Good point. I also didn't realize (or remember) the power requirement for clamsh...

hedora · 2024-05-21T14:29:09 1716301749

The “late 2019” intel MacBooks were some of the worst computers ever built:

- I had two screens fail,

- The battery swelled.

- It did not sit flat on my desk.

- It warped a pine desk that I used during the pandemic.

- At any time after a few months of using it, no fewer than 6 keys would drop or duplicate keystrokes.

- It got under 2 hours battery life, when new.

- under heavy use, it got about 4 while plugged into the provided charger.

- If you charged it using a port on the left side, it’d throttle the CPU to 10% normal speed.

- Kernel panics on resume.

- They had random monitor incompatibility issues with the LG monitors Apple sold at the time.

- My colleagues also had the exact same model, and mine was better than average.

- no escape key

- the touchbar was over sensitive, so pressing backspace would send a ghost keystroke that launched siri a few times a day.

However, you could run them in clamshell mode with the monitor plugged in. It worked out of the box.

(Edit: I might have the model year wrong. I used it for a long time before the pandemic. It was the last one before they brought the escape key back.)

windowsrookie · 2024-05-21T21:23:33 1716326613

Something went wrong with the 2019 models, because almost every time I hear someone complain about an intel MacBook it's a 2019 model.

I am still using my 2018 15" MacBook Pro, and it works great. About six months ago I brought it in to Apple because the keyboard backlight quit working. Turns out the battery swelled and damaged things. So they replaced everything, top case (with keyboard and trackpad), logic board, LCD display, and battery. I still have AppleCare so this was all done free of charge. Prior to that I had zero issues with the laptop in the 6 years I owned it.

Now my M1 Air has had a logic board failure, and the LCD cracked all within two years.

rad_gruchalski · 2024-05-21T16:10:04 1716307804

> It did not sit flat on my desk.

Because the battery was swollen?

> - The battery swelled.

Ah, of course.

freedomben · 2024-05-21T16:28:32 1716308912

That could also explain many of the other issues, such as poor battery life, slow charging, CPU throttling, etc.

In general though, I have had a terrible experience with Apple's QA as well. I've had 4 Macbooks over the years and they all had multiple (usually different) things that really sucked and drove me insane.

hedora · 2024-05-21T17:57:44 1716314264

The battery swelling happened after the other issues (like not sitting flat on the desk).

Also, my sample size is dozens of these laptops. My experience was typical.

Aaargh20318 · 2024-05-22T14:22:20 1716387740

> The battery swelling happened after the other issues (like not sitting flat on the desk).

I had 2 x86 MacBooks that had issues with batteries swelling. Not sitting flat on the desk is simply the first symptom of the problem. Once it swells up a bit more the keyboard starts to show problems.

I think the main issue with those machines was thermal management. That Intel chip got too hot and that affected the battery as well. I used mine quite intensively and they regularly ran hot even with the fans running full speed.

bzzzt · 2024-05-21T19:30:53 1716319853

I used one of those for work until last year, don't know what you call typical but it did last for 4 years without major problems so maybe that was atypical. It made a noise like a hairdryer when starting Teams (but then, even my new M3 doesn't like Teams). Also, the spacebar did sometimes trigger twice but not often enough to make a fuss about. First MacBook Pro I've used that didn't need replacing something during warranty ;).