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Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

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Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#41

Post by cmroanirgo »

kalleboo wrote: post #10
ajma wrote: post #2

hmm... am I alone in being someone who likes the butterfly keyboard?

I like the sharpness of it and don't mind short travel. I hate when I have to send my laptop in to Apple for 10 days to repair it because a speck of dust entered it. So now I use a "keyboard condom" on it to keep dust out (despite Apple's explicit support article saying NOT to use one) and it's turned into the worst keyboard since the ZX80

The apple repair store near me (not an apple store per-se) has those condoms on the customer facing keyboards. Wow, they're awful!

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#43

Post by jinushaun »

sundvor wrote: post #36
kkarakk wrote: post #21

i am absolutely laughing at this macbook pro 2017 i bought. the keyboard has been replaced 3 times now...the screen was replaced for stagelight effect(broken connector)...they replaced the whole top bit for that(everything north of the hinge gets replaced) i finally pawned it off on someone else and they promptly fried the motherboard due to water damage(the air intake ports lead directly to the motherboard so good l…

Woa. For the X1 Carbon, Lenovo actually designed ducts to channel accidental water ingress away from the important parts. It's kind of sad that Apple gets away with just focusing on the glitzy externals - and that their plethora customers don't care.

They do care, but Apple has a monopoly on making MacOS hardware and people are unable to “vote with their wallet”. Same thing with iPhones and the headphone jack.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#44

Post by robjan »

droptablemain wrote: post #40
microtonal wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried, but I don't really feel much sympathy for someone who buys a product with a 40% premium that's effectively a status symbol masquerading as a piece of hardware. Oh come on, this is getting really old. A lot of people (most Mac users that I know) pay the 40% premium because they want macOS and the Mac application ecosystem. Sure, there are people that will buy it as a status symbol, but that's a crude over-gen…

I drive a 7-year old subcompact and you're telling me that the Mercedes S-Class is not that expensive because it's only $10k more than the BMW 7-Series. Those are two quite modestly-spec'd laptops with fairly high price tags. I bought a rebranded Clevo with pre-installed Ubuntu 4 years ago with an i7 and 16GB of RAM for around $1,000. Does it have cool features like an all-aluminium construction or a nifty touch-bar?…

Can you develop and test iOS apps on it?

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#45

Post by culturestate »

marmaduke wrote: post #31
paxys wrote: post #14

> “So, just curious, why did you buy another one?” she asked, referring to the 2018 MacBook Air I’d gotten six months after selling the Pro. I was hoping she talked more about this part, but brushing it aside by bringing up "Apple ecosystem" is pretty unsatisfactory. It does tell you, though, that Apple has its target demographic by the balls, and broken keyboards are certainly not chasing them away. Macbooks will ge…

I do IT orders in a research institute, a MBP user wants a big memory machine to do server side data analysis, and wants to order the iMac pro 128 GB ram. He’s shocked to learn that for the same price he can get a Dell Epyc server with 512 GB ram. Guess what he still wants? The iMac, for the “ecosystem”.

The other commenter makes good points re: the cognitive cost of switching platforms, but let me give you another point of view: the Apple ecosystem is, actually, shockingly good.

My Apple Watch unlocks all of my Macs. When I join a new WiFi network on my iPhone, those credentials are immediately available to my iPad. When my iPhone rings, it pauses video playing on my Apple TV until I ignore the call. To send a link from my iPad to a friend on WhatsApp, I can copy the link on my iPad and paste it into WhatsApp on my iPhone - automatically. I can use my iPhone as a remote camera to insert a photo into a Notes document on my Mac with one action. The list goes on.

Yes, there are absolutely problems and Apple has made some dumb choices (I don't mind the butterfly keyboards but I hate the razor-sharp palmrests...), but overall it's incredibly cohesive in a way that I feel lots of people don't really grasp.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#46

Post by inflatableDodo »

marmaduke wrote: post #31
paxys wrote: post #14

> “So, just curious, why did you buy another one?” she asked, referring to the 2018 MacBook Air I’d gotten six months after selling the Pro. I was hoping she talked more about this part, but brushing it aside by bringing up "Apple ecosystem" is pretty unsatisfactory. It does tell you, though, that Apple has its target demographic by the balls, and broken keyboards are certainly not chasing them away. Macbooks will ge…

I do IT orders in a research institute, a MBP user wants a big memory machine to do server side data analysis, and wants to order the iMac pro 128 GB ram. He’s shocked to learn that for the same price he can get a Dell Epyc server with 512 GB ram. Guess what he still wants? The iMac, for the “ecosystem”.

Should have told them to buy an old Apple Pro tower and max it out with new kit. This way you can actually make a machine more powerful than the ones that they currently sell.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#47

Post by fredsir »

marmaduke wrote: post #31
paxys wrote: post #14

> “So, just curious, why did you buy another one?” she asked, referring to the 2018 MacBook Air I’d gotten six months after selling the Pro. I was hoping she talked more about this part, but brushing it aside by bringing up "Apple ecosystem" is pretty unsatisfactory. It does tell you, though, that Apple has its target demographic by the balls, and broken keyboards are certainly not chasing them away. Macbooks will ge…

I do IT orders in a research institute, a MBP user wants a big memory machine to do server side data analysis, and wants to order the iMac pro 128 GB ram. He’s shocked to learn that for the same price he can get a Dell Epyc server with 512 GB ram. Guess what he still wants? The iMac, for the “ecosystem”.

It just shows that there is more to computers than their specifications. Doesn't matter how much RAM is has got if I don't like using it.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#48

Post by dalbasal »

paxys wrote: post #14

> “So, just curious, why did you buy another one?” she asked, referring to the 2018 MacBook Air I’d gotten six months after selling the Pro. I was hoping she talked more about this part, but brushing it aside by bringing up "Apple ecosystem" is pretty unsatisfactory. It does tell you, though, that Apple has its target demographic by the balls, and broken keyboards are certainly not chasing them away. Macbooks will ge…

There just isn't much choice in the market. It's been windows or apple for a long time.

Windows and the laptops that come with it has gotten a lot better since the (imo) vista low point that got a lot of current mac users started (or back). But, there are still aren't many choices.

I was hoping android (or even iOS) would lead to some interesting new laptop choices but if you're in the market for a pc, it's still a pick-1-of-2 choice.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#49

Post by 0_gravitas »

rarrrrr wrote: post #30
wyclif wrote: post #16

P.T. Barnum (possibly) said it best: "There's a sucker born every minute." There are a lot of suckers out there with MacBooks.

After watching Louis Rossmann's live repairs and informed bitching, I bought an almost maxed-out Lenovo T480 on the President's Day sale and hackintoshed it. Water-resistant, backlit keyboard that's awesome and isn't crazy loud/fragile. 16 GiB, WQHD (could be brighter), Samsung 1 TiB 970 Pro and giant extended battery. 9 hour run-time. MIL-spec rated. EDIT: I had a pre-Retina A1278 mid-2012 MBP with 16 GiB and 2 SSD'…

LR has absolutely guaranteed that I will never willingly purchase an apple product in my life.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#50

Post by fredsir »

thought_alarm wrote: post #24
ajma wrote: post #2

hmm... am I alone in being someone who likes the butterfly keyboard?

The arrow keys are one of the most essential parts of a keyboard for people who write a lot of code or otherwise do a lot of copyediting. This type of user needs to be able to lock on to the arrow keys repeatedly and unconsciously without fail throughout the work day. Apple's keyboard designers understood this and got it right for over 15 years. But that changed in 2016. As of 2016, Apple's new keyboards provide zero…

> The arrow keys are one of the most essential parts of a keyboard for people who write a lot of code

Ahem... I think you meant "hjkl".

Just joking ;)

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