Live data from Hacker News

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

theoutline.com

341–350 of 644 posts

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

#341
post #140

It’s not just the keyboard, either. I’ve been buying Macs since they switched to Intel in 2006 and the most recent MacBook Pros are the most problematic I’ve ever had. - Bluetooth seems to be fundamentally flawed at a hardware level. AirPods, Plantronics, doesn’t matter. It just randomly connects and disconnects as it pleases. - USB-C dongles are a minefield of poor functionality However, I’ve run Linux off and on si…

> USB-C dongles are a minefield of poor functionality Since most of my peripherals have a detachable cord, I just bought a couple of USB-C whatever cables and now I'm fully 'native' USB-C. Suddenly the couple of USB-A host devices I have around feel incredibly legacy (an old MacBook, Xbox One). > Bluetooth seems to be fundamentally flawed / USB-C dongles I do have a USB-C-to-many-things hub but I never use it now, ye…

I have the same thing happening with a Maxtor usb stick. When I plug it into my 2017 MBP (via a usb-c to usb-a dongle), wifi connectivity will drop to what feels like an unreliable 1200 baud connection.

Apparently, it is an issue due to the metal unibody. It took me way longer than I care to admit to figure out the usb stick was causing the problem. :-(

Fun fact: try gently swiping your finger over the unibody while charging, and then without charging. You'll feel something like a vibration in the former case.

I prefer quality plastic.

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

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience: it’s ”unix” on a laptop that just works. Easy access to up-to-date tooling through brew: zsh, docker, bash, vim et al. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a Linux only user since the 90’s and for many years used the dell xps developer edition. But, the mac touchpad (I know, I’m doing it wrong) and screen coupled with superior battery time as well as solid sleep/wakeup makes for a great experience. The…

What is "unixy" about brew or docker?

macOS is a BSD system. I think that was the point

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

#343

A co-worked of mine convinced the company to buy them a MacBook (the first the company has ever purchased) to replace their aging Dell laptop. They have been doing more and more work on the company's iOS app and the aging Mac mini the company had purchased needed to replaced anyway. After having the laptop for just over a year, they called me upset as the laptop would no longer power on. After some gentle interrogati…

Is it normal for companies to expect employees to pay for accidentally damaged equipment? At everywhere that I've worked, some accidental damage was treated as a cost of doing business, and IT would replace it.

In many companies that's the case. I hate it.

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

#345

A co-worked of mine convinced the company to buy them a MacBook (the first the company has ever purchased) to replace their aging Dell laptop. They have been doing more and more work on the company's iOS app and the aging Mac mini the company had purchased needed to replaced anyway. After having the laptop for just over a year, they called me upset as the laptop would no longer power on. After some gentle interrogati…

> My co-worker ended up shelling out ~$1000 out of pocket as they needed to get work done and they had very real feelings of guilt. Ouch! Really? What kind of company wouldn't pay for this repair? And isn't this some sort of legal issue? The laptop doesn't belong to your co-worker so they can't really authorize repair of it. Just a weird situation, that.

I think this may have been lost in my post: the Genius at the Apple Store was clear and insistent when they diagnosed the issue with the laptop that the customer was at fault. It is my suspicion that Apple is trying to push blame onto the customer and I think that is unfair at least in some situations.

It reminds me of the extended warranty on phones; you get one because in the course of regular use you might drop the phone. In this case Apple has made these machines deliberately brittle and now you really need to get that extended warranty because in the course of regular use you might sneeze on the keyboard or drop crumbs of something onto it.

They also need to get work done ASAP and while we have spare Dell laptops on-hand, we don't have any spare MacBooks. I expect them to be reimbursed eventually, there is an insurance policy that covers lost or damaged laptops.

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

#346

A co-worked of mine convinced the company to buy them a MacBook (the first the company has ever purchased) to replace their aging Dell laptop. They have been doing more and more work on the company's iOS app and the aging Mac mini the company had purchased needed to replaced anyway. After having the laptop for just over a year, they called me upset as the laptop would no longer power on. After some gentle interrogati…

I’m in no way defending Apple’s keyboards and there are some real issues with tiny bits of dust completely ruining a keyboard, but normal laptops have always been susceptible to even a little liquid damage. But if your coworker couldn’t just go to his manager, tell them what happened and the company paid for it, that says more about the company.

I know somebody who spilled a whole slurpee into a cheap desktop keyboard once and had it continue working fine. I would pay extra. To have a laptop like that for sure.

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

#347
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From about 7 years of troubleshooting mac problems, it's actually worse than Windows problems. First, you find people discussing the problem where everyone claims it doesn't exist and no solutions are found. Then you find the problem and solution for mac os from 2008, and that solution definitely doesn't work, but might also break things worse. Then you decide, it's best to just make sure your headphones aren't on wh…

It really is kind of amusing how forum threads with Mac owners asking for help usually have at least a few people that instead of responding to the question take the opportunity to relate how their Mac has been working perfectly for them and never had that problem. I like my Mac and my Windows and my Linux boxen, I'm not a Mac hater, but I only see this on Mac related forums.

I've never really seen it for Windows forums -- everyone, including Windows fans, seems to admit at least Windows gets broken; so it's more hmm, that shouldn't happen, check this log or that log or do this rather time consuming thing (reinstall clean, etc).

For Linux forums, there is a small contingent of this never happens to me on Linux Yggdrasil, so try that. Except instead of a distro that died 20+ years ago and will not be getting updates, they have some other distro nobody has ever heard of and may not be getting updates.

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

#349

A co-worked of mine convinced the company to buy them a MacBook (the first the company has ever purchased) to replace their aging Dell laptop. They have been doing more and more work on the company's iOS app and the aging Mac mini the company had purchased needed to replaced anyway. After having the laptop for just over a year, they called me upset as the laptop would no longer power on. After some gentle interrogati…

I’m in no way defending Apple’s keyboards and there are some real issues with tiny bits of dust completely ruining a keyboard, but normal laptops have always been susceptible to even a little liquid damage. But if your coworker couldn’t just go to his manager, tell them what happened and the company paid for it, that says more about the company.

At least for myself, I fully expected Apple to fix the laptop. I had read about these keyboards and their issues, I was really surprised when Genius refused to take it in for warranty repair.

I suspect that if we had purchased the extended warranty, there's a good chance it would have been covered. Reading through the text of on their website it seems like this kind of thing might even be somewhat expected (like people understand that phones will be dropped).

"Coverage for up to two incidents of accidental damage, each subject to a service fee of $99 for screen damage or external enclosure damage, or $299 for other damage, plus applicable tax."

https://www.apple.com/support/products/mac.html

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

#350

A co-worked of mine convinced the company to buy them a MacBook (the first the company has ever purchased) to replace their aging Dell laptop. They have been doing more and more work on the company's iOS app and the aging Mac mini the company had purchased needed to replaced anyway. After having the laptop for just over a year, they called me upset as the laptop would no longer power on. After some gentle interrogati…

I’m in no way defending Apple’s keyboards and there are some real issues with tiny bits of dust completely ruining a keyboard, but normal laptops have always been susceptible to even a little liquid damage. But if your coworker couldn’t just go to his manager, tell them what happened and the company paid for it, that says more about the company.

> normal laptop have always been susceptible to even a little liquid damage

Check out Thinkpads

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/landingpage/small-business/reso...

Post reply on HN