heavy. Head over to Best Buy and try one today.
I never had an issue either but 2 years later it started. Luckily I had apple care so it was exchanged but thats the problem. The keyboard is basically a silent killer. One day it will just show up and you hope for the best
I know right? I hate using laptops as laptops for working for long periods of time. Give me a proper desk with a chair, real keyboard (IBM Model M is my bag) and a large display at the proper height.
I use a 5K iMac at home but if my primary Mac were a laptop I'd definitely have a monitor/keyboard/mouse setup at home to plug into. Forget using a laptop as a laptop unless I'm on the go, and sometimes on my couch.
not sure how your personal experience supports counter-argument with what i said. but good for you, i guess.
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Go google up the estimates. Apple sells about ~20 million Macs per year. Butterfly mechanism was introduced in 2015. 4 years *20 = ~80 million. Subtract iMacs and non-butterfly switch Macs, so maybe about ~50million. Want to be conservative? Fine, 25 million butterfly-switch devices. Find me a million users that are complaining about it. Then we'll reach the 5% average defect rate and at that point we can consider it a problem.
But go ahead and rely on your meaningful 5-person (6 including you, i guess) data point to speak for millions of customers. I'm glad you're not an analyst.
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I love my 2018 MacBook Pro 15”, but when I’m using it at home to work on stuff, it’s docked and I’m using an external keyboard, mouse and nice big 4K monitor on a mounting arm that puts it at eye level.
Anyways I wonder if the 2019 16” MacBook Pro keyboard is what Taika is talking about? Or is he talking about the old butterfly keyboard that’s on its way out across the product line?
Doesn't mean anything. Those same journalists wrote about Antenna-gate which ended up being a non-issue.
It's simply an over-reaction to change. Because Apple changed the keyboards in a way we find it negative, we overreact when something goes wrong with it. Had Apple kept the same scissor switches and if the same amount of people encountered a keyboard issue, we would hear much less of it simple because we'll assume it's a standard defect. But since it's a new switch, we automatically assume there's a systematic problem with the new switches. And we all love to bash Apple so we overreact to issues like these.
Unless you have hard numbers of genius bar appointments related to keyboards or hard numbers of the MacBook returns due to keyboards, I'm going to file this issue under "overblown".
My wife and I are approaching 2 years on our 2017 MBP laptops. My wife uses her keyboard daily for her PhD. 2 of my sisters got MBAs (pre 2019) with the butterfly keyboards.
After about a year, one of my sisters started having a problem with a stuck key and keys repeating. She showed me a video of it as well. She lightly presses the key and it'll double even with one press. She took it to Apple who cleaned it out - fixed the stuck key but didn't fix the key doubling. They said they'll replace it if she takes it back.
Still interesting as my wife and I know many people at university that use these keyboards without problems. My sister was the first person I knew IRL with a keyboard issue.
The butterfly keyboards are loud but I've grown to like them. But like most people here: When I want to get real work done, I put my laptop on an EGPU with a 4k monitor and external keyboards/mice.
I can see why some people hate this keyboard but my wife and I have used it heavily for almost 2 years now and they're doing fine for us. I was happy with my 2015 MBA keyboard...
After about a year, one of my sisters started having a problem with a stuck key and keys repeating. She showed me a video of it as well. She lightly presses the key and it'll double even with one press. She took it to Apple who cleaned it out - fixed the stuck key but didn't fix the key doubling. They said they'll replace it if she takes it back.
Still interesting as my wife and I know many people at university that use these keyboards without problems. My sister was the first person I knew IRL with a keyboard issue.
The butterfly keyboards are loud but I've grown to like them. But like most people here: When I want to get real work done, I put my laptop on an EGPU with a 4k monitor and external keyboards/mice.
I can see why some people hate this keyboard but my wife and I have used it heavily for almost 2 years now and they're doing fine for us. I was happy with my 2015 MBA keyboard...