4 ms·

I'm a little surprised anyone is surprised by this story. Apple has a long history of making questionable engineering decisions that end making their products n

I'm a little surprised anyone is surprised by this story. Apple has a long history of making questionable engineering decisions that end making their products nigh unusable and then steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the issue until evidence becomes too hard to deny. It happened with the iMacs multiple times, with the phones multiple times, with the MacBooks multiple times... By now we should know and not give them the unreasonable amount of credit we, but I should really say the tech press, gives them.

scarface74 7y ago
The “tech press” - even the Apple press were complaining about the quality of the keyboards from day one. In John Gruber’s initial review when they first came out he said he didn’t like them as did Marco Arment. They are two of the most well known Apple pundits. At least Marco slso complained about the iMac monitors before he got the iMac Pro. Gruber doesn’t upgrade his computers as often as Marco but he does usually get review units. So he doesn’t get to comment on long term issues with them. He famously still uses a 20 year old Apple ADB keyboard.
bradknowles 7y ago
Apple doesn't always do this. But they do have a pattern of sometimes doing this, when they feel like the thing they delivered is just fine, and they are blind to the problems that are being reported by the industry. And when that happens, and people scream louder, then Apple digs their heads under the sand just that much deeper. It can take a pretty earth-shaking size disaster before Apple finally wakes up and smells the kitten poop [0], and decides to actually do something about it. But once Apple does finally decide to do something about it, they're usually pretty good about bending over backwards to try to repair that part of their damaged reputation. Usually. [0] All young creatures are stinky, it's just the nature of being young and small and in the hypergrowth phase of their life, and lots of input results in lots of output. But somehow kittens seem to be particularly stinky at this phase. One tiny kitten can stink up an entire large five story house. Been there, done that, narrowly avoided officially giving the name "Stinky" to our then-kitten, which would have stuck with her the rest of her life.
snowwrestler 7y ago
Another way to look at this is that Apple takes risks, which sometimes don't work out. But sometimes they do, and so Apple tends to give new features or products enough time for the answer to become clear. I'm old enough to remember the outcry when the "chiclet" keyboard style replaced the older mechanical keyboards across the line, even for desktop machines. Those complaints faded in time, and now apparently people remember the chiclets fondly compared to the new keyboards! For what it's worth I just got a laptop with the new keyboard and although it's louder, I love the feel of it. But--I have not had any keyboard problems yet. If I do, I'm sure I'll be pissed about it. (Hoping that I won't though...)

scarface74 7y ago

The “tech press” - even the Apple press were complaining about the quality of the keyboards from day one. In John Gruber’s initial review when they first came out he said he didn’t like them as did Marco Arment. They are two of the most well known Apple pundits. At least Marco slso complained about the iMac monitors before he got the iMac Pro. Gruber doesn’t upgrade his computers as often as Marco but he does usually get review units. So he doesn’t get to comment on long term issues with them. He famously still uses a 20 year old Apple ADB keyboard.

bradknowles 7y ago

Apple doesn't always do this. But they do have a pattern of sometimes doing this, when they feel like the thing they delivered is just fine, and they are blind to the problems that are being reported by the industry. And when that happens, and people scream louder, then Apple digs their heads under the sand just that much deeper. It can take a pretty earth-shaking size disaster before Apple finally wakes up and smells the kitten poop [0], and decides to actually do something about it. But once Apple does finally decide to do something about it, they're usually pretty good about bending over backwards to try to repair that part of their damaged reputation. Usually. [0] All young creatures are stinky, it's just the nature of being young and small and in the hypergrowth phase of their life, and lots of input results in lots of output. But somehow kittens seem to be particularly stinky at this phase. One tiny kitten can stink up an entire large five story house. Been there, done that, narrowly avoided officially giving the name "Stinky" to our then-kitten, which would have stuck with her the rest of her life.

snowwrestler 7y ago

Another way to look at this is that Apple takes risks, which sometimes don't work out. But sometimes they do, and so Apple tends to give new features or products enough time for the answer to become clear. I'm old enough to remember the outcry when the "chiclet" keyboard style replaced the older mechanical keyboards across the line, even for desktop machines. Those complaints faded in time, and now apparently people remember the chiclets fondly compared to the new keyboards! For what it's worth I just got a laptop with the new keyboard and although it's louder, I love the feel of it. But--I have not had any keyboard problems yet. If I do, I'm sure I'll be pissed about it. (Hoping that I won't though...)