The suggestion that Apple has a four (4) year repair program in place on one of their best selling products because there is no problem is ludicrous.
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Lawsuit Against Apple's Faulty Butterfly Keyboards Moves Forward
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The 15" or new 16?
I'm a bit nervous about that as well. The space bar on my 16" seems to stick fairly high above the case. Looks like it's begging for particles to find their way in.
It's more profitable to make products non-durable and disposable to frustrate customers into throwing them away after a few years and buying a new one. Lenovo must be regretting making their laptops last 10+ years since sales are down from customers not buying new ones more frequently.
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To a certain point, I disagree. One MAJOR selling point of products is durability. If a product often breaks after a relatively short amount of time, it will gain a reputation among consumers and that will HURT sales (and therefore profits).
Theres plenty of people with mac pros, imacs, or other apple products that are 7 years older or more. One reason people buy Apple computers in the first place is the perception that theyre built well and will last.
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If its the new 16” youre totally fine. Thats a scissor style keyboard thats been proven extremely reliable. Unlike the butterfly design, small specks of dirt/dust under the keys dont affect a scissor keyboard whatsoever
OK, here's my statistic. First, I don't know anyone with a bad keyboard.
As for myself, my 2017 MBP has had zero problems with more than two years of roughly 5-6 hours a day use.
I can report that I love the keyboard as it has enabled me to type faster and more accurately. This laptop continues to exceed my expectations!
Instead of bashing other people not providing numbers, why not providing numbers from your own source to back up YOUR CLAIM instead?
Yeah as far as typing feel and such, I kinda liked the butterfly. I'm probably in the minority there. But I don't trust it will last, so I sold my 2018 15" and got the new 16". Sucks to eat that much $$ so quickly.
They probably mis calculated the the obsolescence. If it was a design flaw then ALL the keyboards would break, but we have seen some break in their first few months and others in couple years. Some say they replaced once and never again, some replaced 3-4 times. Some say they never had an issue. Its an unreliable product. For it to be flawed then all of them have to break.
as far as I see it, Apple sold you this product with a guarantee to fix it for you if it breaks. You agreed and got it, and they kept their end of the deal. Its your responsibility to choose to buy, or not, from such a hardware manufacturers.
I have not looked at them recently, but last I heard ThinkPads are built like tanks for the enterprise. Thats reliable hardware manufacturer.
My guess is that even Apple is surprised by the keyboard's lack of reliability. People keep shouting about the butterfly mechanism, but the multiple registering and dead keys are a different problem - which a bunch of technicians have not yet been able to explain. If your keyboard has issues within days, weeks or a few months it means it's a defective unit. I think this is also the main reason for Apple including the 2019 models to the repair problem - they don't know why or which units are affected. This is why they tried different solutions like the membrane and different materials. It might just be a design that leads to problematic manufacturing of parts and they are ditching it, starting with the 16'' model.
Whether or not it breaks is actually more based on how much you use it. If you carry it with you everyday, and use it 8+ hours a day then it is going to fail very quickly. If you only use it like a couple hours a day, and leave it on a desk then it will work forever. If everyone was carrying these around, and using them like power users then they would all break. It is certainly flawed, and not simply unreliable.
That's the thing, both power users and people that left them on desks had issues. Or power users never had any issues ant the other category did. And how about issues after a week in the case of a top case swap? The keyboards (well, a percentage of them) are flawed, because if it was all about the durability the complaints would have come after a year or so, not within weeks/months of the time of purchase.
1 minute summary of the keyboard issues
How is taking care of customers selling a completely defective product??
HOw is taking care of customers, replace a defective keyboard for ANOTHER DEFECTIVE KEYBOARD???
That is a complete lack of quality control. But most importantly since they still keep selling them even after know of the defective keyboard for over 3 years is FRAUDULENT.
They should have a very harsh fine or at the very least replace any 2016-19 MBP for the new 16 free of charge.
You keep trying to defend an excuse Apple on something that that they even acknoledge they had major problems with.
Look at the video and get educated before posting complete nonsense!
Yeah, nice evidence from a known Apple hater.
Keyboard isn't defective...you're overreacting. They would not be selling it and would not have waited 4 years to change it if it were so bad.
As usual, the vocal minority makes you think there is some massive problem, which just isn't possible given the volumes.
Apple sells nearly 300M units of product annually. If they made "garbage" and "fraudulent" products with no quality control, they'd be out of business. You simply don't work on that scale with any kind of abnormal failure rates and/or customer issues.
You DO however have many customer issues by virtue of selling so many products.
0.02% of 300,000,000 is 60,000. That's sixty THOUSAND failures. They could make a lot of noise and claim failure. What about the other 299,940,000 people?
The facts speaks the truth. Not me. You can see not just here but everywhere that everybody is having major problems with the keyboard.
Once again, you talk complete factless nonsense.
You are generalizing all the products. We are only talking here about the MACBOOK PROS.
NO ONE is talking about the entire Apple line of products.
As always, you distort the evidence with ZERO actual facts.
Hey but it seems that you know more than Apple itself...
Apple knew about the major problems with the keyboards for years.
When there is a problem with food, they actually take it out of the shelves right away. Why Apple knowingly about all these problems is actually still selling them TODAY!
That in my view is plain fraud, since they knew about it long time ago and still they decide to sell you a faulty product.
Everybody knows that the 2016-19 were the worse products Apple ever designed.
Not a single good review (not actually paid reviews).
It seems that Cook standards about quality and innovation are not the same as Jobs.
Hopefully the lawsuits will reveal more information (if Apple does not settle).
"Everybody" and "everywhere" is not true and it's speculation how many have been impacted. You are the one generalizing based on anecdotal evidence. You have no clue how many were impacted or the failure rate. Neither do I.
Based on Apple's actions, there was an issue enough to re-design, but not quickly or completely. They still sell the previous butterfly design and only switched after 4 years. Hardly a fire drill.
Definitely not as big of an issue as the people here think. I have every bit of evidence I need to make the case it wasn't urgent.
My posts have more factual information (official financials) than pretty much anyone here. I live only in facts.
Apple sold about 18M Macs in 2019. Small failure rates can cause complaining.
THE BUTTERFLY IS DEFECTIVE! Apple knows it and that is why they created the Keyboard Service Program that includes EACH AND EVERY SINGLE BUTTERFLY KEYBOARD EVER MADE and also includes EACH AND EVERY SINGLE ONE THEY CONTINUE TO SELL TODAY!!!
These are all facts!
Every single MAC comes with a 1 year warranty, please tell us why Apple took the extraordinary step of extending the warranty on the butterfly keyboards to 4 years if the design is not defective, please explain this!!!
Why can't you just come to grips with the facts... the keyboard is defective, by defective I mean it has larger than normal failure rates, Apple knows it and has taken fair action. No one here is claiming 100% failure rates but yet you continue to try and lower the numbers and play them off as normal failure rates, again you are simply embarrassing yourself, just stop.
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How many were impacted? Not enough for Apple to stop selling it and take 4 years to change it? There are probably close to 75M Macs with butterfly keyboards.
Defective is a strong word and requires proof. You have none.
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ROFL!
Any reasonable person could define 'defective design' as one that produces larger than normal failure rates. Your constant fixation with the actual number is meaningless, the number is obviously large enough that Apple needed to act. Apple would only extend a 4x normal warranty period on a part if was indeed found to be defective. If the design were sound, or if a revision was sound Apple would warranty a single replacement with a sound revision, did they do that? No, they have a flat 4 year replacement plan, regardless of quantity or revision across EVERY SINGLE BUTTERFLY EVER RELEASED!
Apple's own actions are the only proof a reasonable person needs.
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P.S. As per Merriam Webster:
Defective: having a defect or flaw, imperfect in form, structure or function
It's not a strong word, it's just a word.
I wouldn't have any problem labeling the butterfly keyboard as such and apparently Apple didn't either otherwise why did they create a 4 year extended warranty on it?
If Apple deemed it a sound design, free of defects then why the Keyboard Service Program?
Any reasonable person could define 'defective design' as one that produces larger than normal failure rates. Your constant fixation with the actual number is meaningless, the number is obviously large enough that Apple needed to act. Apple would only extend a 4x normal warranty period on a part if was indeed found to be defective. If the design were sound, or if a revision was sound Apple would warranty a single replacement with a sound revision, did they do that? No, they have a flat 4 year replacement plan, regardless of quantity or revision across EVERY SINGLE BUTTERFLY EVER RELEASED!
Apple's own actions are the only proof a reasonable person needs.
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P.S. As per Merriam Webster:
Defective: having a defect or flaw, imperfect in form, structure or function
It's not a strong word, it's just a word.
I wouldn't have any problem labeling the butterfly keyboard as such and apparently Apple didn't either otherwise why did they create a 4 year extended warranty on it?
If Apple deemed it a sound design, free of defects then why the Keyboard Service Program?
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1 percent is likely several hundred thousand customers. That is no small number.
In my personal exposure to said machines the failure rate inside 12 months has been ~50%
One case involved exchanging (before the replacement program - bought on release) a 2015 Macbook 12" three times inside of 3 months, before giving up and going back to a 2015 Macbook Pro (at additional cost) due to the person being continually unable to work and losing money (IT consultant).
I think we both know the whole “Apple will stop selling it” is a naive response. Tim already worked up the supply chain to support these keyboards, so it probably took him a few years to gather more data around the issues and course correct. It’s why they made subtle modifications to the keyboard and why they had the keyboard replacement program.
Actions speak louder than words.
Cook is a genius in supply chain management. If the keyboard were a complete cluster, it would have been gone 3 years ago.