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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

#291

Post by swiftcoder »

bzzzt wrote: post #230
wvenable wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, this is a bad solution. You didn't say why this is a bad solution. The government mandates that cars get safer every year and fatalities are down 78% from the 1960s. Whenever government regulates things to benefit people, people tend to benefit. > One of the things macbook users praise the most is "build quality", which often means the solidity of the device, lack of flex, etc. It seems like the Macbook Neo has…

The innovations that mattered were seat belts and airbags. After that you have to correct for all the electronic gadgets that also actively distract or make drivers over-confident. Real numbers are not available, but governments keep mandating all kinds of questionable safety features that increase the price of vehicles (and insurance) and reduces competition in the market.

I'll grant you some of the more recent driver-attention monitoring features, but you'd be hard put to make the case that the blind-spot warning during lane changes, the cross-traffic warning when reversing out of a parking space, and the emergency brake when the car in front of you brakes hard, don't all save lives (and, perhaps more relevantly to the industrial players, collision insurance claims)

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

#292

Post by swiftcoder »

an0malous wrote: post #111
wvenable wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, this is a bad solution. You didn't say why this is a bad solution. The government mandates that cars get safer every year and fatalities are down 78% from the 1960s. Whenever government regulates things to benefit people, people tend to benefit. > One of the things macbook users praise the most is "build quality", which often means the solidity of the device, lack of flex, etc. It seems like the Macbook Neo has…

> You didn't say why this is a bad solution. The fear is that regulations ossify industries and that's why heavily regulated industries like healthcare, education, and transportation have seen basically no innovation in 50 years. If you mandate that all electronic devices must have USB-C cables, how can anyone invent something better than a USB-C cable? And for what, so people don't have to have multiple cables? That…

> heavily regulated industries like healthcare, education, and transportation have seen basically no innovation in 50 years

Wut?

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

#293

Post by nandomrumber »

sehansen wrote: post #211
RajT88 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Part of the reason money has such a big influence on elections is that first-past-the-post election system you have over there in the US. When voters have to make a binary choice between two participants, low-information campaigns like hit-pieces are able to make a big difference and are cheap to communicate en-masse. When voters have a actual choice between four parties on the left and four parties on the right, hit…

If any of what you just said was true in practice, Australia would be a gleaming example of how democracies with strong civil society organisations can be run.

Instead, Australia is best described as pigs at the slops trough.

A nation that seems to only want to vote for leaders who have a public humiliation kink.

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

#294

Post by nandomrumber »

actionfromafar wrote: post #219
southerntofu wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you're from the USA, your two main parties are exactly like that. The appearances have changed, but Obama drone-assassinating random children on the other side of the world was not much better than what Trump is doing. Not defending Trump, to be clear, just saying US imperialism and fascism has much deeper roots and that removing Trump is not going to fix any issues the rest of the world has with the USA.

It was not better, it was less . US imperialism has deep roots, yes, but a large chunk of the world who would tolerate a moderate level of it, don't tolerate this level.

I don’t see any not tolerating it in practice.

A lot of invective, but nothing in practice that really indicates not tolerating.

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

#295

Post by Tade0 »

spaqin wrote: post #226
Tade0 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you mandate that all electronic devices must have USB-C cables, how can anyone invent something better than a USB-C cable? That already happened with Micro USB. The EU initially mandated that manufacturers agree on a standard socket, because the absolute zoo of charging ports back then was counter-productive and only generated e-waste. Ultimately they agreed to use Micro USB, but obviously that's not what's used…

> If something actually better came up, you'd eventually see it mandated. While I generally am quite content with that particular mandate and it does more good than bad, I would have to disagree on this. Something better doesn't come from nowhere - hell, USB itself has gone through a long and arduous path until it came to the (messy) standard it is today. This is essentially banning any other standard to grow and be…

I don't believe other paths would yield better results.

It took Apple a looong time to adapt USB-C, which was already running circles around Lightning five years after the introduction of the latter. Ironically Apple participated in the development of the standard. They just couldn't be arsed to implement it.

Multinationals don't do anything unless they absolutely have to. Apple notably all but threatened to move out of the EU due to USB-C regulations. They were actively preventing their users from having a better standard because it hurt their bottom line in the field of accessories.

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

#296

Post by Xixi »

hnfong wrote: post #205
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.

> It’s time to accept regulation actually does work when you have a competent government. Given that it's the EU making those regulations, it looks like the government only has to be semi-competent. Maybe the only requirement is that they're not totally in bed with the big corps making money.

I wonder to what extent in this instance it is driven by the EU regulating (mostly) foreign companies rather than (mostly) domestic ones.

Said differently, it is much easier for the EU to be impartial and competent when regulating Apple or Samsung than when regulating Volkswagen or Stellantis...

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

#297

Post by yokoprime »

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…

this is such a classic american reply. "vote with your wallet" and "the market decides". thing is most people don't care, don't complain or are not in a situation where they can "vote with their wallet". truth is, some regulation must exist to nudge companies is the right direction. a good example of this is e.g disposable vapes, people love them for some reason, but they are extremely wasteful.

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

#298

Post by sokoloff »

nandomrumber wrote: post #285
egeozcan wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given that it's the EU making those regulations, it looks like the government only has to be semi-competent Context: I'm not a EU-native, I've migrated to here. It disturbs me a lot when people keep repeating the "incompetent government" narrative when it comes to the EU, but when you compare it to the dictatorship that I escaped from, they still seem way more competent, surprising when the big advantage of a dicta…

You’re worried about the Right-ists. When it has been the Left that has largely governed Europe for the previous few decades to bring it to the point where it is now where the economics and defence capabilities of nations that once ruled the world are now laughing stock on the global stage.

Way back in the times of sailing ships with cannons?

Absolutely Europe ruled the world economically and militarily.

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

#299

Post by itsthecourier »

so this happened to me some years ago. visited a local shop and they wanted to change the whole board. went to Los Angeles, visited an apple store, got an appointment. went back again to the appointment brought the MacBook, they said the same.

went to ebay bought the key, replaced it with tweezers after removing it from above without disabling the keyboard (I know, a little brutish) and it worked again for years.

give it a try

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

#300

Post by subpixel »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #90
justinator wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AppleCare is honestly a great deal, especially for laptops. M1 Macbook Pros from 2020 are humming along just fine for regular people who see no reason to upgrade. The future is now, old man.

I just looked up Apple Care. Costs $449 AUD (~$300 USD) for 3 years of coverage on a MacBook Pro. A quick search shows that it's ~$500-$600 to fix the screen if it does break; I didn't bother looking up the keyboard but I'd assume it's much, much less. So basically, on the off chance that your MacBook does shit the bed in the most expensive way, you save ~$150 or so? But in the almost-certain case that your Macbook i…

You’re underestimating the probability of multiple things needing attention over 5-7 years.

That is baked into the price of AppleCare just like any insurance premium.

I definitely think coverage should be free for 2 years though.

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