Most important point: Apple fixed the keyboard by ditching the flawed keyboard used for the past 3 years and returning to the Magic Keyboard scissor switch design. Comparing the 'new' keyboard to the Magic Keyboard: "side by side, we're hard pressed to spot any differences. Scissor switches, keycaps... There's slightly less space surrounding these new keys, and pundits will celebrate those reconfigured arrow keys—but everything else looks nigh identical."
The Magic Keyboard design is not the 2012-2015 MBP keyboard design, it's the design from their line of external keyboards. iFixit's jokey intro is misleading in this regard.
Personally, I prefer the MBP2015 keyboard to the Magic Keyboard.
I have been to an Apple Store recently to try out the MBP16's keyboard and it's good - but not as good as the one I'm typing this on.
I also don't understand the obsession with key stability on the corners. I like the instability. I use it when I'm touch typing - it gives my fingers a lot more tactile feedback.
>I also don't understand the obsession with key stability on the corners. I like the instability. I use it when I'm touch typing - it gives my fingers a lot more tactile feedback.
This!. Along with smaller Keys and hence more spacing between keys. Little things like these you dont appreciate but you will notice once they are gone.
I've been using a magic keyboard for the past few years, and any time I type on the older 2015 MacBook pro's keyboard now, it feels like I'm pressing my fingers into a mushy sponge.
For me, at least, the Magic Keyboard is the happy medium between the too short action on the 2016-19 Pro keyboards, and the too deep action on the 2015 and earlier,
Interesting, I work on a '14 MBP and one of the new full size magic keyboards, and while the MBP feels slightly softer, I never noticed any discomfort or annoyance, and didn't know the '15 had a significantly different keyboard.
I have a Mid-2015 15’’ MBP and a Magic Keyboard (about 2-year old) sitting in front me side by side right now, and I use both every day. I definitely prefer the Magic Keyboard.
Yes! Fujitsu desktop keyboards have rather pronounced concave keys - not fashionable but very nice to type on. (They have also figured out tactile response with rubber domes.)
Exactly this. Also, the instability means the keyboard is more forgiving of small aim mistakes.
If my finger presses 10% of the wrong key and 90% of the right one, key stability on the corners will mean the keyboard registers both. On the 2015 keyboard it only registers the one I meant. The fact that it wobbles also gives my fingers an extra milisecond to adjust position if it feels it's wrong.
It's also more obvious when I did hit the wrong place and I can automatically reach for the backspace/delete key without even thinking or noticing the wrong key visually on screen.
It's overall a more fluid typing experience.
This is especially useful when I'm typing at night or if my fingers are not moving optimally - like when they're cold or otherwise tight or tired.
To me it actually seems that the 16" keyboard is a brand new keyboard, that has never been in any laptop or external keyboard. But it's derived from the external Magic Keyboard and shares the marketing name.
It has 1mmb of key travel, which is less than the 1.25mm of the external Magic Keyboard. It's also less than the 1.35mm of the 2015 MBP. But it's much more than the 0.5mm travel of the Butterfly keyboard.
This is all to say that although the 16" MBP has a new scissor-based keyboard, it's not quite fair to say it's the same as the Magic Keyboard. And although it probably fixes all of the keyboard woes of the past couple years, I would still wait a few months and see.
Those were great, but having slightly sculpted keytops and longer travel takes an extra 2–3 millimeters of vertical space, which isn’t going to cut it if the #1 goal is for the folded up machine to be as thin as possible.
Is it possible to remove the glossy screen cover to get that extra space? My 2010 mac was the last with a matt screen and had "plenty" of space available.
It's a joke for you but a laptop with a good mech keyboard is exactly what I want.
I plug a mechanical keyboard into my laptop all the time, because it's easier on my fingers. A thicker laptop that I can type on is better for me than carrying around a separate mech and putting the laptop on a nearby flat surface instead of my lap.
We actually use something very similar to run our servers at conferences and presentations, don't really care about the gpu but having a desktop-grade CPU in a "portable" package is very useful for this.
Do you happen to run Linux? A couple years ago I looked at the MSI laptop, which actually has Cherry Brown switches, but it was heavily gaming-focused and I couldn't find anything about Linux support.
The two I linked to were “fully mechanical keyboards in a somewhat portable body” (for very modest definitions of “somewhat portable” – they were 13 and 20 pounds, respectively). Not really “laptops”, but two fantastic keyboards.
I should have included that one too. I like the Mac Portable keyboard even better than the IBM 5140 (orange vs. brown Alps SKCM switches were not quite as stiff).
I got a couple of NOS Mac Portable replacement keyboards on ebay a few years ago, but never got around to putting them into a working case.
And I found that the ones that came with a previous employers mac minis tended to fail quite quickly I had 2 or 3 in my parts cupboard with all the other broken and old equipment.
And I also did not like the feel Put it this way I brought in an old Zenith keyboard from a p90 system from the mid 90's to use instead.
I have a full size Magic keyboard (because my MBP 2018 keys started dying and they couldn't guarantee same-day repair) and it really isn't all that.
Sometimes I get a similar feeling as the MBP keyboard in that it seems to "miss" keystrokes, or get them in the wrong order. Though admittedly the worse MBP characteristic of doubling or tripling up a single keystroke is not there.
I love (and am typing this on) a bluetooth keyboard that came with my 2008 iMac. Is the "magic keyboard" (which apparently came out in 2015 and is lower-profile than its predecessors) sufficiently better to warrant the moniker "magic"?
I rarely complain about that kind of stuff, but the sheer number of jokes in that article had it reaching the "trying too hard to be funny" stage in near record time.
I wish Apple released a butterfly switch external keyboard. I know I am in a minority here but I really loved these new flat keyboards on Macbooks and I'd love to have a keyboard like that for my Windows PC.
How long you have been using the keyboard ? Mine got screwed after couple of months of usage (I took really good care of it as I had read about the initial backlash)
I've got my MBP in November 2016, as soon as it became available in my country. I was using it at home and office, carrying between both of those locations using sleeve, taking extra care to don't mess my precious new laptop up. Its keyboard worked perfectly all this time.
Reading about all the keyboard woes others had, I've been wondering if I am just lucky. In November 2018 I've traveled to another town with my laptop (in the sleeve, as usual). This was single day travel and it turned out that I've didn't even have to pull it from the bag a single time. After coming home 10 hours later I've pulled my laptop from the sleeve and pressed "R" key. It didn't "click". I've pressed it again. It didn't click either, but it sticked to the tip of my finger and popped out of its slot. I was now part of the people blessed with keyboard fault.
While you make a solid point about likely behavior, I'm sure there are those that said Microsoft will never cooperate with Linux.
"Never" is a bold word, and it's worth highlighting things like a hard-to-replace/repair keyboard to keep on that tiny bit of pressure to change (how often have you been in a meeting where "customers aren't asking for this" came up as a justification to not make a change?).
Also, just to let people KNOW - when buying a laptop you may not be considering if the keyboard is easy to service. Plenty of developers on any given day are making their first foray into these sorts of decisions, and there's nothing wrong with pointing out that which is obvious if you've been following for a decade but not if you're new to it.
Perhaps another way to put it is, "This iteration of Apple will never..."
Which carries with it a significant piece of information: Someone saying this is claiming that there is some structural or cultural obstacle, and that the company would have to change its nature in order to effect the requried change.
That was the case with Microsoft and Linux as well.
That's fair, but it would take a massive change in both consumer behavior and Apple's target audience to make something like this come about. But hey, ya never know.
A modular, easy to repair system would be great, but I would settle for a repairable system. That is, that a trained technician can perform the repairs in a reasonable timeframe without throwing components away, which are not defective.
As long as the products are not repairable, we should call Apple out for not being as environment friendly, as they try to present themselves.
They are repairable, just not at their stores. They do swaps at the stores and send out the old parts to be disassembled and remanufactured into warranty exchange parts. They are just as environmentally friendly as they present themselves.
Well, as I wrote, a technician should be able to repair it and that does not mean sending the device around for weeks. Availability of a device is an important thing if you use it for your work. Also, many "repairs" Apple offers are priced such, that quite often the device is totalled. A broken keyboard should cost $100, not >$600. A broken screen cable shouldn't cost > $800. A dead SSD should cost what an SSD does cost.
If you throw away a machine, that for any other brand could have been quickly repaired because it is totalled, this is not environmental friendly, even if Apple recycles the aluminum afterwards.
Most people don't care one way or the other as long as they end up with a functioning machine. They don't care about how the wheels end up getting turned as long as they get turned. If anything, replacing a larger component rather than diagnosing and fixing individual components should be faster. If someone has to solder or work on transistors, your repair could definitely take weeks and that time only goes up with the number of repairs necessary for all customers.
>If you throw away a machine
If you throw away a machine, that's on you. Apple, and most other PC manufacturers, offer some kind of machine recycling. That process includes recycling the raw materials and disassembling and reusing components. Unless we're talking about machines that are 7+ years, those components can still be used for warranty repairs and other assemblies. It's exactly why Apple stops servicing devices that are that old and instead only offers recycling for them. When the warranty claims go down, the parts needed go down.
Don't be silly. I am not talking about soldering or "work on transistors". I am talking about exchanging a keyboard, battery, SSD. That are tasks that every IT guy can do in minutest on most laptops. Most people will care about the difference between an hour and several days to several weeks of repair time. Any professional user certainly will.
And if people don't care about the time, they do care about the cost. It makes a difference whether a broken keyboard costs $100 or $600 to repair. In the latter case, the machine often is totalled. And then it doesn't matter how nicely you recycle the aluminium, the machine could have been used for many more years, if it could have been repaired.
Or asked the other way around: if Apple can so nicely reuse the parts, why do they charge more than the cost for the broken part? If they would replace broken keyboards for $100, few would ask, how they do it. Why don't they fix a broken SSD for $200?
>I am talking about exchanging a keyboard, battery, SSD
None of those things are as simple as you're making them out to be in the form/spec of the Macbook.
>And if people don't care about the time, they do care about the cost.
Apparently not as Apple has the highest customer service scores in the entire computing industry by a large margin. People care about having working computers and, by and large, people who buy Apple computers buy them knowing that out of warranty repairs may be expensive.
>why do they charge more than the cost for the broken part?
Because it's costly to recycle those parts. You can be cheap or you can be sustainable. Right now, you can't really be both.
>I am talking about exchanging a keyboard, battery, SSD
None of those things are as simple as you're making them out to be in the form/spec of the Macbook.
The things aren't as difficult as you make them. There are plenty of devices which have reasonable repairablity without being larger than the MacBook.
>And if people don't care about the time, they do care about the cost.
Apparently not as Apple has the highest customer service scores in the entire computing industry by a large margin. People care about having working computers and, by and large, people who buy Apple computers buy them knowing that out of warranty repairs may be expensive.
Most people who buy Apple computers don't know about the costs of out-of-warranty repairs. It will be interesting to see how big the shitstorm will be once people have to throw away their butterfly-keyboard machines becaus thy can't typ th lttr "E".
>why do they charge more than the cost for the broken part?
Because it's costly to recycle those parts. You can be cheap or you can be sustainable. Right now, you can't really be both.
Yeah, as if it would cost $500 to recyle a pound of aluminium. They do it because they have to machine a new part and want to push the money on the customer. But with a proper design, you wouldn't have to throw away large parts of your laptop for minor repairs.
>There are plenty of devices which have reasonable repairablity without being larger than the MacBook.
Name one. You've made a lot of empty claims in your posts without backing up a single one. I don't even know why I'm responding to you anymore, you clearly have an axe to grind since you're responding to almost every person that disagrees with you.
I am defending my opinion, which I consider be based by facts and good arguments. That is why I answer to anyone who disagrees with me trying to argue for my opionion and what I consider facts.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they go that way too. When I first heard that rumor, I thought "never!". But now I'm like... "hmm, hooray battery life, an OS that more fluidly switches from mobile to desktop, maybe not a bad option". Plus ARM is only getting faster/more powerful. Yeah yeah, apple will probably go the way of locking the OS down more, and thats a major buzkill/non-starter, but otherwise I think it's an intriguing concept. Convince me otherwise, I want to hear what huge drawbacks you see to having an ARM laptop.
Microsoft already has ARM-based laptops, so we can see what some drawbacks to ARM might be. The Intel-compiled app compatibility is unbearably slow, despite them making a custom ARM chip to improve performance, and the better battery life isn't happening. The Verge could only get 5-6 hours of battery life on the ARM-based Surface Pro X. [1]
Presumably Apple is working harder on fixing all of those things than Microsoft, but maybe issues like that are why we still haven't seen an ARM MacBook yet.
For context, the current iPad Pro (still running last year's A-chip generation) benchmarks 50% faster than the Surface Pro X, and basic web browsing battery life tests peg it at around 13 hours battery life.
Apple killing off 32-bit app support (and Carbon, QuickTime API, etc) is probably them preparing for an ARM transition. Any app that managed to make that transition is well-prepared for a pretty trivial "just change the compile target and press the button" ARM port.
Apple would be betting on Mac app devs quickly getting ARM ports of their apps out there. In the Microsoft ecosystem there's zero chance of that happening, so they have to rely much more heavily on emulation.
That depends. The EU is already implementing a right-to-repair law for appliances, it will only be a matter of time until this is extended to electronic devices such as laptops and smartphones.
Apple will have two options then: drop out of the EU market (which they won't do, 500M consumers waiting to be fleeced) or follow the law.
Realistically the chance is slim. It's likely an ingrained Apple culture thing going all the way back to when Steve didn't even want the case of the Apple II to be able to be opened.
Or the Mac Pro. While it’s not a laptop, the original cheese grater Mac Pro is a delight to open up. It’s amazing to see what Apple can come up with when they make serviceability a central design goal.
The new one looks nice too, though it seems significantly overpriced.
The Powermac G3 and G4 towers were awesome. Just pull a lever and the side drops down. Everything is nice, neat, and accessible. The G5 towers were similarly functional and very nice as well, and the early Mac Pro towers were obviously based on the same design. It should also be noted that the old beige PowerMacs were no worse than PCs of similar vintage.
There seems to have been a large cultural shift at Apple toward extreme form-over-function around the time of the intel transition. I still have to deal with Macs because my wife uses them, and they've only been getting worse. Personally, I've been on PCs running Linux for several years now.
Yes, this! I haven't even booted my ancient (2006?) mac pro in a couple years, but have kept it bc it's so easy to imagine happily rebuilding something modern inside it.
I had a Dell keyboard with a similar design years ago. These individual scissor keys were painful to clip replacements (or just popped off keys) on. Dell themselves just replaced entire keyboards.
Assuming given the extra decade, Apple's keys are hopefully more durable, but it's still no pain free job either.
It's not something manufacturer do since it can be time consuming, but if you have a spare afternoon it's fairly easy to do.
The only cases where I have personally seen that a whole keyboard replacement was needed were those caused by a liquid spill, but Apple is never going to cover those since they could easily damage the logic board and you wouldn't be "safe" even after months.
But yes, at the end of the day using screws instead of rivets would be better for everyone
This is something I don't get. It would have been reasonable to design the keybord that it can be exchanged, even if it some effort. While I like the improvents of this iteration, it shouldn't be that unrepairable. A MB Pro is an expensive device, but that is ok, if you get the appropriate quality. Making the machine a write off, if there is a problem after the mandatory Apple-care runs out, does mean it is much less value than if it were reasonably repairable.
It is not obvious to me that screws would be less stiff than rivets. I am fine with such a laptop not being "user serviceable", but it should be designed so that a trained technician with the right tools can do these kind of repairs.
I consider the statements of Apple about the environment friendlyness of their devices phony, as long as a keyboard defect can total the device or at least mean, that large parts of the device have to be changed, which aren't defective.
Let's hope that the new keyboard is robust enough to make it a non-issue. But if Apple is committed to their design and think it is unlikely to ever break, why doesn't Apple price a keyboard replacement at the same price like other laptops?
> I consider the statements of Apple about the environment friendlyness of their devices phony, as long as a keyboard defect can total the device or at least mean, that large parts of the device have to be changed, which aren't defective.
It's a tough question to definitively answer. Are there greater environmental costs to producing and using screws rather than rivets? If so, how does that balance against the environmental costs of replacing failed computers?
It's possible that a fixed keyboard could be the correct choice if their new keyboard fails in low enough numbers.
The numbers would need to be very low to make that difference. There are other reasons to change your keyboard beyond defects: language adjustments. Here in Europe we have over 20 different languages with different keyboard layouts...
And in any case, even if it were a theoretical environmental gain - should the burdon for that lie on the consumer, who randomly looses her or his device, just so that every laptop is a tiny bit more efficient (and the effect would be really tiny)? Shouldn't in this case Apple carry the additional cost for repairs?
Not while keeping the same thickness, though. A screw requires about 1mm (at least) distance from the housing so the screw has something to screw in to, a rivet / weld not.
Key travel for the 2016 is 1mm. The "bad" keyboards had 0.5-0.7mm travel. 2015 and earlier had 1.2-1.5mm travel. Not sure about the reliability of the new mechanism, but the 2016 keyboard does feel much more like the old 2015 one.
Well even your article say the 2016 keyboard are the same to 2017 and 2018 which is 0.6-0.7mm. Although the general accepted Key Travel for 2016 - 2019 15"MBP are 0.5mm.
This is one of the reasons I didn't buy any new MBP after 2016 anymore.
I was so unsatisfied with many changes ranging from the keyboard disaster to the loss of ports that are still industry standard and used every day for some years to come.
Probably this is the start for Apple to find back to some quality and say goodbye to strange experiments. Users should feel good using a device and not pay a lot of $$$ to become Beta-Test Lab Rats.
I basically concur but not all of us can just "flick a switch" here.
The most of my customers still need a lot of "obsolete" connectors as well as my devices which I won't replace just because they have no USB-C yet.
In 5-10 years maybe but they will come up with other standards until then and the race will go on. I think it is a matter of your domain(s) how cutting-edge your choices can be.
These were no experiment. These changes were only a matter of cutting cost.
The new butterfly system was cheaper to produce than the old one. Old keyboard design were more complicated. And the keys made from a more sturdy plastic. I have removed and replaced several keys on both kind keyboard and I broke partially 2 key from the new keyboard, using a more fragile plastic but none of the old version, this taking account to the fact that the new key were more easy to remove.
The USB-C choice was also about reducing cost. Integrate 2 USB-C is less expensive than integrate 1 power input, 2 thunderbolts, 2 USB 3, 1 card reader, and 1 hdmi output.
Removing the MacSafe for the cheap defective usb-c power plug (after 1 year, the cable don't stay stuck anymore in the USB-C, causing the macbook battery to discharge without useur knowledge, and forcing him to push back the cable a least 10 time as day because of the low quality of the component, no matter the cable you used to plug your macbook) was also about cutting cost.
On the pretense to changing design and and adopting new trends, the have cut cost by reducing the quality and the number of feature of their computer.
That's how they became the richest company in the world.
In this case they should have done their market analysis properly I think.
One of the USP's for Apple devices for me always was the quality of materials and production. Weakening this point of reference by opting for poor quality materials and implementing strange new designs that break fast is poor product management in my opinion.
I don't see that behavior in Apple's past so often - the opposite is true.
Look at the iPhones for example: The early models had a plastic case and buttons and then they introduces more metal etc. somewhere around the 4/5s.
The same happened with their notebooks: They started with cheap plastic cases and upgraded to metal. Nice.
There is more products where they excelled at improving the features and the quality. If it is their choice to leave this USP in the dust they will loose customers like me because quality, good materials and stuff like that are very important for some people.
I went with my gf to take a look at these last night at the Apple store. Her command key has completely stopped working on her 2018 MacBook that otherwise works perfectly fine.
It feels clumsily large, especially since we’re coming from MacBook 13s. She kept asking me if I’d heard any rumors about when new 13s would come out. She went in pretty determined to get a new machine but decided to wait.
The struggle continues for us 13ers I’m afraid. Not really excited to drop $3K+ on an even larger form factor I haven’t been excited about for upwards of 5 years (and being forced to upgrade to Catalina) just to fix what is now universally understood to be a defective keyboard design.
I’m fairly convinced that this whole speaker business was to have something, anything, to differentiate it from the current models other than fixing the keyboard, and probably delayed this release. Someone said “we can’t seriously just ship a new laptop, with the same CPU as the current models, and just fix the keyboards!” It wouldn’t surprise me if the 13s haven’t come out yet for a similar reason.
Huh?? 64gb of ram, bigger screen, much more powerful GpU, bigger storage options, better thermals, better microphone, better speakers, bigger battery...it’s definitely not just “the same CPU” and a fixed keyboard”...not sure what else did you expect?
The 64GB of ram alone makes the new 16" a completely different machine. It really can't even be compared to the previous generations. 64 opens up a lot of possibilities in the media creation space that, realistically, were just not there with 32, and were pretty much impossible with 16 gig.
Given a choice, I would much rather have had the 64 gig rather than a new keyboard. A keyboard you can put a cover on. There's no mitigating 16 gig.
With this release however, Apple chose to give us both, as well as a GPU with 8. So yeah, the machine is a significant upgrade. Anyone saying otherwise is probably in a demographic where they really don't need the GPU or the extra ram. So they don't see the value in them.
Right, and this machine moves further towards a portable workstation by embedding more power, allowing people to do some tasks on-site that would have previously required a fixed workstation.
The “but why would you want a powerful portable machine” argument has always seemed really strange to me. It’s the same reason I’d want any portable machine.
My company uses freestyle seating (which sucks big time, but that's a story for a different day) which means a desktop or workstation is not a possibility for me. Anything that can make a laptop closer in power to a workstation is great in my book.
I worked at a company with freestyle seating. Out of the 2,000+ seats everyone had a movable standing desk and at least one monitor. Most desks had 2 monitors. No hunching required.
I don't think people like having multiple computers, and since they need portability, they want a beefy laptop. I personally hate spending time on all the incidental configuration that having multiple computers entails; keeping them up to date, making sure that all your settings are sync'd, and the inevitable configuration that isn't in easily git-able config files that you have to perform manually each time.
I also find it to be a pain in the ass to unplug and plug laptops in to docking stations; you get up for a meeting, none of your windows are where you left them when you get back. So I just use an iPad and ssh to where I need to work. This doesn't work for everyone, but since I mostly only use a web browser and a tmux session, it works fine for me. And thus, I don't have to deal with configuring multiple computers or carrying around a heavy laptop. Great when you travel; it's hard to say "no computer this trip!" and the iPad fills the gap nicely. If you are travelling for work, there will be a computer with an ssh client on it for you when you arrive. If you are travelling for fun, you probably don't want to spend a ton of time on the computer, but it's nice to be able to watch a movie in your hotel room or peruse an ebook before bed. So I just have a very powerful workstation and a very underpowered non-laptop, and get what I think the best of both worlds is.
But many people really like having the same setup at home, at work, and when travelling, and for those people, the beefy laptop seems like the right solution. (They probably also use programs that were developed after 1980, and need the GUI anyway. I think I would be stuck if I needed to use Fusion 360 or lay out a PCB while out and about with my iPad. But it's never come up for me.)
(My experience is based on my 2015 Macbook that I had at work. It didn't have a docking station, so every meeting that you took it to involved unplugging at least 4 cables; power, USB hub, 2 monitors. OS X appeared to be worse than Linux at handling displays going away, so it was always a major undertaking for something that should not be a major undertaking. I'm not really a Mac person, though, so maybe I was doing it wrong.
My personal laptop was a Surface Pro. I never used it except when travelling, so whenever I arrived at my destination it would turn on and say "hey you haven't updated me for like 3 months, this is a major crisis and I am going to freak out until updates are installed. This requires 1TB of data and 12 hours. Have fun! Oh by the way, all your settings are gone now and if you change them, I will also change them for you on your desktop at home when you log back in! Fun stuff! Value add! Innovation!"
disks are slow, even SSDs / flash. not to mention eating cycles of the SSD. you want to go the other way with it, cache the disk to ram, not the other way around.
I specifically brought up the speakers as the key differentiator beyond the keyboard, so I find it really weird to include in your list of things I “missed” about this computer.
Well he quoted something that was itself a hypothetical quote from a story I made in my comment to explain the addition of the speakers, so I think it’s weird to pretend that my statement was “it’s just the same keyboard with the same CPU” when I obviously pointed out the speakers. Wait a minute, why am I explaining this to you, if you read both comments you already know that it’s plainly obvious that his list absolutely is supposed to represent things I supposedly missed and you’re trying, unsuccessfully, to make a purely semantics based argument.
This seems cynical. The list of changes on the new laptop are enormous...
And this is Apple -- they don't have to, or feel the need to, justify anything. If they released the 2018 15" with just a new keyboard the world would be over the moon because otherwise it's a close to perfect laptop. They took quite a few steps further surprising a lot of people.
As an aside, I've had my MBP for about a year now. I've typed barely a paragraph on it. I've always used a magic keyboard and mouse with -- yup, even when mobile -- because I cannot stand "laptop warmth" under my hands. So I've inadvertently gotten around the shite keyboard because of another weird hangup.
...yet I've seriously considered getting the new one. Keyboard doesn't bother me at all given my weird usage, but the other changes, particularly the much better speakers, seriously interests me.
Well, on the 16" they improved the thermals as well (2nd biggest complaint for the previos 15"), put a much more powerful GPU (3rd major complaint) and more storage for the same price and finally put a bigger battery which I'm sure everybody likes.
Apple will certainly upgrade the 13" model as well next year, maybe moving to a 14" format.
They really wanted to release this 16" sooner because the 15" was by far the most criticized one and they wanted to show to the "Pro" market that they're still there.
A few blasts of compressed air very likely will fix the keyboard. We have cans of it spread throughout the office, because it took Apple three laptop generations to admit to their faults
Please avoid calling the "gas duster" type cans "compressed air". It's misleading.
They usually contain compressed fluorocarbons like difluoroethane. These are toxic chemicals, which are also potent greenhouse gases. Their casual use for cleaning should be discouraged.
I bought a three pack about 5 years ago and am only on the 2nd can. They're great for a very occasional spritz into a fan or some other dusty region when you have a laptop or desktop open for a repair.
Otherwise I'll use a vacuum or duster, if it's not delicate electronics.
Uh, that's not true at all. CFC's that most people are concerned with emitting aren't necessarily greenhouse gases, and the greenhouse contribution is not really a primary concern with them.
The primary concern is that many of them are catalysts with very very long active lifespans. As a catalyst (not a consumable reactant), a single CFC molecule is capable of destroying hundreds of thousands of ozone molecules in the upper atmosphere (or more). It's the catalytic nature that makes these things problematic and accumulative even in small amounts. The accumulation of these long-lived gasses would be measurable if everyone were blasting their laptop once a day, which is precisely why a number of them are banned completely. The ones generally used now are relatively better, but there is still plenty of reason to avoid emitting them if possible.
Cigarette smoke isn't comparable when it comes to environmental concern, nor are most common combustion byproducts. Those definitely cause concern for different reasons, but aren't directly comparable to environmental concerns raised by CFCs.
I have had great success cleaning using a electronics vacuum. It is a type of vacuum that blows instead of sucks and uses non-conductive materials to avoid static discharge.
I got one for around 60 USD and unless the motor breaks it should last forever. There are also screen and electronic safe wet wipes for cleaning phones and other messes that a vacuum would not solve.
I have a 15inch ~mid 2014 model that works very well still! The only problems I've had were the battery losing juice, and the screen went out suddenly. The original screen also had peeled a bunch which turned out to be a manufacturers defect from the 2014 models. I took it in to apple and ended up spending ~$500 to repair the battery and the screen, and I'm almost certain that they gave me back a brand new 2015 model a few days later. It's like a brand new laptop. I really like this model and plan to keep using it as long as I can.
I am generally not a lucky person, but after hearing all these horror stories of 2016+ MBPs, it's obvious that I really lucked out when I bought my 13" MBP in fall of 2015, which I'm using right now to make this post. I've only had to service it once to get the "logic board" replaced, which cost me something like $600 last winter, but it was pretty obvious that it was still the best option after comparing to the newer MBPs and many other laptops. I'll be a sad panda when this bad boy becomes unrepairable.
I don’t mean to dunk on you, and I’m sure you really aren’t a lucky person (as you say), but this just stands out to me as a reason people look at us tech workers and think we’re a touch entitled: anyone who can afford a new MacBook at any point in the past few years is almost by definition lucky.
Well, since you brought it up... My MBP was actually one of the most expensive things I had ever bought, at that time. I've been pretty poor my entire life (e.g., sometimes had to skip meals as a kid because we had nothing to eat), and I worked harder than you can probably imagine for many years to be as good with computers and tech as I am now. I bought the MBP using a few thousand dollars that I had saved up from some odd freelance jobs, which was the most money I'd ever had, and the purchase of the MBP took a significant percentage of it. However, I knew that the MBP would be a good investment (and I'm now aware of just how good of an investment it was, compared to newer models) to help me find more work, be more effective, and make more money. I am very lucky to have chosen this path, for sure, but don't assume things about people.
I have 2017 13" and am quite happy as well. Hardware wise, only bigger downside is the cooling. The laptop can't do much work otherwise it starts to get really noisy and then slow after a while. Overall the worst part is definitely the crappy OS. Not that there is any really good one out there.
why are you buying apple laptops if you don’t like the OS? you can buy equivalent windows laptops and not have to pay the macos tax. the entire reason to buy a mac is because of the OS
The 2015 models are great, but their graphics card (which these days is an integrated Intel Iris chip, not a discrete GPU) is severely underpowered. An external 4K screen at "retina"-type resolution will result in noticeable visual lag.
That's what I'm replacing with the 16" now. I work with external displays and the Intel Iris is the weak link for me. Other than that I've been really happy with the 2015 13"!
Speaking of macs and external monitors: I continue to enjoy my 2012 mbp 15r, but gave up on non-mac external monitors years ago, because of text blurriness. Is this a solved problem?
I have been using macs with external monitors for years without a problem with the text being blurry. if you mean the DPI isn’t as high then it really depends on the monitor. if you buy a 4k then it is almost equivalent in DPI.
I bought the same in 2016. Last year the speakers got fried and since few months back it has started to shut down abruptly. The max time I can use it now is only around 30 mins :(
Mine was like that even when on the charger until I replaced the battery, after that it was like new again. Well worth the money!
Another thing to do is opening the bottom an removing as much of the dust buildup as possible, that shit alone explains a lot of the “my computer gets slower with age”.
I was at the Apple Store this weekend. Some guy brought in his older 15” to compare to the new 16”. It was not too much larger but it was slightly noticeable. It didn’t feel like I would break the top lid like I do on my 2017 15”.
I would not use clumsily large to describe it, my work laptop is a clumsily large hp zBook. Not one will ever mug me for it because I could throw it at them. They’d probably get a concussion.
Apple listened to customers and built the 16”. The CPUs are intel’s problem not apple. The 16” is Apple saying they were wrong and fixing issues.
I'm a power user and I'm really surprised you looked at this release as "just" fixing the keyboard. I'm more excited about this release than any other macbook release in the past 3 years. Increased base hd size, new graphics card with performance that stomps the previous model, more available RAM, the largest battery legally possible on a laptop, and a larger screen in the same form factor as the previous 15 inch model. There are actually no downsides to this laptop except the touch bar.
The keyboard is the “only” thing that matters for someone that bought a computer about a year ago, so yeah.
64GB of RAM and 8TB of SSD are great, that’s why I have a desktop computer with those specs for half the price. I love big screens too, which is why I have an actual big monitor on my desktop, not “big considering the form factor it’s in”. Getting those specs on the MacBook Pro puts you into the $6K territory, so I don’t think for most people that’s actually a difference. The absolute upper bound has increased, but what I get for the price I just paid about a year ago isn’t that much different.
Meanwhile, my laptop is for mobility and not where I boil the ocean. Sure, I’ve wanted 32GB on my 13 inch for years, still waiting though.
Look, I get that there exists a market for super high end laptops, but there is arguably a much larger market for, like, mobile laptops that can type correctly. It’s annoying that I have to get pushed into the ultra niche high end laptop market, with specs that I specifically don’t even care that much about (I have no use for a better graphics card, especially an AMD graphics card that ensures I can’t use it for ML), just to get a keyboard that puts one e on the screen when I hit the e key once.
Not everyone uses a desktop–I do all of my work out of a laptop, for example. It's not strange to want a powerful one, and comparing it to something completely different is not useful.
I agree! That's why my point was that if you compare the new 16 inch to the previous 15 inch, at the same starting price points -- they aren't all that different. The difference does indeed grow quite large as you reach exorbitant price points.
The old 15.4 inch at $2699.00 (vs. 16 inch at $2399) was also 512GB, 16GB RAM, and 2.6GHz. This is absolutely a modest perf bump -- however it really sucks if you feel like you have to pay this price again for nearly identical specs to really just get the new keyboard. Yes, if you were really hoping for amazing... laptop speakers, then paying full price again may make a lot of sense. But the reality is that for most people (those not spending $6K), this computer is not that much different from the one that already exists, except for the keyboard actually working. My response was for the comment stating surprise that I "just" saw this as a keyboard fix. I stand by my position that this is absolutely the case at most of the reasonable (common?) price points.
There are probably a lot of people who can and do pay for upgraded machines, and for them 64 GB of RAM or an 8 TB SSD might be reasonable. (OK, I'm not so sure about the 8 TB storage tier…but there are probably a number of people who'd like the higher capacities.)
I’m very happy about the 8tb. itunes media has proper bitrates (looking at you google with your “4k”) so having your entire media library with you is a nice benefit as well as having some room to grow. i’m currently sitting on about 2.5tb of media and ~500gb of user data. buying a 4tb would max me out in a few months after buying more movies / shows.
My company is talking configurations for all next summer's upgrades... top i9 8-core, top 5500/8G GPU, 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage. Someone may up their storage, but I'm mostly insanely happy about the GPU and RAM.
Sure, but if you want seriously powerful hardware, you're simply not getting that in a laptop form factor. A desktop workstation can have power budgets upward of 10x what these can use.
you bought a machine a year ago, so why not wait until they inevitably release it in the macbook line and buy one of those. this is your ultraportable “trashbook” line you’re looking for.
What do you mean by "legally possible on a laptop"? My current machine (some rugged mobile power house) got 120Wh and I really don't wanna get arrested. Please enlighten me.
Just shipping the product can be an issue if you use FedEx or similar.
I don't think they allow >100wh, and even under this is a pain.
Understandably, because they already have had a few crashes likely caused by battery fire.
The one time they do, you will either be abandoning your $3000 laptop or missing your $3000 flight. Better to follow the rules. Not because the rules are intrinsically good, but because not following them can be a big waste of time.
Coming from a 15” 2013, the 16” still feels clumsily large and not portable. I want to hold out for a 14” but it will like have a gimped processor. Why can no one get this right ...
I doubt Apple will make a new 13" just for the Keyboard. It will require some other improvements, like for the 16", they got larger display, better CPU and GPU. The problem with the 13" is they dont come with Discreet GPU, which means Apple will have to wait for new Intel Icelake, with Better CPU and iGPU before releasing an update.
Intel Icelake platform will also come with WiFi6.
I am not sure if Apple want to release a 13"MBP with better Wireless Spec than its bigger 16" brother. So the likelihood of 13" releases is when they update their 16" again with Icelake as well.
But the problem with Intel Icelake is 10nm. And judging from the current retail Icelake solutions, the chances of Intel lying again with 10nm yield is extremely high. And that is why all of a sudden you see Intel PR and Marketing team on fire in the past few months, keep sharing their roadmap and their forth coming tech. From GPU to OneAPI etc.
May be in Intel will finally fix their 10nm problem in time for another update in WWDC or earlier, if not I hope Apple will switch to AMD.
Edit: And I would also like to point out, the so called Better Thermals, Bigger Battery, only when comparing to 2016+ MBP, they are roughly the same in 2015 MBP.
Call me crazy but I must be the only person who enjoys typing on the old butterfly keyboard.
Yes I was one of those people who originally thought the travel was too small but after using it for a couple hours I found the low travel was a huge relief to Carpal Tunnel and I also typed much faster.
Maybe I have the only keyboard that “works” but I love me some butterfly keyboards.
I actually prefer the butterfly keyboard's clickiness – coming from a mechanical keyboard, I always found the chiclet keys a tad too mushy. And the jarringly-short travel, while annoying at first, is easy to adapt to.
The thing that turned me against the butterfly keyboard were the reliability issues. I've had to get replacements for broken keyboards three times: spacebar stopped working, `f` ended up double typing every single time, and capslock (I remap to Ctrl) would 'stick' for a few seconds when pressed.
Same. I love typing on it, and my reliability issues haven't been as bad as yours, but occasionally having 2 'a's come out instead of one is very annoying for a command-line driven workflow.
I felt the same way until my butterfly keyboard gradually stopped working and I went back to my old 2014 MBP keyboard, and realized I had developed Stockholm Syndrome. If you haven't already, try switching back to the old (or new) scissor keys and see if you still feel the same.
Agreed - I used the 2017 model for a couple years and no complaints about the feel, just the non-working keys. But I didn’t realize that my typing had gotten slower and less precise.
I switched to the X1C7 and will prioritize key travel and response from now on.
I had one of the butterfly keyboards at work and an old one at home. I still feel like the butterfly keyboard felt crisper and faster to type on. I never dealt with any issues with the butterfly keyboard, but I only used it about a year.
I enjoy the butterfly keyboard, but once the keys started putting two spaces in when I said one, or putting two of other letters, or none of yet other letters, it got old really fast.
Still like my keyboard, and would be happy to have it back if Apple fixed the reliability issues.
I'm with you. There are probably dozens of us. But really, the loudest ones in the room are always the ones that got screwed over by the keyboad. I love the way the butterfly types, and 1+ year in, I've had no issues. Let's just hope it lasts another 6. I got 7 years out of an Air (replaced the battery in year 6), and I'm hoping to get as much out of a way more expensive pro...
I'm also curious as to if the keyboards are different sizes on 13in v. 15in models. As in, are all the problems/complaints stemming from the 13in models?
I am starting to think that it’s more to do with how people type, rather then a keyboard quality. Most people who get them break - go through 3-4 keyboards in a year. I am still using my 2017 butterfly and have not had a single issue with a keyboard. So it’s either 0 or 3+ replacements
I think it might be more about how much contact your keyboard has to particulates. The primary mode of failure has to do with dust/crumbs/etc getting into the mechanism. It's not impossible to imagine that people who type in more particulate-rich environments have frequent keyboard issues.
But that's still victim blaming. There are plenty of keyboard designs which are not this fragile, and you shouldn't have to dust-proof your workspace to avoid hardware failures. We're not making CPUs here.
One thing I found is that the reliability issues are usually quite fleeting. I have the feeling that a lot of the people who are experiencing issues are going to the Apple store straight away to get it fixed. I've had a few issues: 5 key stopped working properly, space stopped working properly a couple times, same for f key, where by properly I meant it needed more effort to get the keypress out, however every time the issue resolved itself in 2 or 3 days of use (presumably by the typing breaking up whatever dust had gotten itself under there)
They are definitely unreliable and shouldn't break so easy, but every issue I've had has resolved itself
As one anecdotal point: I waited months for mine to go away, and eventually got really frustrated with it and brought it to the store. They took it to the back and somehow their air can removed what my air can at home could not.
About a year since I did that and the key funkiness is slowly coming back for the last two weeks. Hopefully I only need another Apple Store trip and their compressed air to fix it.
The point is that a keyboard shouldn't have those kind of problems. If it fixes by itself or if it needs sometime, doesn't really matter because most other keyboards works fines for years.
I'm with you. I have an old Macbook Pro at home with the original scissors keyboard, as well as some old bluetooth Mac keyboards with scissor switches, and a 2017 Pro with the butterfly switches, so I get plenty of experience with both styles. I prefer the butterfly keyboard.
But like you, I haven't had a key go bad (yet?). I'm sure some folks did not like the butterfly feel, but I think a lot of the frustration started with how easily it broke.
Besides reliability, the problem with the butterfly for me was the close inter-key spacing. It was too easy to hit the next key over while I was typing. I kept having to back up and retype. it took most of the last year before I, mostly, got used to it. The travel or stability was never a problem, but then it was never a problem on the 2014 either. :)
Who knew? Keyboards turn out to be very personal. I am in your camp. I picked up one of the 13" MBPs when they rev'ed it earlier this year and I love the keyboard! I have never typed faster on any laptop keyboard.
I've used 3 different MacBooks since 2016 with the butterfly keyboards (upgrading to newer models as they came out), never had a problem with any. Granted, I always use a "keyboard condom" anyway no matter what (because I hate the inevitable stains that no keyboard is immune to), maybe that saved me?
The Touch Bar can also be pretty handy, especially if you customize it with third-party apps like BetterTouchTool. I certainly use it more than I ever used F# keys.
Not everybody hates the feel of the butterfly keyboard, I kinda like it too. The problem is in its reliability.
Anyone who works in a shop with a large population of Macs will have see them fail in droves. My 2016 has had the B and V keys fail, a couple keys falling out, and now spacebar and a few other keys come out duplicates every other sentence.
You can count me in. I was expecting Apple to fix the problems with the butterfly keyboard (I didn't have any but seems like a bunch of them stopped working). Instead, they went backwards. Maybe it's the right move and the butterfly is really broken.
But it was a nice typing experience for a while. At least, until I get the new Mac!
I felt likewise and enjoy the key travel. I do type faster on it and find it overall pleasant. Then again I’m wary of getting anything under the keys and worried for the day one or more keys stop working properly. Hard to tell what the actual failure rate is.
I bought the pre-16 inch MBP specifically for the keyboard. It's joyful and effortless to type on at the same time. Hands down the best laptop keyboard. (I used ThinkPads exclusively for more than a decade before coming to Macs)
I find the whole debacle absolutely bizarre. The butterfly keyboard is fantastic. The only real problem with it is that the keys aren’t easily removable. If they were, you could easily clean them and/or replace them. I don’t understand why the design directive after the first ones started failing wasn’t: Make the keys easily replaceable.
They did four iterations on the original design and never made a variant where you didn’t have to replace the entire top case because of some cookie crumbs. It’s just insane.
All they had to do was redesign the hooks under the keys. I’m no engineer, but when I look at them it doesn’t seem like some kind of impossible challenge.
I just bought one and have been using it for a couple of days. So far so good. I still hate the TouchBar because it's completely useless, but the Esc key and directional keys was enough for me.
I also have a 2018 MBP from work and the keyboard is shit. Within 3 weeks it was doubletyping and putting random .'s everywhere.
I was days away from buying the top end Vaio and then I heard the news about the new MBP and decided to go for the MBP instead.
For anyone else having this problem, the new MBPs ship with the same autocorrect "feature" that comes on iOS where when you press spacebar twice (or, I should say, your keyboard thinks you pressed the spacebar twice) it inserts a period automatically. In addition, newer MBPs automatically capitalize and autocorrect spelling, like on mobile.
You can disable this. I did, and, I don't think any desktop computer should be telling me how to type. I don't need help when I have a full keyboard. System Prefs > Keyboard > Text.
> I don't think any desktop computer should be telling me how to type.
I agree.. seems like Apple derped there. The auto-correct was because typing on a smartphone is a lot harder, but some genius must've thought "Hey, why don't we use this software on our desktops too?". Also holding down a hardware key to get to accented characters, oh fuck, how is that ergonomic?
> Also holding down a hardware key to get to accented characters, oh fuck, how is that ergonomic?
I think it's a good addition for when you very occasionally need to type a particular accented character, since you can visually see the options. Of course if you are going to type it a lot you're better off learning the Option key combo.
For instance I would have to look up how to directly type "ł" since I rarely need to type a Polish name... but I can get it in 1 second by holding down "l". Very handy!
> For instance I would have to look up how to directly type "ł" since I rarely need to type a Polish name... but I can get it in 1 second by holding down "l". Very handy!
What's more, you can't even type ł on the standard Apple layout. Sure, you could use the Apple Extended keyboard layout that handles more characters than what's used in Western Europe, but you'll lose ≈ (irritatingly, the Extended layout isn't a strict superset of the standard layout). I type ≈ more often than I type ł or ć or ō, so the hold-key behavior is a handy addition.
For those who can't upgrade yet, there is an open source utility, Unshaky (https://unshaky.nestederror.com/), that can help with double presses. It's sad and gross that it is necessary but it works well on my aging MBP.
You should be able to get the keyboard replaced for free, I just haven't found the time yet to go to an Apple store, but you shouldn't need to pay money and upgrade to fix this issue.
Just to say, if you want to explore making the touchbar more useful, possibly check out BetterTouchTool [0]. I don't have a touchbar machine so I haven't tried out those features (I use BTT mainly for window control) but my understanding is that it can give you very good, more fine-grained, control over what the touchbar displays and how it behaves.
> I still hate the TouchBar because it's completely useless
I don't have one, but I just can't fathom how you can't make use of it? I'm looking forward to using it for all kinds of things -- notifications, quick glance information, context aware keys, and more.
For those who are not in a hurry to upgrade, ( If you are on 2015 MBP ), the next upgrade which should be soon, will get you WiFi 6 and Icelake, with 20%+ IPC and hopefully Apple will throw in 10 Core Config in as well.
I kind of felt Apple rushed as the problem with Keyboard were big enough and Apple had to release something to calm the market, not to mention Intel 10nm Icelake is late as usual.
And of all the thing Apple backtrack, I really wish they bring back AirPort Extreme.
>There is always something new just around the corner.
True, but something new isn't always something better, and isn't always worth waiting for. Aka 2016 - 2019 MBP 15". And in the above cases, I consider Icelake IPC and Security improvement along with WiFI 6 to be quite a significant upgrade, not the same could be said for the past 3 update of MacBook Pro.
But is this something you would’ve known when they were released? Looking back it’s quite easy to know which upgrade was worth waiting for. What if intel can’t deliver next year?
For me it’s also less about what next upgrade might bring but also what next upgrade does to the resale price. I’m sure those offloading a 15” 2018 will feel the price drop now.
I have a 13” 2018 and I am seriously considering replacing with the maxed out 16” with 2tb.
But the struggle is real, this is essentially a first gen device despite the somewhat small design changes. What if they release a new version in half a year? Definitely not an easy decision for a laptop that costs 5k€
Agree as well, something that was in mind but didn't wrote it out in my last reply. There was of course the assumption Intel execute, which isn't something Apple can control.
At least Intel has shipped its Icelake in extremely small quantities. I actually rather hope Intel do miss their deadline so Apple has an excuses to switch to AMD or ARM.
This is true, but relatively insignificant. Things in tech don't tend to evolve smoothly and predictably.
I think anyone who remembers the 'Do not buy the 2015 MBP, Skylake is right around the corner and it will bring such improvements you should definitely wait' knows that it's senseless to tell people to wait for Apple to release a 16 incher with 10nm processors if they want a new laptop.
There's multiple reasons why: 10nm higher powered chips are not ready and we all know about how much Intel is struggling with 10nm, Apple's release cycle is rather unpredictable, what if the switch to ARM is next year, should we wait longer...?
Something "Newer, Better, Shinier" is always around the corner and unless it's very close to release or the current product has genuine flaws, it makes little sense to wait.
The post started with “For those who are not in a hurry to upgrade.”
I found the post informative and useful, with details that I hadn’t been aware of.
I found the rebuttals to it to be dismissive and full of obvious well known information and anecdotes that did not bear repeating in a forum like this one where we are well aware of the nature of incremental technology advances.
These will likely be features of the Intel product lineup, which is a lot more public than Apples roadmap but which is very intertwined for anything processor related, which likely includes WiFi.
This ifixit article says, "Once again, the keyboard assembly is riveted down. Though the switches are likely less vulnerable to crumbly assailants, the keyboard itself isn't any more repairable than the Butterfly boards."
"Apple says that it has done extra work to stabilize the keycaps, made them slightly smaller so there’s more space between the keys, and that if a key breaks you can just replace that one key without taking apart the whole laptop."
This seems like a strange thing for Apple to lie about. What's the real truth here, I wonder?
EDIT: It seems that ifixit is just wrong about this, and the keyboard is at least somewhat more repairable than the butterfly model. The keycaps are replaceable (allowing you to spray compressed air directly onto debris) and the white part of the switch is replaceable.
The keycap and the scissor mechanism are replaceable, but not officially (at least it isn't on the 2012-2015 models).
So if you have an issue with one key, Apple will likely still offer a whole top-case replacement (this is what they did with me with a 2015).
I bought an add-on USB-C 'magsafe' adapter when I bought my 2017 MBP 13" [1]. I had planned to leave the one bit in the laptop, and use it like a magsafe, but it didn't work out well - it wasn't as magnetic or as positive in location as a real magsafe (it tended to fold 'sideways' too easily), and in the end I just stopped using it because it became more of a pain than the real risk of it getting dragged off a table (the only location I used to use it was at my girlfriend's house in the kitchen and I took to just taking the cable out when I walked away to save the kids having a nightmare).
Snapnator actually delivered for you? I know several people including myself that had bought one of these things and never had them delivered, then never had any support requests answered. I had put them down to a large scam.
>The X-rays make it even angrier! Run away! Luckily our friends at Creative Electron are taking all the risk here—we'll resume disassembly after things calm down.
Not sure what is the allusion to here, but anyone else noticed static discharge you get after airport xray scans your macbook?
I believe that is caused by the rubber conveyor belt carrying the laptop through in a nylon bag rather than the x-ray itself. You can get the same effect from other non-x-ray conveyor belts at the airport.
That might have more to do with you, in your socks, walking on plastic while your metal-encased laptop goes through something that could be used as a part of a Van de Graaff generator.
> News flash: there's not even a dust-proofing membrane on these new switches. We're inclined to take this as a very good sign. (It means we can finally eat Doritos during teardowns again.)
That sounds counter-intuitive. Can someone explain?
They don't have the membrane because they don't need it. With the old keyboards, any spec of dust would cause them to stick. That means these are back to the original, non-fragile keyboards with good travel.
The first butterfly keyboard design had problems with dust intruding and breaking the delicate switches. The second butterfly keyboard design was claimed "fixed" by adding the dust-proofing membrane.
The Surface Laptop 3 scored a 5 at least, which was a big improvement over previous generations. I wish Apple would try to improve repairability as well.
While this is true, the battery (which is likely the only component most people will need/want to replace) is still glued to the case, the RAM is soldered and I'm not sure Microsoft will provide a replacement keyboard to you for a decent price.
I mean, I was very happy about the Laptop 3 repairability, but if the MBP is 1/10, then 5/10 looks a bit too much to me.
I'm very patiently waiting for modular components. Apple's hardware is certainly beautiful but IMO not worth the upfront premium PLUS the additional premium for repairs.
From a hardware eng perspective, is there a clear advantage for hardwiring components?
A while back, I used to think hard about whether to purchase AppleCare to extend the warranty on a new MacBook Pro. Now, it's a no-brainer. Believe me, I know from hard experience that you won't regret it.
The lack of repairability and fragility of recent models has driven up the repair price and the need for repairs so much it makes AppleCare vital now. Apple outright lied in Europe for years about warranty duration to upsell AppleCare and went to court multiple times before they stopped, these "replace most of the computer" repairs might be nothing more than a dark pattern sales optimization. During iFixit's live teardown of this device it turned out there was plenty of space for socketed ram and storage, as is consistent with devices much smaller.
Well I bought AppleCare because of the keyboard and I regret it. They refused to fix the nonworking keys because of a 1mm scratch on the back of the top case, saying it voided the warranty.
I had the keyboard of my MBP 2017 replaced for free. Also, the display died roughly at the same time. At first, I thought it was a problem of the flex cable, but later I discovered a small crack. The Apple Store replaced the entire display for free, what is usually a $800 repair. I guess it depends a lot on the store, the country, maybe even the person you talk to.
Why shouldn’t it be acceptable? I for one accept to trade repairability for less footprint/weight. And I also admire my ThinkPad T420 that I thoroughly hacked.
Let the market decide what it wants. There’s space for all kinds os laptops and gadgets.
In a world where sourcing materials and building computer parts that cannot be recycled has such a high environmental and societal cost, no, I can't find any way of seeing this as acceptable.
We should not let the market and consumers preference decide on this. We need informed, resonnable and thoughful decisions. If it leads to laptops a bit more heavy and thick but less wasteful, so be it. Convenience cannot be demanded at any cost. Anyway, repairable is convenient.
We do not know the failure rates so making judgements of its sustainability are hampered and cannot just rely on "I want the option" as a counter to how a product is designed.
By your logic why stop at laptops, why not demand tablets and even smart watches be treated the same. the reason is simple really, the reliability of these devices is very good and companies like Apple have highly developed processes in place to recycle the failures they do encounter.
we would never survive in a world were consumer electronics were lego like in their manufacturing. you think we have waste issues now, it is far more likely a laptop or desktop would be recycled than individual components which when failed many would just toss like they toss one use batteries found in many devices.
Well, there is a middle ground between completely unrepairable and completely lego like. Nobody needs to glue the keyboard to the battery and the speakers in a laptop. My laptop is fine. Changing the battery is especially common, they wear fast. And Apple has shown that it did glue an unreliable keyboard to components that didn't need to be thrown away.
As for tablets, you can change the screen or the battery on an iPad 2 for instance - though not easily -, and its form factor was perfectly fine. A bit thicker would not make it horrible so I am sure it is also possible to design a repairable tablet and I think Fairphone proved that it is possible for phones too (although the Fairphone seems a bit thick, granted).
As for smartwatches, I'd argue that while there are valid use cases for them, most people certainly don't need them, so it should not be a big concern. Almost everybody has a phone now, and people who really want to wear the time on their arm can get a regular watch that will last decades instead of a smartwatch. We don't need to carry two computers 24-7. I hope this market is niche and remains niche. But I certainly can imagine that you don't need to glue the battery to the screen in a smartwatch neither anyway.
Anyway, the best waste is the one that does not exist, recycling should be last resort since it's often far from perfect and costly too. So we should reduce the amount of things we need to recycle in the first place. As for computer parts, I cannot see how it can be efficient.
The article is from 2017 and references data from 2016 and 2012. In 2018 Apple announced it stepped up its recycling efforts but I don’t know how things have changed and I haven’t read the full environmental report.
Apple forces recyclers to shred because they determined those devices are not fit for resale and they don’t want recyclers reselling them, like they said they would in the article. This happens to 1/3 of trade-ins, see link below.
You are implying that an article that is only two years old is too old, precising that you don't know if things have changed (thank you for your honesty by the way).
Apple forces recyclers to shred perfectly good hardware indiscriminately, against their will, so it does not hurt Apple's bottom line. When you are the richest company in the world, surely you can do better. There is no excuse.
I cannot take Apple's own 2 MB, 55 request loading marketing material about environment as a reliable source.
> You are implying that an article that is only two years old is too old,
No. I’m stating that policy changed after this article was published, who knows maybe it was in response to this article, so the facts may have changed. The age of the article is not relevant I was just showing the timeline.
> Apple forces recyclers to shred perfectly good hardware indiscriminately
Says the recyclers. Apple says they are not perfectly good hardware, otherwise they would have refurbished it themselves. I also believe Apple maximizes profit which is why I believe if it was reliably repairable, they would have done it. A refurbishment unit has to fetch more than a recycled unit.
>> You are implying that an article that is only two years old is too old,
> No. I’m stating that policy changed after this article was published, who knows maybe it was in response to this article, so the facts may have changed
Ok, that was a more charitable and likely interpretation of your message. A bit of bad faith unfortunately slipped in my last comment. Sorry for that.
I looked at how to recycle of my old Color laser printer and the instructions on PA’s web site were to out it into the blue bin. They show GP this on the sides of some of the trucks too. I did so (almost completely filled the bin and weighed a ton) but they took it without a qualm.
I can give you a good reason. Last time my mac had a problem and I went to an authorized company that fixes macs the report they gave me was: "There's a problem with the logic board, we need to replace it, but we can't assure you that will fix it, if problem persists we will replace the other components until it works, you'll have to keep paying."
I asked what was the exact nature of the problem. The answer was "Electrical", whatever that means.
I think it was the worst repair experience I ever had. I would have ended up paying half to two thirds the price of the mac probably because of a broken tiny component somewhere.
Also I'm not allowed to keep broken components for later personal inspection (apparently apple does not allow it).
You can totally run Windows or Linux on a macbook with some effort. Apple even built Bootcamp to make it easy to dual boot...
Or are you saying you should be able to take OSX elsewhere? it's not a "monopoly" that Apple built OSX and only support it on their own hardware. It is not monopolistic to build something supported on one platform and not others.
The thing is, that if you want to run MacOS, you have to buy Apple hardware. There is no choice for MacOS users, so the market cannot decide whether they want more or less repairable laptops. You have to buy whatever Apple is offering.
I'm not sure, I've never tried installing Linux on a Macbook Pro. I know that it is/was possible for certain hardware but also that it was never easy or straight forward. Apple doesn't help but they aren't making their laptops reject unsigned code or anything like they do for the phones.
Given that OSX and Linux are so similar under the hood and that standing up a VM is so easy, I've never really seen the point of installing linux except to say you can.
They both share their roots in Unix. Linux is an open port of Unix whereas OSX is a fork of BSD which is itself also derived from Unix
`ls`, `mv`, `cp` and other command line utility functions work relatively similarly across OSX and Linux. OSX has a package manager (brew) that works similarly to Package Managers found on Linux, etc...
If you learn to use Linux, switching to OSX is relatively painless compared to Windows (although WSL might have changed that)
Ah, I was expecting you to say something lower level than that. Homebrew is however quite unlike package managers I've used on Linux, and even MacPorts is a little different…I've heard that WSL is pretty decent and presumably APT works on it, though I haven't touched it since it first came out and it was broken in some way that I cared about.
You'll find that linuxbrew exists, apart from the AUR being a thing. And yes, apt and other distro package managers work perfectly fine in both wsl and wsl2.
>> Having the lowest repairability possible should not be acceptable for such a high-end machine.
That's just like, your opinion dude. Take a look at the logic board. Given the thinness of the device, every piece of it is designed and stuck in place. Nothing here is plug/play. If modularity is important to someone, and thinness is not, then they're free to look elsewhere for a machine.
The maximum warranty period is 3 years, though obviously there are lots of ways to still hand yourself an expensive repair (spill soda on the keyboard, that kind of thing).
Now, to be fair, I was a first-gen MacBook owner, and suffered from the issue with the magnetic latch cracking the topcase plastic and the plastic itself getting stained. I'm pretty sure I had that topcase replaced at least four or five times over the course of the computer's life, several of them out of the Apple Care period. That was a while ago, but at least back then, Apple were good about taking care of people once they'd come around to acknowledging a flaw.
Some people don't mind throwing a few grand every couple of years on a new machine. You see the same with the phones, they cost a fair bit but people just buy them anyway.
A little annoying that certain things aren't simple a socket that can be replaced though.
I'm one of those people who pays ~$60/month on Apple's 0% iPhone loan plan. When my phone is paid off in a couple of months I would gladly pay $100/month for a 0% Apple loan on a low- to mid-range MacBook. I wonder if this will ever become an option.
I switched from a pair of Mac Pro's to a 15" Macbook Pro last year. The 15" was the first laptop to support quad 4k displays (what I was using with my Mac Pro). The laptop has been fantastic, with the exception of cooling. The cooling is bad enough that I keep it (when it's hooked up to my quad 4k displays) upside down, with 2 plastic cups, to keep it from overheating.
I'm mostly interested in the enhanced cooling. If it's really that much better, it may be time to upgrade. Has anyone had similar experiences?
I really like the inverted-T arrangement. I have literally held off on buying a new Mac until they went back to that layout, since it lets me position my fingers on the keys better.
Yeah same here, I tried using keyboards with full-size left right arrow keys and I don't know why but I found that to be one of the hardest things to adjust to. And I type on lots of different keyboards.
Note: they were talking about the size rather than the layout. I think the OP wants full-size cursor keys in an inverted T layout, which does sound like the best of both worlds to me.
Only a tiny percentage of laptops are ever upgraded. If making the device upgradable and accessible adds the same percentage in materials then it's pretty much a wash.
Also Apple devices on average have much longer service lives than devices from most other manufacturers. On average they stay usable longer, and even when they are replaced they're more likely to be handed on and keep in use even without upgradability. This is why they retain more of their second hand value. That factor alone is dramatically more significant from a whole lifecycle impact point of view.
> Only a tiny percentage of laptops are ever upgraded.
A larger percentage however needs repairs (apple care sells well for a reason). A 1/10 score means that a "repair" will basically be throwing (large parts of) the laptop away and exchanging it for a new one.
Similarly recycling is made much harder by this design.
> This is why they retain more of their second hand value.
And because there is large base of people paying that much for them. A high-priced sony vaio, elitebook, thinkpad etc. stays usable just as long and there is large interest in the secondary market (e.g. see reddit's /r/thinkpad) but at much lower prices. Macbook buyers instead treat them as design objects first (which keep value) and computers second.
Upgrading a laptop might increase its useful service life, but if bought well-specced, this isn't the biggest problem.
The elephant in the room are repairs. Due to the design, too many repairs are not economic, so machines get thrown away early. Repairs, which should cost way less with a design that at least allows repairability.
Exactly.
When I had some sticky keys on a 2015 MacBook Pro, the Genius told me that the only way to fix that was to replace the whole top case and it wouldn't have been cheap.
I just went home, searched a bit on YouTube, removed the keycaps and cleaned them.
It's the same for batteries: they want you to replace the whole top case for a stupid battery that they could have made much easier to remove (it's still possible to do it BTW)
I feel like much of these claims are only in the past. I used my 2009 Macbook for 5 or so years, and it only lasted that long because I was able to upgrade it. It came with a comical 2GB of ram, and that would have been a trash—as in worthless to me—if it couldn't be upgraded. I was able to sell it, only because they're desirable, and they used to be more reliable. The latter quality is not so evident any more. Many naive customers are duped into buying the bottom of the line MBP or Air, and then are dumbfounded when their thing runs out of resources. I blame apple for making less reliable products for higher margins and offering their customers less agency over their devices. Their marketing pitch is usually that you should have to know the details, but you do, because they're trying to screw you. The people with money to blow I'm not so concerned about, it's more the person who buys a 13" MBP for 2k that has 4GB of ram and 128gb ssd, and can't ever upgrade the thing.
>I feel like much of these claims are only in the past.
It's not actually possible to buy a new Mac with less than 8GB RAM these days, and that seems likely to be plenty for a typical user for the lifetime of a machine bought today. 128 GB SSD is a bit tight, but flash drives are cheap. I see it the opposite way, in the past minimum Mac specs always seemed miserly, but nowadays they're pretty capable.
On the other hand, my 2014 15" MBP didn't come with less than 16Gb and still packs a quad-core 45w CPU, a decently fast SSD, a crazy good chassis and trackpad and a bright hi-dpi display.
I think it's still better than most of the 800-900€ 15" new laptops offered today, but it's not upgradable.
My only issue with it is the battery which will fail sooner or later, but it shouln't be too hard to remove it.
I was quite fond of my 13" from late 2013. One of the major differences that I find quite distressing is the soldered on SSD in most if not all new models. Good luck with data recovery if necessary.
This is true, but increasing RAM or disk capacity over time could extend that even more. Maybe not so much visible right now with those machines that are sold today and look awesome, but I have a few examples of 2006/2009 MBPs that had hard drives being replaced with SSDs, and extended their lifetime many more years! In my today's 5-year-old MBP, I would enjoy doubling the RAM for example.
> Only a tiny percentage of laptops are ever upgraded.
What about batteries, they're basically consumables.
I still remember a friend of mine breaking a single usb port on his macbook, he had to change half the components, the bill was something like $1.5k for a $2k macbook.
Yes, batteries are probably the biggest issue, because they deteriorate.
On all the retinas you have to separate them from the chassis using a thread (something like a fishing line). It's not too hard to do, but it's not fun neither.
>> If making the device upgradable and accessible adds the same percentage in materials then it's pretty much a wash.
In the case of Apple products, it can save you a pile of money.
The last Mac I bought was the early 2011 MBP (yeah, -that- lemon), and Apple's prices for RAM and storage were ridiculously above market prices.
I was able to max out the specs of my MBP more cheaply by buying my own parts, and upgrading to larger faster storage at my own timeline. Heck, you could even get a cage to replace the optical drive on those MBPs and put in another 2.5" drive (which I did, and it was a very bad decision, especially for battery life).
> Only a tiny percentage of laptops are ever upgraded.
Probably yes and that is also probably because behaviors like this. Manufacturers have trained consumers for years that upgrading of fixing stuff is not worth it. Personally, I have upgraded every laptop I have ever owned. This isn't possible with todays Macbooks.
> Also Apple devices on average have much longer service lives than devices from most other manufacturers
Bullshit, if anything I believe the opposite is true. What is your source for this?
> Bullshit, if anything I believe the opposite is true. What is your source for this?
In my experience this is true, but not for technical reasons.
It just seems to me that there a lot of people happily using almost 10 years old macbooks just because they want a macbook, but probably can't afford a new one.
Just try to sell a 6/7 years old mac and then try doing the same with a Windows laptop from the same year: you'll sell the mac much more quickly, for a higher price.
I think that old macbooks still have a market, most old laptops don't, but this is just my impression.
This comment is randomly bashing Apple for not acting ecologically while suggesting that alternatives are somehow better. Apple can and should be criticized for shitty environmental behavior when you can actually back up your claim.
Not that there would be any proof in the comment, no. For example, how do Lenovo, Samsung or Dell handle this stuff and can you explain why their approaches produce less waste? Of course not, but let's put some hate into the HN comment section!
A centrally managed maintenance process where Apple hardware is managed and its waste properly disposed off (recycling, proper sorting of waste, secure handling of toxic materials...) vs. risks like customers putting Li-Ion batteries into their home trash causing landfill fires. And throw the left-over SSDs and RAM right into the mix as well.
No, it's just about hating on Apple without any evidence or data to back it up. Mimimi Apple ecologically bad but I won't tell you why or how others are evidently making it better!
Microsoft just released Surface X with a door on the back for replacing the drive. The device is 0.28 inches thick.
Thinkpad X1 Carbon and Dell XPS both have replaceable drives. From opening the case. If anything I'm struggling to find another laptop maker who solders the drives to the boards like Apple does...
Drive failure isn't a possibility, it's a certainty and soldering them to the board creates a hard deadline when the laptop turns from a computer to a brick.
Moreover, XPSs have a screwed-in battery and replaceable keyboard, which would make restoring and reusing the laptop much more viable. With macbook, if you keyboard is broken, you trash half of the laptop, including the battery.
Nothing in the XPS 15 is glued in place. I'm literally using a laptop that has a screen from 9550 (4 years old), battery from 9560 (3 years old), motherboard from 9570 (2 years old) and other parts that I've accumulated randomly while upgrading my laptop from 9550 to 9560 to 9570.
And the parts that I wasn't using after the upgrade I've all sold to other people who had their mobo or battery fail. Nothing was wasted.
All this and I've got a pretty slick looking powerful laptop!
HP, Dell, LG, Acer and even Samsung manages to do a lot better. Lenovo is also very simple to at least change battery, ram and disk. I know this since I own one and have added memory and disk.
On the Thinkpad versions the battery is located outside and can be switched without even having to open the machine at all.
> can you explain why their approaches produce less waste?
Yes, by letting me as a consumer change parts myself for the only cost of purchasing the actual part that needs changing or upgrading, the increase the service life of the machine I purchased.
Also, by not participating in this anti-consumer behavior, I can take said machine into a third party service shop and get it repaired there. I don't have to wait weeks for the proper parts to arrive and so on and I can get it fixed the same day.
I am not hating, I am stating a fact. By indirectly forcing people to buy new machines instead of repairing their old ones that often work perfectly well, except for maybe 1 thing that is broken or needs an update, they increase their environmental impact for no other reason than profit on their part.
Apple can do better and Apple have done better in the past.
From the article: "we can't help but feel that Apple can do better—especially after seeing Microsoft perform some real engineering magic to make its latest laptops more repairable"
If Microsoft can do it, Apple could do it too and even improve upon it.
Also I can't see why the original comment is about "hating on Apple". All I see is legitimate criticism about some issues with Apple products, that apparently many other people have too. Your comment on the other side is very emotional and full of snide remarks.
I don't understand this comment. So something is difficult to fix; how does this make the components any less recyclable, less free of harmful toxins?
Apple has a fairly comprehensive recycling system, to strip their own systems apart and reclaim reusable components. Are you suggesting when people take their MacBooks to get replaced that Apple are just throwing them in a landfill or something?
Repairing a device by replacing a small part (preferably only the broken component) uses far less resources than recycling.
For most other laptops, repair or replacement of common components doesn't depend so much on the manufacturer. The skill and equipment required to do the repair is significantly reduced. All else being equal, this makes it more likely that the laptop will be repaired rather than discarded.
Not trying to be cynical here because I also would prefer a MBP that was more serviceable/repairable, but all these discussions about how repairability impacts the environmental cost of these devices are IMO extremely contrived.
How many (in percentage terms) of laptops will ever need repairs, how many of those will actually be repaired (as opposed to consumers just deciding to buy something new, even if repair would be relatively easy and cheap), and then finally, what percentage of these defective laptops will actually been thrown away without any form of recycling? I'm pretty sure that if you do the math, in the grand scheme of things, these numbers will be utterly irrelevant except for HN talking points.
I would recommend spending public outrage about environmental concerns on areas where it really matters instead, such as e.g. food waste, plastic bags, energy efficiency etc. I'm pretty sure that even a tiny, tiny fraction improvement there would offset the environmental impact of the worldwide total of laptops that cannot or will not be repaired after they break down.
> How many (in percentage terms) of laptops will ever need repairs, how many of those will actually be repaired (as opposed to consumers just deciding to buy something new, even if repair would be relatively easy and cheap)
Whether end-users try to repair their laptops depends in part on their expectations; and their expectations depend a lot on how repair-able laptops are in general. My second-to-last laptop, a Dell, lasted me nearly a decade. I upgraded the hard disk, upgraded the memory, and replaced the inverter in the display twice. I mainly replaced it because it was about 4x the weight of newer laptops, and had started eating batteries. There's no reason more laptops couldn't last as long.
On average, a sealed no-moving-parts laptop like the MacBook(Pro/Air) line lasts 10 years due to resistance to the elements, excellent thermals/fans, and forward-looking connectivity compatibility. Every day people buy 2011 Macs online for the same $400 price as new non-Macs with similar specs.
Yes I get it, that's what I try to do as well. Just recently I went through the hassle of repairing my moms 5-year old Asus Zenbook, which had a broken SSD that was also a lot more effort to repair than necessary because of the non-standard M2 slot Asus used for the sole purpose of discouraging home repair (there literally is no other explanation for this slot besides trying to get you to pay Asus for the repair or -even better- a new device). She was already planning to throw it a way and get a new one.
The point is, that if it weren't for the fact that I explicitly asked her to let me have a look to see if I could repair it, she would have thrown it out even though it was perfectly possible to repair it (it's working 100% fine again now). My mother is not the exception, she's the rule. I would guess over 90% of people don't bother to repair 5-year old laptops, under any circumstance. They just write it off and get a new one.
That's why I was saying all these discussions about how repairability of laptops impacts the environment are largely moot. Probably better incentives to promote proper recycling (e.g. a tax on electronics that gets re-imbursed when you properly dispose them) would have much more positive effect compared to improved repairability.
Laptops that are decided by their owners are beyond economic repair when something fails don't just get whisked away to landfill, but actually (in many geographic locations) go through actual computer recycling centres, where they are triaged, repaired where possible and re-used in lower socio-economic areas such as low income area training projects etc. Often people "throw away" a laptop just because it's "slow" which usually means malware infested and low tier spinning rust drive, low end CPU, not enough RAM. The CPU has generally been soldered since 5th gen intel core series but upgrades and repairs to the rest can yield perfectly usable machines for some considerable more time. In my region there are numerous recycling projects that do this and one of their sources is the local municipal recycling centre (aka the dump or tip to the locals) where E-Waste is specifically segregated for licenced recyclers to handle.
If you have devices that have "simple" faults (bad RAM,storage,wifi card etc) that would normally be a simple swap out, but now can only be repaired with a high degree of skill (micro soldering) and access to a parts supply which is intentionally restricted and knowledge which intentionally obfuscated (take you pick of Louis Rossman repair videos on youtube)then those products will skip this second life and head straight to material recovery rather than re-use.
so
>How many (in percentage terms) of laptops will ever need repairs
as long as it's non zero then it's irrelevant
>how many of those will actually be repaired
For apple products this is rapidly approaching actual zero while for others it's non-zero
That reuse used to be through but nowadays we are absolutely drowning in computing hardware. Look at all the dealers in old used business computers, selling $200 machines. That's paying for the time of the person turning over the machine, with no premium for scarcity. Shipping and handling costs more than the non-consumable portion of old computer hardware.
I would counter that the reason laptops don't get repaired has a lot to do with mindsets and habits. It feels easier to just get a new one. I'd say the availability of repairable laptops is a prerequisite to change.
Basically Apple need to want this change. They need to... be brave? To... think different?
> I don't understand this comment. So something is difficult to fix; how does this make the components any less recyclable, less free of harmful toxins?
The next best thing to recycling (from an environmental standpoint) is being able to repair and continue usage. However Apple's hardware becomes more and more unfix-able (actually impossible, because parts are basically tailored to a single device, thus there can't be secondary parts, and Apple doesn't provide them at all). Go down the rabbit hole yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTpHa70DDX0
Soldering it down doesn't provide any quantifiable performance improvements. It probably allows them to make it smaller / thinner, and less expensive to manufacture. However, now if any one component (memory, CPU, SSD drive) goes bad the entire set must be tossed! When this happens, it will be expensive for the unlucky customer. All so Apple could avoid including a bit more plastic for the component sockets.
Also, SSD drives have a limited number of write cyclew before they stop working, usually some 10's of TBW (terabytes written). For normal users, it will take them a very long time to wear out the drive. Conversely, developers and power user types may find their setups doing 50GB or more of writes per day. So for example, if a drive is rated for 75TBW, a power user could wear it out after only a couple of years.
I have some Samsung SSDs at home where I regularly track and monitor the write usage, and I'm always surprised at how many writes occur on my [often idle] Windows machine. Background OS and application activity is my hypothesis for the cause. The primary windows partition drive will probably need replacing within a year, and will have lasted three or four years.
I am one of those up to 100GB/day developers. Reason: handling huge codebases (Chromium, among others) and working with VMs, which also extensively increases the write volume. My top day saw multiple TB written on a single day.
But even I don't seriously fear my MacBook pro SSD will die because of write load. I've done the math, and I should be good for way longer than the projected use of the laptop.
My actual annoyance is the inability to upgrade. I would love to make use of the currently laughable prices for m.2 SSDs and upgrade the 1TB internal storage to 2TB or more. But I can't, thanks to soldered storage.
There are perfectly fast m.2 modules, that would mean only minor differences in peformance, if any at all. My iMac actually runs perfectly fine on a SATA SSD, though this is definitely slower than the soldered-on SSD of my MB Pro.
I’ve never known anyone to throw away a Mac. They get used until the temptation to upgrade becomes too big, then sold onto someone with different needs.
I don’t have a Mac, and I think they should be more repairable, but I still think they’re ahead of most the rest.
Even within my very small social circle, I knew of three 2011 15" MBPs (including my own). Of those 3, all of them had to get the recall service, and since then, 2 of those MBPs have become bricks/e-waste.
I've gone through a lot of laptops (PC and Mac, my first was a Powerbook 170), and the only one to ever crap out on me was that 2011 MBP.
When it was working, it was one of the best laptops I ever had. When it had issues, I felt like Apple couldn't care less about the issue. It's pretty well documented that Apple pretended the problem didn't exist for quite some time.
The first logic board replacement (during AppleCare) had the exact same defect as the original board. It displayed the same symptoms within a couple of months, and then it totally crapped out right after AppleCare ended, and there was no way I was going to pay $500+ CAD to replace the logic board with yet another defective board.
I was lucky that the recall was announced before I recycled it (I ended up having to buy a new laptop in the meantime). The recall board has since died as well. The saddest thing is that computer (quad core i7 with 16gb ram) would still be more than usable today if it still worked.
I was completely locked into the Apple ecosystem prior to my 2011 MBP experience. And while I realize that the 2011 MBP is an outlier in terms of Apple product quality, the experience pretty much guaranteed that I'll never buy an Apple product again. There were so many ways they could have made me whole, but instead, they just kept providing a fix to a design defect with another defective part.
Please stop with the apologetic fanboy rhethoric. It's not helping. I have thrown away several macbooks and I know several people that has too.
I used to have Macbooks, I upgraded them with new disks and memory. Today that would not have been possible which is one big reason I would never buy a macbook to begin with.
This behavior is bad for all consumers of their products and should not be defended with anecdotal stuff like "people don't throw away their macbooks" which is easily refuted by going to a garbage site.
“Fanboy rhetoric”? How does this add to the conversation?
Anecdotally (which is all your point boils down to) I know that businesses rarely upgrade machines. Home users rarely do either. Gamers and enthusiasts are the people that tend repair or upgrade. These people are a vanishingly small number. I have no problem with Apple, or anyone else, replacing broken or damaged items with new/refurbished ones, so long as they are responsible with the disposal or reuse of the damaged article. Apple demonstrably are.
Apple offer free recycling[0] and it’s available in most countries, if not all. It is reasonably well publicised and easily searchable. If an individual chooses to dispose of a device in an inappropriate way, that’s on them, not the manufacturer of the device.
My car dealer offers free recycling too. They even pay me for it. Of course Apple wants people to remove competing used hardware from the market, to remove alternatives to it's high margin new manufacturing. The "recycling" part is a side note.
The only reason I added an anecdote was because the entirety of your argument was anecdotal. How you can't see the irony here is beyond me.
> I’ve never known anyone to throw away a Mac
I'm just telling you that there are people who do that. What are your sources for that business don't upgrade machines? In my experience, business are often the kind of places that actually do upgrade their machines but of course not if it is macs since they cannot be upgraded.
I have never said anything negative about their recycling program. But it still is more resource heavy and more polluting than simply continued use of a product when you upgrade parts.
>I have thrown away several macbooks and I know several people that has too
This seems like its explicitly your problem given that apple will take and recycle your old macbooks for free if they are worthless and if they arent they will take them for a credit.
iFixit, the site that did the teardown, measures the repairability of equipment according to objective criteria and rates it. Apple does not typically score well at all.
Except the huge part that you're missing is that, when they do a swap or a replacement at an Apple store, they don't just throw away the hardware. They send it back to be disassembled, tested, and remanufactured. They re-use a vast amount of these components and all of their warranty devices are remanufactured from good, tested components that were pieced out of larger components. Just because they don't do individual component repairs at the stores doesn't mean it's unfixable hardware.
Ok, you got a replaceable battery. Now when you replace it you not only have old battery but also the hard shell for that battery to throw out. The same goes for storage. You don't have soldered storage, you have cased SDD. How is this any better than Apples solution?
i don't get it. what does one thing have to do with the other?
i assume no-one's going to throw their macbook in the trashcan anytime soon, so i don't see the connection between the ability to repair the device and how bad that device is for the environment.
After Apple care expires, many repairs are so expensive that you have to consider the MB totalled, that means, you are throwing away a device that should be repairable. A keyboard exchange should cost between $100 and $200, not in excess of $600.
That depends on Apple. If they are willing to repair a keyboard for like $150 and a broken SSD for what the SSD prices are going for at that time, at least the customers wouldn't be harmed by these design decisions. If Apple then would reuse the additional changed parts, then even the environment would benefit. But right now, all the burdon is on the customer and the environment.
it all depends on second hand mac component prices.
from my knowledge apple changes the casing and motherboard for almost every mac hardware update. thus making components more expensive (lower runs) and the re-sell value high.
so for apple to allow replacing parts the backlash from a reduced re-sell price would need to be lower than the potential new avenues of 3rd party components and repairs.
No, the resale value isn't high because they are difficult to repair. It would be the other way around.
Currently, I wouldn't pay much for any Mac with a butterfly keyboard, as Apple only warrants it for 4 years and after that the machine is totalled.
So no upgradable RAM, no upgradable storage. If either stops functioning, you have to change the entire logic board (including the CPU and GPU? I'm not sure). Wow this is a crappy design. But expected, since this is Apple that we're talking about.
What's interesting about this perception is that PC vendors who do the same things don't catch flak. Presumably because there are still options for PC that are at least theoretically repairable and built to last.
I wonder what would happen in a hypothetical world where there were pro and non-Pro Apple laptops, but the only real difference between them were that the Pro laptops had replaceable parts, and were however much larger/heavier/pricier they need to be to make that happen, while the non-Pro ones are all soldered and riveted together.
My guess is that the ones that are soldered together vastly outsell the pro line because that's what most Apple consumers want. And then economies of scale kick in until everyone's just mad that Apple is charging $500 "tax" just to be able to replace the hard drive and upgrade the RAM.
In my experience they do catch fairly significant flak. It's usually in the form of: This other laptop is pretty much identical except you can replace the ram and storage, so buy that instead.
That's because Apple is the only hardware provider for Mac OS X. If you just want Windows or Linux, you have a lot of choices. If you want OS X, there's no choice but to put up with whatever hardware Apple gives you.
That's only for exalted characters with nice hats and beards.
If you want to run MacOSX legally without risking a lawsuit from Apple (they even went after a repair shop, FFS), you must use their hardware, as per the license agreement.
Why doesn't apple make the touchbar out of keys? The keys could be flat on top and seamlessly adjacent to one another to make a "bar", for sliders and such. But pressable like regular keys to make great buttons (most common use-case). I feel like that is inventable.
There are pretty much two ways to do this, neither one works well:
1) Overlay multiple transparent keys on a single display. This works OK in concept, but is hard to do mechanically gracefully. You would also end up with parallax issues with the touch functionality, if you could even get multi-point touch functionality working on key-faces like that.
2) Keys with small displays and captouch sensors in them: The display tech isn't quite there yet for this, AFAICT. I've seen demos of small, single-color OLEDS embedded in buttons, but none with touch overlays and nothing with a higher end display in them. Additionally, due to the bezel and gaps between the keys, it would be very difficult to get a consistent image across multiple keys/displays.
I bought a MBP 15" around the time of the fall keynote because the 16" was not announced. Does anyone know how I can replace it with a 16"? The keyboard really is driving me nuts.
Would have hoped a note on the screen cable for this one. Wasn't a breaking/failing ribbon cable the biggest problem after the keyboard for that last couple of years models?
The stage light flaw. Happened because Apple made the cable between the mainboard and the display panel in too short. Excacerbated because Apple soldered the cable to the display panel turning a $6 repair into a $600 repair.
There is also the 'orange spot' problem, a manufacturing defect which Apple have successfully suppressed but which appears to be a mounting class action against them akin to the "peelgate" situation .. no mention if the new 2019 models have this same issue ..
Apparently what happens is the liquid crystal particles separate from the grid and float around the screen, creating orange splotches that are very, very annoying. If you tilt the screen, over an hour the splotches will move around .. I've gotten to the point where I don't take my MBP 2018 off the desk just so that I don't have to watch the progress of the splotches over the day ..
Very annoying. I hope they've fixed it, and I hope Apple are forced to replace these screens.
iFixit can't cover an Apple device without injecting just a bit of snark and passive-aggression into it. People who buy these things know what they're getting. Score it how you want to, but spare me the sermon.
iFixit are not even pretending to be a neutral party here. They have a clear agenda and a clear viewpoint and that is very much the point. And there is nothing wrong with that.
While I agree with them in broad strokes I also disagree on some points but that’s not the end of the world. We just disagree and that’s alright.
They don't really present themselves as a political organization, just a business that tells you how to perform whatever operations you can perform on a given device and what those operations are, and sells you tools for doing so. They can tell you that you can't replace a lot of things on your MacBook without implying that they think it's every company's responsibility to make their devices apocalypse-proof.
I can't find any information on the SSD flash chips; does anyone have any info on if they're MLC or 3D Nand? That would impact the wear of the drives considerably.
They were likely actually referring to MLC vs TLC vs QLC. All three types can be manufactured in the stacked "3D" form.
MLC stores 2 bits per cell, TLC store 3, and QLC stores 4. MLC is the fastest and most reliable form, while QLC is the cheapest.
The MacBook Pro likely uses TLC like the vast majority of current consumer machines. Apple's SSDs are typically among the fastest available, but I haven't been able to find anything about reliability.
Nobody is manufacturing planar NAND flash memory in high volume or in die sizes large enough to fit multiple TBs of flash into a notebook. The only viable options currently being manufactured are all 3D NAND. The vast majority of this (and what is used by almost all SSDs across all market segments) is 3D TLC NAND flash memory—TLC meaning it stores 3 bits per physical memory cell. MLC would typically refer to storing two bits per cell, SLC means one bit per cell, and QLC means four bits per cell.
There is no reason to prefer MLC these days. TLC has plenty of write endurance for client/consumer usage. MLC offers theoretical advantages in performance and endurance, but these are absolutely not worth the higher cost that comes from lower density. (And that's comparing 3D MLC against 3D TLC; high-density planar MLC loses against 3D TLC on all counts.) There is a niche market for SLC NAND in high-performance server applications that need the lowest possible latency from their SSDs, and Samsung and Toshiba are currently manufacturing memory to suit this use case. But it again has density too low for multi-TB SSDs to fit into a laptop.
+1. The serviceability of ThinkPads had always been a great (if not hidden) feature, almost allowing Ship-of-Theseus-ish rolling upgrades like a desktop. Even though the build quality has generally declined since the T410 era, this at least has been preserved (I have a company-issued P50 and it's still a few screws away from changing RAM and SSD).
This is part of why I bought an E4xx instead of a T4xx, the RAM isn't soldered on in the E4xx line, so that's at least one thing I can fix that I can't on a T4xx.
Yeah, non-s versions are better in that regard, because t490s has RAM soldered (and t480s had one chip soldered + one upgrade-able module), I have it and no way to upgrade that.
I really hope EU will pass a law that will forbid soldering RAM and SSD to the mainboard, because it starts getting ridiculous and increases garbage.
I replaced the trackpad on an x240 and it took me 2 hours and a few broken spudgers. I would have been able to swap everything else out first, as the touchpad was buried under motherboard, keyboard, hard drives etc.
That is essentially the feature of the “good” thinkpads. You can replace almost anything, but the whole thing is built in this weird upside-down way and replacing anything that you really want to replace means that you have to take the whole thing almost completely apart. On the other hand if you read the official procedure for that and take inspiration from that, the only tool you really need to take it completely apart and assemble back is literally an cheapest swiss army knife which includes philips screwdriver.
I replaced the AC barrel connector on an x220, which required removing every single part from the chassis. It took me probably four hours all told, and a few gray hairs (it was my wife's laptop, and yes I had a backup of everything on it, but didn't want to need to replace it).
An Apple laptop would have been shipped off who knows where for three weeks, if fixing that part were even possible.
I have had my mid-2012 RMBP since 2012 and I haven't had to repair it yet (I might be an outlier). I'm hoping to trade in my 2012 and get the 16" and have it last another 7 years.
Mine's a 2013 model and I'm in the same boat. My X1 Carbon is being delivered today, the Mac put in a good shift but it's frozen a couple of times since the upgrade to a Catalina. Until the last month it's been perfect.
I'll still use it for Affinity and Capture One, but as a contractor I need something I feel I can depend on.
I'm due an upgrade - if my life depended on it being reliable I'd downgrade. I'll do a fresh install once I'm up and running on my new machine and if that's unstable then I may downgrade it.
any reasonably mid to high tier product from 2011 is still perfectly usable today thanks to CPU stagnation from intel from no real competition from AMD in that time frame. it's only the release of ryzen 2 years ago that finally ignited real advances in (consumer level) CPU power from both teams.
before that it was only sandy bridge which really moved the needle from it's previous generation. Ivy Bridge, haswell, broadwell and skylake were only around 3-5% improvements over thier previous generation counterparts, and i5 only got more than 4 cores (without H/T) in recent gens (7th or 8th IIRC)
My 2015 broadwell i5 thinkpad is not showing any signs of needing replacement (for what I use it for) soon. It'll quite easily push on for considerable time too with replacable, well everything except for the CPU. regular SATA SSD, (small) M.2 slot, 2 RAM SODIMMS (albeit Maxed out with 16 GB but that's a platform limitation) accessable other parts with just a screwdriver
Their resale value holds much better than any other laptop; so I wonder if that somehow balances out the lack of repairability - working machines keep being used for much longer than equivalent PCs as people have more incentive to resell them.
2016 and 2017 mbps are only as good as the free keyboard replacement program, which starts ending next year for the 2016 model. These laptops won’t be in circulation long except as pseudo-desktops.
Probably should look at the whole picture. They use recyclable materials and have recycling programs to collect them as they are very easy to break down into reusable parts: https://www.apple.com/in/environment/
I keep looking at the Dell XPS 15, but several colleagues at work have horror stories about Dell laptops with faults and bad service. I've seen similar stories online.
At least with Apple I can walk into the store and talk to somebody face-to-face.
If you're "switching wireless cards" you're using computers as a toy. Wireless just works, these days. And if it doesn't, whatever Apple decided to put in MacBook is unlikely to be the culprit.
If you consider recompiling kernels and and overclocking your caps lock LEDs to be fun that's fine, but don't delude yourself into thinking it has anything to do with productive work or professionalism.
Wireless, fair enough. But are you really ignorant enough to think it's not productive to
1. Buy a stick of RAM / new or bigger SSD from your provider of choice online
2. Open the delivery package and install it in your computer in 3 minutes
And get another three years out of your device? Or how about, when your Macbook breaks and you need to take it to a genius bar only to have them tell you that you need to order either a whole new logic board or buy a new computer. Both will require days of waiting.
It's because of people like you that Apple is increasingly producing and pushing worsening quality hardware and service.
EDIT: I should also mention, the XPS 15 is comparable in every aspect of the hardware. And the very thing you're complaining about "I don't want to change my hardware I just want to use it" is completely optional.
> Haskell is a community of cancerous people that should die, along with cancer.
This being a tech discussion forum, I really think dang and other HN admins should count attacks based on people's choice of tech as a form of hate speech against any other groups.
Such attacks only distress readers and the buildup of noise from the inevitable responses gradually devolves this place down to the Reddit/4chan tier.
Reading through GP's posts I'm getting a vibe of some sort of personality disorder and/or extreme loneliness. I've seen people develop exactly that sort of holier-than-though techno-puritanism in such circumstances. I can even recognise that mechanism in myself, although I've been lucky enough to leave most of it behind after my teenage years.
Anyway, I wouldn't necessarily equate such statements with actual hate speech. It's just hyperbole and Haskell/Python/Ruby users are probably save.
The comments are still bad because they just don't add anything.
It‘s not a very professional device if you can‘t upgrade the storage and the memory.
The Mac Pro will feature modular SSDs (and they aren‘t even super fast). I wonder if Apple will use something proprietary or standard M.2 NVMe modules. They probably can‘t offer PCIe 4.0 slots since they‘re using Intel which is trailing behind.
> As someone who carries a MBP every day, the focus on portability is something I appreciate. So for me, I’m happy to take that trade off.
Well, no. I got issued a 2018 MBP 15" and it's an alumninum brick twice as heavy as any X-series thinkpad and twice as fragile (screen broke twice by just gripping the lid at the display bezel).
I think the distinction being made is that something for casual use (like a Chromebook, or an iPad) doesn't really carry with it the expectation that you will be repairing or upgrading components - if something fails, you replace the whole (relatively cheap) device. For a machine that has a pricetag in the thousands, not hundreds, of dollars/euro, that isn't a very appealing approach...
Hopefully you'll have Apple care, which will allow you to replace the whole machine without paying for an entirely new one.
If you need it for a living, it's a no brainer. Is it malfunctioning? Take it to an Apple store, grab a brand new device, restore it from Time Machine and resume where you left off. You could be back up and running in a couple of hours as if nothing had happened. You could potentially waste a lot more than that trying to troubleshoot and then ordering new parts.
That only works if you have good Apple Store coverage though. Otherwise, the table flips.
That's also a reason to make it less repairable. If you can replace parts with aftermarket parts, the gray area of applecare support is much bigger.
People who are using these computers "professionally" mostly don't want to fiddle with modifying them. They want a computer that will be reliable, and whose failure will cost them the smallest work interruption.
Fair, though it doesn't take a very cynical mind to also see that there's a benefit to Apple if I can't double my ram in a couple of years, and instead have to buy a new machine...
Whether something you purchase can be upgraded depends on a lot of things.
We don't expect to be able to upgrade lots of things that are tools used by professionals, including the engine and transmission of a truck used for deliveries, or a hammer. And yet, those things can clearly be intended for professional sales based on capabilities and reliability at the time of sale.
With laptops, some laptops really can be upgraded - especially larger, heavier ones. Ironically, sometimes heavier ones that have easy to access panels for upgrades are cheaper. But as a provider of laptops, there would be a balance between allowing those upgrades, and guaranteeing levels of performance and reliability.
Personally, I won't buy a desktop - I'll buy parts (with options for later upgrades) and I'll build it. But I won't claim that it's therefore a device for professionals. Rather, it's a device specifically for me! With a laptop, which is increasingly the tool of choice for many professionals, being able to upgrade does tend to mean you'll get a longer life out of it. That's a good thing, but it's only one of many ways to measure whether a laptop is good for your professional needs. My employer provided me with a Macbook Pro, and it works well for my tasks as is, without needing upgrades. But in the past, I've had computers that slowed my performance down, and had to be upgraded or replaced. And in each case, the time savings multiplied by my hourly rate made replacing the hardware trivial in comparison.
So does that mean Apple is taking advantage of businesses by selling a professional tool that cannot be upgraded? Maybe. Maybe that was your point all along? But it's not an uncommon practice, and our best option to get around this is to choose an alternative device that better fits what we value. (That's why people love Windows and Linux - lots more choice!)
Im so tired of these comments on HN. Some people want a laptop they can pull apart and fix themselves. Those people should buy something else. when I was younger and had more time than money, I used to upgrade RAM and the SSD myself. Then I started making money. Then it became seriously dumb to spend 2 hours doing all that nonsense when I can just pay upfront to get a maxed out RAM and Hard drive. Can’t afford it? Then buy something else! I honestly don’t underatand this constant complaining about repairing laptops yourselves. What a waste of time! Leave it to the Apple store techs to do it for you.
It doesn't have to be 2 hours. It doesn't have to be more than 5-10 minutes.
> I can just pay upfront to get a maxed out RAM and Hard drive.
Yes, but you can't pay upfront and get a SSD that will be launched in 2023. You'll be forever stuck with whatever tech was available at the time of purchase.
> I honestly don’t underatand this constant complaining about repairing laptops yourselves. What a waste of time! Leave it to the Apple store techs to do it for you.
Apple can't repair them either, the design is unrepairable, that's why the failing keyboards were such a fuck-up. They had to throw away the whole top half of the chassis because keyboard was riveted to it. It's as anti-consumer and anti-environment as it gets. Given the growing electronic waste problem, I expect such practices to be outlawed sooner or later, and I'm somewhat surprised that Apple isn't already positioning itself as leader in long-lasting products that extract maximum value from natural resources put into them. Repairability and upgradability are cornerstones of environmentally responsible business, but Apple seems to be heading in the opposite direction.
> Yes, but you can't pay upfront and get a SSD that will be launched in 2023. You'll be forever stuck with whatever tech was available at the time of purchase.
Given that the SSDs you can buy right now outstrip the IO bandwidth your laptop CPU provides, the only real benefit that upgrading to future SSDs could provide would be a better price per GB. If you're seriously concerned about wanting more storage a few years down the road, you probably also want to buy a machine now and immediately upgrade it with aftermarket storage.
Apple store techs can't really fix stuff. All they can do is replace and it takes 3-10 days depending on country.
Yeah, when their batteries swell up twice in 3 years, and they take 11 days each time and you're out of your main workstation for that long? See how that compares with an hour fixing it yourself.
Look at the inside of this thing. nearly every millimeter is used. Switching to replaceable forms of memory/storage would take up significant space, either requiring a larger laptop, a smaller battery, or lower thermal capacity.
> It‘s not a very professional device if you can‘t upgrade the storage and the memory.
Well, if you use this professionally, grab the max memory and storage available. Done.
It's not like you could stuff 256GB of RAM in the future, chipsets have limitations.
As for storage, that's only the internal storage. It has fast ports for a reason.
Upgradability is good, but it is worth much more for non-professionals. This allows someone to buy a machine today for lighter tasks and then later on re-purpose it for heavier workloads should the need arise.
Apple rolling back the keyboard design and lack of Escape key reminds me of the satirical "Upgrade to Windows 7 (from Windows 8)" article from six or seven years ago, joyfully describing how Windows was back on track after 7 fixed most of 8's problems.
I dropped a beer in my 2017 model, and i screwed up all the spacebar, and the command and option keys in one side. They were really hard to use until some days ago they started working. The prior models were better for maintenance and resistant to these abuses with liquids.
> I hate the wobbly feeling that the scissor mechanism produces. Apple didn't need to return to the scissor mechanism, it should have reiterated the design. I'm very disappointed that Apple just gave up & used the safe way of regressing back.
> It feels like Apple is losing the spirit of doing things itself, whether other people dislikes it. Apple is more and more becoming a usual company that just does what consumers demands. And I'm sad with that.
In this case, consumers were demanding a keyboard that... ya know, works for more than six months. Maybe they did try to iterate, but the fundamental design was just flawed. Who knows? Maybe they'll change it again down the road, but you only have so long between revs, and they had a design which works in their back pocket.
