Apple’s Sticky Keyboard Triggers Offer For Free Repairs

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From The Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. sought to head off customer complaints about defective keyboards on its latest MacBook models, saying it will offer free repairs for qualifying devices in the latest overture to users concerned about the performance of one of the company’s signature products.

The company on Friday said it would replace the keyboard or keys on some MacBook and MacBook Pro models released since 2015 if those devices had letters or characters that didn’t appear when pressed, felt sticky or didn’t respond consistently to typing. Prior to the offer, Apple was quoting customers with out-of-warranty keyboards a cost of $300 to $475, according to the company.

. . . .

The MacBook issues can be traced back to 2015 when Apple introduced a new keyboard system with a “butterfly mechanism” that it said was 40% thinner and more responsive. The butterfly system, which has been used in MacBook updates since then, uses V-shaped underpinnings rather than an X-shaped scissor connection, a change Apple says allows it to bounce back “with a crisp motion that you’ll appreciate the moment you start typing.”

However, customers have complained that dust and debris, such as crumbs of food, cause the keyboards to stop working on devices with starting prices ranging from $1,299 to $2,399.

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal

PG expects he is not the only writer (legal stuff and blogging) who has a close and intense relationship with his keyboard. He wishes he had found some type of software to record his cumulative keystrokes since starting with personal computers. It would be a very large number.

His first love was a clicky Northgate keyboard which, with the function keys on the right left side, was an ideal companion for WordPerfect software.

Alas, WordPerfect was acquired by Novell and promptly ruined.

After holding out for as long as possible with his doddering Northgate and increasingly outdated WP software, PG switched to MS Word and tried a variety of ergonomic keyboards before finding the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard. It was not love at first sight, but PG’s fingers and wrists came to appreciate this experience after a few days of interaction.

Remembering his earlier Northgate experience, PG has stashed a few MS Ergo keyboards in a closet so he can have a transition period on his schedule rather than Microsoft’s if things change again.

PG still wants to be able to talk to his computer and have really usable results appear on his screen and tries the latest dictation options from time to time, but hasn’t found that nirvana yet.

 

 

19 thoughts on “Apple’s Sticky Keyboard Triggers Offer For Free Repairs”

  1. I bounced through half a dozen cheap keyboards before finding an IBM PC/XT keyboard. 84 keys, function keys on the left. I used it for twenty years, until I finally had to go to a PC/AT 101-key board when too much software demanded F12 and right-ctrl or right-alt keys.

    Alas, in the years since, I’ve never made complete accomodation with the 101-key board. My preferred editor (so old I have to runit with an emulator) uses function keys and arrow keys, neither of which are usefully accessible on the 101-key board.

    I recently dug out one of my spare 84-key board, found the requisite adapters to go from the 1982 PC keyboard connector to USB, and found a “key stick” that the manufacturer’s tech support assures me is independent of any operating system. As soon as the Non-Essential Purchases Fund gets up to $125, I plan to order it.

    • I am stuck with ergonomic keyboards, I think, but if you want a replacement IBM PC/XT style keyboard, you can buy a new 122-key keyboard from Unicomp with function keys on the side and top. They come in different colors and have buckling spring key mechanisms just like the originals.

      http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/category/PC122

      A 105-key keyboard is on the deep wishlist for me, due to aforementioned ergonomic layout requirements.

      • Yeah, there are a bunch of those with the function keys on the left. Unfortunately they all have the idiot “inverted-T” mess shoving the keypad waaay off to the right, which makes navigation while editing very difficult.

        Even if I could cramp my hand into a shape to work the inverted-T, the Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys are in a separate cluster above.

    • Many years ago, before the commercial Internet, I ran a little chat board. One of my users had an ancient computer that was crapping out piece by piece. She was particularly chagrined when the F key quit working. I told her that just for the moment, she should worry along the best she could, and if anybody complained, she should tell them to uck o.

  2. I’m guessing all the stories/warnings about Apple’s crap keyboards was starting to cause fanboys/girls not to buy Apple systems (because after ‘you’re holding it wrong’ and ‘bendgate’ Apple will never admit that they’ve screwed the pooch …)

  3. I’ve used Apple/Mac desktop and laptop computers since the early Eighties. Apple has never failed me with recalls or fast free replacements. They initiate the recalls, not some government agency. I’ve even had repairs done for free when my computer was out of warranty. Some of these computers were still working many years after I stopped using them when I needed one for ham-handed nephews playing games. I’ve only had one die on me in service, and it was eight years old. Sure, they cost more, but they last longer than most of the junk out there.

  4. I use a DasKeyboard and roller ball on my MacBook. I need something that can take my “learned-on-a-manual” typing without hanging up or having a conniption. Apparently you are not supposed to type quickly or firmly on a modern computer.

    Alas, the cat learned that when the clickity-clickity stops, she has a higher likelihood of being able to distract me and get petted or fed. 🙂

  5. Actually, WordPerfect (now from Corel) is still available; I’ll be receiving my upgrade to WordPerfect X9 (known in human terms as Wordperfect 19). You might not like it, but I hate MS-Word so much I’ll use almost anything else, like the German software company Softmaker’s TextMaker on my android tablets. While there were releases that weren’t terribly good, overall, having had to use MS-Word at work, Wordperfect is MUCH BETTER than any version of Word I’ve encountered. -tc

      • I agree. I’ve used WordPerfect for decades to fix “broken” word documents that refused to format correctly.

        Keyboards: I should also mention that my desktop computer is using a keyboard by Cherry, who made the little switches in my wonderful KayPro keyboard back in the 1980, before everyone switched to MS-DOS from CP/M (1983; way before Windows).

  6. IBM clickety-clicks all the way, beginning with pre-desktop Selectrics. These days my weapon of choice is a ThinkPad compact keyboard with a great feel to the keys, and a stick-mouse in between the keys. My fingers never leave the surface.

  7. I wrote one of my first technical manuals using Word 1.0x on a Mac in 1985. At that time it had a horrible problem when it came to formatting multiple lists (letters, numbers, you name it). Problem was still present in the 2017 version that shipped with Office 365 (v14.x?).

    Unfortunately I was forced to used it at most of the companies I worked for over the subsequent years. Since I’ve more or less retired from technical writing and moved to fiction I’ve only used it to convert/clean-up my manuscripts for publishing sites that demand clean Word files. An oxymoron IMHO due to the amount of extraneous cruft added to the files.

    Note, your milage may vary.

  8. I went through 3 Microsoft Ergos. My hands and wrists love them, but after a year or so, the space bar began to stick. The rest of the keys were fine. I noticed on the network that some other people have had similar complaints.

    Eventually, I dug in my heels and took one apart.

    I discovered, after days of puzzling and experimenting, that the mechanism for distributing the pressure over the width of the space bar relied on sliding steel wires over a steel guide. On the sticking boards, a slight depression was worn into the guide. I tried smoothing the guide with silicon carbide emery paper. No luck. I tried covering the guide with teflon “mouse tape.” No luck. Tried silicon grease. Still sticking.

    In the end, I stumbled on a lanolin-based grease {used to be called cosmoline, I think). The tiniest dab of grease on a toothpick on each guide solves the problem for months.

    I now have 3 Ergos that work perfectly.

    The stuff is called “Fluid Film.” I bought it on Amazon, of course. One can is enough to keep Ergos working as long into the future as I can imagine.

  9. For what its worth on the Dictation Software my still practising former partner in legal practice in Australia has been using Dragon for the last couple of years and swears by it. He’s just invested in an updated version and a state of the art microphone.

    A former colleague is still using the old Word Perfect for Dos integrated with a Lotus approach database. In a profitable practice with 3 or 4 lawyers and at least 10 other staff! I had lunch with him recently and he indicated that he may finally be forced to change soon, though he is still resisting it.

    But this is hardly new. About 15 years ago a relative of my girlfriend at the time was running his own legal practice in another City. It was straight out of the pages of Dickens, using a typewriter. Last I heard he wouldn’t have one of those new-fangled computer thingies in his office! I often wondered how he could effectively look after his clients, though from all reports he had a loyal clientele who wouldn’t go anywhere else.

    It’s a strange old world.

    • Fifteen years ago was about the tail end of when you could still find non-geriatric lawyers who didn’t have a computer on the desk. You would usually find that his paralegal and/or younger associate did, and was perfectly proficient. This also was the last generation that might well not have ever learned to type in school, typing being what the secretarial class did.

      That ship clearly has sailed, but I am generally sympathetic to the position that if you have equipment and software that does what you want it to do, spending money to buy new software that does a bunch of stuff you don’t want, may or may not do what you want it to, and most certainly will require retraining to learn to use, assuming it will in fact do what you want it to–well, this seems a hard sell, for those of us not enamored of the newest and shiniest of everything. There is a huge middle ground between writing in cuneiform and frantically buying whatever has just come out.

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