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"Maybe It's a Piece of Dust" (theoutline.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: I was in the Grand Central Station Apple Store for a third time in a year, watching a progress bar slowly creep across my computer's black screen as my Genius multi-tasked helping another customer with her iPad. My computer was getting its third diagnostic test in 45 minutes. The problem was not that its logic board was failing, that its battery was dying, or that its camera didn't respond. There were no mysteriously faulty innerworkings. It was the spacebar. It was broken. And not even physically broken -- it still moved and acted normally. But every time I pressed it once, it spaced twice. "Maybe it's a piece of dust," the Genius had offered. The previous times I'd been to the Apple Store for the same computer with the same problem -- a misbehaving keyboard -- Geniuses had said to me these exact same nonchalant words, and I had been stunned into silence, the first time because it seemed so improbable to blame such a core problem on such a small thing, and the second time because I couldn't believe the first time I was hearing this line that it was not a fluke. But this time, the third time, I was ready. "Hold on," I said. "If a single piece of dust lays the whole computer out, don't you think that's kind of a problem?"
Sometime around 2005, I bought my first Thinkpad - second hand because they were pretty expensive machines - from a guy who had bought it overseas. I used it everyday as my work/home machine for about three years including travelling all over the world and taking it out on various work sites.
One day, the left shift key on the worn-smooth keyboard fell off. The clip had worked its way lose and the key no longer had a proper detent. I thought I had had a pretty good run with the thing, but figured I'd see what a spare part would cost. To my amazement, the machine was still under IBM's global warranty. I rang them up on the toll free number, gave them the serial number, and asked if the keyboard was still covered. They said the parts were, but not labour, and asked if I would be able to change the keyboard myself. About 3 days later a new keyboard was couriered to me. I screwed it into place and got another year of use out of it before it just became too slow.
I guess you payed for it in the price back then, but that is how you do customer service.
"Key bounce error".
When you depress a key, any key, the contacts do not perfectly connect; they bounce. Electrical engineers fight key bounce error — basically by trial and error — with debounce by adjusting the computer to read the key input then wait. If there are other bounces within a few milliseconds, they are ignored. Then the computer starts looking for keyboard inputs, again.
When keys go bad— one way that keys go bad is the contacts don't contact-and-release as quickly as expected, and, the computer reads a second key input.
That's why, on some keyboards, the "space bar" goes bad, or the 'E' or the "T" or "A" or "O" or "N"...
"Bouncing is the tendency of any two metal contacts in an electronic device to generate multiple signals as the contacts close or open; debouncing is any kind of hardware device or software that ensures that only a single signal will be acted upon for a single opening or closing of a contact."
From reading TFA.
They keyboard is so integrated - and the spacebar so fragile - that they have to replace the entire top of the MacBook. After the warranty expires, that's a $700.00 repair.
So a piece of dust under the spacebar can lead to a $700.00 repair bill. Nice.
The "Genius" (heh, yeah, right) shows his complete lack of understanding on how something as simple as a switch works. Hell, there aren't even any active components in it. It's just 2 conductive surfaces coming into contact. A crumb might prevent that altogether, or make it so that you would have to press harder in order to get your character. Getting *TWO* characters sounds to me like a cracked trace. This used to happen on heavily used mouse buttons. When you press down on the button lightly, it closes the switch. If you keep pressing and increase the force slightly, it flexes the PCB which expands the crack enough to break the current flow. Then, as you release the pressure, it reconnects again until you completely disengage the switch.
Either way, the solution is simple: REPLACE THE KEYBOARD!
Also, what they hell kind of "diagnostic" are they running that displays a progress bar in a non-interactive way? If there is a problem with the keyboard, you need to interact with it to test it!
Their editor makes use of the Esc button extensively. It's up there on that smudgeglass zone on the new Applebooks.
Everything *is* a logic board problem on the newer Applebooks, because it's all soldered together.
Your hard drive is corrupt? It's part of the logic board.
An area of the memory seems corrupt? It's soldered onto the logic board.
Firstly
From TFA: "The tradeoff for enhanced hygiene and the slimmer profile is that scissor-switch keys are more difficult to separate from their base than rubber-domed ones, but it's not impossible."
Side note, a cat can do this very quickly. Like, five or six keys in less than a second. I've witnessed this personally. I even managed to get most of the keys back on.
Secondly, although he doesn't specifically say, I strongly suspect the root cause wasn't "a piece of dust". He describes the problem as one (1) press of the space bar (where do astronauts go for drinks? never mind) consistently causes two (2) spaces. I'm sorry, that's not mechanical, it's electrical. There's something wrong with the circuitry. Were it a mechanical problem, the symptoms would not be so precisely reproduceable.
As someone else mentioned, "it's dust" is just something the "geniuses" say to appease the unwashed masses. It should be taken with a ... well it shouldn't be believed at all. These are Mac "geniuses" we're talking here.
And finally, if you buy an electronic device that's not meant to be repaired, don't be surprised when repairs are costly, or impossible. There's a lot to be said for (a) staying one or two generations behind the bleeding edge, and (b) buying your products with reliability and maintainability in mind. That is, if your objective is to get work done. If your objective is to own the thinnest laptop on earth, your mileage may vary.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
No - it's less than a year old, and a laptop. He's likely got AppleCare on it, but it would be covered even without it. Apple will fix or replace it for free. They swapped out a 9 month old mini when the HD wouldn't test correctly no questions asked, and it wasn't under AC either.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.