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My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

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Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#91

Post by VogonPoetry »

wvenable wrote: post #73
bloppe wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car safety is a bad counterexample because the risk is otherwise often externalized i.e. your car can easily hurt a total stranger whereas the consequences of your choice in laptop are strictly personal. And as GP stated, regulating this sort of thing would definitely force a particular trade-off on everyone. A lot of people would be pissed to have MacBooks with worse "build quality" even if they were more reparable.…

I disagree. The lack of repairability has external costs not born by the purchaser or the manufacturer -- more toxic trash unnecessarily added to the environment. Forcing a particular trade-off on everyone is entirely the point. It's the point of car safety, it's also the point of minimum warranties, electrical emission regulations, safety standards, etc.

Does this also mean only using "standard" parts? Or does the manufacturer have to over-produce the parts for, lets say 7 years, and then warehouse and ship those parts, probably multiple times. Or keep a low rate production line running for 7 years? What happens to the parts that don't get used? Are they scrapped?

That "what if" cost is going to be built into the cost of the laptop. Repairability doesn't always keep the cost low. The purchaser will definitely have to foot the cost otherwise it isn't sustainable.

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#92

Post by vintagedave »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #83
ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS has slid a long way down the quality ladder over the past ten years.

In what way? Tahoe's UI SNAFU aside, it seems like it's basically just a more polished version of the older macOS versions from a decade ago.

I run into bugs every day. It wakes, and has a black screen not wallpaper. Change spaces and the focus is wrong for half a second. Login screen is a pain because it collapses all users together. Notifications don’t scroll if they stop scrolling when the cursor is over a gap between them. Something on the system constantly eats disk space, and I think it’s the system updates. If I dock two apps in one space, sometimes one is black. If I zoom out to the Spaces overview it shows fine in the preview though. In the Terminal if I close a tab it can focus an entirely different window.

I could go on for hours. It’s a buggy mess these days and I miss Lion and Snow Leopard desperately.

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#93

Post by stavros »

VogonPoetry wrote: post #85
free_bip wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no, my laptop is 2mm thicker than a different laptop. Won't someone think of the 2mm?

That 2mm uses at least (2*335 + 2*235) * 2mm * 1mm = 2,280 mm^3 more material for the case. (a wall thickness of 1mm)

I don't understand your math. The 1mm (the wall) was there already, so why is it being counted here? Plus, multiplying by 1 doesn't do anything? Also, the 2mm extra won't be solid plastic (they'll be solid air, since that's why we're adding the extra thickness, for the room.

If anything, the extra material for the case would be the perimeter length times the perimeter wall width times the height.

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#94

Post by RajT88 »

Gigachad wrote: post #84
MostlyStable wrote: post #42

>Here’s hoping governments regulate laptop manufacturers to actually make repairable machines in the future. No, this is a bad solution. If you want a repairable machine, buy one. They exist. Others have already mentioned Framework, but there are other options that aren't that far down the spectrum either. One of the things macbook users praise the most is "build quality", which often means the solidity of the device…

Decades of HN users finger wagging and suggesting FOSS hardware has progressed society nowhere. 12 months from EU mandatory replaceable batteries and products across the industry are being redesigned with repairability, usb-c, and user friendly designs. It’s time to accept regulation actually does work when you have a competent government.

Indeed, government regulation is decried mostly because of all the cases where it got polluted by special interests, instead of following the interests of general consumers.

This is how you end up turning a chunk of your food supply into fuel to subsidize crops which aren't all that good at being distilled into fuel in the first place...

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#95

Post by ajkjk »

MostlyStable wrote: post #42

>Here’s hoping governments regulate laptop manufacturers to actually make repairable machines in the future. No, this is a bad solution. If you want a repairable machine, buy one. They exist. Others have already mentioned Framework, but there are other options that aren't that far down the spectrum either. One of the things macbook users praise the most is "build quality", which often means the solidity of the device…

well it's a good solution in the sense that it would solve the problem and it would be great for all of us.

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#96

Post by jorvi »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #83
ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS has slid a long way down the quality ladder over the past ten years.

In what way? Tahoe's UI SNAFU aside, it seems like it's basically just a more polished version of the older macOS versions from a decade ago.

For all its faults I do still like modern macOS, but it is a far cry from the beauty that was Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard).

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#97

Post by wvenable »

VogonPoetry wrote: post #91
wvenable wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The lack of repairability has external costs not born by the purchaser or the manufacturer -- more toxic trash unnecessarily added to the environment. Forcing a particular trade-off on everyone is entirely the point. It's the point of car safety, it's also the point of minimum warranties, electrical emission regulations, safety standards, etc.

Does this also mean only using "standard" parts? Or does the manufacturer have to over-produce the parts for, lets say 7 years, and then warehouse and ship those parts, probably multiple times. Or keep a low rate production line running for 7 years? What happens to the parts that don't get used? Are they scrapped? That "what if" cost is going to be built into the cost of the laptop. Repairability doesn't always keep…

Repairability definitely doesn't keep the costs low. If it was cheaper and easier, it wouldn't have to be regulated. As for supply chain management, companies that get that equation correct are going to benefit. Which is exactly how it should be.

We define the rules of the game and companies that can best implement those rules will succeed. That is capitalism.

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#98

Post by lowbloodsugar »

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #66
radley wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want a repairable machine, buy one. They exist. Others have already mentioned Framework But that means Windows or Linux, not macOS. There's serious trade-offs that you're dismissing because you personally don't need macOS, but that's not the case for everyone. #hn-bingo

macOS has slid a long way down the quality ladder over the past ten years.

Sure, but relative to windows…

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#99

Post by carlosjobim »

stkhlm wrote: post #86
carlosjobim wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His name is Swedish or it could be Norwegian. Anyway, did he contact Apple to see if they could help him out? Because sometimes Apple fixes these things for free. I've had very good and very bad experiences with Apple support for hardware failures. It's worth trying to contact them, instead of calling for more government regulation.

He went through the Apple Icon -> "About This Mac" -> "More Info" -> Coverage Expired Details Button -> Clicked the Get Support button and ended up in an infinite loop of questions on the Apple website if I recall correctly. Not great support on Apples side there.

That's not the point where you give up. That's the point where you call or e-mail the company to talk to a human.

Hence my comment about defeatism. Sometimes you have to push a little bit before giving up and crying for the government to come help you. Big companies aren't unbending stone statues.

Re: My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix

#100

Post by nine_k »

vintagedave wrote: post #92
AussieWog93 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way? Tahoe's UI SNAFU aside, it seems like it's basically just a more polished version of the older macOS versions from a decade ago.

I run into bugs every day. It wakes, and has a black screen not wallpaper. Change spaces and the focus is wrong for half a second. Login screen is a pain because it collapses all users together. Notifications don’t scroll if they stop scrolling when the cursor is over a gap between them. Something on the system constantly eats disk space, and I think it’s the system updates. If I dock two apps in one space, sometimes…

Unless these problems only started after an upgrade to Tahoe, I would strongly suspect defective hardware in your case.
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