The Outline:
Late Friday night, Apple was hit with a class action lawsuit over the finicky butterfly-switch keyboards that have plagued its customers since they were released in 2015. The suit, filed in the Northern District Court of California, cites forum complaints going back to 2015, and substantially describes the difficulties of two named plaintiffs, one of whom experienced a failed keyboard after only one month.
The suit alleges repeatedly that Apple “promoted and sold laptops it knew were defective in that they contain a keyboard that is substantially certain to fail prematurely,” and that selling these computers not only directly to its customers but also to third party retailers constitutes a violation of good faith. The plaintiffs are seeking damages and legal fees, and demand that Apple admit to the design flaw and cover all costs for remedying or replacing the defective computers.
This doesn’t feel like the “usual” money-grubbing lawsuit. I know anecdotes don’t equal data but this is a very widespread issue.
the sooner we get new macbooks with proper keyboards where you can hammer away without the fear of breaking a key or a finger, the better. i‘d rather try making a hackintosh out of a dell than buy a 2016+ macbook pro.
iPad smart keyboards have a pretty high failure rates too. Watch 3 and AirPods are marvels of engineering and durability. Keyboards are a weak area because they haven’t got the right balance of durability vs. aesthetics currently.
I like the tactile feel of all the new keyboards but they just don’t stand up to the heavy, everyday use that we inflict upon them.
Wow, a whopping ~0.1% of MacBook/Pro owners signed the petition.
It would be different if a keyboard more prone to failure was easy to fix. But this requires replacement of the top of the computer. When I had mine fail (3 months after purchase) and I got my computer back and saw what all they’d had to do, I left the store thinking, “Apple has officially lost it’s damned mind.”
So? What percentage of MBP pro owners even know about it? Are you trying to suggest that 99.9% of them signed a petition asserting the opposite? Please get off the internet. You’re embarrassing yourself.
I’m suggesting nothing of the sort. That’s quite the leap of logic you’ve made.
Someone’s embarrassing themselves on the internet, you’re not wrong about that.
What are you suggesting by your original post?
At least the Smart Keyboard is trivially replaceable without replacing the iPad? 🙂
(I’m only half-kidding. It’s a reason why the Smart Keyboard failures have provoked less outrage.)
I wasn’t suggesting anything. I was making a remark. You and The Cappy are the ones who think it’s suggesting something. You’re reading too much into it.
Sometimes, problems slip through testing. The most unfortunate thing that can happen is the thing slipping through is the first component into the case. The old iBooks had issues with the magnesium frames and they could fracture with a fair amount of force. But it was the first bit in the case. The first aluminum iMacs had a problem with the DC-in cable. The first thing into the rear enclosure. (Arguably, a fun repair though. I actually enjoyed them. 922-8188 FTW!) Now with the uni-body design, they’re making much stronger, much lighter laptops, which we mostly appreciate. However, this design choice means they’re building laptops upside down. The part with the most mechanical movement, therefore most susceptibility to physical failure, now goes in first. I have seen plenty of keyboard failures on pre-butterfly keyboards. Those repairs sucked too. This is simply a case of their good design of the uni-body type case making this mechanical part failure seem particularly painful. If the non-anecdotal (read: actual) failure rate of the keyboards is dramatically higher than previous types, then I expect Apple to fix this with a Quality Program like previous design defects.
I think that’s a really good point Janak. Makes sense.
My guess is that some of the the minimalist fully-enclosed design teams who did iPad and iPhone work also applied the same principles to the Mac, not realizing that you can’t really treat the Mac the same (at least, yet). The Mac has a lot more ports and keys where stuff can get in there.
I’m hoping that the mea culpa post-2016-MBP launch means executive attention refocused on Macs, including this design flaw.
More and more publications/review sites are recommending against buying MB/MBPs. So no matter how widespread it is, the perception is definitely there. I’m very curious to see if anything is said or implied at WWDC…
Ironically, you might be reading too much into mine. I asked it straightforwardly.
The reason people read into it (my first response was to assume the same as The Cappy) is because the “Wow, a whopping…” phrasing strongly imbues a tone, which often insinuates something. If you had said, simply, “0.1% of MB/P owners signed” you may have gotten a different response.