tht said: 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. ☺️
I don't think those are good analogies at all. We're not reminiscing about the joys of keyboard entry being 'analog' vs 'digital'. The problem, of sorts, is actually jumping that physical to digital divide. The entry of data is physical until we find some other way to do it. Until then, as you take away sensory data from the physical process, it gets less efficient and precise.
Development and evolution of mechanical keyboards has been series of design tradeoffs involving factors like key travel, force, noise, spacing, thickness, weight, materials, etc. In theory, there is some optimal design, from which it might vary a bit from person to person (i.e.: smaller hands, finger strength/dexterity... and I suppose a bit of personal preference). Then, from that optimal design, we decide how much we're willing to trade to save space, or be more quiet, etc.
While I'm not expert on this, my understanding is that in terms of pure speed, it's hard to beat certain older mechanical keyboards/typewriters. Somewhere in there, was the optimal. The newer laptop/chiclet keyboards we've been using for a couple decades now were close-enough to that optimal, but saving space and lower in noise, such that we made a tradeoff.
My argument is that going that extra step, possibly even to the new MBP keyboard, but especially to something like a touch-screen with haptic feedback is a move too far from the optimal for a lot of people. Others, like those already using iPad screens, would probably be fine with it... but that doesn't mean it's optimal or that they will ever be as fast with them as they would have been with something better. Maybe that's an OK tradeoff for the flexibility.... for some. But, for people who do a lot of typing, I think something more akin to what we have now will be around for a long time yet.
I'm typing this on a 6-year-old MBP. A few years ago I lost a key and replacing it was a five-minute process at the local Mac service provider. Glad to see Apple's making progress on the reliability of their keyboards. /s
I have a Macbook pro, 2016 model. Space bar started not working occasionally. So I took a knife and popped of the key to try to get the dirt out from under it, like the old style keyboards. Nope, don't do it, you can't. Shortly thereafter, read about the keyboard recall on these machines. Made a Genius bar appt, they said, no problem, need to send it out, done in a few days. While I was there I signed up for the Joint Venture service so I could get a loaner. Then a few days later I get a message that the repair will cost $1200!!! So I call the store, get nowhere. Talk to the manager, get nowhere. They try to tell me a whole bunch of stuff needs replaced because it has water damage. I can tell you for sure this NEVER had water damage. I think they really were trying to just get some $$ from what was to be a no charge repair.
Anyway, I call apple care, they guy looks at the photos of the machine, the service narrative, and says, this machine is in pristine condition, I will override the service center and have it done for free. Thats good because I damn near went back to a PC and an Android, had bourbon, then calmed down.
Got the machine back, seems to work fine. HOWEVER- The gave me a 2015 Macbook pro with the old style keyboard on it. Like it a LOT better. So now may sell the 2016 macbook pro on swappa and get me an old 2015 model.
Bottomline- if Genius bar wants to charge you a ton for a keyboard repair, nicely call the apple care line to override, they seem to have lots of sway over the store....
chainbucket said: Bottomline- if Genius bar wants to charge you a ton for a keyboard repair, nicely call the apple care line to override, they seem to have lots of sway over the store....
Sounds kind of like that one YouTube'r with their broken iMac Pro mount. It seems Apple needs to QC their Apple Store staff a bit too, these days.
Back when I used to frequent the Apple Stores, the Genius Bar people were top-notch and they very much had a 'customer is right' attitude, unless it was something pretty obvious the customer did to damage things.
keyboard repair unit need to be compared to sold unit and not total repair. What is relevant is to know what is the rate of failure caused by the keyboard and not what is the keyboard rate failure amongs bad units. And if mbp sales stay most likely stable like stated, if the newer mbp had 1400 unit serviced vs 2100 ish + on prior design, it tells me that the new mbp seem more reliable since its getting serviced about one third less. Yes the ratio on the newer mbp amongs bad unit suggest that if something is going to break it is most likely going to be the keyboard but in fact, it says that other reason why mbps were previously failing seem to get partially or for the most part fixed while keyboard is about the same (120 or 160 on millions or hundreds thousand units is not significant to conclude anything). + I dont know the exact numbers but mbp sold out in like a week after launch in 2016, so I'm guessing it was prolly a better year than 2014 and 2015.
And you can't also expect Apple to build you a tank nuke proof in a sexy bezel ultraportable with 45 cpu and exceptional new features and also exceptional new OS features and cheap, yeah very cheap.
And ask intel about that 10mn chip they should have delivered by 2016. Thats prolly why the keyboard is like that, because apple needs to find alternative for something they should already have which is a smaller cpu which doesnt require soldering anymore because it gives more rooms in term of thickness. Quite ironic isnt it? Prolly you would have gotten your 32 gb lpddr in 2017 but still they choked again.
I mean like Apple will suddently start doing crazy ass consecutive mistakes like that. They always had problem with intel since post powerPC. Intel chip didnt meet the expectations then when the i core came out, well, look today, since 2nd generation (sandy bridge), it the same shit but only power management changed. Intel is stuck for years, it slow down or mess up every others plan and now with the T2 chip over their already apple processor in the iphone, we might see an apple cpu soon in the macbookpro,
So yeah, Blame intel for mbp keyboard and soldered parts, and about soldered part, no body might consider a 16 to 32 jump at this time. It's either you know you'll need 32 or 16 is more than needed for the casual semi pro end user. For other parts potential fails, well, buy a lottery ticket if one day your ram or ssd fail just like that...it's virtually impossible if properly soldered. So yeah, blame intel in case of bad soldering
Poetic, isnt it
Comments
Development and evolution of mechanical keyboards has been series of design tradeoffs involving factors like key travel, force, noise, spacing, thickness, weight, materials, etc. In theory, there is some optimal design, from which it might vary a bit from person to person (i.e.: smaller hands, finger strength/dexterity... and I suppose a bit of personal preference). Then, from that optimal design, we decide how much we're willing to trade to save space, or be more quiet, etc.
While I'm not expert on this, my understanding is that in terms of pure speed, it's hard to beat certain older mechanical keyboards/typewriters. Somewhere in there, was the optimal. The newer laptop/chiclet keyboards we've been using for a couple decades now were close-enough to that optimal, but saving space and lower in noise, such that we made a tradeoff.
My argument is that going that extra step, possibly even to the new MBP keyboard, but especially to something like a touch-screen with haptic feedback is a move too far from the optimal for a lot of people. Others, like those already using iPad screens, would probably be fine with it... but that doesn't mean it's optimal or that they will ever be as fast with them as they would have been with something better. Maybe that's an OK tradeoff for the flexibility.... for some. But, for people who do a lot of typing, I think something more akin to what we have now will be around for a long time yet.
Anyway, I call apple care, they guy looks at the photos of the machine, the service narrative, and says, this machine is in pristine condition, I will override the service center and have it done for free. Thats good because I damn near went back to a PC and an Android, had bourbon, then calmed down.
Got the machine back, seems to work fine. HOWEVER- The gave me a 2015 Macbook pro with the old style keyboard on it. Like it a LOT better. So now may sell the 2016 macbook pro on swappa and get me an old 2015 model.
Bottomline- if Genius bar wants to charge you a ton for a keyboard repair, nicely call the apple care line to override, they seem to have lots of sway over the store....
Back when I used to frequent the Apple Stores, the Genius Bar people were top-notch and they very much had a 'customer is right' attitude, unless it was something pretty obvious the customer did to damage things.