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Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

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Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#141

Post by dpkonofa »

OrangeMango wrote: post #133
dpkonofa wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't make recommendations based on predictions. That's a terrible reason to wait for a necessary purchase.

But they do offer a small education discount ($50 or so on the cheaper hardware) and almost always have a "Back to School" promotion in which they also throw in some sort of accessory for free. For the last two years (at least), the "Back to School" promotion launched in the middle of July and offered a free set of Beats headphones, which had a retail price of $200-300.

Sure, and that's a valid reason to wait. Waiting on rumor and conjecture, though, is almost always a bad idea.

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#142

Post by bradknowles »

cletus wrote: post #129
jacknews wrote: post #5

Add to that, that the keycaps break. They have teeny-tiny clips on the top edge, which just break after a while, and they just lift off, sticking to your finger, or just shift slightly, enough not to 'click' when you press them. I'm not a particularly heavy typist (though it sounds like it on the butterfly keyboard, compared to my previous 2013 macbbok pro), but I've now had about 8 keycaps replaced in the lasst year…

Serious question: how much force do you type with? The reason I ask is that I see many, many people stab laptop keyboards with a ridiculous amount of force. It actually bothers me like someone is banging on my skull, particularly for the bad keyboards you have (which includes the latest MBP). I learned to touch type in high school. At first, believe it or not, it was with manual typewriters. These actually require a…

Agreed, a lot of people pound the holy living snot out of their keyboards. Old or new, it doesn't matter.

However, with the newer keyboards, even if you are a relatively light typist, it still sounds like you're pounding the holy living snot out of your keyboard.

Apple addressed that somewhat with the rubber membrane in the latest generation, but we're constantly having to ask people to mute themselves when we're on a conference call and they're typing.

Otherwise, it sounds like gang warfare throughout the building, and I need to reach for my 33dB NR earplugs.

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#143

Post by bradknowles »

luckydata wrote: post #83

I'm a little surprised anyone is surprised by this story. Apple has a long history of making questionable engineering decisions that end making their products nigh unusable and then steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the issue until evidence becomes too hard to deny. It happened with the iMacs multiple times, with the phones multiple times, with the MacBooks multiple times... By now we should know and not give them…

Apple doesn't always do this. But they do have a pattern of sometimes doing this, when they feel like the thing they delivered is just fine, and they are blind to the problems that are being reported by the industry.

And when that happens, and people scream louder, then Apple digs their heads under the sand just that much deeper.

It can take a pretty earth-shaking size disaster before Apple finally wakes up and smells the kitten poop [0], and decides to actually do something about it.

But once Apple does finally decide to do something about it, they're usually pretty good about bending over backwards to try to repair that part of their damaged reputation.

Usually.

[0] All young creatures are stinky, it's just the nature of being young and small and in the hypergrowth phase of their life, and lots of input results in lots of output. But somehow kittens seem to be particularly stinky at this phase. One tiny kitten can stink up an entire large five story house. Been there, done that, narrowly avoided officially giving the name "Stinky" to our then-kitten, which would have stuck with her the rest of her life.

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#144

Post by bradknowles »

X-Istence wrote: post #79
panzagl wrote: post #74

My daughter wants a Macbook when she leaves for college next month- no Apple store within a 8-hour drive. Does anyone have experience getting this type of stuff fixed through whatever arrangement Apple has with a typical University? Is Applecare an absolute requirement in this type of situation?

Apple doesn't typically have an arrangement with a university. Apple does allow you to send the device in/get it shipped back to you though if there is an issue. There may also be a certified Apple repair store near your daughters university.

Depends on the University. UT Austin does have such an official relationship with Apple -- I knew the guy who did all that work, and he had 30 years worth of certification on various hardware and software from Apple.

He was also the guy who was certified and licensed to do all that same kind of work on Dell. He spent > 90% of his time working on Dell stuff, and was very happy when he got a call to come work on Apple stuff.

Yup, one guy for the entire campus of 50,000+ students, and 20,000+ faculty and staff. It amazed me, too.

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#145

Post by bradknowles »

dpkonofa wrote: post #88
jonplackett wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can wait until September that’s the month some people predict there will be a new MacBook Air with a new type of keyboard that goes back to the original design.

Don't make recommendations based on predictions. That's a terrible reason to wait for a necessary purchase.

Yup. Most predictions in this business don't hold a lot of water, especially when it comes to anything that Apple hasn't already publicly committed to and just hasn't announced a shipping date.

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#146

Post by bradknowles »

rohug wrote: post #104

In the list of eligible models: "MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2019, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)" I'm certain they previously would have specified that model with "Touchbar" rather than the number of thunderbolt ports... RIP Touchbar!

Of course, that also means that they are killing at least one or two of the Thunderbolt 3 ports.

Because there's no way they'd add one or more T3 ports on top of already having four of them.

So, maybe you don't want to be so glad to see that designation.....

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#147

Post by cassianoleal »

vuln wrote: post #8

Ugh. I really want to upgrade my 2014 mba. Four gigs of ram doesn’t cut it anymore and my eyes have grown tired of the screen. I love the size, battery life, I just don’t know what to get next.

Rumour has it a new MBA model with scissor switch keyboards will be released later this year [0].

Whether it's true or not, or if it will be an actual improvement remains to be seen but it might be worth the wait.

[0] https://9to5mac.com/2019/07/04/kuo-new-keyboard-macbook-air-...

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#148

Post by raydev »

jm4 wrote: post #125
ulfw wrote: post #109

I would love to know how much this whole keyboard disaster has cost Apple, in constant replacement costs (material, man hours) and reputation/lost sales. The stubbornness to have stuck with this for half a decade is what fascinates me.

Can there be any doubt this is what precipitated Ive’s departure? This keyboard is a disaster. They ended up replacing the entire inside of my laptop when my space bar broke. Then I had the logic board replaced again a few months ago after it was bricked by an update. Worst computer I’ve ever owned and I’ve owned the likes of e-machines, gateway and cheap netbooks back in the day. Each repair exceeded the cost of App…

> Can there be any doubt this is what precipitated Ive’s departure?

That this precipitated his departure is doubtful.

Ive has had one foot out the door for a few years.

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#149

Post by breck »

lancesells wrote: post #116
bradknowles wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem with the old hardware is that it can't go over 16GB of RAM. And over time, things have slowly gotten to the point where -- IMO -- even 16GB of RAM is no longer really enough for simple baseline usage. If you want an Apple laptop with more than 16GB of RAM, then you don't have much in the way of options. This is a problem that has only been fixed with the latest generation of hardware. So, you have to…

I don't know what you mean by baseline but I have 8GB or RAM in a 2014 MBA and it's perfectly fine for most any tasks that I do. I've rendered heavily layered 1080p video in After Effects without any sort of problem. I doubt it can handle 4K video but for me 8GB definitely works as a "baseline".

I do a lot of data science tasks in Python and R and 8GB is definitely a show stopper a lot of the time. It makes life easier when I can just write naive code that loads all of our training data into memory.

I like to work locally when possible but often have to move things to our 512GB servers for speed. For GPU heavy stuff I'm running things on our Nvidia machines only but lots of non-GPU tasks are still memory bound.

16GB or better 32GB would allow me to go to the server probably 25% and 50% fewer times, respectively. Which would be great!

Re: Apple's service program for butterfly keyboard MacBooks, even out of warranty

#150

Post by breck »

tdurden wrote: post #62
breck wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t know there were 16GB options. I thought I got the best last generation MBA at 8gb and 512. It’s my primary machine and I still love it.

My mid 2014 15" MBP came with 16GB

I bought mine from Apple's refurb store, and come to think of it their probably just wasn't any for sale there at the time. I forgot that not all models are on there.
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