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Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

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Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#551

Post by ahartmetz »

kowdermeister wrote: post #442
camelNotation wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only are Thinkpad keyboards the most comfortable and satisfying on the market, you can literally pour water on them and it will drain out the bottom of the laptop without ever touching internal components. After using my Thinkpad for about six months, I can't go back. The keyboard is amazing, build quality is rock solid, screen is 4k with 100% RGB, and you can actually upgrade the thing. I buy a laptop because I…

My only complaint with ThinkPads is that they are ugly as hell and I'm not an Apple fanboy. A device should look beautiful, clean and simple that you are looking at all day.

Thinkpads are IMO one of the few products that look better as they age. The traces of wear (and maybe a few appropriate stickers) give them the character that they are missing when new. There is something "real" and honest about that look - I like it very much.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#552

Post by carlivar »

camelNotation wrote: post #410
cmiles74 wrote: post #324

A co-worked of mine convinced the company to buy them a MacBook (the first the company has ever purchased) to replace their aging Dell laptop. They have been doing more and more work on the company's iOS app and the aging Mac mini the company had purchased needed to replaced anyway. After having the laptop for just over a year, they called me upset as the laptop would no longer power on. After some gentle interrogati…

Not only are Thinkpad keyboards the most comfortable and satisfying on the market, you can literally pour water on them and it will drain out the bottom of the laptop without ever touching internal components. After using my Thinkpad for about six months, I can't go back. The keyboard is amazing, build quality is rock solid, screen is 4k with 100% RGB, and you can actually upgrade the thing. I buy a laptop because I…

I agree it's great hardware. Do you run Linux? Because my problem with Lenovo is Windows. It's hot garbage despite the perception that Windows is decent again.

But what's not great hardware is the touchpad. I always miss the Apple touchpad. It's perfect.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#553

Post by avhon1 »

sbuk wrote: post #402
orblivion wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to say this as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U5n2WaMMHo I was a real dumbass myself one day and spilled a glass of water on my Lenovo in a cafe. I took it apart just in case to dry out, but I'm not sure I even needed to. I put it together and it was just fine. I have an Apple laptop for work and I work in cafes a lot. I assumed that Apple of all companies would consider this lifestyle issue, but…

Annecdata. I had someone accidentally knock a glass of water over a working T440s and it died.

I deliberately poured water onto my thinkpad T430 a total of 3 times in 6 years. All three times, I did it while the laptop was running.

The second time I did it, the laptop turned off as I was pouring the water. The drains are only so big; water can only move so fast through them. I had poured the water so fast that it overflowed the drains and the keyboard, and run into the motherboard.

I pulled the battery, keyboard, and access panels, and let the laptop dry overnight. I turned it on the following morning, and it worked without any problems.

So yeah, spill-resistant laptops have their limits. Dumping a quart / liter of water on them all at once is beyond their limits. And you may get unlucky with spilling onto the laptop in just such a way that it gets into something. In general, however, they seem to be very effective at preventing damage from liquid spills.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#554

Post by tomxor »

lrem wrote: post #493
camelNotation wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only are Thinkpad keyboards the most comfortable and satisfying on the market, you can literally pour water on them and it will drain out the bottom of the laptop without ever touching internal components. After using my Thinkpad for about six months, I can't go back. The keyboard is amazing, build quality is rock solid, screen is 4k with 100% RGB, and you can actually upgrade the thing. I buy a laptop because I…

Macbooks used to survive that too. My 2009-ish Pro got half a liter of sweet tea to the keyboard. Keypresses sounded crunchy for almost a year, but otherwise it worked fine.

I still have a 2009 MBP (although was running linux for the last 5 years), I only just upgraded to a Dell XPS 13 this year.

Here's the funny thing: the keyboard started to fail after 9 years of use, this is the only thing that pushed me to finally get a PC replacement (new macs are terrible linux machines) - the little rubber domes under the keys just started cracking and breaking apart so some keys feel really squidgy - mind you they still work at least.

So there's a pretty insane statistic for you:

    - 2009 MBP = 9 years of keyboard use (my main computer)
    - 2019 MBP =
Edit: RE the water thing, these models have a big sticky piece of plastic under the whole keyboard which seals it to the top case (I considered trying to replace it - although no one makes new ones so it seems kinda pointless, and quite difficult)

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#555

Post by robdachshund »

tzakrajs wrote: post #393
martinpw wrote: post #348

The Benjamin Button review of improvements in older Macs compared with newer ones: https://blog.pinboard.in/2016/10/benjamin_button_reviews_the...

Guess this guy was pleased with his slower processor too.

I don't know if you've noticed but Intel chips have hardly improved over the years. They've been content with die shrinks for since sandy bridge. And even then, they've had to turn off the speculative hacks because of spectre and meltdown.

Apple also doesn't care about thermal performance. Look at how their i9 models throttle and perform worse than the i7 variants.

If you're buying apple you aren't putting performance first and foremost. It's either because of mac os or the design. You've been able to buy much faster windows laptops for far less money since they switched to intel. That's why a lot of devs have switched to lenovo.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#556

Post by robdachshund »

npongratz wrote: post #458
chx wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was IdeaPad, nothing to do with ThinkPad.

Good to know, thanks! Do both lines have completely different engineering and management leadership? That might put me at some ease.

They do. Thinkpads are made out of magnesium and are super durable. Build quality is pretty great. Should be more reliable than a mac.

Mac build quality really isn't all that great. Lots of glue and plastic hinges. Motherboard design is also atrocious. Check out Louis rossman on YouTube. I remember seeing a video where the webcam died because a thermal sensor stopped working and for some reason the webcam was wired into the same bus.

They also solder in ram and ssds now. They removed the data recovery port so if your ssd kicks the bucket there's no way to recover anything. That's what the T2 chip is for- they market it as some magical coprocessor but it's just an ARM chip that acts as a drive and ram controller so they can use soldered parts on the cheap.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#557

Post by currysausage »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #505
camelNotation wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only are Thinkpad keyboards the most comfortable and satisfying on the market, you can literally pour water on them and it will drain out the bottom of the laptop without ever touching internal components. After using my Thinkpad for about six months, I can't go back. The keyboard is amazing, build quality is rock solid, screen is 4k with 100% RGB, and you can actually upgrade the thing. I buy a laptop because I…

Note that I believe the water pouring trick does not apply to the Thinkpad Carbon X1. I killed a third gen X1 years ago from a water spill. Luckily Lenovo fixed it for $500.

According to the specs [1], the X1 Carbon Gen 3 does have a spill-resistant keyboard, and the current Gen 6 too. Given the compact design, maybe the liquid just couldn't escape from under the laptop in time, so it soaked the motherboard from below?

[1] https://www.lenovo.com/au/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-x/X1-...

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#558

Post by rbanffy »

geerlingguy wrote: post #439
dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naa you’re not alone. I love the new MBP keyboard. My experience to suggests what we have here is a vocal minority. I type faster with the new style keyboard, I enjoy the springiness of the keys and their much larger size than previous iterations. I also like how their backlighting works compared to the old style. If people are having trouble with them, Apple should resolve those issues, but in my opinion the keyboar…

I love the feel, but in my 2016 I did have the spacebar stop working on one side (the side I tend to use more often) because of dirt ingress. My favorite keyboard ever, though, is the current 'Magic Keyboard'. It's like the perfect medium between the old chicklet-style that felt rather mushy to me and the new butterfly mechanism that's almost too rigid. Sadly, it seems Apple does not want to go back to that feel in t…

Keyboards are a very personal thing. I think the butterfly is usable and pleasing, but that the magic keyboard is a dreadful downgrade from the previous one that was more or less identical to the previous-gen Macbooks (which were very adequate).

My favorite keyboard, beam-spring being a thing of the past, is the Model M (Unicomp still builds them). I love it, even if my family would rather have me not typing after 10 PM.

Re: Its butterfly keyboard design has failed, but Apple has yet to admit its mistake

#560

Post by rhizome »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #542
rhizome wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The harddrive that came with my ThinkPad hasn't seen electricity since it left the factory, I replaced it before I ever turned the laptop on.

The hard drive isn't the only place malware can live (the BIOS would be one example of another place).

Well, you do what you can.
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