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I've just had the keyboard recall done on my 2017 mbp after the J key started failing/duplicating when being pressed. The whole process, although annoying, was

I've just had the keyboard recall done on my 2017 mbp after the J key started failing/duplicating when being pressed. The whole process, although annoying, was painless. The tech gave me the option of them trying to fix it by blowing dust out or just replacing the entire keyboard. I elected for the later given that it's a design fault. The repair took 1 1/2 days which I had done when I was out of town. Since they glue everything together, getting a new J key also meant a new keyboard, touch bar, finger print reader, speakers, battery and touch pad. Which if there was no recall I can imagine would be a costly exercise. Hopefully after the recent recalls Apple engineers will be looking at making easier to service components.

nkkollaw 8y ago
Half-way through your comment, I though you were going to say it was actually a positive thing that Apple keyboards aren't good enough to type on them...
wlesieutre 8y ago
It's still a ton of labor to take the whole thing apart, but the new MacBook Air changed to using removable adhesive tabs. I suspect this is why. 2018 MacBook Air Teardown Confirms Improving Repairability With Adhesive Pull-Tabs Under Battery and Speakers https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/08/2018-macbook-air-ifixit-teardown/ https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/08/2018-macbook-air-ifixit... Amusingly, the 13" MacBook Pro non-touchbar where they have defective SSDs are the only ones that have removable SSDs. The touchbar versions are soldered. I wonder if that's a happy coincidence that they're repairable, or if the reason for these defects is that Apple's engineers screwed up the socket since they have basically no experience with those across the rest of the product line anymore.
- nkkollaw 8y ago
  Mmm... I wonder if they improved repairability because they expect things to keep breaking...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - pmlnr 8y ago
    There's no need to expect that - things keep breaking when they are used. Repairability is becoming a topic, though spreading quite slow, but eventually it will reach the higher ups, and we'll finally get our oldschool thinkpads back. (Hope is a strong emotion.)
    - nkkollaw 8y ago
      My MacBook Air's keyboard never broke (I've had 2, kept them for 2-3 years each.
      - pmlnr 8y ago
        > 2-3 years each That's not a very long time. Business laptops' extended warranty is 5, and to be honest, 5-6 years old laptops - actually, nearly anything since modern sleep and aes-ni - are perfectly enough, so instead of buying new, it really should be possible to fix a hinge, a display, a keyboard once in a while, instead of needing to buy a new machine.
      - cyphar 8y ago
        2-3 years is a ridiculously short lifespan for a laptop. If one of my laptops failed that quickly I would demand the manufacturer provide me with a replacement under Australian Consumer Law. I've used 8-10 year old ThinkPads that worked fine (battery life was the only issue, but a new battery is not that expensive -- since you can replace those on older ThinkPads).
        zaroth 8y ago
        Still happily using my 2011 Air. The battery was very easy to replace (5 minutes). The only thing that’s failed is the charging cable frayed and I got a replacement DC side cable with MagSafe connector for like $9 on Amazon. The only thing holding it back is I could not for the life of me get Boot Camp working with Win10 — UEFI nonsense. The new Air is finally actually tempting me to upgrade. Before that there was nothing I thought was worth considering.
xoa 8y ago
>Since they glue everything together, getting a new J key also meant a new keyboard, touch bar, finger print reader, speakers, battery and touch pad. Which if there was no recall I can imagine would be a costly exercise. I think this most illustrates not so much that components should be easier to service in and of themselves but rather that it should be Apple's problem universally, not just for a recall. On a product at this level standard legally required warranty should be more like 4-5 years. Apple (or anyone else) can themselves make the economic call on whether costlier repairs are offset by increased revenue due to feature advantages or other QA boosts, but they shouldn't be able to externalize the cost onto their customers and reap any rewards beyond egregious circumstances. The sticker price should include a reasonable expectation of fitness for purpose over a lifespan in line with the price at no extra cost.
Sharlin 8y ago
Would probably take a week or two here and necessitate shipping to another country...
btown 8y ago
Does anyone know if the new 2018 MBPs are having keyboard failures, or did their "quieter keys" update fix the issues? It's very hard to find information on whether people have experienced problems since this summer - which might be a good thing! But anything definitive?
- zacwest 8y ago
  They do have hardware failures. I bought a new 13" and started having issues about 2 months in with repeating and dropped keys. Apple store did a straight exchange given how new it was, thankfully.
- mitchty 8y ago
  I bought the 2018 mbp on day 1, so far zero issues with the keyboard. Not definitive by any means but its all I can offer up to go on. YMMV but thats true of all hardware.
  - matwood 8y ago
    Same. I have had a 2017 MBP for awhile, and have had zero issues with the keyboard. I assume it will fail at some point, but otherwise I like the keyboard.
- Marsymars 8y ago
  It's tough to get good data from anecdotes. Anecdotally, my first-gen butterfly MB keyboard has been flawless, while I've had half the function keys fail on my fancy mechanical keyboard. (Though they failed due to a issue with the underlying mylar strip, and Kinesis was happy to sell me an out-of-warranty replacement part.)
- aheckler 8y ago
  My 2018 MBP is having keyboard issues for sure. Some keys, mostly those in the top row of letters, are sometimes not entered or are entered twice. I too have looked around online for reports of 2018 MBP owners seeing this same thing, but haven't found a lot. (Also, my WiFi reception seems noticeably worse than my late 2016 MBP, but I'm not sure if that's hardware or some misconfiguration I haven't found.) EDIT: Your username... Are you from Bloomington or is that a coincidence? :)
bnolsen 8y ago
No they won't. Apple made specific choices NOT to do what the whole industry had already been doing: making repairable systems.
- mbreese 8y ago
  The whole industry has been moving towards smaller, lighter, machines for a while. You don't get smaller and lighter without sacrificing repairability. Screws add weight and size, whereas glue is just as good at holding components in place and adds no extra thickness. I'm sure there is an inflection point in terms of thickness where you have to switch from screws to glue. And I'm sure there are some laptops that straddle that line and are quite repairable. But it's not correct to say that Apple moving counter to the rest of the industry with respect to repairability. More consumers have decided to value light and thin over repairable and upgradable.
  - tmd83 8y ago
    But I think it's fair to say that Apple is the first one to sell mainstream high volume machines like that and use their reputation to make it standard making it both much easier for others to follow without backlash or even forced to follow in search for ever slimmer device.
  - ethbro 8y ago
    Logistics at Apple scale is underappreciated too. I wouldn't be surprised if it's almost cheaper to stock/ship whole motherboard units than individual parts. And much easier to guarantee a tighter repair SLA. Inventory tracking, storing, shipping, and training don't come free. Especially if, as Apple, they can likely financially push back on their suppliers for some flaws.
  - blattimwind 8y ago
    > More consumers have decided to value light and thin over repairable and upgradable. Turns out many people really like to fuck their children and grandchildren over (and when you can even extract some shareholder value from catering to that demand, then why not?)

nkkollaw 8y ago

Half-way through your comment, I though you were going to say it was actually a positive thing that Apple keyboards aren't good enough to type on them...

wlesieutre 8y ago

It's still a ton of labor to take the whole thing apart, but the new MacBook Air changed to using removable adhesive tabs. I suspect this is why. 2018 MacBook Air Teardown Confirms Improving Repairability With Adhesive Pull-Tabs Under Battery and Speakers https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/08/2018-macbook-air-ifixit-teardown/ https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/08/2018-macbook-air-ifixit... Amusingly, the 13" MacBook Pro non-touchbar where they have defective SSDs are the only ones that have removable SSDs. The touchbar versions are soldered. I wonder if that's a happy coincidence that they're repairable, or if the reason for these defects is that Apple's engineers screwed up the socket since they have basically no experience with those across the rest of the product line anymore.

nkkollaw 8y ago
Mmm... I wonder if they improved repairability because they expect things to keep breaking...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- pmlnr 8y ago
  There's no need to expect that - things keep breaking when they are used. Repairability is becoming a topic, though spreading quite slow, but eventually it will reach the higher ups, and we'll finally get our oldschool thinkpads back. (Hope is a strong emotion.)
  - nkkollaw 8y ago
    My MacBook Air's keyboard never broke (I've had 2, kept them for 2-3 years each.
    - pmlnr 8y ago
      > 2-3 years each That's not a very long time. Business laptops' extended warranty is 5, and to be honest, 5-6 years old laptops - actually, nearly anything since modern sleep and aes-ni - are perfectly enough, so instead of buying new, it really should be possible to fix a hinge, a display, a keyboard once in a while, instead of needing to buy a new machine.
    - cyphar 8y ago
      2-3 years is a ridiculously short lifespan for a laptop. If one of my laptops failed that quickly I would demand the manufacturer provide me with a replacement under Australian Consumer Law. I've used 8-10 year old ThinkPads that worked fine (battery life was the only issue, but a new battery is not that expensive -- since you can replace those on older ThinkPads).
      - zaroth 8y ago
        Still happily using my 2011 Air. The battery was very easy to replace (5 minutes). The only thing that’s failed is the charging cable frayed and I got a replacement DC side cable with MagSafe connector for like $9 on Amazon. The only thing holding it back is I could not for the life of me get Boot Camp working with Win10 — UEFI nonsense. The new Air is finally actually tempting me to upgrade. Before that there was nothing I thought was worth considering.

xoa 8y ago

>Since they glue everything together, getting a new J key also meant a new keyboard, touch bar, finger print reader, speakers, battery and touch pad. Which if there was no recall I can imagine would be a costly exercise. I think this most illustrates not so much that components should be easier to service in and of themselves but rather that it should be Apple's problem universally, not just for a recall. On a product at this level standard legally required warranty should be more like 4-5 years. Apple (or anyone else) can themselves make the economic call on whether costlier repairs are offset by increased revenue due to feature advantages or other QA boosts, but they shouldn't be able to externalize the cost onto their customers and reap any rewards beyond egregious circumstances. The sticker price should include a reasonable expectation of fitness for purpose over a lifespan in line with the price at no extra cost.

Sharlin 8y ago

Would probably take a week or two here and necessitate shipping to another country...

btown 8y ago

Does anyone know if the new 2018 MBPs are having keyboard failures, or did their "quieter keys" update fix the issues? It's very hard to find information on whether people have experienced problems since this summer - which might be a good thing! But anything definitive?

zacwest 8y ago
They do have hardware failures. I bought a new 13" and started having issues about 2 months in with repeating and dropped keys. Apple store did a straight exchange given how new it was, thankfully.
mitchty 8y ago
I bought the 2018 mbp on day 1, so far zero issues with the keyboard. Not definitive by any means but its all I can offer up to go on. YMMV but thats true of all hardware.
- matwood 8y ago
  Same. I have had a 2017 MBP for awhile, and have had zero issues with the keyboard. I assume it will fail at some point, but otherwise I like the keyboard.
Marsymars 8y ago
It's tough to get good data from anecdotes. Anecdotally, my first-gen butterfly MB keyboard has been flawless, while I've had half the function keys fail on my fancy mechanical keyboard. (Though they failed due to a issue with the underlying mylar strip, and Kinesis was happy to sell me an out-of-warranty replacement part.)
aheckler 8y ago
My 2018 MBP is having keyboard issues for sure. Some keys, mostly those in the top row of letters, are sometimes not entered or are entered twice. I too have looked around online for reports of 2018 MBP owners seeing this same thing, but haven't found a lot. (Also, my WiFi reception seems noticeably worse than my late 2016 MBP, but I'm not sure if that's hardware or some misconfiguration I haven't found.) EDIT: Your username... Are you from Bloomington or is that a coincidence? :)

bnolsen 8y ago

No they won't. Apple made specific choices NOT to do what the whole industry had already been doing: making repairable systems.

mbreese 8y ago
The whole industry has been moving towards smaller, lighter, machines for a while. You don't get smaller and lighter without sacrificing repairability. Screws add weight and size, whereas glue is just as good at holding components in place and adds no extra thickness. I'm sure there is an inflection point in terms of thickness where you have to switch from screws to glue. And I'm sure there are some laptops that straddle that line and are quite repairable. But it's not correct to say that Apple moving counter to the rest of the industry with respect to repairability. More consumers have decided to value light and thin over repairable and upgradable.
- tmd83 8y ago
  But I think it's fair to say that Apple is the first one to sell mainstream high volume machines like that and use their reputation to make it standard making it both much easier for others to follow without backlash or even forced to follow in search for ever slimmer device.
- ethbro 8y ago
  Logistics at Apple scale is underappreciated too. I wouldn't be surprised if it's almost cheaper to stock/ship whole motherboard units than individual parts. And much easier to guarantee a tighter repair SLA. Inventory tracking, storing, shipping, and training don't come free. Especially if, as Apple, they can likely financially push back on their suppliers for some flaws.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  > More consumers have decided to value light and thin over repairable and upgradable. Turns out many people really like to fuck their children and grandchildren over (and when you can even extract some shareholder value from catering to that demand, then why not?)