Right its like the Pinto was a nice car. Yah it has a defective tank that explodes when rear ended, but hey mine still on the road and hasn't been rear ended.
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Is the butterfly keyboard really that bad? -- upgrading from a 2012/'15
- Thread starter kuebby
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At a large university I serve as voluntary hardware-requirements liaison between my lab (about a 100 people) and the IT department. Between 2016 - 2020 it used to be:
- 20% of the lab uses Dell laptops. These are returned for all sort of reasons, most often trackpad failures, but also fried motherboards and so on
- 20% Lenovo laptops: same as Dell.
- 60% Apple laptops: These are returned almost solely because of the 2016 - 2019 butterfly keyboards with keys becoming permanently unresponsive. At least 40 of them were returned at some point.
Since 2021 it is 80% Apple with everything being M1 Pro / Max (hardly Air since almost everyone uses at least two monitors) and it's been a flawless experience so far. Everyone loves their laptops nowadays.
The remaining 20% are hardcore Linux users that are still on Dell / Lenovo laptops but even they are slowly transitioning to Apple and reprogramming their Linux automation efforts (particularly window management) in Hammerspoon in OS X.
- 20% of the lab uses Dell laptops. These are returned for all sort of reasons, most often trackpad failures, but also fried motherboards and so on
- 20% Lenovo laptops: same as Dell.
- 60% Apple laptops: These are returned almost solely because of the 2016 - 2019 butterfly keyboards with keys becoming permanently unresponsive. At least 40 of them were returned at some point.
Since 2021 it is 80% Apple with everything being M1 Pro / Max (hardly Air since almost everyone uses at least two monitors) and it's been a flawless experience so far. Everyone loves their laptops nowadays.
The remaining 20% are hardcore Linux users that are still on Dell / Lenovo laptops but even they are slowly transitioning to Apple and reprogramming their Linux automation efforts (particularly window management) in Hammerspoon in OS X.
There's several issues, but I've had the computer since early 2013 and have been using it regularly since then, so it's the most use I've ever gotten out of a computer.
The issues are:
1. WiFi has stopped working (or rather, receiving a signal usually seems to have--running a hotspot still works fine and occasionally receiving data does too... I bought a USB dongle and it's been fine, or ethernet via TB)
2. M key is falling off--still on and works but 1 of the clips is broken
3. Wear and tear on the key tops of 2 keys
4. Battery says "Service Recommended" but has been fine in normal use (99% of use is plugged in nowadays).
Pretty sure that's it but I might be missing something
Thank you, that's exactly the case. I was about to purchase a 2017 15" but actually cancelled my order after the responses I received here. I'm hoping it can help someone else, cause like I said, I would have loved a "new" computer but not one with basically guaranteed issues (over my planned lifetime and with my use it would fail, I'm sure).
Yeah, non broken butterfly keyboards seem to be the aberration from a system built to fail.
Basically torpedoed the out of warranty value of that entire generation of Macs.
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Without seeing the MacBook directly, do specs say if a MacBook has the butterfly keyboard? Looking at a 2019 MBP. Hence, my question...
Of the 2019 MacBooks, only the 16” doesn’t have the butterfly keyboard. The 13 inch Pro and Air both have it.
I never used such a Mac laptop regularly, but at my workplace we've gotten a few MacBooks with the butterfly keyboard, and it indeed felt flimsier than regular scissor-mechanism keyboards like the ones I generally use (i.e. my M1 MacBook Air, Retina MacBook Pro, Apple Magic Keyboard 2, etc.)
I've had no problems with the 2019 13" keyboard. Get a keyboard vacuum, you'll be surprised how much debris it pulls out. And NEVER use compressed air, it just pushes that debris further into the key mechanism.
So basically Apple implemented the extended keyboard repair program for nothing. Also they paid a $50 million fine for nothing. If they only knew a keyboard vacuum would solve the problem....
'Helpful' comments like 'use a vacuum' or 'do not eat near the keyboard' etc. do not make the problems with the butterfly keyboard go away and they do not make the flawed keyboard design better in any way.
If you read this entire thread you will notice that there are some anecdotal examples such like yours. You will also notice that your anecdotal example only reflects your reality, but not the reality of a majority of people.
In real life, the statistics are against you. You are simply one of the lucky ones. It is not a matter of if but when.
Fact is: The butterfly keyboard is bad and has to be avoided.
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Good trolling my friend haha. Good job OP for reading the whole thread and avoiding the butterfly-keyboard Macbooks, they are inherently flawed.
Maintaining a laptop well is always a good idea, but maintaining a defectively designed laptop has proven to be futile for many. There are countless accounts of people having failures even with strict attention to avoiding particles of what not anywhere near the keyboard. And accounts of failures out of the box or shortly thereafter.
A defective design such as the butterfly keyboard is very much a luck of the draw thing. Good luck with yours.
if it didn't break so much, i think i would have liked it. seeing how i've gone through 4-5 of them already, i hate them.
Had I not seen it to believe it, it would be ridiculously unimaginable to me that Apple would release a premium MacBook Pro appliance with such a horribly flawed keyboard design - not once, but twice and three (or was it even four) different revisions!
That left me no appetite to upgrade to another Apple appliance (I can't even call these unservicable devices as laptops anymore) for all of these years.
I've been grateful that I've been able to hold out with my trusty 2011 MacBook Pro LAPTOP, before needing a new MBP.
That left me no appetite to upgrade to another Apple appliance (I can't even call these unservicable devices as laptops anymore) for all of these years.
I've been grateful that I've been able to hold out with my trusty 2011 MacBook Pro LAPTOP, before needing a new MBP.
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I wonder if it has to do with people eating around their laptops and dropping crumbs inside the keyboard. I’m not saying I don’t want a keyboard that sensitive but I wonder what makes the difference between some people having no issues and others having problems all the time.