My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by rjmunro » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

piekvorst wrote: post #216

ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perfect example of cognitive dissonance! The government, which mandates that the can of tomato soup I buy must not contain any glass shards, is immediately equated with physical violence. Although the shopkeeper who requires me to pay for the can before I take it out of the store is far more likely to get in my face if I don’t follow their rules. I don’t understand this worldview. You’re selling your freedom to b…

If I buy a can of soup and find glass in it, I have a valid claim against the manufacturer. It's a matter of holding someone accountable for fraud or negligence, not a matter of regulation. The proper route is a court, not a bureaucratic agency that preemptively dictates production methods on the assumption that every manufacturer is a potential prisoner. > get in my face if I don’t follow their rules If a shopkeeper…

> If I buy a can of soup and find glass in it, I have a valid claim against the manufacturer.

What does that mean?

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

#352

Post by Trannosaur » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 2:53 PM UTC

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.

Also, they're ignoring the true cost of unrepairable hardware which is e-waste. Perhaps if they're looking for a lighter hand, they'd suggest that less repairable hardware has to have a tax that pays for its PROPER recycling.

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

#353

Post by charles_f » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 2:55 PM UTC

My camera started malfunctioning lately (because tropicalized doesn't mean you can use it in tropical weather). It worked, but when I switched batteries I had to wait a minute for whatever capacitor was blown to discharge before it would boot again.

I sent it back for repair to the manufacturer, they gave me an "estimate" that it wouldn't be repairable, and generously offered a replacement with a refurbished one, at $10 off the price of new (plus shipping, of course). I declined the "repair" and asked for the camera back.

When it arrived, the stickers I had put around made it clear it hadn't even been open. Having seen enough Louis Rossmann, I brought it to a camera shop around which is doing microsoldering. They replaced a single capacitor (after making me sign papers that it would probably never work again, and charging me quite a bit - still better than wasting an otherwise perfectly functional camera). The unrepairable camera was repaired.

It is so disappointing and unsurprising that a manufacturer wouldn't put even remotely any effort into actual repairs, that a street shop with actual expertise will happily do. I've come to expect no expertise from any service department I communicate with. Sending something for repair is almost a sure way that it will be broken even further. When even replacing the top case in the example of that mac seems overkill, when they could probably replace the faulty key with skill and will.

I guess that's a matter of incentives, given that in mass market, repairability is not something people look into when shopping.

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

#354

Post by gambiting » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #346

gambiting wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> your car can easily hurt a total stranger whereas the consequences of your choice in laptop are strictly personal. You know that safety for pedestrians is also a very tightly regulated car safety category, right? Obviously, there's not much that can be done if you get hit by a car going 70mph, but the fact that most people should survive a 30mph impact with a modern car is mostly thanks to regulations requiring cr…

It would be trivial to limit a car’s speeds in residential and urban areas based on GPS, and that would dramatically decrease risk to people outside of cars. Or mandate in car cameras that record the driver to a blackbox to determine if the driver’s negligence caused others to be damaged. Also a cheap implementation that would immediately make drivers be more attentive.

>>It would be trivial to limit a car’s speeds in residential and urban areas based on GPS, and that would dramatically decrease risk to people outside of cars.

Only partialy agree. As in - yes I agree in principle, but I don't agree it would be trivial.

My sister had insurance with a black box policy, where everything she did in the car was recorded. And on her drive to work, she would always get a threatening email saying "we've recorded you going 70mph in a 20mph zone, if this continues we will cancel your policy". We had to ring them up and demand the GPS trace, and guess what - at one point she was going on the motorway above a 20mph road, but the system probably just did "what is the speed limit at X/Y coordinates" and was getting 20mph for the nearest road. We've had to do this several times when she had the policy.

My own Volvo XC60 frequently tells me I'm going over the speed limit as it thinks the road I'm on has a 50mph limit when in fact it's 70, and in another place it thinks it's 30 when in fact it's also 70.

Not to mention that the speeds entered on Google Maps are often just wrong and take forever to update. And it's funny when people like Harry Metcalf say that every new car he tests insists that his own private drive has a 20mph limit when obviously there is none. Imagine if you couldn't turn that off!

So yeah, very easy to implement(and it's a great idea!) but in practice it's one of these "looks easy on paper, but in reality it's super hard to do reliably".

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

#355

Post by analog8374 » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

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.

People believe whatever authority tells them. It's one of those bug/feature things.

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

#356

Post by rogerrogerr » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 2:59 PM UTC

hilliardfarmer wrote: post #339

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.

People need to stop buying apple products. Anyone dumb enough to have already done so deserves what they get.

I guess I'm happy being dumb if it means I deserve a laptop with a battery that lasts all day, a trackpad that doesn't feel like it's covered in dry syrup, a case that doesn't make noises when I pick it up, and a processor that feels like alien tech.

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

#357

Post by cromka » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 3:00 PM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #342

Gigachad wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is mostly because Americans keep electing total morons.

It is also because corruption is called lobbying in America. Corporate lobbying should be illegal and punished severely (including capital punishment for directors and confiscation of the corporation).

This. Came here to say this. People completely forget about this supposed nuance when comparing US and Europe, but this is exactly what leads to fundamentally different outcomes in legislation and, by extension, people's expectations of their governments. That frog is long-time cooked.

As an ex-expat to US, I never could stop smh over how Americans are not making it a number 1 issue for themselves. Private prison, private healthcare, gun industry, all types of small industries keep US government in their pockets and the society, as a whole, in a complete gridlock, unable to meet its actual expectations.

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

#358

Post by mrWiz » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 3:03 PM UTC

PunchyHamster wrote: post #309

BoorishBears wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Putting spring on the connector part rather than socket part means the easily replaceable part has wear item. Lighting is designed wrong here. And our helpdesk had more broken lightning connectors than anything else in shop that's ~ 50/50 PC/Mac

I’m surprised to hear that it was such a common failure. I used plenty of lighting devices back in their hay day and plenty of USBC devices since they became common. I don’t tend to treat those devices gingerly and have far more issues with USBC than I ever did with Lightning, even accounting for the fact that lots of devices have USBC but only phones and mp3 players had lightning.

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

#359

Post by streetfighter64 » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 3:08 PM UTC

999900000999 wrote: post #331

streetfighter64 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah, you can probably fix it for pretty cheap if you've just got some know-how. But why do Apple need to make it more difficult to fix for no reason? Riveting the keyboard to the frame doesn't make the device "thinner", and as proved by people being able to fix it without rivets, doesn't even really serve a purpose. Your last sentence is a total non-sequitur; as far as I can tell it does not relate to anything…

I don’t understand this authoritarian need to ban everything you don’t like. Should the government have a reparability board ? Who gets to be on it ? If it pleases the King , may I buy a laptop while traveling and bring it home. An argument could be made for a refundable recycling fee. Say 5% that gets returned when you take the device to a recycling center after your done with it

I mean, do you also consider it "authoritarian" to have e.g. regulations on vehicle exhaust? Should the government have an environmental protection agency? Who gets to be on it? What about my right to insulate my house with asbestos and paint it with lead?

And who's talking about banning private import of laptops? You do know that you can regulate national sales without controlling absolutely everything right? Whoever bothers to travel to a different country just to buy a worse laptop should be allowed to do so, it's whatever.

Regarding "recycling", that's all a show in order to seem more environmentally friendly with very little actual impact. You can look up how electronics "recycling" usually works in practice, which normally entails sending the waste to third world countries to have some precious metals extracted using dangerous and not exactly environmentally friendly processes.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vufLW4xOsS4

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ8BjHOdI8g

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

#360

Post by bzzzt » Mon, Mar 30, 2026, 3:08 PM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #291

bzzzt wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Those things could save some lives of course, but it's a small drop. And then there's the issue of people trusting on those safety systems and driving more reckless than before. It also helps not to live in a country where everyone is driving trucks ;)