The Failure of the Touchbar MacBook Pros: Emergency Redesign Needed

[poorcody]

Not very far apart actually. You are just one failed key away from potentially joining the club

After using the keyboard for almost two years, at least 50 hours a week? No, I don't think so. If I had a key fail now, I wouldn't consider it a design failure. I've gotten a lot of miles out of it...

There is still something odd with these failures, when I have a department full of them with no problems, and other people have multiple returns in a couple of months. Not sure if it has really been figured out yet honestly...

 

[macjunk(ie)]

After using the keyboard for almost two years, at least 50 hours a week? No, I don't think so. If I had a key fail now, I wouldn't consider it a design failure. I've gotten a lot of miles out of it...

There is still something odd with these failures, when I have a department full of them with no problems, and other people have multiple returns in a couple of months. Not sure if it has really been figured out yet honestly...

It is weird. Some bright forum members here conjectured heat was a probable cause and that made a lot of sense to me. Perhaps some people were not running the kind of workloads that would trigger these failures?

But you are saying your entire department has no problems with these machines. If that is the case, maybe it is environmental?

Anyway, there were two points to my post:
- even if your keyboard is functional right now, a key can break anytime since we do not know what is causing it
- a key breaking would not have been a big deal on the pre-2016 MBPs cause you could have replaced it easily. Not so in the case of post-2016; you will have to leave your machine at the store and hope that the very difficult repair does not cause regression.

On my 2015 MBP, my Escape key got loose and was prone to falling off. I went to the Apple store and they wanted to take it in for a week! I decided against that and spent 7$ to buy a single Esc key and replaced it myself in under 2 mins.

 

[poorcody]

It is weird. Some bright forum members here conjectured heat was a probable cause and that made a lot of sense to me. Perhaps some people were not running the kind of workloads that would trigger these failures?

Yeah, I think there is something to the heat theory, in part because we've noticed the keys feel different when the machine gets hotter. I actually wonder if there is some combination that is unusual but not rare, like maybe it's how hard you hit the keys when they are hot... ? That might explain the repeated-problems versus no-problems by some. Just a wild theory on my part.

But you are saying your entire department has no problems with these machines. If that is the case, maybe it is environmental?

We've got 11 2016 MBPs, and we haven't had any keyboard problems so far, having bought most of them around November 2016.

Anyway, there were two points to my post:
- even if your keyboard is functional right now, a key can break anytime since we do not know what is causing it
- a key breaking would not have been a big deal on the pre-2016 MBPs cause you could have replaced it easily. Not so in the case of post-2016; you will have to leave your machine at the store and hope that the very difficult repair does not cause regression.

Agreed, although to me, the repairability "issue" is part of broader issue that MacBooks are getting less repairable in all aspects. I used to think it was a necessary evil for the thin designs, but I see some laptops like Dell and Thinkpad that appear to have similar thicknesses with more replaceable parts, so maybe I'm giving Apple too much of a pass in that regard.

 

[Jimgpayne]

I realize that there are some people who may like the Touchbar or even the keyboard, but I suspect that the list of those people is few.

My perspective... is that Apple needs a redesign asap. Without delay. It's clear to me that nobody really took ownership of this product other than Jony Ive and his Touchbar nonesense. How could this pass testing and product design reviews unless it's an environment of design by committee and politics. Steve Jobs, the person who would say it sucks and no, is long gone...

Your suspicion is wrong. While there have been problems with the keyboard; for the most part users like the product. To verify this, all you have to do is look at the various reviews listed on retailers sites such as Amazon, Best Buy, B&H, New Egg, and others. The vast majority of people love their new MacBooks.

The Touch Bar is polarizing because people don't like change. The fact is that you can change the touch bar to simply display the function keys if you don't want it to be interactive. Your comments about using it are the exact same comments that people made 30 years ago when the mouse came out: don't want to take eyes off screen, would rather use keyboard shortcuts, etc.

I continue to be amazed at all the armchair product developers who simply think they know better than the professionals doing their jobs.

Emergency Redesign Needed....

ha!
[doublepost=1540239854][/doublepost]

Window OEMs have caught up and so has Microsoft with the OS.

Tell that to the thousands of people whose Windows machines die each and every time Windows does one of their quarterly updates. Windows 10 is *NO WHERE* near the OS that MacOS is.
[doublepost=1540239948][/doublepost]

I'd like to meet the unicorn who is a Touchbar Whisperer.

Sarcasm much??
[doublepost=1540240361][/doublepost]

...what? They sure do, as do Macs (especially the new ones) and Surface Books and all other laptops. If you look at QC data, Apple will be middle of the pack amongst top companies, regardless of what their marketing departments wants us to think.

What QC data?
[doublepost=1540240769][/doublepost]

You have absolutely ZERO data to support what you just said. It is not the case that to MOST people the trackpad is a pleasant upgrade. That is simply you're own personal opinion. As we can see by the poll I've included in this thread, many more people than not agree that the design of the keyboard, trackpad, and other aspects of the device in question should be redesigned.

Actually, its you who have no data to support your opinions. Your poll has fewer than 250 people responding out of the millions of rMBPs sold in the past two years. Roughly three million are sold per quarter (statista.com). Who statistical percentage complain of your issues????? .001%?

Don't devalue his opinion because it conflicts with yours.
[doublepost=1540240811][/doublepost]

Listen, the pool in this thread means nothing in real world.
Here is an extremely small % of actual 2016/2017 MBP users.

In my opinion yes, the trackpad is a huge improvement over the old ones and even the keyboard with flaws or not, still an improvement.

Keep supporting your data based on this pool, but don't jump and attack others with your nonsense.

Agreed!!!!

 

[Hadron]

The Touch Bar is polarizing because people don't like change. The fact is that you can change the touch bar to simply display the function keys if you don't want it to be interactive. Your comments about using it are the exact same comments that people made 30 years ago when the mouse came out: don't want to take eyes off screen, would rather use keyboard shortcuts, etc.

I think there's an element of truth in that, but it's not the whole truth. Setting the TB to show the standard function keys doesn't change the fact that it's harder to use that way than physical keys. And I don't understand the analogy with a mouse since you do not remove your eyes from the screen to use a mouse. So for some workflows it is undoubtedly less convenient, and I do wonder what the results would be if Apple actually offered people a real choice on TB or not.

Personally I don't find Apple's default use of the TB terribly helpful. Setting the "expanded control strip" as default gives me nothing that I couldn't have had with physical keys, and slightly less usability, while the "App Controls" are more of an irritation than a utility: limited or non-existent in many apps, and where an app does use them they are often of limited value, and being different in different apps is just an annoyance. Maybe if someone just has a couple of apps they use and those apps actually do something useful with it it might have value for them, but personally the inconsistency of it switching with each app is just an annoyance.

That said, it came with the machine and the touch id sensor is very useful. So I simply used BetterTouchTool to replace the default setup with something that would be useful to me (in my case a set of desktop switchers, a lock button, couple of information widgets, plus volume and brightness and, of course, escape). And that makes it OK: a little less usable as function keys than physical keys, but it also makes a couple of things I do often a little easier, so on balance I quite like it. Not a major selling point, but it has its uses. But only because of a third party utility: if I only had the options Apple themselves provided I'd rather just have the keys.

 

[Queen6]

Your suspicion is wrong. While there have been problems with the keyboard; for the most part users like the product. To verify this, all you have to do is look at the various reviews listed on retailers sites such as Amazon, Best Buy, B&H, New Egg, and others. The vast majority of people love their new MacBooks.

The Touch Bar is polarizing because people don't like change. The fact is that you can change the touch bar to simply display the function keys if you don't want it to be interactive. Your comments about using it are the exact same comments that people made 30 years ago when the mouse came out: don't want to take eyes off screen, would rather use keyboard shortcuts, etc.

I continue to be amazed at all the armchair product developers who simply think they know better than the professionals doing their jobs.

Emergency Redesign Needed....

ha!
[doublepost=1540239854][/doublepost]

Tell that to the thousands of people whose Windows machines die each and every time Windows does one of their quarterly updates. Windows 10 is *NO WHERE* near the OS that MacOS is.
[doublepost=1540239948][/doublepost]

Sarcasm much??
[doublepost=1540240361][/doublepost]
What QC data?
[doublepost=1540240769][/doublepost]

Actually, its you who have no data to support your opinions. Your poll has fewer than 250 people responding out of the millions of rMBPs sold in the past two years. Roughly three million are sold per quarter (statista.com). Who statistical percentage complain of your issues????? .001%?

Don't devalue his opinion because it conflicts with yours.
[doublepost=1540240811][/doublepost]


Agreed!!!!

When the MBP can do this or exceed these numbers you can come back....

Apple has transformed the MBP into a pretentious, trite and worst of all unreliable toy. Steve Jobs once said Apple would never produce cheap garbage, he was 100% correct...

Q-6

 

[Pangalactic]

What QC data?

https://www.squaretrade.com/laptop-reliability-1109/

 

[Mr Screech]

The Touch Bar is polarizing because people don't like change.

No.
Pro users don't look at the keys they are pushing.
You've effectively robbed pro users of 12 shortcutkeys + the escape key.

Touchbar is a step back in the 'pro' department and I sincerely hope that in the next update they have non-touchbar options for every single version.

 

[Momo13Drums]

I didn't read the entire thread besides OP, but here are my 2c. To give you an idea of where I'm coming from, this is my first MBP. 2018 model. I've never even owned a Mac computer until now, always a Windows guy. I have the 15"/2.6/512/560x.

My MBP is phenomenal. Easily the best laptop I've ever had. The keyboard is just fine. Like ANY keyboard, it took a day or two to "acclimate" to the typing distance and stroke in comparison to my last laptop, and certainly my desktop keyboard. But within a day or two, I could type just as fast as any other keyboard. I really don't understand the complaint here, unless people lack the motor skills to swap between keyboards and type properly. It's a simple matter of learning slight differences in muscle memory with the same general layout which most people should be capable of within a short period of time. It's not like you're typing on some foreign object that has an entirely different layout.

Touchbar... I love the touch bar so far! I read so much hate about it on these forums before I bought my MBP I was very concerned about it. The touchbar makes everything so much easier. I primarily work in FCPX now, Photoshop, Logic, Lightroom, etc. Totally makes these tasks easier and more fun, to boot. I'm not a coder or anything like that, but even just daily tasks like entering information into forms online or scrolling through video, its so much better. I've even gotten to the point where I don't always need to look at it to hit "esc" in the rare event I'm using it. The touch bar is awesome IMO.

I can't comment on people coding, etc. Maybe the touch bar sucks for that, I don't know. Some people may say I'm not a "pro" user because I'm not a programmer or some mathematician or something, but I think "pro" simply just means you do professional work on your machine, which I do... from photo/video, to website design, content creation, etc. I really think this machine is awesome for creative content creation, especially with the touch bar.

 

[Newtons Apple]

Until Apple gets over it's obsession with "thin", we will just see more sacrifices. Do not see that happening anytime soon.

 

[Pangalactic]

I've even gotten to the point where I don't always need to look at it to hit "esc" in the rare event I'm using it

ie instead of never looking at the esc key now after considerable training you "don't always need to look at it". That summarizes the touch bar experience in a nutshell

 

[Koh Phi Phi]

I agree to each of the OP points, to the point that I decided to sell my MBP 15" TB and get a Surface Book 2.

The TB is indeed a flashy gimmick, and I agree that the battery was less than stellar. I do also agree that the trackpad was unnecessarily oversized... but it was ultimately the keyboard what drove me away. Boy, what a pain in the ass of a keyboard, plus it broke down on me and I had to replace the whole piece (they quoted $700+tax for the repair!).

I really feel Apple has dropped the ball with this MBP generation. The previous one was AMAZING, but the 2016+ family has been a disappointment

 

[maflynn]

Until Apple gets over it's obsession with "thin", we will just see more sacrifices. Do not see that happening anytime soon.

What's odd, is apple was all in on the touchbar back in 2016, but since then nothing has been done. They can't remove it and re-add the f-keys but they've yet to add the TB in any other keyboard or laptop. Maybe he new hardware rolling out next week will have it, but so far I'm left with an assumption that apple has cooled to the TB.

I'm hoping with the increased heat that Coffee Lake produces and the need to properly cool these machines, that they'll not make these laptops any thinner. Its like when they re-designed the iMac a few years ago, and made it wafer thin. Why? Its a desktop, there's no reason to sacrifice cooling and those early 5k iMacs and throttling issues.

 

[Newtons Apple]

What's odd, is apple was all in on the touchbar back in 2016, but since then nothing has been done. They can't remove it and re-add the f-keys but they've yet to add the TB in any other keyboard or laptop. Maybe he new hardware rolling out next week will have it, but so far I'm left with an assumption that apple has cooled to the TB.

I'm hoping with the increased heat that Coffee Lake produces and the need to properly cool these machines, that they'll not make these laptops any thinner. Its like when they re-designed the iMac a few years ago, and made it wafer thin. Why? Its a desktop, there's no reason to sacrifice cooling and those early 5k iMacs and throttling issues.

Agreed. Why make a desktop thin when you have the opportunity to offer superior cooling?

It is just for the looks of it.

I am still looking for the setting to turn my TB into the original "F" keys and stay that way while using BootCamp.

 

[Ma2k5]

What's odd, is apple was all in on the touchbar back in 2016, but since then nothing has been done. They can't remove it and re-add the f-keys but they've yet to add the TB in any other keyboard or laptop. Maybe he new hardware rolling out next week will have it, but so far I'm left with an assumption that apple has cooled to the TB.

I'm hoping with the increased heat that Coffee Lake produces and the need to properly cool these machines, that they'll not make these laptops any thinner. Its like when they re-designed the iMac a few years ago, and made it wafer thin. Why? Its a desktop, there's no reason to sacrifice cooling and those early 5k iMacs and throttling issues.

Unless the whole market (not just Apple), adopt a Touchbar-like feature, developers will have very little incentives to develop for a touch bar which probably makes up less than 0.1% of users.

What doesn't help is, Apple clearly abandoned it too - with apps like BetterTouch needed for it to be somewhat usable. If Apple themselves are not supporting it (adding to the fact they aren't expanding it as per your post), why will anyone else?

 

[maflynn]

Unless the whole market (not just Apple), adopt a Touchbar-like feature, developers will have very little incentives to develop for a touch bar which probably makes up less than 0.1% of users.

No question given that Apple's marketshare is around 10% give or take a few percentage points, that's the definition of a niche product. Now looking a little deeper, and you see that the touchbar is only available on one computer line from apple, then its a niche of a niche. Developers need to ensure their programs are available for the widest array of customers, and so they'll code their apps to please the majority not the minority. Since apple has seemingly abandoned it, that decreases any possible motivation by the developers more because they don't know how long apple will stick with it as well.

 

[Ma2k5]

No question given that Apple's marketshare is around 10% give or take a few percentage points, that's the definition of a niche product. Now looking a little deeper, and you see that the touchbar is only available on one computer line from apple, then its a niche of a niche. Developers need to ensure their programs are available for the widest array of customers, and so they'll code their apps to please the majority not the minority. Since apple has seemingly abandoned it, that decreases any possible motivation by the developers more because they don't know how long apple will stick with it as well.

That is 10% of the laptop market share too I believe (and that is for US? A lot less worldwide, particularly developing countries) - if we factor all PC computers (which use a keyboard), you can see it becomes niche³!

One in what, 10,000+ (probably greatly underestimating this figure) computers might be a MacBook Pro?

 

[Koh Phi Phi]

The real problem with the Touch Bar is that it violates one pivotal rule of ergonomics: your sight and your point of touch are not in line!

That means that, whatever I interact with via the Touch Bar, is displayed on the actual monitor. And, since the Touch Bar has no physical keys (and thus no physical feedback or resistance), I must look down at it to interact with it. As a result, my eyes are going up and down, jumping between the screen and the TouchBar, in order to adjust a mere video time line, or to adjust the sound volume, or whatever mundane task I might be doing.

That doesnt happen with tablets or touch screens because the point of touch is exactly where my eyes already are, making such interaction much more seamless.

I was never able to find any real-world use of the TouchBar that I could not fulfill faster and more comfortably via key shortcuts or directly on the screen with my mouse cursor. So... it pretty much remained unused 95% of the time.

Like I said in my previous post: a flashy gimmick with little beef to it

PS: the fact that, after TWO full years there's been virtually no developer support hasn't helped either.

 

[Jimgpayne]

When the MBP can do this or exceed these numbers you can come back....
View attachment 797600 View attachment 797601
Apple has transformed the MBP into a pretentious, trite and worst of all unreliable toy. Steve Jobs once said Apple would never produce cheap garbage, he was 100% correct...

Q-6

Oh *please*..... save me from the benchmark gods.....

What do benchmarks have anything to do with what we are talking about?

We're talking about touchers, trackpads, and operating systems...

Troll.

 

[Queen6]

Oh *please*..... save me from the benchmark gods.....

What do benchmarks have anything to do with what we are talking about?

We're talking about touchers, trackpads, and operating systems...

Troll.

Throttling performance for a starter due to a weak cooling solution, nor does the excessive heat likely help the genius keyboard Apple has inflicted on us all...

Q-6

 

[Jimgpayne]

https://www.squaretrade.com/laptop-reliability-1109/

Good lord....

First off; Square Trade is by no means a reliable quality control authority. They only cover internet based sales (ok, they also cover some retail sales, but not many). The vast majority of their clients are from Ebay and such.

Quick show of hands...... how many people here use Square Trade for extended warranty versus AppleCare?????

And even so.... the statistical difference of their sample (which only covered 30K laptops over a three year period) from Best In Class is less than 1% for 2 year windows and 1.8% for 3 year windows. Their exact quote "Sony and Apple also performed better than average." Which is *COMPLETELY* different from the original reference about them being in the middle of the pack.

If you want *REAL* QC data; then go to industry indicators such as JD Power and Consumer Reports. I may be taking a chance here since I'm not sure they have to say on the subject - but please at least use a more standardized authority.

Imagine if you tried to take this sample set to your boss as evidence to get him to agree to a financial outlay....
[doublepost=1540478973][/doublepost]

No.
Pro users don't look at the keys they are pushing.
You've effectively robbed pro users of 12 shortcutkeys + the escape key.

Touchbar is a step back in the 'pro' department and I sincerely hope that in the next update they have non-touchbar options for every single version.

Man, you must have hated it when cell phones went from physical keys to touchscreens......
[doublepost=1540479269][/doublepost]

Throttling performance for a starter due to a weak cooling solution, nor does the excessive heat likely help the genius keyboard Apple has inflicted on us all...

Q-6

Again.... those comments have nothing to do with our discussion up to this point. They are designed by their very nature to incite additional controversy and complaints.

Even your profile says "Putting out the fire with gasoline..."

 

[Queen6]

Good lord....

First off; Square Trade is by no means a reliable quality control authority. They only cover internet based sales (ok, they also cover some retail sales, but not many). The vast majority of their clients are from Ebay and such.

Quick show of hands...... how many people here use Square Trade for extended warranty versus AppleCare?????

And even so.... the statistical difference of their sample (which only covered 30K laptops over a three year period) from Best In Class is less than 1% for 2 year windows and 1.8% for 3 year windows. Their exact quote "Sony and Apple also performed better than average." Which is *COMPLETELY* different from the original reference about them being in the middle of the pack.

If you want *REAL* QC data; then go to industry indicators such as JD Power and Consumer Reports. I may be taking a chance here since I'm not sure they have to say on the subject - but please at least use a more standardized authority.

Imagine if you tried to take this sample set to your boss as evidence to get him to agree to a financial outlay....
[doublepost=1540478973][/doublepost]

Man, you must have hated it when cell phones went from physical keys to touchscreens......
[doublepost=1540479269][/doublepost]

Again.... those comments have nothing to do with our discussion up to this point. They are designed by their very nature to incite additional controversy and complaints.

Even your profile says "Putting out the fire with gasoline..."

Your problem....

 

[afir93]

What's odd, is apple was all in on the touchbar back in 2016, but since then nothing has been done.

Since the Touch Bar's inclusion in 2016, they have
- Added support for TrueTone on the 2018 MBPs (on the hardware-side of things),
- Added support for Automator shortcuts in Mojave (making neat shortcuts like switching between light/dark mode and other settings and quick actions achievable in just 1-2 taps from wherever you are without leaving the app),
- Given some additional tools to developers for the Touch Bar in Mojave,
- Added Touch Bar support for the new Command + Shift + 5 screenshot tool in Mojave; not only does it give you some useful buttons but what I find most useful about this is that the Touch Bar shows the current file size of a recording while making a screen recording so you know how much space the recording up to this point will take, something that is currently not visible on-screen in any way,
- Added support for the new post-editing tool for screenshots/screen recordings in Mojave,
- Added support for the new QuickLook editing options in Mojave,
And probably more that I'm missing. I agree that there is still a lot of untapped potential for the Touch Bar on the software- (and hardware-)side of things, but this isn't exactly what I would call "nothing has been done". Apple is definitely improving it and I don't expect them to drop it anytime soon.

It's still a bit of a mystery where they'll go with it on the hardware-side of things though, that's true. Will an external keyboard with Touch Bar + Touch ID like described in their patent from last year ever see the light of day? If so, maybe with next week's refresh? I'm not holding my breath for it, but if Apple fully commits to the Touch Bar then they'd eventually have to, and a Mac-focused Apple event seems like a great opportunity for an announcement like this, so who knows. Is the non-TB MacBook Pro really dead or was it just "merged" with the upcoming new MacBook (Air)s? Will the Touch Bar come to the nonTB-MacBooks aswell eventually?

 

[IngerMan]

I voted for a change. I like the touch bar but my vote is to improve the keys to reduce the failures and increase longevity. I would expect the keyboard to be one of the last things to fail on the laptop.

I have had a 2016 13" TB for almost 2 years and a 2017 15" going on 2 months. I have not had any issues with either but I don't put the heat or the constant typing to them either.
[doublepost=1540504768][/doublepost]

- Added support for Automator shortcuts in Mojave (making neat shortcuts like switching between light/dark mode and other settings and quick actions achievable in just 1-2 taps from wherever you are without leaving the app),

Thank you for the tip afir93. My first Automator shortcut and it comes on the Touch Bar.

 

[lJoSquaredl]

1. I like the chassis build, makes the old one feel just that, old.

2. Didn't like the keyboard at first but no I'm fine with it. Mine hasn't broke luckily and I beat the hell out of it typing and playing League of Legends.

3. Haven't touched the Touch Bar once accept to turn the volume up and down and night shift which was easier with a button. Cool to be able to move stuff around but I really just haven't found much use for it personally.

4. Trackpad is cool, more big than it needs to be I rub my palm on it sometimes but its good. The edge of the laptop cuts into my palm more than the last MBP which is a bigger issue for me.

5. Not worried about overheating cuz I've learned to just buy the baseline CPU from now on. It's a laptop and it's thin, I'm more realistic with the power I need or should be getting from a sleek yet powerful laptop experience. 6 cores is fine for me, never heats up and gets loud when get the baseline model (I edit video and game)