Month: March 2019

While it's been nearly a year since my last keyboard replacement and—knock on space gray aluminum—I've had no issues since then, apparently even the "new and improved" third generation butterfly design Apple introduced in the 2018 MacBook Pro and MacBook Air are still breaking down. We all know what "a small number of customers" means in Apple-speak.

News for you, Apple: Steve is gone. We are no longer subject to his personal reality distortion field.

Joanna Stern of The Wall Street Journal absolutely excoriates Apple for issues she's having with her 2018 Air—to the point of writing an essay that by default is missing the letters her keyboard refuses to type. It's accompanied by an equally engaging video.

It's a brilliant move that is sure to have the folks in Cupertino downing bottles of Tums—and rightfully so. It's well past time for these butterfly keyboards to be retired. In my fantasy Apple would recall the lot and outright replace the machines once a truly better design is implemented. That will never happen of course because it would involve Apple admitting that they actually screwed up—something that they will never do. The most we can hope for is that in its place their current program of replacing the keyboards/top cases/batteries for 4 years from date of purchase is expanded to include the 2018 models.

And when a new keyboard is introduced (and you know one will be, because this replacement program has got to be impacting the company's bottom line in a not-insignificant fashion), they'll herald it as "revolutionary" and worthy of worship—even if it's simply going back to the more reliable scissor mechanism that's currently being used in their stand-alone keyboards.