fastasleep said: What do you mean? I use it for many different things. Triaging notifications, quick replies to communication, Apple Pay at contactless payment terminals, unlocking my Mac, quick access to time/weather/next up on calendar, hands-free Siri for everything from adding geofenced reminders to setting timers to adding/removing items from my shopping list in Reminders, activity tracking/reminders, hailing a Lyft, Shazam, remote control of Music or TuneIn Radio on my phone, answering the occasional phone call including one over wifi when my iPhone was in a Lyft driver's car, pinging my iPhone when I can't find it... probably a few other things I can't think of right now? Is that good enough to be "useful"?
Yea, I get *some* of that. ApplePay might be nice (if I ever get around to trying it), or checking time/weather/next calendar event. But, pulling out my phone isn't so hard as I'd imagine fighting with a tiny-screen would be to accomplish most of that. Emergency cellular contact (w/o phone), IMO, is finally something that makes the Watch useful. I'd just be frustrated with most of the above list.
Again, it's ridiculous to claim something isn't "useful" when you haven't even tried it, or describe interacting with the most popular smart watch in the world as "fighting" with it. Sales and customer sat would suggest that the vast majority of people are not frustrated with it, so not sure why you come to that conclusion.
Yes, those things you can also do with your iPhone. The point that's missed there is the Watch is designed to prevent you from having to interact with your iPhone. For many if not most people, this results in many many instances of saved time that quickly add up. For many people whose time is valuable, that alone makes the Watch quite useful.
fastasleep said: I never had or wanted one of those. Have you even used VR before?
Not anything "high-end" just PS4. It, like 3D TV, seems mostly a novelty, at least in current incarnations. I can see some uses for it, though with my being prone to motion-sickness and such, I don't think it is something I'll ever like. I see more use to AR if they ever crack the glasses-overlay type AR well enough. But I think we're still many years away on that.
I have a PSVR, which is what I have most of my VR experience in. To me, and most other people I interact with in PSVR forums/etc, it's literally game changing and extremely impressive for a gen 1 consumer model. I'm a bit confused by "I can see some uses for it" — it's a game console, it's for gaming. But I feel like the comparison to 3D TV cheapens the experience. There's a marked difference between watching 3D content on a flat screen and literally being inside of a 3D environment that you can interact with. Hearing someone walking down the street and being able to literally lean to peer around a corner, or look down and into an object to see things happening inside it, etc. Or in Skyrim looking up to see a dragon flying over you, is all incredibly impressive to me. I'd be curious to know what you experienced on the platform that left you underwhelmed and quick to dismiss the technology as a novelty. It's only going to get better with time, and there's absolutely no way VR is a fad as has been suggested by a few people here.
fastasleep said: Again, it's ridiculous to claim something isn't "useful" when you haven't even tried it, or describe interacting with the most popular smart watch in the world as "fighting" with it. Sales and customer sat would suggest that the vast majority of people are not frustrated with it, so not sure why you come to that conclusion.
Yes, those things you can also do with your iPhone. The point that's missed there is the Watch is designed to prevent you from having to interact with your iPhone. For many if not most people, this results in many many instances of saved time that quickly add up. For many people whose time is valuable, that alone makes the Watch quite useful.
Yes, I suppose somewhat. But, I generally have a pretty good handle on whether technical things would be of much use to me or not. The ability to contact emergency help when kayaking or out and about w/o a phone (not very often) might be a compelling reason to get one some day.
I don't answer many texts with 'ok' or 'yes' or 'no.' I don't really need to be notified on my wrist if I have my phone with me. I don't have a problem with not being able to wrangle myself away from my phone. Maybe some do, and that's OK.
But, if I recall, my original comment was in the context of battery life. My point was that the Apple Watch has been hampered by trying to squeeze every bit of life out of the tiny battery (to the point of people complaining about it's usefulness as a watch, as the screen is off so much), especially now that it can communicate with the cellular network. That's finally useful (to me), but is extremely limited. I'd like the Watch to be thinner (unlike most Apple products), but that's going to be a tough road given battery needs and the physics of transmitting a signal to cell towers.
fastasleep said: I have a PSVR, which is what I have most of my VR experience in. To me, and most other people I interact with in PSVR forums/etc, it's literally game changing and extremely impressive for a gen 1 consumer model. I'm a bit confused by "I can see some uses for it" — it's a game console, it's for gaming. But I feel like the comparison to 3D TV cheapens the experience. There's a marked difference between watching 3D content on a flat screen and literally being inside of a 3D environment that you can interact with. Hearing someone walking down the street and being able to literally lean to peer around a corner, or look down and into an object to see things happening inside it, etc. Or in Skyrim looking up to see a dragon flying over you, is all incredibly impressive to me. I'd be curious to know what you experienced on the platform that left you underwhelmed and quick to dismiss the technology as a novelty. It's only going to get better with time, and there's absolutely no way VR is a fad as has been suggested by a few people here.
I was comparing 3D TV to VR in the sense that it was the 'big thing' when it came out and then kind of got forgotten. I think VR will have a lot more application than 3D TV, but it will be much more limited than the current hype.
There are some useful verticals for it, like remote machine operation or some kinds of training. Gaming is an obvious use, but I don't think the masses are really going to take to it, at least not for quite some time. It takes an unrealistic amount of computing power and accessory hardware to deliver a less-than-stellar experience.
I can't remember what games we tried... Fruit Ninja, some shooter, etc. at a friends house. But, I remember thinking that it was interesting but not something I'd spend the money to buy. The resolution was way too low, the tracking too choppy. It wasn't really immersive. Frankly, it wasn't as good as I would have imagined it would be. I know it's a gen-1, but I was kind of like... "they actually released this, and people are paying how much for it?"
My other concern (at least for me getting one, even if they advance greatly), is that people like me often have trouble with motion sickness with them. In my reading about it, I don't know how they are going to fix that. It might be that no matter how good it gets, it won't be something for me.
I was comparing 3D TV to VR in the sense that it was the 'big thing' when it came out and then kind of got forgotten. I think VR will have a lot more application than 3D TV, but it will be much more limited than the current hype.
There are some useful verticals for it, like remote machine operation or some kinds of training. Gaming is an obvious use, but I don't think the masses are really going to take to it, at least not for quite some time. It takes an unrealistic amount of computing power and accessory hardware to deliver a less-than-stellar experience.
I can't remember what games we tried... Fruit Ninja, some shooter, etc. at a friends house. But, I remember thinking that it was interesting but not something I'd spend the money to buy. The resolution was way too low, the tracking too choppy. It wasn't really immersive. Frankly, it wasn't as good as I would have imagined it would be. I know it's a gen-1, but I was kind of like... "they actually released this, and people are paying how much for it?"
My other concern (at least for me getting one, even if they advance greatly), is that people like me often have trouble with motion sickness with them. In my reading about it, I don't know how they are going to fix that. It might be that no matter how good it gets, it won't be something for me.
Fruit Ninja? No wonder. Not sure what the shooter was but must’ve not been a good one. Try Farpoint with the Aim controller, or Resident Evil, or Eve Valkyrie, or Doom and you may come back with a different opinion. There are a lot of garbage shovelware games that absolutely do not give you an accurate representation of the system’s capabilities. They’ll get better, too.
AppleZulu said: Let’s back into the question. What would a failure rate for keyboards on MacBooks mean? Ultimately, it would be a percentage of the machines made that have keyboards that go bad. So that would be a scalable number, right? The AI article talks about a keyboard failure rate of 11.8 (almost 12!) percent for 2016 machines, nearly doubled from 6.0 percent in 2014.
Does that mean that of every 100 MacBooks sold, nearly 12 of them had bad keyboards? For every thousand machines, nearly 120 had bad keyboards? That would be catastrophic! But see, that’s not what their number actually says. They’re saying that 12% of the reported service tickets at the shops they surveyed were for keyboard issues. That’s an entirely different thing, and it doesn’t say anything predictive about the failure rate for a given number of machines sold. It’s not scalable. It doesn’t actually tell you anything.
If you were going to take a sample to determine the failure rate for keyboards on MacBooks, you would need a randomized sample of machines out there being used, and the sample would have to be large enough to statistically represent the whole population. So it would be something like, of 1,000 MacBooks in use during the first year of a given model, how many required keyboard repairs? Then you could compare that rate from one year to the next. But you have to include in that sample all the machines, including those that needed no repairs at all. That’s not what AI did here. They just looked at numbers for machines that showed up at repair shops, and calculated how many of those that required repair, required specifically keyboard repairs. Without knowing anything about how many didn’t show up at the repair shop at all, you can’t then extrapolate anything back out to the total population. It’s essentially a self-selection bias.
Second, the number of repair tickets in their sample was different for each year, from 2014, ‘15, and ‘16. The 11.8 percent ‘keyboard failure rate’ they reported for ‘16 was from a one-third smaller pool of repair tickets in 2016, as compared to 2014. So, a third fewer 2016 MacBooks came in for repairs, but a larger percentage of those repairs were for keyboards. If that information conveys anything that you could extrapolate back out to the total population, it’s that, when comparing 2016 MacBooks to 2014, slightly more appeared to have keyboard issues (but nowhere near double), but that 2016 models were actually a third less likely to need any sort of repair at all. There are enough questions about their sampling methodology that I wouldn’t actually assert that, either, but a better case could be made for that than for the sensationalized but unsubstantiated assertion that keyboard failures ‘doubled.’
Ahh, OK, I see what you're saying (partly). I think the assumption is that a somewhat similar number of MBPs sold back in the 2015 style as the 2016+ style, as there hasn't been huge growth in MBP sales (nor huge decline). So, if you knew about how many came back for repair of each style, you could kind of extrapolate that.
But, yea, 12% of the issues being keyboard related vs 12% of units having keyboard issues are quite different things. I'll have to go back and re-read the original article again.
Anyway, based on my limited experience using the keyboard, reports from enough trusted people about their issues with it, and the cost to repair... it's a no-go for me. I'd be quite shocked, actually, if the repair rates weren't more than double. But, as I said before, I don't want to see inaccurate data, of course.
At least the 2017 seems to have been improved (both from the numbers here, but also anecdotal reports), so if my son gets one, hopefully it will be OK. And, hopefully, they'll introduce some new laptops in a month that will address this.
Sorry, late to the party, here. Been a busy week. In the "not doubled" calculations here in the forums, this discussion here omits the returns for service.
And, at no point did we say that it is X% of all MacBook Pros. But, given that we are reasonably certain that there was not a dramatic increase in MBP owners after the 2016 and 2017 were released, we can reasonably assume that the usage numbers are consistent. As a reminder, the data captured is only for the first year after release for the 2014-2016 -- not repairs done after that year.
AppleZulu said: Let’s back into the question. What would a failure rate for keyboards on MacBooks mean? Ultimately, it would be a percentage of the machines made that have keyboards that go bad. So that would be a scalable number, right? The AI article talks about a keyboard failure rate of 11.8 (almost 12!) percent for 2016 machines, nearly doubled from 6.0 percent in 2014.
Does that mean that of every 100 MacBooks sold, nearly 12 of them had bad keyboards? For every thousand machines, nearly 120 had bad keyboards? That would be catastrophic! But see, that’s not what their number actually says. They’re saying that 12% of the reported service tickets at the shops they surveyed were for keyboard issues. That’s an entirely different thing, and it doesn’t say anything predictive about the failure rate for a given number of machines sold. It’s not scalable. It doesn’t actually tell you anything.
If you were going to take a sample to determine the failure rate for keyboards on MacBooks, you would need a randomized sample of machines out there being used, and the sample would have to be large enough to statistically represent the whole population. So it would be something like, of 1,000 MacBooks in use during the first year of a given model, how many required keyboard repairs? Then you could compare that rate from one year to the next. But you have to include in that sample all the machines, including those that needed no repairs at all. That’s not what AI did here. They just looked at numbers for machines that showed up at repair shops, and calculated how many of those that required repair, required specifically keyboard repairs. Without knowing anything about how many didn’t show up at the repair shop at all, you can’t then extrapolate anything back out to the total population. It’s essentially a self-selection bias.
Second, the number of repair tickets in their sample was different for each year, from 2014, ‘15, and ‘16. The 11.8 percent ‘keyboard failure rate’ they reported for ‘16 was from a one-third smaller pool of repair tickets in 2016, as compared to 2014. So, a third fewer 2016 MacBooks came in for repairs, but a larger percentage of those repairs were for keyboards. If that information conveys anything that you could extrapolate back out to the total population, it’s that, when comparing 2016 MacBooks to 2014, slightly more appeared to have keyboard issues (but nowhere near double), but that 2016 models were actually a third less likely to need any sort of repair at all. There are enough questions about their sampling methodology that I wouldn’t actually assert that, either, but a better case could be made for that than for the sensationalized but unsubstantiated assertion that keyboard failures ‘doubled.’
Ahh, OK, I see what you're saying (partly). I think the assumption is that a somewhat similar number of MBPs sold back in the 2015 style as the 2016+ style, as there hasn't been huge growth in MBP sales (nor huge decline). So, if you knew about how many came back for repair of each style, you could kind of extrapolate that.
But, yea, 12% of the issues being keyboard related vs 12% of units having keyboard issues are quite different things. I'll have to go back and re-read the original article again.
Anyway, based on my limited experience using the keyboard, reports from enough trusted people about their issues with it, and the cost to repair... it's a no-go for me. I'd be quite shocked, actually, if the repair rates weren't more than double. But, as I said before, I don't want to see inaccurate data, of course.
At least the 2017 seems to have been improved (both from the numbers here, but also anecdotal reports), so if my son gets one, hopefully it will be OK. And, hopefully, they'll introduce some new laptops in a month that will address this.
Sorry, late to the party, here. Been a busy week. In the "not doubled" calculations here in the forums, this discussion here omits the returns for service.
And, at no point did we say that it is X% of all MacBook Pros. But, given that we are reasonably certain that there was not a dramatic increase in MBP owners after the 2016 and 2017 were released, we can reasonably assume that the usage numbers are consistent. As a reminder, the data captured is only for the first year after release for the 2014-2016 -- not repairs done after that year.
Your headline reads, “2016 MacBook Pro butterfly keyboards failing twice as frequently as older models.” Anyone reading that without digging in and trying to understand what you actually did calculate is going to think you mean it is X% of all MacBook Pros. What you did calculate was X% of repair tickets, even though the number of repair tickets decreased from 2014 to 2016. So even in your sample, your denominator moved, so the doubling of your X% calculation doesn’t have the meaning that you are claiming (that keyboard repairs doubled), even narrowly as a percentage of repair tickets. (Consider this: if the actual number of keyboard repairs in your samples was exactly the same from year to year, but your total number of repair tickets decreased, your percentage calculation of #of keyboard repairs over total number of repairs would be an increase.)
As for the assumption that there was not a dramatic increase in MBP owners after the 2016 and 2017 models were released, that’s too broad an assumption upon which to base calculations of small samples. When you’re calculating small portions of small samples, even moderate shifts in the overall number of owners can make those percents of percents be indistinguishable from statistical background noise.
AppleZulu said: Let’s back into the question. What would a failure rate for keyboards on MacBooks mean? Ultimately, it would be a percentage of the machines made that have keyboards that go bad. So that would be a scalable number, right? The AI article talks about a keyboard failure rate of 11.8 (almost 12!) percent for 2016 machines, nearly doubled from 6.0 percent in 2014.
Does that mean that of every 100 MacBooks sold, nearly 12 of them had bad keyboards? For every thousand machines, nearly 120 had bad keyboards? That would be catastrophic! But see, that’s not what their number actually says. They’re saying that 12% of the reported service tickets at the shops they surveyed were for keyboard issues. That’s an entirely different thing, and it doesn’t say anything predictive about the failure rate for a given number of machines sold. It’s not scalable. It doesn’t actually tell you anything.
If you were going to take a sample to determine the failure rate for keyboards on MacBooks, you would need a randomized sample of machines out there being used, and the sample would have to be large enough to statistically represent the whole population. So it would be something like, of 1,000 MacBooks in use during the first year of a given model, how many required keyboard repairs? Then you could compare that rate from one year to the next. But you have to include in that sample all the machines, including those that needed no repairs at all. That’s not what AI did here. They just looked at numbers for machines that showed up at repair shops, and calculated how many of those that required repair, required specifically keyboard repairs. Without knowing anything about how many didn’t show up at the repair shop at all, you can’t then extrapolate anything back out to the total population. It’s essentially a self-selection bias.
Second, the number of repair tickets in their sample was different for each year, from 2014, ‘15, and ‘16. The 11.8 percent ‘keyboard failure rate’ they reported for ‘16 was from a one-third smaller pool of repair tickets in 2016, as compared to 2014. So, a third fewer 2016 MacBooks came in for repairs, but a larger percentage of those repairs were for keyboards. If that information conveys anything that you could extrapolate back out to the total population, it’s that, when comparing 2016 MacBooks to 2014, slightly more appeared to have keyboard issues (but nowhere near double), but that 2016 models were actually a third less likely to need any sort of repair at all. There are enough questions about their sampling methodology that I wouldn’t actually assert that, either, but a better case could be made for that than for the sensationalized but unsubstantiated assertion that keyboard failures ‘doubled.’
Ahh, OK, I see what you're saying (partly). I think the assumption is that a somewhat similar number of MBPs sold back in the 2015 style as the 2016+ style, as there hasn't been huge growth in MBP sales (nor huge decline). So, if you knew about how many came back for repair of each style, you could kind of extrapolate that.
But, yea, 12% of the issues being keyboard related vs 12% of units having keyboard issues are quite different things. I'll have to go back and re-read the original article again.
Anyway, based on my limited experience using the keyboard, reports from enough trusted people about their issues with it, and the cost to repair... it's a no-go for me. I'd be quite shocked, actually, if the repair rates weren't more than double. But, as I said before, I don't want to see inaccurate data, of course.
At least the 2017 seems to have been improved (both from the numbers here, but also anecdotal reports), so if my son gets one, hopefully it will be OK. And, hopefully, they'll introduce some new laptops in a month that will address this.
Sorry, late to the party, here. Been a busy week. In the "not doubled" calculations here in the forums, this discussion here omits the returns for service.
And, at no point did we say that it is X% of all MacBook Pros. But, given that we are reasonably certain that there was not a dramatic increase in MBP owners after the 2016 and 2017 were released, we can reasonably assume that the usage numbers are consistent. As a reminder, the data captured is only for the first year after release for the 2014-2016 -- not repairs done after that year.
Also, to have any numbers that one could extrapolate back out to the overall number of MBPs out there in the wild, you would have had to take a random sample of MBP owners, not just a sample of those who had repair problems. Just sampling the ones who had problems is a lot like just looking at complaints that show up on twitter and message boards. It’s a self-selection bias. You’re only looking at the people who had a complaint, which could be a large portion of total MBP owners or a minuscule one. By not sampling the general MBP population, you have no way to relate what you’re looking at back to the general MBP population.
AppleZulu said: Let’s back into the question. What would a failure rate for keyboards on MacBooks mean? Ultimately, it would be a percentage of the machines made that have keyboards that go bad. So that would be a scalable number, right? The AI article talks about a keyboard failure rate of 11.8 (almost 12!) percent for 2016 machines, nearly doubled from 6.0 percent in 2014.
Does that mean that of every 100 MacBooks sold, nearly 12 of them had bad keyboards? For every thousand machines, nearly 120 had bad keyboards? That would be catastrophic! But see, that’s not what their number actually says. They’re saying that 12% of the reported service tickets at the shops they surveyed were for keyboard issues. That’s an entirely different thing, and it doesn’t say anything predictive about the failure rate for a given number of machines sold. It’s not scalable. It doesn’t actually tell you anything.
If you were going to take a sample to determine the failure rate for keyboards on MacBooks, you would need a randomized sample of machines out there being used, and the sample would have to be large enough to statistically represent the whole population. So it would be something like, of 1,000 MacBooks in use during the first year of a given model, how many required keyboard repairs? Then you could compare that rate from one year to the next. But you have to include in that sample all the machines, including those that needed no repairs at all. That’s not what AI did here. They just looked at numbers for machines that showed up at repair shops, and calculated how many of those that required repair, required specifically keyboard repairs. Without knowing anything about how many didn’t show up at the repair shop at all, you can’t then extrapolate anything back out to the total population. It’s essentially a self-selection bias.
Second, the number of repair tickets in their sample was different for each year, from 2014, ‘15, and ‘16. The 11.8 percent ‘keyboard failure rate’ they reported for ‘16 was from a one-third smaller pool of repair tickets in 2016, as compared to 2014. So, a third fewer 2016 MacBooks came in for repairs, but a larger percentage of those repairs were for keyboards. If that information conveys anything that you could extrapolate back out to the total population, it’s that, when comparing 2016 MacBooks to 2014, slightly more appeared to have keyboard issues (but nowhere near double), but that 2016 models were actually a third less likely to need any sort of repair at all. There are enough questions about their sampling methodology that I wouldn’t actually assert that, either, but a better case could be made for that than for the sensationalized but unsubstantiated assertion that keyboard failures ‘doubled.’
Ahh, OK, I see what you're saying (partly). I think the assumption is that a somewhat similar number of MBPs sold back in the 2015 style as the 2016+ style, as there hasn't been huge growth in MBP sales (nor huge decline). So, if you knew about how many came back for repair of each style, you could kind of extrapolate that.
But, yea, 12% of the issues being keyboard related vs 12% of units having keyboard issues are quite different things. I'll have to go back and re-read the original article again.
Anyway, based on my limited experience using the keyboard, reports from enough trusted people about their issues with it, and the cost to repair... it's a no-go for me. I'd be quite shocked, actually, if the repair rates weren't more than double. But, as I said before, I don't want to see inaccurate data, of course.
At least the 2017 seems to have been improved (both from the numbers here, but also anecdotal reports), so if my son gets one, hopefully it will be OK. And, hopefully, they'll introduce some new laptops in a month that will address this.
Sorry, late to the party, here. Been a busy week. In the "not doubled" calculations here in the forums, this discussion here omits the returns for service.
And, at no point did we say that it is X% of all MacBook Pros. But, given that we are reasonably certain that there was not a dramatic increase in MBP owners after the 2016 and 2017 were released, we can reasonably assume that the usage numbers are consistent. As a reminder, the data captured is only for the first year after release for the 2014-2016 -- not repairs done after that year.
Also, to have any numbers that one could extrapolate back out to the overall number of MBPs out there in the wild, you would have had to take a random sample of MBP owners, not just a sample of those who had repair problems. Just sampling the ones who had problems is a lot like just looking at complaints that show up on twitter and message boards. It’s a self-selection bias. You’re only looking at the people who had a complaint, which could be a large portion of total MBP owners or a minuscule one. By not sampling the general MBP population, you have no way to relate what you’re looking at back to the general MBP population.
I don't think that will give you a decrease in failures. As sampled, this is just the failures that users consider bad enough to seek service for, and Apple considered sufficient to justify a repair under warranty. If anything, it will be more because people will just live with a key that gives a double-a sometimes.
And, we were conservative in the numbers of keyboard failures, not including ones that were considered "user abuse" which may or may not have been.
This all said, I appreciate what you're trying to do. I stand by the story, and the numbers. Ideally, I'd have every number ever, but I never will. The denominator of "all MacBook Pro" isn't obtainable -- but given what we know about sales it is relatively constant and can be eliminated for this discussion.
These numbers are indicative that there's a problem with the keyboards induced by the new design causing more failures than the older models, and that the 2017 moved in the direction of attempting to fix it.
I appreciate AppleZulu’s concern. Mathematics is such a wonderful discipline and statistics in particular so difficult to master. Also not very many take the time to think about it in everyday situations.
Anyway, the petition on change.org just passed 13.000 participants and that only after some days. The 2011+ GPU petition had about 40.000 when it was closed and those MBPs fell like flies. When I recall correctly Apple reduced the GPU performance of my 2011 after I bought it in 2011 with a software update, but in 2013, probably because of increased MacOS system requirements, my laptop broke down and Apple was unable to fix it. (As far as I know the lead free solderings could not take the heat produced by the system.) Fortunately Apple took the right decision and created a repair program for this generations. Generations because it was a problem affecting 2011 - 2014 machines.
I might be wrong, but I like to think it was Tim who cared about this. Let us bring this to his attention. In case you have not done so yet, please sign up and help spread the word.
I appreciate AppleZulu’s concern. Mathematics is such a wonderful discipline and statistics in particular so difficult to master. Also not very many take the time to think about it in everyday situations.
Anyway, the petition on change.org just passed 13.000 participants and that only after some days. The 2011+ GPU petition had about 40.000 when it was closed and those MBPs fell like flies. When I recall correctly Apple reduced the GPU performance of my 2011 after I bought it in 2011 with a software update, but in 2013, probably because of increased MacOS system requirements, my laptop broke down and Apple was unable to fix it. (As far as I know the lead free solderings could not take the heat produced by the system.) Fortunately Apple took the right decision and created a repair program for this generations. Generations because it was a problem affecting 2011 - 2014 machines.
I might be wrong, but I like to think it was Tim who cared about this. Let us bring this to his attention. In case you have not done so yet, please sign up and help spread the word.
To be sure, I’m not saying that the keyboard issue isn’t an issue. I’m just saying that the statistical methodology in the above report doesn’t provide evidence either way. I have a 2016 MBP and haven’t experienced any issues. But that’s just me.
I appreciate AppleZulu’s concern. Mathematics is such a wonderful discipline and statistics in particular so difficult to master. Also not very many take the time to think about it in everyday situations.
Anyway, the petition on change.org just passed 13.000 participants and that only after some days. The 2011+ GPU petition had about 40.000 when it was closed and those MBPs fell like flies. When I recall correctly Apple reduced the GPU performance of my 2011 after I bought it in 2011 with a software update, but in 2013, probably because of increased MacOS system requirements, my laptop broke down and Apple was unable to fix it. (As far as I know the lead free solderings could not take the heat produced by the system.) Fortunately Apple took the right decision and created a repair program for this generations. Generations because it was a problem affecting 2011 - 2014 machines.
I might be wrong, but I like to think it was Tim who cared about this. Let us bring this to his attention. In case you have not done so yet, please sign up and help spread the word.
To be sure, I’m not saying that the keyboard issue isn’t an issue. I’m just saying that the statistical methodology in the above report doesn’t provide evidence either way. I have a 2016 MBP and haven’t experienced any issues. But that’s just me.
Yeah -- I think you're wrong about that, but that's okay.
And, again, I haven't had any problems with my 2016.
To be sure, I’m not saying that the keyboard issue isn’t an issue. I’m just saying that the statistical methodology in the above report doesn’t provide evidence either way. I have a 2016 MBP and haven’t experienced any issues. But that’s just me.
Yes, I think that was clear.
Good that you didn’t have an issue, that is great to hear. It is a wonderful machine, I love mine. I deal with the audio interface issue by changing audio interface to internal before disconnecting the external one, although I think that should be automatic and not result in the computer crashing. But my keyboard braking and the dark patches on the display made me concerned about my machine and the 5000,- euro I paid for it (4700,- + AppleCare).
fastasleep said: Fruit Ninja? No wonder. Not sure what the shooter was but must’ve not been a good one. Try Farpoint with the Aim controller, or Resident Evil, or Eve Valkyrie, or Doom and you may come back with a different opinion. There are a lot of garbage shovelware games that absolutely do not give you an accurate representation of the system’s capabilities. They’ll get better, too.
Hey, they had just gotten it, and that's what they had. But, I think it should still somewhat represent the resolution and general experience, no? I'll try it again sometime when I get a chance. We don't live near them anymore, and I don't know anyone who has one near me.
AppleZulu said: When you’re calculating small portions of small samples, even moderate shifts in the overall number of owners can make those percents of percents be indistinguishable from statistical background noise.
This isn't my area of expertise, but my impression was that there haven't been even modest shifts.
Mike Wuerthele said: I don't think that will give you a decrease in failures. As sampled, this is just the failures that users consider bad enough to seek service for, and Apple considered sufficient to justify a repair under warranty. If anything, it will be more because people will just live with a key that gives a double-a sometimes.
That was a point I was trying to make earlier. I hear a lot of complaints about problem where people haven't taken them in for repair and fixed with compressed air. Those aren't outright failures (i.e.: broken), but they are design failures. If I'm at a meeting, and my keyboard starts messing up, even if I can later fix it with a can of air, it still failed on me where the previous design wouldn't have. It just won't cost me $700+ (which I'd be grateful for), but better if it didn't happen at all.
SEJU said: When I recall correctly Apple reduced the GPU performance of my 2011 after I bought it in 2011 with a software update, but in 2013, probably because of increased MacOS system requirements, my laptop broke down and Apple was unable to fix it. (As far as I know the lead free solderings could not take the heat produced by the system.) Fortunately Apple took the right decision and created a repair program for this generations. Generations because it was a problem affecting 2011 - 2014 machines.
Yea, Apple had pretty long-term issues with GPUs. I had an earlier 2000s MBP that went due to GPU or solder issues, as well as a 2007 that eventually couldn't run anything GPU intensive w/o freezing up and was generally unstable unless I kept a fan blowing air across/under it. The former, I think, was covered by Apple (but was a company purchased machine that I returned, so can't speak to the long-term). The latter, I finally sold for $100 with my silent-fan setup to someone who mainly needed to write school papers. (I also witnessed a number of them go while at said company... so you're right in that it was pretty wide-spread.)
I'm now pretty gun-shy about running heavy-duty stuff on laptops or iMacs. Maybe I don't have to be with newer lower-thermal chips... but the thermal designs have also shrunk... so I just don't know. Leaning towards a Mac Pro if they don't introduce something in June, but I'm worried about longevity (macOS support).
SEJU said: I deal with the audio interface issue by changing audio interface to internal before disconnecting the external one, although I think that should be automatic and not result in the computer crashing. But my keyboard braking and the dark patches on the display made me concerned about my machine and the 5000,- euro I paid for it (4700,- + AppleCare).
Yikes! I hope you can get all that fixed, or Apple can fix with software updates or something. That doesn't sound good.
Hello everyone, I would like to let you know that the great Matthew Taylor started a change.org petition in order to put some pressure on Apple to do the right thing.
In case you agree please sign up + share the campaign through your network. Currently there are over 9000 participants after only 2 days.
Incase you did not encounter this problem yet, please keep in mind that this could happen to you just like to so many other people and you would face a repairbill of 700,- euro/$ + repair fee!
From my perspective it would be ok to - guaranty out of warranty repair for the keyboard to everyone, - lower the price for the repair to something more reasonable - come up with a revisited more reliable version of the keyboard to use in case a repair is needed or any combination thereof.
I also would like to thank Mike Wuerthele again for the article. That is called journalism, bravo!
Think I’ll pass, but thanks.
A petition doesn’t prove there is a problem. It only proves that people think there’s a problem, or people like to think there’s a problem.
A keyboard for my Lenovo Thinkpad costs under $40, I can install it (easily) myself, and it works & feels much better than the Apple keyboard.
Apple needs to prioritize functionality a bit higher over slick, beautiful "design"....
The keyboard for your Lenovo Thinkpad doesn't consist of the upper case metal, the battery, and the keyboard -- as spelled out in the story.
Yeh, I saw that and ignored that because:
Why would I want to replace the top upper case metal and battery (and pay to tear the machine apart) just to replace a simple keyboard?
And, as I pointed out, the ThinkPad keyboards are far superior to MacBook keyboards (at least by any measure meaningful to me: repairability + Comfort and efficiency typing because of their feel and travel).
Often, people criticize a design because it was a compromise between multiple requirements. But it seems that the MacPro keyboards are a compromise taken too far to the point that it simply ignores too many other requirements in the pursuit of thinness and lightness.
It wasn't a judgement statement -- just a factual one.
My MBP 2012 keyboard collapsed into the case under use in 2015. Some of the rivets they use to hold the keyboard in place snapped. It cost me $440 to replace it. So, I'm not a big fan.
fastasleep said: Still funny to me that people say this stuff with authority, as if they know what Jobs would’ve actually done in situation x. What a disservice to him. ... Look, I know you have a hard time imagining a future of computing that looks different from your own use case, or even a different definition of “professional” that doesn’t involve a big clicky keyboard, but Apple can. Look at all the input/keyboard patents on Patently Apple going back ten years and the tea leaves aren’t that hard to read. The technology isn’t where it needs to be yet to replace the traditional keyboard, but you can see the steps they’ve taken and continue to take. The future is coming whether you like it or not; you should give it a chance.
Jobs actually cared about computers... particularly the professional models. While I can't know exactly how it would have gone, I'm pretty confident I wouldn't be far off.
This would be the same Steve Jobs who said that if he was in charge of Apple he’d milk the Mac for all it’s worth and move onto the next big thing.
Jobs didn’t seem care about any particular technology. He seemed to care more about how people used technology.
Wait … isn’t that Steve Jobs scrubbing the word ‘Computer’ from ‘Apple Computer’?
The reason Apple is successful is the whole ‘puck’ thing. It doesn’t care for any particular technology or appliance. It cares about trends and the evolution of its customer base, and the customer base is evolving towards keyboards that don’t move.
tht said: Au contraire, it’s precisely the context it should be. Think of it as an input device on a flat surface controlling what’s going on in the vertical display.
As an input device, it can have keyboard, trackpad, stylus, and multitouch UI inputs in the right ergonomic orientation, a flat surface where the user can rest their arms. It can have infinitely variable and user customizable keyboard designs. A keyboard specialized for programming? Easy to do and easier for people to learn. Running MS Windows? A Windows keyboard is used. Running a game? A custom game control UI can be used.
With a Pencil, I can take notes on it without doing origami. It’s just a matter of picking up a Pencil and writing much like it is on an iPad. Want to have piano keys? Easy. Multitouch sliders and dials? Easy. Apple has definitely thought about doing this, but it’s a matter of costs, form factor and price. I don’t think Apple can do it for less than $2k. But if the CPU was cheaper, more power efficient like Apple’s ARM CPUs, and the displays more power efficient, it makes you think the timing for such a device is not far away. Two iPad Pros on top of each other is thinner than the 4th gen MBP, so I think the hardware for it is basically available.
It would be a great device for education, engineering and creative markets.
Except the actual efficiency of all that multi-varied input would be next to zero for the most meaningful stuff. There's a reason keyboard layout and even key-spacing and feel are so important to people.
Oh, I totally disagree with this sentiment. A software keyboard of the same size and spacing as a full size hardware keyboard will be 80% to 90% the efficiency of a hardware version, and for most people, it won’t be much different at all. In terms of typing efficiency that is.
I’ve been using my iPad Pro 10.5 flat on a table with the software keyboard ever since I got it. Doing it right now. It has full horizontal key spacing, and a touch shorter vertical spacing. It’s been perfectly fine. I’ve been pleasantly surprised how easy it is. Reminds me of the skepticism with the software keyboard when the iPhone came out. Today, more people use a software keyboard than a hardware one if you include phones.
Then, I would argue input efficiency would go up with a 13.4” touch input surface. Meta key sequences can be made more explicit, button functions can be made explicit, there is 2x more area for buttons, and you gain the usage of a stylus analog free form input. So learning curves will be shorter while users will become more efficient as input UI can be specifically designed for applications.
Exactly.
Before I got the MacBook Pro, I was using a Microsoft Comfort keyboard, and I thought it was the dog’s danglies. My old monitor packed up so I just used the MacBook without a screen. First day with the keyboard was a nightmare – a loud nightmare. Second day, not much better. Day 3, I realised that the travel meant I didn’t have to punch the keys through the desk, so I started tapping the keys instead of hitting them. After that, I was typing faster and with a lot less wrist strain. Accuracy took a bit longer because of the spacing between the keys
Now I have a new monitor, so I went back to the MS Comfort keyboard.
And now … it sucks. Accuracy is way down because the travel is too deep. I lose keystrokes, especially around the edges (qwop). Feels like an effort, rather than just gliding over the keyboard, foppishly touching the keys. Oh, and the RSI is back.
So yes, I think a touch keyboard is in the future, and we’re being trained for it now.
Things that need sorting out:
Haptics. They’re part way there. The mouse pad and Magic Trackpad don’t actually move, but manage a pretty good impression of an actual click. As well as a click then you’d need a haptic engine capable of simulating curvature.
AppleZulu said: A sample has to have a valid relationship to the whole, and you can’t ignore a decrease in your sample denominator when comparing one sample to another, and then claim that a portion of that sample has thus ‘doubled.’ That’s a huge, glaring math error. AI made some very broad and dubious assumptions about how their samples relate to the whole, and then made comparatively fine detail year-to-year comparisons of data in their samples, while ignoring important aspects of the required math. They then created a headline out of their bottom line calculation, that keyboard failures have ‘doubled,’ and others pick up that headline as though it’s the gospel truth. It’s not. It’s just not.
The keyboard issue could be a big deal, or it could be another case of a problem amplified by the fact that the people who don’t experience the problem don’t bother to post their nominal experience online, or bring their perfectly functional machine to the shop for repairs. AI has essentially taken that scenario and wrapped it in a pretend statistical analysis and presented it as though it’s scientifically proven to be a big deal. The truth is, we don’t know. We just have anecdotal complaints.
Maybe the problem is that I'm not a statistician, but I'm not understanding the problem. If you take a sampling of repair centers and compare the number of repairs for one series vs another series of product, I'd think that's fine... as far as it goes. Or, are you saying there is a problem in how they calculated the 'double' aspect based on that data?
Anyway, the actual failure rate is fairly irrelevant to me, aside from this possibly backing up everything I'm hearing anecdotally. IMO, there are way more 'failed' keyboards for this series, even if they never made it to the repair center. Only once have I had to take a can of compressed air to my MacBook Pro keyboard in decades of using them... and then it was my fault for too much snacking over my laptop. If dust-specks are causing it to 'fail' then it's a problem even if they are fully breaking.
But, sure, I'd like such evidence to be as accurate as possible, so your remarks make me curious.
Let’s back into the question. What would a failure rate for keyboards on MacBooks mean? Ultimately, it would be a percentage of the machines made that have keyboards that go bad. So that would be a scalable number, right? The AI article talks about a keyboard failure rate of 11.8 (almost 12!) percent for 2016 machines, nearly doubled from 6.0 percent in 2014.
Does that mean that of every 100 MacBooks sold, nearly 12 of them had bad keyboards? For every thousand machines, nearly 120 had bad keyboards? That would be catastrophic! But see, that’s not what their number actually says. They’re saying that 12% of the reported service tickets at the shops they surveyed were for keyboard issues. That’s an entirely different thing, and it doesn’t say anything predictive about the failure rate for a given number of machines sold. It’s not scalable. It doesn’t actually tell you anything.
If you were going to take a sample to determine the failure rate for keyboards on MacBooks, you would need a randomized sample of machines out there being used, and the sample would have to be large enough to statistically represent the whole population. So it would be something like, of 1,000 MacBooks in use during the first year of a given model, how many required keyboard repairs? Then you could compare that rate from one year to the next. But you have to include in that sample all the machines, including those that needed no repairs at all. That’s not what AI did here. They just looked at numbers for machines that showed up at repair shops, and calculated how many of those that required repair, required specifically keyboard repairs. Without knowing anything about how many didn’t show up at the repair shop at all, you can’t then extrapolate anything back out to the total population. It’s essentially a self-selection bias.
Second, the number of repair tickets in their sample was different for each year, from 2014, ‘15, and ‘16. The 11.8 percent ‘keyboard failure rate’ they reported for ‘16 was from a one-third smaller pool of repair tickets in 2016, as compared to 2014. So, a third fewer 2016 MacBooks came in for repairs, but a larger percentage of those repairs were for keyboards. If that information conveys anything that you could extrapolate back out to the total population, it’s that, when comparing 2016 MacBooks to 2014, slightly more appeared to have keyboard issues (but nowhere near double), but that 2016 models were actually a third less likely to need any sort of repair at all. There are enough questions about their sampling methodology that I wouldn’t actually assert that, either, but a better case could be made for that than for the sensationalized but unsubstantiated assertion that keyboard failures ‘doubled.’
And this is why God gave us the “Informative” button.
Rayz2016 said: This would be the same Steve Jobs who said that if he was in charge of Apple he’d milk the Mac for all it’s worth and move onto the next big thing.
Jobs didn’t seem care about any particular technology. He seemed to care more about how people used technology. Wait … isn’t that Steve Jobs scrubbing the word ‘Computer’ from ‘Apple Computer’? The reason Apple is successful is the whole ‘puck’ thing. It doesn’t care for any particular technology or appliance. It cares about trends and the evolution of its customer base, and the customer base is evolving towards keyboards that don’t move.
I think he generally had in mind, technology that would change things for the better. I guess if the user-base moves towards stupid and fashion, I hope Apple doesn't follow.
As for the 'puck' I'm not really seeing any replacements on the horizon for big display areas and efficient input. It doesn't matter how powerful the iPhone gets, people aren't suddenly going to start doing CAD on it.
I think there can be more than one 'puck' as well. My point, though, was that Jobs deeply cared about the technology (which happened to be computers at that point), over how many SKUs sell the best. Or, another way to put that... he made the best stuff and the sales followed. He didn't (primarily) target what he thought he could sell the most of and forget the rest.
Haptics. They’re part way there. The mouse pad and Magic Trackpad don’t actually move, but manage a pretty good impression of an actual click. As well as a click then you’d need a haptic engine capable of simulating curvature.
There’s also the question of cost and the power needed to run a second OLED screen of that size. Or does it have to be OLED?
People will be ok without the haptics. Great if it is there, but isn’t required for a great solution imo.
Biggest issue with the software keyboard imo, other than needing full spacing and very low latency which looks like it is good enough, is that you can’t rest your fingers on the keyboard without it registering a touch. This will probably be solved by 3D capacitive imaging systems in the future, where the capacitive layer of the touchscreen is able make a 3D image of your hands and fingers as they approach the display. This is millimeters above the surface, maybe 15 or 30 mm. I think this is done somewhat today, but maybe could be made much more capable in the future. If the capacitive layer can sense how fast a finger is approaching the key, that might be a one way to discern an intentional tap versus resting. The capacitive sensing layer may actually be good enough recognize a palm, wrist, “not finger tip” body parts so that “palm” rejection can become rock solid too.
Secondary to this is maybe better color production at 30° to 50° viewing angles. The MBP TB supposedly has a surface finish to address this, but it’s hard for me to tell when I’m in the Apple Store.
The iPad is 7 mm thick. They can remove the aluminum chassis out and put the guts in a 4th gen MBP and only add something like 5 mm to the thickness. Something a little thicker than the revered 3rd gen MBP. It will be an interesting product.
A lot of the mechanical keyboard talk from aficionados sound a lot like analog record album fans. That scratchy analog sound just sounds better! Or maybe similar to the affection audiophiles have for audiophile speakers and headphones. Great that think they can tell the difference, but the 90% of the rest of the population just wants something to entertain them and will be fine with mono. I jest. ☺️
Comments
Yes, those things you can also do with your iPhone. The point that's missed there is the Watch is designed to prevent you from having to interact with your iPhone. For many if not most people, this results in many many instances of saved time that quickly add up. For many people whose time is valuable, that alone makes the Watch quite useful.
I have a PSVR, which is what I have most of my VR experience in. To me, and most other people I interact with in PSVR forums/etc, it's literally game changing and extremely impressive for a gen 1 consumer model. I'm a bit confused by "I can see some uses for it" — it's a game console, it's for gaming.
I don't answer many texts with 'ok' or 'yes' or 'no.' I don't really need to be notified on my wrist if I have my phone with me. I don't have a problem with not being able to wrangle myself away from my phone. Maybe some do, and that's OK.
But, if I recall, my original comment was in the context of battery life. My point was that the Apple Watch has been hampered by trying to squeeze every bit of life out of the tiny battery (to the point of people complaining about it's usefulness as a watch, as the screen is off so much), especially now that it can communicate with the cellular network. That's finally useful (to me), but is extremely limited. I'd like the Watch to be thinner (unlike most Apple products), but that's going to be a tough road given battery needs and the physics of transmitting a signal to cell towers.
I was comparing 3D TV to VR in the sense that it was the 'big thing' when it came out and then kind of got forgotten. I think VR will have a lot more application than 3D TV, but it will be much more limited than the current hype.
There are some useful verticals for it, like remote machine operation or some kinds of training. Gaming is an obvious use, but I don't think the masses are really going to take to it, at least not for quite some time. It takes an unrealistic amount of computing power and accessory hardware to deliver a less-than-stellar experience.
I can't remember what games we tried... Fruit Ninja, some shooter, etc. at a friends house. But, I remember thinking that it was interesting but not something I'd spend the money to buy. The resolution was way too low, the tracking too choppy. It wasn't really immersive. Frankly, it wasn't as good as I would have imagined it would be. I know it's a gen-1, but I was kind of like... "they actually released this, and people are paying how much for it?"
My other concern (at least for me getting one, even if they advance greatly), is that people like me often have trouble with motion sickness with them. In my reading about it, I don't know how they are going to fix that. It might be that no matter how good it gets, it won't be something for me.
And, at no point did we say that it is X% of all MacBook Pros. But, given that we are reasonably certain that there was not a dramatic increase in MBP owners after the 2016 and 2017 were released, we can reasonably assume that the usage numbers are consistent. As a reminder, the data captured is only for the first year after release for the 2014-2016 -- not repairs done after that year.
As for the assumption that there was not a dramatic increase in MBP owners after the 2016 and 2017 models were released, that’s too broad an assumption upon which to base calculations of small samples. When you’re calculating small portions of small samples, even moderate shifts in the overall number of owners can make those percents of percents be indistinguishable from statistical background noise.
Also, to have any numbers that one could extrapolate back out to the overall number of MBPs out there in the wild, you would have had to take a random sample of MBP owners, not just a sample of those who had repair problems. Just sampling the ones who had problems is a lot like just looking at complaints that show up on twitter and message boards. It’s a self-selection bias. You’re only looking at the people who had a complaint, which could be a large portion of total MBP owners or a minuscule one. By not sampling the general MBP population, you have no way to relate what you’re looking at back to the general MBP population.
And, we were conservative in the numbers of keyboard failures, not including ones that were considered "user abuse" which may or may not have been.
These numbers are indicative that there's a problem with the keyboards induced by the new design causing more failures than the older models, and that the 2017 moved in the direction of attempting to fix it.
Anyway, the petition on change.org just passed 13.000 participants and that only after some days. The 2011+ GPU petition had about 40.000 when it was closed and those MBPs fell like flies. When I recall correctly Apple reduced the GPU performance of my 2011 after I bought it in 2011 with a software update, but in 2013, probably because of increased MacOS system requirements, my laptop broke down and Apple was unable to fix it. (As far as I know the lead free solderings could not take the heat produced by the system.) Fortunately Apple took the right decision and created a repair program for this generations. Generations because it was a problem affecting 2011 - 2014 machines.
I might be wrong, but I like to think it was Tim who cared about this. Let us bring this to his attention. In case you have not done so yet, please sign up and help spread the word.
Yes, I think that was clear.
Good that you didn’t have an issue, that is great to hear. It is a wonderful machine, I love mine. I deal with the audio interface issue by changing audio interface to internal before disconnecting the external one, although I think that should be automatic and not result in the computer crashing. But my keyboard braking and the dark patches on the display made me concerned about my machine and the 5000,- euro I paid for it (4700,- + AppleCare).
But, I think it should still somewhat represent the resolution and general experience, no? I'll try it again sometime when I get a chance. We don't live near them anymore, and I don't know anyone who has one near me.
This isn't my area of expertise, but my impression was that there haven't been even modest shifts.
That was a point I was trying to make earlier. I hear a lot of complaints about problem where people haven't taken them in for repair and fixed with compressed air. Those aren't outright failures (i.e.: broken), but they are design failures. If I'm at a meeting, and my keyboard starts messing up, even if I can later fix it with a can of air, it still failed on me where the previous design wouldn't have. It just won't cost me $700+ (which I'd be grateful for), but better if it didn't happen at all.
Yea, Apple had pretty long-term issues with GPUs. I had an earlier 2000s MBP that went due to GPU or solder issues, as well as a 2007 that eventually couldn't run anything GPU intensive w/o freezing up and was generally unstable unless I kept a fan blowing air across/under it. The former, I think, was covered by Apple (but was a company purchased machine that I returned, so can't speak to the long-term). The latter, I finally sold for $100 with my silent-fan setup to someone who mainly needed to write school papers. (I also witnessed a number of them go while at said company... so you're right in that it was pretty wide-spread.)
I'm now pretty gun-shy about running heavy-duty stuff on laptops or iMacs. Maybe I don't have to be with newer lower-thermal chips... but the thermal designs have also shrunk... so I just don't know. Leaning towards a Mac Pro if they don't introduce something in June, but I'm worried about longevity (macOS support).
Yikes! I hope you can get all that fixed, or Apple can fix with software updates or something. That doesn't sound good.
A petition doesn’t prove there is a problem. It only proves that people think there’s a problem, or people like to think there’s a problem.
Jobs didn’t seem care about any particular technology. He seemed to care more about how people used technology.
Wait … isn’t that Steve Jobs scrubbing the word ‘Computer’ from ‘Apple Computer’?The reason Apple is successful is the whole ‘puck’ thing. It doesn’t care for any particular technology or appliance. It cares about trends and the evolution of its customer base, and the customer base is evolving towards keyboards that don’t move.
Before I got the MacBook Pro, I was using a Microsoft Comfort keyboard, and I thought it was the dog’s danglies. My old monitor packed up so I just used the MacBook without a screen. First day with the keyboard was a nightmare – a loud nightmare. Second day, not much better. Day 3, I realised that the travel meant I didn’t have to punch the keys through the desk, so I started tapping the keys instead of hitting them. After that, I was typing faster and with a lot less wrist strain. Accuracy took a bit longer because of the spacing between the keys
Now I have a new monitor, so I went back to the MS Comfort keyboard.
And now … it sucks. Accuracy is way down because the travel is too deep. I lose keystrokes, especially around the edges (qwop). Feels like an effort, rather than just gliding over the keyboard, foppishly touching the keys. Oh, and the RSI is back.
So yes, I think a touch keyboard is in the future, and we’re being trained for it now.
Things that need sorting out:
Haptics. They’re part way there. The mouse pad and Magic Trackpad don’t actually move, but manage a pretty good impression of an actual click. As well as a click then you’d need a haptic engine capable of simulating curvature.
http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~haptic/pub/MW-ET-AL-EH-08.pdf
There’s also the question of cost and the power needed to run a second OLED screen of that size. Or does it have to be OLED?
And this is why God gave us the “Informative” button.
As for the 'puck' I'm not really seeing any replacements on the horizon for big display areas and efficient input. It doesn't matter how powerful the iPhone gets, people aren't suddenly going to start doing CAD on it.
I think there can be more than one 'puck' as well. My point, though, was that Jobs deeply cared about the technology (which happened to be computers at that point), over how many SKUs sell the best. Or, another way to put that... he made the best stuff and the sales followed. He didn't (primarily) target what he thought he could sell the most of and forget the rest.
People will be ok without the haptics. Great if it is there, but isn’t required for a great solution imo.
Biggest issue with the software keyboard imo, other than needing full spacing and very low latency which looks like it is good enough, is that you can’t rest your fingers on the keyboard without it registering a touch. This will probably be solved by 3D capacitive imaging systems in the future, where the capacitive layer of the touchscreen is able make a 3D image of your hands and fingers as they approach the display. This is millimeters above the surface, maybe 15 or 30 mm. I think this is done somewhat today, but maybe could be made much more capable in the future. If the capacitive layer can sense how fast a finger is approaching the key, that might be a one way to discern an intentional tap versus resting. The capacitive sensing layer may actually be good enough recognize a palm, wrist, “not finger tip” body parts so that “palm” rejection can become rock solid too.
Secondary to this is maybe better color production at 30° to 50° viewing angles. The MBP TB supposedly has a surface finish to address this, but it’s hard for me to tell when I’m in the Apple Store.
The iPad is 7 mm thick. They can remove the aluminum chassis out and put the guts in a 4th gen MBP and only add something like 5 mm to the thickness. Something a little thicker than the revered 3rd gen MBP. It will be an interesting product.
A lot of the mechanical keyboard talk from aficionados sound a lot like analog record album fans. That scratchy analog sound just sounds better! Or maybe similar to the affection audiophiles have for audiophile speakers and headphones. Great that think they can tell the difference, but the 90% of the rest of the population just wants something to entertain them and will be fine with mono. I jest. ☺️