51–60 of 927 posts
Apple, please put back in full size up and down arrow keys
My God, this, 1000x times this. I've owned a Macbook Pro 2017 for 6 months now and still manage to get a miss 40% of the time. It's maddening.
This IS a business issue. It has a quantifiable effect on profit margins for Apple's macbook, and I would look at it as an investor and see if it effects Apple's valuation in the short and long run.
The Note 7 is a fantastic comparison - the complete recall did not have to happen but did because of design choices from Samsung engineers. It could have been a $200 million dollar issue instead of a $5 billion dollar one.
Similarly, these keyboards did not have to be that expensive to repair or be so prone to damage, but being that way has a snowball effect on repair/maintenance/warranty.
It's also a design decision that they're kind of stuck with. They are not going to go back to their original keyboards (unless they release a mac book pro classic, which I would personally be estatic about) - and so the increase repair costs cutting into their margins is a challenge for them to solve going forward (especially since the brittle-ness is because of the thin design).
Who is Apple engaging in design anorexia for? Does it drive sales? Couldn’t some other stat be used to pad their presentations? Any thickness less than an inch is fine with me. I’m not concerned with whether my laptop fits in an envelope.
I bought a 12" MacBook when it came out because it seemed like it was a big advance over the previous Mac Air. I also bought the first generation Mac Air. So, obviously, you and I don't have similar criteria.
Classic case of why business managers shouldn't be directing design of a product. Business managers sees .2mm shaved off the thickness of macbook pro to 'justify' the premium cost of it over other laptops while a developer/pro user of the laptop would increase the thickness to gain battery and maybe mechanical/mesh hybrid keys... I would be more than happy to pay for a pro version of the current macbook pro. EDIT----…
No. Absolutely wrong assessment. This is a design team running amok after their own goals
Marketing and the business side love it because it's a concrete metric they can point to in order to justify it to consumers and it doesn't require any specialized knowledge for consumers to understand. Thickness is simple. Everyone can understand it, and some people can even use a ruler to measure it themselves.
And consumers continue to choose to reward them by buying thinner devices. After all, if we can't have flying cars, personal jetpacks, and live like The Jetsons right now, we damned sure can have thin devices as a consolation prize. Consumers would probably buy these devices even if they weren't thinner than the generation they replace, but it all gets tied together. Not to mention the pesky problem that the biggest problems (lack of repairability, keyboard switches that are deathly allergic to dust, etc.) aren't really noticeable until something goes wrong. And then, it's "my MacBook is broken" and not "my Macbook is broken and the ultimate cause is a zealous focus on thinner and thinner devices."
So here we are.
The entire Apple universe is bizarre. I've not used an Apple product except for the first gen iPhone but I did love it when I did. Since then, Apple has been behind the curve on every thing. I want to go back to using Apple since I really like their stance on privacy and security but feature wise they're usually 2-3 years behind a Samsung or a Microsoft. And now, this...
To me, other than raw specs (like, say, screen density), they're still winning more frq8 then not.
(And I say this as someone who avoids Apple like the plague).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
None whatsoever. Given Apple's very well known proclivity to elevate their design/product teams, it's probably more likely to have come from someone on that side of the fence anyway. But it's pretty popular to deride non-technical people (especially those in management) as know-nothings, so it's an easy reach.
It seems like a business thing where thinness=money. Can't be from any other angle.
Classic case of why business managers shouldn't be directing design of a product. Business managers sees .2mm shaved off the thickness of macbook pro to 'justify' the premium cost of it over other laptops while a developer/pro user of the laptop would increase the thickness to gain battery and maybe mechanical/mesh hybrid keys... I would be more than happy to pay for a pro version of the current macbook pro. EDIT----…
No. Absolutely wrong assessment. This is a design team running amok after their own goals
Once again, I have 0 knowledge of the inner workings of apple, rather I am asking if this is a possibility.
Maybe the thinner keys were ironically meant as a fix for this production issue in order to save them money on screen replacements.
I was absolutely ok with repairability of 2013 pro models. But what they did with new keyboard design is awful. I write this now from my Dell XPS 13, not from my MacBook Pro different models of which I used for > 5 years.
Writing from my 2017 MacBook Pro. Apart from the keys being louder than before and my nagging fear of an errant crumb or cat hair I'm happy, typing is crisp and maybe faster for me than on any other keyboard. I move my hands less. In comparison my regular Mac keys now feel loose and smooshy, almost as if they'd been produced by the Haribo Gummy Bear factory. (Not that this is a horrible feeling. I miss gummy bears; c…
This is NOT a big issue for consumers. Apple is great at keeping customers happy, their 4 year warranty extension for replacing the keyboard shows this. This IS a business issue. It has a quantifiable effect on profit margins for Apple's macbook, and I would look at it as an investor and see if it effects Apple's valuation in the short and long run. The Note 7 is a fantastic comparison - the complete recall did not h…