Snippet: Regarding That Ostensibly ‘Small Number of Customers’ Reporting Problems With Their MacBook Keyboards ☇

Nick Heer:

But what’s missing from the numbers Apple Insider published and the general malaise about these keyboards is any understanding of the impact they’re having on otherwise-silent users. Hansson’s piece sheds some light on this, plus a poll he posted on Twitter. As of writing, over 4,600 people have responded: 38% say that their keyboard is perfect, 11% say that they had problems with the keyboard but Apple fixed it, and 51% say that they’re living with their keyboard problems. I’m not surprised by that — people who use their laptop a lot, especially for work, cannot just be without their computer for a week or two. It is enormously disruptive.

The thing I keep getting back to in my head is that this is a problem that should not exist. The highlight feature of the next MacBook model should be something like Face ID or being powered by one of Apple’s own kick-ass processors, not a keyboard that hasn’t regressed and now functions correctly. And I understand completely that all tech companies experiment with new and different things. In Yosemite, Apple tried to replace the fine-but-old mDNSResponder with the new-but-flaky discoveryd; that decision was reverted after a year. Apple has now been shipping MacBooks with crappy butterfly keyboards for four years.

Apple needs to make redesigning/replacing these mechanisms the number one priority for the company. The MacBook family are the most popular Macs and all it takes is for someone to get burned once or twice to decide to maybe go look and see what other non-Apple products are out there next time. There’s also people hanging on to years-old models because they don’t want to upgrade and mess with this. It’s absurd.