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MacBook Users Fix Trackpad Problem with Origami Paper
yonnage writes "Some Apple MacBook owners are plagued with what seems to be a defective trackpad button. The button, when pushed, seems "squishy" and sometimes even unresponsive. While these MacBook owners are getting turned away at the Apple Genius Bars, they have come up with a custom and unique solution to the problem. A piece of paper, placed strategically under the battery pack where the trackpad is located, seems to fix this problem for most users."
Looks like the solution is to fold up a piece of paper, and put it under the actual mouse button. This might work for a little while, but it is a laptop. I can see this paper falling in some other part of the laptop, like say a fan or a hot battery - and you will have a more interesting problem of fire, or CPU death.
Disable USB Drives - Remotely
or you could just buy a malfunctional battery (one the buldges) and it'll just work just as well
Paper over hot battery? Fire risk?
Oh.
Are these the same batteries we saw pictures of heating up and warping a few days ago? Are these Mac users trying to make their own exploding Japanese Dells?
Why is it that a silly trick like this makes front page of slashdot? If I submitted a blog article of how I used a toothpick to fix the mousebutton on a generic ACME brand laptop would anyone give a care?
Same thing with this whole "discoloration" thing about the palm rests. People, laptops are machines, they wear out, they have flaws. It's like some people get so emotionally attached to their computer that if they see one flaw with it they have to write an article about it.
Woo! I knew all that origami that I learned while bored doing tech support would come in handy some day!
Support a true independent artist - Leila Lopez
I purchased a MacBook two weeks ago. At first, it was slightly irritating me. I like that responsive, affirming click when I press the mouse button. But then I realized that only the left and right sides of the button are squishy. The middle of the button doesn't have this problem, so train yourself to push it there. It becomes second nature quickly. (Perhaps YMMV.)
Or go into the system preferences and set it so that tapping the trackpad clicks. (Tapping it with two fingers to 'right-click' is nice too...)
- sm
The real question is, do smugness and homosexuality cause mac use or does mac use cause smugness and homosexuality?
... as a non-Mac user, is that Apple's after-sales service seems to suck. Sure there seem to be lots of hardware problems, but that's not really uncommon these days. However I would have expected reports of better service given Apple's reputation for "quality products" and the cult-worship it seems to get from it's fans. It's like it's giving a big "fuck you" to its users while at the same time expecting them to whoop and holler everytime Steve Jobs farts out something new.
Someone must explain something to me. I am a European (Netherlands) so possibly it's to do with consumer laws or something.
When I buy a new computer / household device that does not live up to my expectations, I return it to the store and demand a refund or a new one that works properly. I always get what I want, including from vendors such as Apple.
Now why does no-one in the blogosphere think of that? Why start fiddling around with pieces of paper, toothpicks, reinstalling software, "trying this and that because a friend told me". Why? WHY?
GO BACK TO THE STORE AND DEMAND A PROPER PRODUCT!
Not sure what you mean by Apple "combining the consumer and pro brand into 'MacBook'," but:
MacBook = consumer-class notebook
MacBook Pro = professional-class notebook
but the volume of posts I see on Slashdot and Digg about fixes for various MacBook problems both astound and amuse me. I could write it off as very poor quality control on Apple's part...and there may be something to that, but I wonder to what degree the Apple users are being more picky than the average bear.... I, for one, can't imagine buying, say, a Dell laptop and getting at all exercised about the clicky-ness of its buttons. But here we have evidence that not only has it bothered many MacBook owners, but one of them was so concerned that he gave it the thought to come up with a completely unusual solution to the problem. So...was the quality control really THAT bad? or are people just being very sensitive?
You see problems like this all the time with first generation models, especially from Apple. Almost half of the Apple first-gen hardware that my friends and I have purchased over the years have been completely replaced by Apple within a year of purchase. Don't get me wrong, I swear by my PowerBook, but I'll never buy a new product before the kinks can be worked out.
So I think Apple is screwing themselves by combining the consumer and pro brand into 'MacBook'.
Yeah. They should make a better laptop and call it "MacBook Pro." (cough.)
The Nano, which was clearly designed to cheap and accessible, does not have the ruggedness of the original machines.
As per the name, the Nano was designed to be smaller than the iPod. And it is. "Ruggedness" has nothing to do with it.
Now, the Shuffle WAS designed to be the cheap and accessible iPod. But since it's flash-based, encased in plastic and has no screen, it's actually the most rugged of the three. The only way to kill a Shuffle is to drop it in water.
To provide a bit of balance - my Powerbook was delivered with what turned out to be a faulty PSU. One call led to the machine being collected the next day (at my request) and replaced. Since then I've had no problems whatsoever. More importantly, I'm enjoying using the best user OS out there, since I didn't take one dodgy machine to mean that all Apples are now completely unreliable.
And before someone feverishly responds "What does one data point prove?", I only mention this episode because someone is extrapolating a few noisy bloggers into "Apple's after-sales service seems to suck". I feel no need to make excuses for the supplier of my computer and OS, but my experience of Apple's after-sales has been wholly positive.
So label me "fan-boy": I think this platform deserves fans in a way that maybe vanilla PCs don't. I'm also a fan-boy for HP's DL380 servers, which is my bread-and-butter machine at work, in case you're interested.
Looks like the solution is to fold up a piece of paper
It's not quite that simple.
The article is inaccurate. It says you you can fold an origami star or merely just fold the paper in a square. Neither of these methods will work. Instead, fold the origami (or other, but origami paper is preferred) into a crane, as shown here. Then smash the origami crane with your fist, using a quick up and down motion, as if you were masturbating.
From here, follow the rest of the directions in the article, and your trackpad should soon be clicking like there's no tomorrow.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Well, they did drop the 12" PB, forcing those who want/need a smaller form factor to sacrifice for the cheaper MacBook.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
The GP is correct about the way Apple has changed their branding strategy.
Old:
* Brand: PowerBook
* Brand: iBook
New:
* Brand: MacBook
* Brand Extension: MacBook Pro
I'm sure Jobs would hate the comparison to fizzy water, but it's sort of like the transition from Coke/Tab to Coke/Diet Coke. Diet Coke is a brand extension of Coke. It's a definite consolidation under the new name. But really, I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing and Apple is screwing themselves. It puts more weight behind the Mac name, and that might be a smart move if they want the Mac to seriously make inroads in marketshare.
that even with computers you will never have a "paperless office". :-)
Cue FUD tag on this story in 3...2..1..
Oh I agree, it is way beyond the consumer to understand that a MacBook Pro Ultra-Lite might be.... 1)MacBOOL noteBOOL computer 2)Professional Model 3) Ultra low weight It would be much more intuitive if they would go with something like Dell and be the Inspiron E1705. 1)Insipiron, let me see, was that the notebook, desktop, small form factor...? 2)E--uhhhhhh what? 3)1705, so it is 1.705Ghz machine? nope, $1705, nope, uh? Yeah Apple is HORRIBLE with names, I'm off to buy a HP Pavillion WSXLJPILJPJS32165461, bye.
I've had excellent results when dealing with apple, however there seems to be a problem with their system. If you call to an operator and say, "I'd like to make a warranty claim", they will make the claim as long as you emphasize that it is for a faulty part. Otherwise, if you say, "My computer randomly shuts off" they will say you need phone support, because in essence, they are helping you diagnose a problem. I talked to one lady at AppleCare telling her I needed to make a warranty claim, and she said that I would need to purchase the three year plan so that I can get the one year of phone support. I asked her how to make a direct warranty claim, and she said I can't do that, I have to go though her, and purchase the agreement with the phone support. She told me I needed to pay $49/hr if I took the machine to a Genius Bar for them to diagnose and send it off. She spread FUD. Their purpose isn't to help people, it is to get those plans sold and extended. They are going about the whole thing the wrong way. "AppleCare sales are low, push them!" The applecare system needs to be revised. It used to be that the Genius Bar provided free help, and that you shouldn't have a problem with getting defective things fixed. I can see charging tech support over the phone to a certain extent (maybe each call gets a free 30 min, or everyone gets 30min/week for free based on your phone #/appleID), but this is just ridiculous. I'd be a much happier apple customer if they would simply help people without all this garbage. I feel like I'm taking an HP laptop to the GeekSquad whenever I talk to Apple. Like they are trying to make a buck off my problem with their product!
Sig: I stole this sig.
I bought a Mac mini a few months ago and experienced wireless issues. I took it to the store and had it back in three days with wireless seeing some access points in the vicinity that I wasn't even previously aware of.
But you should see the GIGANTIC thread about this issue in Apple forums. Folks try everything except for the right thing - take it to the store and have it repaired or replaced. Some folks have been posting into that thread for MONTHS.
When you think about them running ads saying "It just works" everything comes into focus. Add to that the legions of Mac zealots.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
"big heavy MacBooks"? What are you people, hobbits?
For what it's worth, I just spent a few hours reading MacBook reviews, researching whether I should buy one or go with a regular Wintel laptop.
:(
Here are the MacBook problems people wrote about:
1. the bottom gets very hot (one person compared it to a vulcano), not suitable for laptop work
2. plastic around the screen likes to come off
3. the white MacBooks get "stained" where people rest their hands. These stains cannot be cleaned with any kind of a cleaning agent.
4. trackpad problems like this one.
Guess which type of a laptop I'm now leaning towards?
Simpy
I watched a demo on a 17" X86 Powerbook the other day and I decided the ONLY real selling point was the screen, for road warriors. The downside is that in order to get the very thin design they must have made compromises, and I bet this is at the root of both the battery problems and the trackpad problems. Lots of research has gone into making reliable batteries with rolled construction - it is much harder to make a reliable thin battery.
Pining for the fjords
1 -- Buy hardware from a company whose business model consists of selling brand hardware with particularly high margins.
2 -- High margins != high price. High margins > high price. High margins = high price + low costs.
3 -- ???
4 -- Profit! For Apple!
This is my first time ever with the 'Profit!' cliche and I promise it will probably be my last.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
The other thing is that I know quite a few people with macbooks and none has yet had any problems as those mentioned on slashdot. My guess is that many mac users tend to be more active online than other laptop users, and hence make much more of a buzz when somethings wrong.
But anyway, my point is that with the desktops (mac mini or imacs) you've got a solid piece of computing machinery.
i'm not at all trying to bait y'all mac people... but if i paid as much as the macbook costs for a laptop... i'm expect the thing to work... without me having to fold up little pieces of paper and cram them in the battery compartment. i'm just wondering... kinda makes u wish you run osx on commodity x86 hardware???? seriously i swear i've never had to cram little pieces of paper into my thinkpad.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
I can go out right now and buy a SHIT HP laptop and it will probably not have major heat problems/keyboard/explode, and if it does, I can just phone up HP and they will replace it or fix it, yet the "far better" apple totally unsupports their (still costly) lower end line? BS.
Great Intellect...
Anyone that has followed Apple products over the years knows not to purchase the first generation of any Apple redesign. I did buy the 1st generation snow white iBook (the ones with all the Logic Board problems) and I had reservations from the git go, but timing was the big issue. (I was leaving the country for a year and needed a new laptop, fortunatly I was back home before the problems began) I had a friend that is an Apple Early adopter. He had about a 1-yr old PowerBook (1.25Ghz, 2GB RAM, all the other fixings) the he sold to me for a going rate below Ebay so he could get one of the brand new MacBookPro's. So far he's happy, although the week after he bought it he realized there wasn't any software available and he had to run everything through rosetta. This PowerBook should last me a couple years at least into Law School at which point all the major software applications (office, PS, Pro Tools, etc.) will be converted and any design flaws caught and fixed (hopefully). The lesson here is: (and goes for any technology really) Early Adpotors beware!
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
It's not very often I can be bothered to login to reply to something, but on this occasion I think we need a little perspective...
Let's start off with an admission - I use Apple products. There, I've said it. I find OS X to be the best OS for what I do, full stop. OK, my servers are all Linux and _occasionally_ I have to use 'doze, but OS X is my bread and butter OS. My Macbook is one very capable machine.
Now, I don't think you'll find many people who've used it who don't rate OS X. It's a _very_ capable and compelling system which has most of the advantages of a real OS with most of the advantages of a windowing interface - it wins. It ain't perfect, but it's pretty fine. OK OK..enough already. Let's not get into the relative merits of all that...suffice to say, for joe user, it's pretty good. Two of the primary reasons for it's stability are it's compartmentalization of legacy/back compatibility issues (Rosetta and prior to that the mechanisms for OS 9 and 68K compatibility) and the fact that it only has to work on a limited, well defined, set of hardware...these are both big bonuses.
Apple hardware, on the other hand, is slightly less slick, in my experience. QC and design quality are both slightly lacking, resulting in products that don't Quite Work Right. Now, Apple deliberately set themselves up as some kind of centre of design excellence so they are (and should be) judged against higher metrics than your bucket-pc-producer and, against those metrics, their hardware just ain't so good at the moment. Go google the issues on the MB and the MBP or pretty much any of the machines over the past few years and you'll see issues.
Now, my point is, we need to keep this in some sort of perspective - can you imagine Dell taking a machine back because it has a soft trackpad button, or the screen doesn't lie flat against the base of the machine? No, nor can I.
So, Apple isn't perfect, it needs to improve its hardware QC and QA (especially on rev 1 kit), but the only real reason they get such a lot of headlines on these issues is because they've set themselves up as Something Better.....live by the sword, you'll die by it too.
Please, take all these reports with a pinch of salt. Out of the set of compromises you always make when buying a new machine, don't let a few hardware imperfections skew your decision unnecessarily harshly, just 'cos some people are reporting them with the aid of a megaphone...perhaps OS X isn't the best choice for you, but there's a fairly good chance that it might be.
DAVE
The site seems to contradict itself when it says "Lenovo managed to tie Apple in each case in the laptop survey" but then says "...Apple also scored an 82, with Lenovo at 69..." Or maybe the numbers are just different than the survey.
I wonder if Apples numbers could be skewed because Apple owners are sort of a special group(no insult or compliment intended by special). There is probably much less brand loyalty among the owners of Windows machines. I also wonder what the price difference is between comparable Apple and Windows machines (if any), and what kind of support and quality that could buy if a Windows vendor would/could/does sell it.
Maybe the lesson to take from the report is that if you're going to buy a Windows box, that you shouldn't buy it from any of the companies listed, because Apple proves that they could do much better.
I wonder if you would get better support if you told them you were a consumer reports member and you always fill out their surveys.
It's because with other companies such as IBM, they actually give a damn. Their Hardware Maintenance Manuals havent really had much of a record of being sued over regarding access. They absolutely, positively make sure the machine is fixed when they are done. If you're out of warranty, the HMM gives you a second out on fixing things from internal speakers to screen replacement(If you've ever disassembled a T series, it's known that you're going to be spending quite a while with all the wires even if you *do* know what each of them do).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
hmmm, all i got out of that was macs are better than pc because they look cooler, have up-to-date wifi cards, and good tech support. Well, the Nintendo Wii looks pretty cool, has an up-to-date wifi card, and I can't even remember a time i need Nintendo's tech support. Screw laptops, buy a Wii! And as an added bonus, you can play games on it without Bootcamping to Windows!
In case anyone cares, I'm a network admin for a place thats mostly all mac. I've ordered 6 of the new Macbooks so far (5 white, 1 black). The most recent white one that we recieved is definitely 'squishy'. You have to move your whole hand to really bare down and push the button.
Han shot first.
Yep! The thing is, whenever you have a company releasing new products that are designed significantly differently than the "norm", or differently than their own previous products, *and* they're not exactly a "market leader" in sales to begin with - you're going to have some flaws in first revisions.
I bought a Macbook Pro about 5 weeks after they were released, and mine arrived completely dead. It was obvious it was getting power, but that was about it. No display or sound.... That was quite irritating, but to Apple's credit, they shipped me a replacement that arrived with absolutely no issues. (None of the buzzing, whining, extreme overheating, sound only out of one speaker, or any of that other stuff you see complaints about on these machines.) I've used it almost every day since then and so far, so good.
I also had a "rev. 1" PowerMac G5 dual 2.0Ghz tower that always seemed to be just a little "flaky". I must have owned it for close to a year, using it all the time, and still couldn't really pin down anything specific. It just crashed a little more often than it should have, and had an above-average number of odd problems with "sleep" mode and so forth, which seemed to always vary with OS X updates. (And yes, I swapped out RAM, reformatted the drives and reinstalled OS X from scratch, etc. etc.) I ended up selling it and getting a newer revision of the exact same PowerMac G5 and to this day, I use this one and it's rock solid by comparison.
So yeah, my recent experience bear out the fact that Apple products are good, but only after you give them a chance to iron out the bugs in a particular model.
Do you mean the quality of the hardware components chip for chip, USB plug for USB plug etc.... it would surprise me if Apple hardware turned up better in such a comparison since Apple sources these components from the same manufacturers as everybody else.
This truism is always brought up in this (and similar) conversations, but I don't buy it.
No manufacturing process has a 0% failure rate. As such, you can "buy" quality by negotiating a price with smaller failure tolerances:
$x per unit with failure tolerance A.
$2x per unit with a failure tolerance of A/2.
Now, I am not saying that Apple does this, but saying that two companies that use the same source will have the same quality is not a straight forward as you think it is.
- Tony
my G4 ibook has had repeated problems with the trackpad. it went back two times and even thoguh I have a few months left on the extended warranty, i just use a usb mouse. in fact, the trackpad problem is exactly why I haven't bought a new MacBook. I am unsure whether I want to go through the hassles again. I am really pissed at apple, I expect to pay a little more, but I expect to get better quality hardware. hell, if I wanted a cheap Dell, I'd buy one and run ubuntu. this doesn't bode well for apple as they've had all these recent problems with the macbooks and MB pro's. I think I'll wait before I buy another apple.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Aren't these devices wont to begin aflame? I'm sure the added kindling won't help!
----
"Those who quote others are more likely to one day be quoted" -Tom Planter
Sigh... you're trolling, but I'll bite:
This is one of the huge problems I have with fanboys... I respect when a machine can look good, but it's hardly something I value very high. Sure, Mom and Dad don't want an ugly machine... but how does the case make a mac a better computer? If toting your macbook around so that people will envy how sexy it looks is what you do, then you have little authority to decide the quality of a computer. There's a word for people like that.
You mentioned previously the hardware in a mac comes from the same place as the rest of the PCs out there, and 'very latest hardware' isn't entirely accurate. Where's the 64 bit CPUs in the mac laptops (or in consumer desktops, for that matter)? For $2000 you get 512MB of RAM and a mid-level graphics card... hardly top of the line. Not to say the other PC manufacturers do better, but your claim of the "very latest" doesn't stand.
So even old, outdated macs are overpriced? I feel a little bad for the person/institution you conned into paying more for a 5 year old system. Also, since when do PCs appreciate in value? I've always recommended that you recycle your old computers by donating them to people or places that need them (there's a soup kitchen in my hometown that took my parents' old packard bell and used it for an accounting computer).
This is kind of an odd way to argue in favor of Apple's support. I'd rather have an actual working product over stellar customer support. I guess I've been rather lucky in that I've only had two products DOA (motherboard and video card) and only one component fail (a stick of RAM). None of those problems existed with entire systems I've purchased; those particular machines have never had a problem, so dealing with customer service was a non-issue.
Do you have any basis to this? What if the machines actually *work*? Then, really, does it even matter if the support is non-existant? (also, you probably wanted to use "obsolete," as "already obsolescent" is kinda awkward (it means "already becoming obsolete"))
LegendMUD
I hear the Apple Store will start selling "Apple Trackpad Origami Paper" soon so that we can all have an Apple Origami folding experience. You'll be able to choose either a plain white piece of paper or pay $30 more for the black paper. Either way, you'll be able to customize the paper with your choice of engravings (up to three lines, 160 characters)*.
* Price/availability of engravings dependent on what printer the store has.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice