My 2016 13” MBP had a TON of issues. The battery depleted after 4 months of use, loose TB3 connectors, etc. The keyboard was the worst. It would get stuck from the smallest crumbs and then I would press say an “o” or “i” or the space bar and it wouldn’t register. Then I’d press again and it would double type! Finally got them to give me a 2017 model. Much better!!!
I don’t have a MacBook anymore as I smashed it into a wall of an AppleStore that denied warranty. Not a wise move or something that I would advise to anyone, but OMG, it was sooo relieving.... (I had a backup that I now run on my 2015 MBA)
I have a 2017 13" MBP that my daughter uses for school. One day one of the keys started acting flakey. A lot of tapping & blowing & fretting got it working again, but the tiniest bit of detritus cripples these new keyboards. They are not robust.
Losers? These machines cost a lot of money and many people have had these issues. This is how it works: if enough people are vocal about an issue, in the end something is done about it.
Apparently, Roxy, you don't you know how it works here on AI. You should know by now that you're not allowed to question the overall quality of any Apple product or service without expecting to be accused of trolling, being an Android lover or falling into any one of several other categories of rebel-rouser who only show up at this site to demean Apple.
Just use your Apple product as is, don't post inflammatory comments here on AppleInsider and we'll all get along just fine.
Anyone can complain on AI about Apple but be prepared to have facts presented such as about AppleCare+. * My son’s MacBook had a complete hardware failure. We took it into the Apple Store and because we had AppleCare+ an $800 motherboard replacement was done for free. * All computers can have hardware failures. It happens with every company and with every product. - When a person buys an expensive Apple product and they don’t purchase AppleCare+, they are gambling that they won’t experience a major out of warranty hardware failure in the 2nd & 3rd year. Sometimes that gamble does not pay off.
That would be reasonable if they printed that information on the box.
Your $800 repair wasn't 'free'. If Macs came with a three or five year guarantee, perhaps you could consider it free. You paid extra for that repair and in advance!
As we accept all hardware can fail, why just not design repair into the philosophy of the machine itself while still at a concept stage?
Someone took the decision to compromise easy, less costly repair, in exchange for other concepts.
I have no issue with that per se but consider me a lost Mac user until the decision gets rectified. That, or make prices much more affordable (what about a 15" new MBP without a Touchbar) and slap on a 'money where your mouth is warranty' (3-5 years). I believe some countries have extra long statutory warranties based on price bands which Apple honours (it's that or pull out of the market in question).
People want an extended warranty or recall of the 2016 MBPs but the issue doesn't seem to be caused by a faulty batch of components and affect just a subset of machines. The problem appears to be in the design of the keyboard (possibly tweaked for the 2017 models?). That would mean potentially every 2016 MBP is a time bomb. Add on to that the battery issues and things don't look good for the 2016 line.
I have taken my MacBook Pro in 3 times for keyboard issues and looks like the 4th time is not far away. Tim Cook is such a joke. He doesn't care about the end user. Only his $$$$$$$$
Yep...Tim is the designer of the keyboard. Can we fuckin stop with the Tim Cook shit. Its getting old! We can't blame Tim for every single god damn problem at Apple.
They have a support document that shows you've been holding your laptop the wrong way. Your suppose to hold it so the screen and keys face the ground. This makes sure no dust gets into the keys since, instead of falling down, dust would have to fall "up" fighting gravity to get to the keys. Silly users.....
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205662
Excellent link. Sent this to all my friends with this keyboard design. Thanks.
I have taken my MacBook Pro in 3 times for keyboard issues and looks like the 4th time is not far away. Tim Cook is such a joke. He doesn't care about the end user. Only his $$$$$$$$
End user purchases are the method Apple uses to generate profits. Apple knows this.
Apple will most definitely propose a solution to end users which will be adequate to retain enough users, at a low enough expenditure, so to maximize long term profits.
We have nothing to worry about. Tim is very good at balancing consumer satisfaction with profits.
The truth is that there's very little context for the complaints about the butterfly keyboards being a faulty design. For example, are the 2015 MacBook Pro repair incidents for keyboards low for the industry as a whole? Are they average? Are they high? No one can say, which means that the number doubling in 2016 for a new design may not be significant at all. It could just relate to manufacturing issues and not the design itself. You might be doubling a number that was already far below the typical keyboard repair rate for the PC industry.
Apparently, these very expensive machines are finicky and prone to failure. Failures that are very expensive to fix.
Yet, Apple is making a decision that, instead of using their money to satisfy their dissatisfied customers, they are passing that "excess cash" out to their shareholders as dividends and stock buybacks.
Characterizing this issue as a 'doubling' of the failure rate on keyboards is a possibly sensationalist and definitely dubious statistical claim. If I understand it correctly, this 'doubling' is based on service tickets from a sample of 'genius bars' and thrid-party repair shops that provided their data to AppleInsider. First, there could be questions whether the sample is sufficiently large to be representative, whether it's fully and accurately reported to AI, and whether it's controlled for various external factors that could influence the data. Assuming we're all good on those questions, the number that 'doubled' is still just a percentage of reported 'warranty events' that were specifically related to keyboards. Statistically problematic is that this number is not related back to the number of machines actually manufactured and sold.
When considering the rate of failures of a component of MacBook Pros or whatever, a standard understanding of that statistic would be as a percentage of MBPs manufactured where this issue arose or at least was reported. Reporting a doubling of such number would then also raise the question of what that base percentage actually is. If 10% of the MBPs made initially had keyboard failures, that would be a serious problem, and a doubling of that to 20% would be a huge issue. On the other hand, if .000001% of the machines made initially had that problem, and then that doubled to .000002%, we're talking about background noise. Context is important. (Of course, it's a real problem for the people who actually experience it, but as a manufacturing issue, it would be background noise.)
In the case here, that context isn't even available. Further, this 'failure rate' is being reported as a percentage of reported 'warranty events' from a sample of repair shops. The increase or decrease of other issues leading to 'warranty events' will have every bit as much influence on the specific keyboard issue's supposed 'failure rate' as will the issue with the keyboards themselves. For instance, if the actual failure rate for keyboards (as a percentage of machines made) remained constant, and the incidence of all other problems leading to 'warranty events' (as a percentage of machines made) dropped, the percentage of keyboard incidents as a factor of 'warranty events' would be reported as an increase. That would be an erroneous and misleading use of the data. Reporting that such an unmoored statistic has 'doubled' is then just sensationalism on top of bad data.
The truth is, this keyboard issue could be a real problem, or it could be statistical noise. We don't know. The data used here to report it as a 'doubling of the failure rate' is really just anecdotal information wrapped in a veneer of statistical analysis. AI should know better.
I have taken my MacBook Pro in 3 times for keyboard issues and looks like the 4th time is not far away. Tim Cook is such a joke. He doesn't care about the end user. Only his $$$$$$$$
Yep...Tim is the designer of the keyboard. Can we fuckin stop with the Tim Cook shit. Its getting old! We can't blame Tim for every single god damn problem at Apple.
Chief Executive Officer, he sets and communicates expectations. He used a valued Apple moniker "Hello Again!" as a cheap shot to induce hype, and all we got was a gimmicky Touch Bar.
- When a person buys an expensive Apple product and they don’t purchase AppleCare+, they are gambling that they won’t experience a major out of warranty hardware failure in the 2nd & 3rd year. Sometimes that gamble does not pay off.
One might argue that when purchasing a premium-priced computer that is sold with margins unheard of anywhere else in the industry, one might take exception to being told the only assurance of quality service is to pay even more to get the extended warranty (which is also premium-priced).
- When a person buys an expensive Apple product and they don’t purchase AppleCare+, they are gambling that they won’t experience a major out of warranty hardware failure in the 2nd & 3rd year. Sometimes that gamble does not pay off.
One might argue that when purchasing a premium-priced computer that is sold with margins unheard of anywhere else in the industry, one might take exception to being told the only assurance of quality service is to pay even more to get the extended warranty (which is also premium-priced).
I have taken my MacBook Pro in 3 times for keyboard issues and looks like the 4th time is not far away. Tim Cook is such a joke. He doesn't care about the end user. Only his $$$$$$$$
Yep...Tim is the designer of the keyboard. Can we fuckin stop with the Tim Cook shit. Its getting old! We can't blame Tim for every single god damn problem at Apple.
Chief Executive Officer, he sets and communicates expectations. He used a valued Apple moniker "Hello Again!" as a cheap shot to induce hype, and all we got was a gimmicky Touch Bar.
I don't care what he said...he's still not the designer of the keyboard and its getting really tired of every single time there's an issue at Apple everyone is so quick to blame Tim Cook when its not even something he's in charge of. Tim is not in charge of making a keyboard. Thats why he (or the hardware exec) hires engineers and designers for. I find it really hard to believe that if Steve were still CEO everyone would be this hard on Steve Jobs and don't give me this BS that it wouldn't have happened. Plenty of shit like this happened when Steve CEO. This is what people seem to forget or, maybe they're too new to Apple to know what it was like "back in the day" when Steve was CEO of Apple.
- When a person buys an expensive Apple product and they don’t purchase AppleCare+, they are gambling that they won’t experience a major out of warranty hardware failure in the 2nd & 3rd year. Sometimes that gamble does not pay off.
One might argue that when purchasing a premium-priced computer that is sold with margins unheard of anywhere else in the industry, one might take exception to being told the only assurance of quality service is to pay even more to get the extended warranty (which is also premium-priced).
I don't think a typical consumer knows what Apple's margins are (nor do you!), nor do they care when they walk out with one. Bottomline, its an expensive product and it is a risk for them not to have "insurance" on them. Honestly, the AppleCare+ for a 15" MacBook Pro isn't a bad deal at all considering how much it costs to replace something. One issue and the extended warranty pays for itself and then some. I don't care if its the Apple of 8-10yrs ago...if you buy a $3,000 laptop you put the extended warranty on it and yes there were Apple laptops that cost that much back then.
I have taken my MacBook Pro in 3 times for keyboard issues and looks like the 4th time is not far away. Tim Cook is such a joke. He doesn't care about the end user. Only his $$$$$$$$
Yep...Tim is the designer of the keyboard. Can we fuckin stop with the Tim Cook shit. Its getting old! We can't blame Tim for every single god damn problem at Apple.
Chief Executive Officer, he sets and communicates expectations. He used a valued Apple moniker "Hello Again!" as a cheap shot to induce hype, and all we got was a gimmicky Touch Bar.
I don't care what he said...he's still not the designer of the keyboard and its getting really tired of every single time there's an issue at Apple everyone is so quick to blame Tim Cook when its not even something he's in charge of. Tim is not in charge of making a keyboard. Thats why he (or the hardware exec) hires engineers and designers for. I find it really hard to believe that if Steve were still CEO everyone would be this hard on Steve Jobs and don't give me this BS that it wouldn't have happened. Plenty of shit like this happened when Steve CEO. This is what people seem to forget or, maybe they're too new to Apple to know what it was like "back in the day" when Steve was CEO of Apple.
And if he doesn't have personal responsibility to approve every single new model of Mac that Apple releases, he's utterly neglecting his job and needs to be fired.
I'm sorry, but it's not like Apple releases a hundred models a year. It's well within his expected job duties to have some concept of what Apple is shipping, and he needs to take a closer look at them, rather than the quick glance he's apparently giving them, or he needs to leave.
Jony Ive, on the other hand, absolutely should have been fired about ten years ago. These new hardware designs are directly his responsibility, he IS responsible for these awful designs, and it's inexcusable. Hire a competent industrial designer, and fire that idiot. The first MacBook Pro without a user-swappable battery should have been the clue that he'd lost his mind, and he should have been out the door the day he proposed that stupidity.
And I'm not saying anything about Tim that I haven't said about Steve. Steve absolutely let some garbage out the door that should never have shipped, and he made some incredibly stupid decisions.
- When a person buys an expensive Apple product and they don’t purchase AppleCare+, they are gambling that they won’t experience a major out of warranty hardware failure in the 2nd & 3rd year. Sometimes that gamble does not pay off.
One might argue that when purchasing a premium-priced computer that is sold with margins unheard of anywhere else in the industry, one might take exception to being told the only assurance of quality service is to pay even more to get the extended warranty (which is also premium-priced).
I don't think a typical consumer knows what Apple's margins are (nor do you!), nor do they care when they walk out with one. Bottomline, its an expensive product and it is a risk for them not to have "insurance" on them. Honestly, the AppleCare+ for a 15" MacBook Pro isn't a bad deal at all considering how much it costs to replace something. One issue and the extended warranty pays for itself and then some. I don't care if its the Apple of 8-10yrs ago...if you buy a $3,000 laptop you put the extended warranty on it and yes there were Apple laptops that cost that much back then.
It does stand to reason, if Apple represents quality and one pays for said quality, you would expect it to last. I bought a Toyota for my wife. Why? Quality first but they stand behind their quality. I’ve heard countless stories of Toyota covering issues outside of warranty. Sure, the users could have bought an extended warranty but then why not buy a Nissan with an extended warranty for the same price?
On a side note, never buy a majorly redesigned product from Apple. Wait for generation two. I broke this rule with the mid-2012 MacBook, despite the countless claim of LG panel ghosting. After multiply consultations with Apple personnel, I was assured it was a small issue, one that wouldn’t likely affect me. I bought it. Checked it several times throughout the first year. At 15 months, it surfaced bad (noticed it while running simulations). 368$ on an issue I saw coming. At the same time, I tested 5, somewhere between ordering and fixing mine, models at Bestbuy and reproduced the issue. 5/5 lg panel models I checked (counting mine). That’s pretty piss poor. All aside though, best computer ever. When I saw the 2016, I thought about it but it was clearly a step back. Bought a PC desktop instead for work and play. Still love MacBooks though. Maybe in 2019..
Comments
Not a wise move or something that I would advise to anyone, but OMG, it was sooo relieving....
(I had a backup that I now run on my 2015 MBA)
Your $800 repair wasn't 'free'. If Macs came with a three or five year guarantee, perhaps you could consider it free. You paid extra for that repair and in advance!
As we accept all hardware can fail, why just not design repair into the philosophy of the machine itself while still at a concept stage?
Someone took the decision to compromise easy, less costly repair, in exchange for other concepts.
I have no issue with that per se but consider me a lost Mac user until the decision gets rectified. That, or make prices much more affordable (what about a 15" new MBP without a Touchbar) and slap on a 'money where your mouth is warranty' (3-5 years). I believe some countries have extra long statutory warranties based on price bands which Apple honours (it's that or pull out of the market in question).
People want an extended warranty or recall of the 2016 MBPs but the issue doesn't seem to be caused by a faulty batch of components and affect just a subset of machines. The problem appears to be in the design of the keyboard (possibly tweaked for the 2017 models?). That would mean potentially every 2016 MBP is a time bomb. Add on to that the battery issues and things don't look good for the 2016 line.
Yep...Tim is the designer of the keyboard. Can we fuckin stop with the Tim Cook shit. Its getting old! We can't blame Tim for every single god damn problem at Apple.
Apple will most definitely propose a solution to end users which will be adequate to retain enough users, at a low enough expenditure, so to maximize long term profits.
We have nothing to worry about. Tim is very good at balancing consumer satisfaction with profits.
Characterizing this issue as a 'doubling' of the failure rate on keyboards is a possibly sensationalist and definitely dubious statistical claim. If I understand it correctly, this 'doubling' is based on service tickets from a sample of 'genius bars' and thrid-party repair shops that provided their data to AppleInsider. First, there could be questions whether the sample is sufficiently large to be representative, whether it's fully and accurately reported to AI, and whether it's controlled for various external factors that could influence the data. Assuming we're all good on those questions, the number that 'doubled' is still just a percentage of reported 'warranty events' that were specifically related to keyboards. Statistically problematic is that this number is not related back to the number of machines actually manufactured and sold.
When considering the rate of failures of a component of MacBook Pros or whatever, a standard understanding of that statistic would be as a percentage of MBPs manufactured where this issue arose or at least was reported. Reporting a doubling of such number would then also raise the question of what that base percentage actually is. If 10% of the MBPs made initially had keyboard failures, that would be a serious problem, and a doubling of that to 20% would be a huge issue. On the other hand, if .000001% of the machines made initially had that problem, and then that doubled to .000002%, we're talking about background noise. Context is important. (Of course, it's a real problem for the people who actually experience it, but as a manufacturing issue, it would be background noise.)
In the case here, that context isn't even available. Further, this 'failure rate' is being reported as a percentage of reported 'warranty events' from a sample of repair shops. The increase or decrease of other issues leading to 'warranty events' will have every bit as much influence on the specific keyboard issue's supposed 'failure rate' as will the issue with the keyboards themselves. For instance, if the actual failure rate for keyboards (as a percentage of machines made) remained constant, and the incidence of all other problems leading to 'warranty events' (as a percentage of machines made) dropped, the percentage of keyboard incidents as a factor of 'warranty events' would be reported as an increase. That would be an erroneous and misleading use of the data. Reporting that such an unmoored statistic has 'doubled' is then just sensationalism on top of bad data.
The truth is, this keyboard issue could be a real problem, or it could be statistical noise. We don't know. The data used here to report it as a 'doubling of the failure rate' is really just anecdotal information wrapped in a veneer of statistical analysis. AI should know better.
I don't think a typical consumer knows what Apple's margins are (nor do you!), nor do they care when they walk out with one. Bottomline, its an expensive product and it is a risk for them not to have "insurance" on them. Honestly, the AppleCare+ for a 15" MacBook Pro isn't a bad deal at all considering how much it costs to replace something. One issue and the extended warranty pays for itself and then some. I don't care if its the Apple of 8-10yrs ago...if you buy a $3,000 laptop you put the extended warranty on it and yes there were Apple laptops that cost that much back then.
On a side note, never buy a majorly redesigned product from Apple. Wait for generation two. I broke this rule with the mid-2012 MacBook, despite the countless claim of LG panel ghosting. After multiply consultations with Apple personnel, I was assured it was a small issue, one that wouldn’t likely affect me. I bought it. Checked it several times throughout the first year. At 15 months, it surfaced bad (noticed it while running simulations). 368$ on an issue I saw coming. At the same time, I tested 5, somewhere between ordering and fixing mine, models at Bestbuy and reproduced the issue. 5/5 lg panel models I checked (counting mine). That’s pretty piss poor. All aside though, best computer ever. When I saw the 2016, I thought about it but it was clearly a step back. Bought a PC desktop instead for work and play. Still love MacBooks though. Maybe in 2019..