anantksundaram

9secondkox2 said:

MplsP said:

9secondkox2 said:

MplsP said:

JP234 said:

Since the second thing I do when I buy a new Macbook of any kind is to buy a keyboard cover, I've never encountered this problem. I also don't eat or drink in their proximity. And when I sell or trade them in, the pristine case and keyboard underneath gives me a bit extra leverage on price, Try it, they're cheap, and taking care of your electronics properly costs nothing.

I bought a silicone cover for my keyboard. The feel was awful, it was horrible to type on, it left grease smudges on the screen and it still didn't prevent stuff from getting into the keyboard. If you have to purchase a protector for the keyboard because it won't stand up to routine use then it's a design fail.

foregoneconclusion said:

avon b7 said:

ranson said:

AniMill said:

“ Apple denied any wrongdoing…” 

Ummm, I have great respect for most Apple products and business practices, but the Butterfly Keyboard was an unmitigated disaster in design and durability. I understand they have to deny culpability, but they should send this bill to Jony Ive. Maybe this (along with the Apple Watch tree removal fiasco) were the real reasons they pushed him out, and cut ties to his new venture.

To be clear, there is no wrongdoing here. Wrongdoing in the legal sense means with nefarious intent. Clearly Apple did not intend to make everyone's life miserable with this terrible keyboard design.

And I suppose settling will have allowed them to avoid having to provide internal data on exactly how many machines were repaired due to keyboard issues. 

The number $35 million ($50 million minus $15 million in legal fees) gives you a very rough idea of the total number of repairs in the five year period for those states. It has to be less than 700,000 (if all repairs were $50 variety) and more than 88,000 (if all repairs were $395 variety) since it's going to be a mix of $50, $125, and $395 payouts. Or from an annual perspective: less than 20,000 repairs on average per state and more than 2,500 repairs on average per state. 

FTA, the settlement only covered California, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Washington. We have no idea about relative sales numbers but if you use your approach it's safe to say a large number of devices were affected.

9secondkox2 said:

DAalseth said:

welshdog said:

DAalseth said:

Thanks Jony

Don't see his name on the patent.
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2015047612A3/en

Wouldn’t have gone into production without his OK. Would not have happened at all without his push for thinner at all costs. 

Pushing the envelope is what Jony and Apple are famous for. 

Making things thin isn’t a bad thing. And the industry has followed Ive’s lead there. 

The keyboard was a fantastic idea that simply wasn’t sorted out properly by the hardware team and shouldn’t have been signed off on by The hardware lead at the time. 

It was a rare failure for Apple, which has a history of pursuing the impossible - and usually grasping it. 

But this wasn’t Jony’s failure, no matter how hard you push that narrative. 

“Cool story bruh”

I'm not sure how you call the butterfly keyboard a 'fantastic idea.' Making things thin is fine, as long as they work and any idea that fails is not fantastic. We'll never know for sure how much of this was Jonny but ultimately it was Apple's failure.

probably because the idea of a more stable keyboard with more uniform key presses and shorter travel is … a good idea. 

Was it executed well? We all know the answer to that. But the idea - the concept - was fantastic  

Idea is different from execution  

Lots of great ideas that don’t pan out. Doesn’t detract that it was worth a shot. The hardware team has learned from it and will be more careful the next time an opportunity to invent comes around  

A ‘good’ keyboard is a good idea. The definition of a good keyboard is up for debate. I would dispute that shorter travel is always a good thing. Take it to the extreme - when I was a kid a friend had an Atari 400 computer that had a membrane keyboard. It had no travel so that must be better, right? Or how about the iPad screen keyboard? Solid, stable, very short travel. It’s perfect!

A good keyboard is tactile, responsive, provides consistent feedback, is sturdy, reliable, and “just works” as an input mechanism. 

Shorter travel is a good thing to a point. And the butterfly keyboard hit the perfect balance on that. It wasn’t anywhere near your extreme examples. 

It was a fantastic idea that had poor execution. 

How was it a fantastic idea? Let’s take a look at a brand new butterfly keyboard. It works and is great to type with. Each key press is uniform and doesn’t tilt like a scissor switch. Boom. Done. 

How does that separate from the execution? Over time, it has some failure points. Boom.

so it was a fantastic idea that needed much more testing and R&D than it received. 

And that’s literally all there is to it. 

The fact the engineers were unable to produce a long lasting keyboard does not mean the concept wasn’t great - especially consideration how good the experience was when new. 

igorsky said:

These comments are funny.  People still bringing the same skepticism as from 5 years ago...how did that work out?