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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

#141

Post by Gigachad »

BoorishBears wrote: post #123
Gigachad wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a great example of their point, all I got was a mechanically inferior connector (putting the most important piece of the female connector on a floating sliver of plastic was a choice) and the cable hell attached to USB C. If USB C had been so important to me I wouldn't have bought iPhones all those years.

Apple was on the design committee for USB-C, they also failed to make lightning an industry standard after 10+ years. The EU didn't design the connector, they just required the industry pick a design, and USB-C is what Apple and the rest designed.

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

#142

Post by RajT88 »

Gigachad wrote: post #134
RajT88 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

This is mostly because Americans keep electing total morons.

I would actually suggest this is symptomatic of the real problem: money in politics.

Elected officials (and some appointed, like SCOTUS) keep changing laws and precedents to allow more and more money in politics. They can't quit all that dark money - without a lot of funding, you don't get elected. Usually the best funded candidate wins.

There was an anonymous oped from a congressman some years back which bemoaned the reality - that 60% of their time was dedicated to meeting with donors for reelection campaigns instead of working on real problems.

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

#143

Post by gertop »

stavros wrote: post #107
wat10000 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the probability of those things failing during the time you have the MacBook? I've had Apple portables since they were called PowerBooks and the only problem I've had that wasn't caused by violence was a battery swelling, and that cost me something like $120 to replace, not a big deal. If you add 5% to the price, that's probably about your expected cost for repairs or premature replacements if you don't have…

My Framework 13 is a bit long in the tooth. I can pay 529 EUR to get a new mainboard and keep the same case/battery/speakers/camera/keyboard/mouse/screen/etc. Or, I can replace the keyboard for 32 EUR. It's not just repairs, to upgrade a Mac you have to throw away all that perfectly working hardware just to get a new mainboard.

> I can pay 529 EUR to get a new mainboard and keep the same case/battery/speakers/camera/keyboard/mouse/screen/etc.

Or you can spend 50 euros more and get an entire new laptop that is not only much more powerful than your old framework but is almost as repairable: the neo.

At some point your argument begins to work against you, you should just have talked about the keyword repair being cheap. Not how you can get a new motherboard for "only" 530 euros.

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

#144

Post by Esophagus4 »

danpalmer wrote: post #106
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…

> If you want a repairable machine, buy one.... Framework Sure, but Framework doesn't run the OS I want, doesn't run the chip I want, doesn't quite meet the form factor I want. It's not an effective market because I can't pick and choose. The problem here is vertical integration. If you want anything from Apple you have to buy everything from Apple. And the answer to that is: regulation.

Being an effective market doesn’t mean you get everything you want.

You’re actually saying: “I want Apple’s software, and I want certain chips, and I want a certain form factor. And if Apple won’t build what I want, I will pass a law to make them build it for me!”

Come on man. You will make tradeoffs either way. The answer isn’t: force a company to build what I want them to build.

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

#145

Post by radley »

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.

Oh, I completely agree. But they can get away with it because we depend on the platform more than the individual apps.

And yes, Tahoe is shiny hot garbage piled on top of so much broken software, just to push an effect trick. I'm not sure how I feel developing with SwiftUI when Apple clearly can't make it work for their own apps.

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

#146

Post by Esophagus4 »

socalgal2 wrote: post #113
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…

100% agree. If you don’t like that Apple products are expensive to repair, don’t buy them or suck it up I came to terms with it, mostly. I buy AppleCare. I’ve had my screen on my M1 Mac replaced twice. I agree with the sentiment tho. I had the rubber foot come off the bottom of a MacBook Pro, Apple wanted $350 to replace that $1 part. I found other solutions

> If you don’t like that Apple products are expensive to repair, don’t buy them or suck it up

Yea exactly. This is why I switched from Apple to Framework.

I like MacOS better than Linux, but it was worth the hardware trade off for me.

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

#147

Post by Esophagus4 »

zapnuk wrote: post #30
mattbillenstein wrote: post #9

Framework Laptop + some form of Linux - MacOS keeps getting worse and the hardware exceeding hard and expensive to repair.

Framework Laptop is more expensive than a Macbook Air with all around worse hardware. For a framework 13 I'd have to pay 1900€ with a 16GB setup. For 1450 I get a MBA with 24GB ram. Similar with a dell or lenovo who get smoked in performance comparisons. It might still be worth it for those who hugely value open source and repairability but as for value I think its save to say that Apple is currently in a league of t…

The downside of an Apple is generally you can’t improve the hardware by replacing it piecemeal as new hardware comes out.

That was my goal buying a Framework… to get to refresh hardware regularly as better stuff came out rather than waiting 10 years to buy a new laptop.

Will it work that way in reality? No idea, but I thought it was at least interesting enough to take a gamble.

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

#148

Post by danpalmer »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #144
danpalmer wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want a repairable machine, buy one.... Framework Sure, but Framework doesn't run the OS I want, doesn't run the chip I want, doesn't quite meet the form factor I want. It's not an effective market because I can't pick and choose. The problem here is vertical integration. If you want anything from Apple you have to buy everything from Apple. And the answer to that is: regulation.

Being an effective market doesn’t mean you get everything you want. You’re actually saying: “I want Apple’s software, and I want certain chips, and I want a certain form factor. And if Apple won’t build what I want, I will pass a law to make them build it for me!” Come on man. You will make tradeoffs either way. The answer isn’t: force a company to build what I want them to build.

Well another version of it is: I want to be able to talk to my family, but I don't want to buy an iPhone. The EU rightly regulated that any chat network big enough must open their doors to different platforms. Or I don't want to buy Microsoft Office for my employees but I want to be able to do business with those who do, and thankfully we have relatively open document formats now.

The chips argument is contrived, the OS argument less so, but it's all just network effects at some level, and it's important for competition and effective markets that we prevent the largest networks from locking people in and forcing them to make a lot of other unrelated decisions.

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

#149

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

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…

Yeah we can keep saying that, but thanks to the EU we have everybody with shared chargers. Thanks to the EU, the nintendo switch has a replaceable battery. Thanks to the EU, we have USB-C on iPhone.

I'm sorry but your argument conflicts with reality at this point: regulation works better for expectations on hardware.

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

#150

Post by tencentshill »

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…

The Macbook Neo is just as high-quality as any other Apple product. Apple has some of the most brilliant engineers in the industry, they can absolutely design a repairable device to their own standards.
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