Apple Engineers Its Own Downfall with the Macbook Pro Keyboard

> They do thinness for lightness sake.

Would you consider getting something like a LG Gram 15" then? It's thin and light but appears highly repairable [1]

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/LG+Gram+15-Inch+Repairability+A...

This is what happens when you do user testing and the users you primarily test are only internal folks.

Apple, next time: take your prototype, throw a handful of fine sand on the keyboard and shake... if it can't be fixed by customers (via canister air or removing/cleaning the keys), then rework.

P.S., I am tying this now on this absolute crap keyboard with multiple letters sticky and repeating.

Considering it reinforces a commonly held engineering ideology that only engineers understand or are capable of solving a problem or goal, and every other job function in a corporation is clueless deprivation of engineering, I’d say the response is fair. Apple is quite successful despite organizing in a way that baffles engineers, and will spend a bit recovering from this, then everyone will forget about it within a few Christmases. That’s not even advocacy, that’s just, like, exactly what will happen. It’s dust in the path of an asteroid at this point, with well-documented prior art. All of us with the keyboard get a bum deal, but events are probably proceeding exactly as engineered, if we are all honest with ourselves.

The correct following step is “what can I learn from that,” including, yes, many pitfalls and questionable decisions to learn, rather than “I know exactly what’s wrong with that success, and it’s business leaders.”

I realize the irony of saying this here, as many are at least amenable to said ideology. It also doesn’t strike me as an intentional color, just subtle thought basis underlying the sentiment.

Having interfaced with Apple in a different way (apart from owning a new MBP and an iPhone X) I'd say the issue is, and continues to be, growing pains.

They're certainly losing the lead in software engineer talent (giving it away to whom, I'm not sure). But the single most horrible experience I've had with Apple in the last year was trying to get software published on the App Store.

That's a department that's so large that it's become a classic bureaucracy -- middle managers run amok, pettiness, lack of professionalism, etc.

I was trying to publish a piece of software using their less extortionate subscription options and I was told by a young woman manager that I would have to have feature X in order to qualify. I added feature X in a couple days and got back to her. She was surprised (disappointed?) and then told me I'd have to have feature X + feature Y in order to qualify.

I have a couple of contacts from the "good old days" and sent a very angry email. Middle manager woman disappeared, her boss called me and apologized within a few minutes.

If I didn't have that contact I probably wouldn't have gotten past her.

What has happened to Apple that their dev teams work against devs, compile times (this is 2018 remember) are now counted in minutes for small projects, my MBP crashes when plugging in an external monitor, etc?

They've grown too fast. My contact told me that their App Store team is now interfacing with over 2 million developers. How do you grow to accommodate that?

Now, what is the answer to all of this? Fix the marketing driven culture. Thinner isn't better. The number of apps on the app store isn't a meaningful metric. New languages are cool only if you can actually pull them off. Etc.

> The lighter your laptop (or tablet, or phone), the more you'll choose to not leave it behind but rather to just lug it around with you, and so the more places you'll have it and the more it'll be there to aid your productivity in random situations.

I didn't know how true this was until upgrading from an old Lenovo T400 to a newer Lenovo Carbon X1. I'll regularly carry the X1 a few blocks to a library, park, or coffee shop. The X1 and my work laptop - a Dell Latitude - are about as thick and heavy as the T400 alone, so it's not even a question that I take both to a location when working remotely. Now I need a bag with 2 laptop slots.

> [Also, for phones and tablets specifically, the longer you'll be willing to hold it up to your face to stare at it before putting it away due to the "gorilla arm" feeling.]

Conversely, the Samsung Tab A has enough magnets in the back to stick to a fridge - this remarkably makes it feel heavier than the X1, especially when working on magnetic tables and surfaces. The Tab A causes the "gorilla arm" feeling almost immediately, making it basically worthless to me. To add insult to this injury, when it's stuck to my fridge, the screen refuses to turn on when rotated to landscape. So it can't effectively play full-screen Youtube while stuck to the fridge, negating the last use case I found for it. I think this is due to a magnetic screen-off sensor that all Android devices seem to have on the back, but don't know why this would only turn off landscape and not portrait.