Slashdot Mirror
"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?"
Sorry about that. There was a piece of dust in my "i" key which caused a 1/20ms delay in processing.
You were probably holding it wrong and let the dust in.
If a single piece of dust can spoil your "First!" post, don't you think that's kind of a problem?
Mac laptops are designed for a very specific operating environment -- sitting in a coffee shop and "working on your screenplay" while desperately hoping the cute hipster girl at the next table over asks you what you're working on, so you can casually mention your screenplay. You probably weren't doing that, thus it's your fault.
But holy crap, the touch-bar is a bad bit of UI design. I'm constantly accidentally triggering it. When I'm typing it offers spelling tweaks, so if my finger grazes the touchbar I wind up changing the word I typed unintentionally. I hit the escape (or cancel) button frequently. It's a nightmare. I was curious to try it, but now I wish there was some way I could switch back.
I purchased the second Macintosh model (Fat Mac) in college and had Macs up until about 10 years ago.
So it is with some sadness that I say Apple is no longer special. Whatever Karma Jobs left behind has worn off and now Apple is merely another Tech Company.
Their idea Vault is empty, their commitment to be "insanely great" has waned, and investors are on the verge of turning management into just another, "beat the quarterly earnings forecast" collection of MBAs and bean counters.
I feel privileged to have lived in the time of it's creation, ascension, and total domination. I fear that I will also live to see its demise in the manner of so many alternative computer companies before it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Did they find the fault, or have you made three visits and each time been left with a faulty computer? Were you abandoned with a still broken computer? The summary seems incomplete.
Is this a warning that we need lemon laws for computers as well as cars? At what point does Apple recognize that a repeatable and verifiable problem, even if intermittent, requires a product replacement?
The audacity of Apple giving some minimum-wage tech schlub the title of "Genius" says *everything* about Apple, its branding, and the customers it serves.
-Styopa
Slashdot is a tabloid.
If a single glass of water dumped on it keeps lays the whole computer out, don’t you think that’s some sort of problem?
Um, no. Most failures of most systems are caused by a "single" thing.
Man who apparently breaks the keyboards on all the Mac Book Pros that he has ever owned is upset that all three times he has taken his new Mac Book pro into the Apple Store, the people there have offered him the same solution.
BUY MACALLAN WHISKEY
Finally, on the third trip, he allows them to fix the issue and bitches that it is a more involved process now than when he broke the keyboards on his previous versions.
BUY MACALLAN WHISKEY
IItt aappeeaarrss tthhaatt II aallssoo hhaavvee dduusstt iinn mmyy kkeeyybbooaarrdd........
GGeenniiuusseess ssaavvee mmee!!
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Only Apple has the courage to remove the dust filters.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
One of the things I've learned working in retail; it's better to bullshit than admit ignorance. One gets into a whole realm of magic words and phrases to keep peevish customers from going into asshole mode, and plausible excuses are an important tool. Even if an employee develops a thick skin, the store's customer satisfaction surveys will not.
Think about how many religious people believe "We don't know what happened before the big bang." is a weakness in the theory, or indeed a weakness lurking behind all cosmological science.
In any case, the article says the apple employees were almost certainly correct, so I dunno what you're referring to.
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.
Honestly, it's kind of amazing how quickly it was picked up by all different web sites and blogs! I've probably read 5 different discussions on the original article already this morning.
The thing is? The "Genius" used the wrong terminology, in my opinion, which made things sound worse than they really are. A speck of dust is most assuredly NOT enough to jam up one of the new Apple keyboards. CRUMBS, however, from people eating by the machine? Absolutely possible.
I had one of these "New Macbooks" when it first came out. Ordered the "high spec" configuration to test it out at work, using it as my own personal work computer, to get a feel for what it was and wasn't really capable of doing for us. (We have a lot of highly mobile employees who care more about a computer being lightweight and easy to carry around, plus long battery life, than raw CPU power. So it was potentially a good fit, vs. the Macbook Air 13" machines we've issued to most of them for years.)
I really despised the keyboard design on it. Practically no key travel and just too easy to mistype things when I wasn't purposely typing extra slow. The 2017 edition has a slightly revised variation of the original keyboard and I tried that out at an Apple Store. IMO, still pretty awful, though MARGINALLY better tactile feel.
I finally resold the thing after concluding it just wasn't enough of a full-fledged notebook computer for our needs. (I'd really just classify it as Apple's high-fashion/style idea of a netbook.) But I never had sticking keys on it. With that little bit of key travel though, it's clear to me you're going to have to take extra care to keep this machine clean. (Wash your hands before typing on it if you were just eating some toast or bread, for example.) It won't take much to get some crumbs or grains of sand or salt or what-not in there, messing up one of the small scissor type key-switches under the key-caps.
I'll also say though, in Apple's defense? I've been using one of the latest models of external keyboards that's wireless, with the built-in rechargeable batteries that charge when you connect it via USB. After typing on that one quite a bit at home, still no real key issues. I try to keep it as clean as I can, but don't go to extrodinary lengths to do so either. Maybe the external ones just hold up a little bit better, or it's the fact they're not getting taken around so many different places where the environments aren't always as clean? Whatever the case, it's worked as well as can be expected. Still dislike the limited key travel on the new designs though, vs. what they had previously.
"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."
The touch bar is just the opening volley. Meanwhile Apple is doing the boiled frog thing with key travel, slowly getting users used to less and less key travel.
Eventually, they will probably replace the entire keyboard with a touch-board of some kind and expect that users will simply adjust. I think they've lost the plot somewhere.
Note this is not my original idea -- Merlin Mann mentioned it on the Back to Work podcast and I think he's spot on. And he's a huge Apple fan.
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What kind of dust was it? Cheeto, brake, nose candy? Maybe you were simply traveling too fast? Left somewhere in a hurry? My bet is just that the guy had no clue and just wanted to dust you off.
Think about how many religious people believe "We don't know what happened before the big bang." is a weakness in the theory, or indeed a weakness lurking behind all cosmological science.
As a religious person, I've never understood this. Science says "there was a point in time when nothing existed, and then everything existed." Isn't that what Genesis says? I would think that "Science can't explain what happened before that" isn't a weakness to either science or religion.
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!
Science says "there was a point in time when nothing existed, and then everything existed."
No scientist in their right mind would say that, since by the standard model, time itself was created with the big bang, so there was never "a point in time" at which nothing existed. It doesn't make sense to ask for the "before". So please check your statements, especially when you're trying to speak for science.
Now, the main difference in this matter between science and religion appears to be that religion actually sees it the way you described, i.e. "at some point nothing (except time itself) existed, then some intelligence appeared and created everything else", while science goes the "we don't know, we can't fundamentally find out, therefore speculating in this direction means leaving the bounds of science". There's a slim hope that once we have the right model, going back to t=0 and looking at what's going on COULD provide us with some understanding about how the big bang came to be in ways that we can't anticipate yet.
Either way, pretty big difference, if you ask me.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
There may have once been nothing, not even a substrate or set of laws from which things could emerge. This idea breaks causality. There may always have been something, or at least a substrate or set of laws from which things could emerge. This idea breaks causality. The universe can't possibly have begun, and the universe can't possibly have always existed. Yet here we are.
Scientists don't claim to know why, which many religious people consider a sign of weakness. Religious people claim they do know why, which many scientists consider a weakness. One thing I think we can all agree on is that Apple's design philosophy sucks.
Yeah. Genesis just implies it happened about 14 billion years more recently. If you're willing to accept the bible as period-appropriate ancient fairytales constructed to convey deeper spiritual truths, rather than as a literal record of events, then yeah, there are a *lot* fewer conflicts. Unfortunately that interpretation also tends to rob the clergy of much of their political power, and so you don't see it expressed much within organized religion.
Also, incidentally, there are some theories that assert nothing is still all that exists in aggregate - it's just been divided up in such a way that the pieces no longer cancel out. As a gross oversimplification: gravitational potential energy is all negative - we only see gravitational "holes" that things fall towards, not "hills" that they fall away from. And the positive mass-energy of the "stuff" creating the "holes" would perfectly cancel out the negative energy created by the "hole" itself. Shove the entire universe - space, time, mass, and energy, into a sufficiently powerful blender and hit "frappe", and the whole of it will combine back into non-existence.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It's not dust; it's spores that have "contaminated" the keyboard enclosure.
You see, spores (such as from Psilocybe cubensis) are the basis of the universe.
They are everywhere, sometimes manifested in our physical plane, but always existing
everywhere on the mycoplane of Space. At the lowest level, biology is physics, and
physics recapitulates biology -- they are the same thing. It's all quantum, you see.
Your problem is that you've got a stuck spore. You need to energize it properly,
and it will instantly transmit (quantum spore teleport) the key's signal to any part
of the UNICODE. Your brain will function as the quantum sentience that directs
the action, so that instead of a SPACE, you'll get the correct symbol pressed.
(This is related to why sometimes electronics gear that has not been stored
properly for a while will spew out "dust" when you fire it up, or why sometimes
it seems like there are dead cockroaches or mouse turds inside the box.)
SOLUTION:
The Genius Bar is actually stocked with dehydrated tardigrades.
If the moisture (liquid spill incursion) sensor in your Mac has not been triggered,
an Apple representative can insert a tardigrade into your machine along with an
eyedropper of water. Using horizontal DNS zone transfer (I think that's what it's
called; something to do with binding, anyway) the tardigrade will interact with
and energize the spore, curing your SPACE key bounce problem. This is known as
a "key de-bounce" procedure. If your tech doesn't seem to know all this just
have him look it up in the knowledge base; it's standard.
Just make sure he doesn't hold the tardigrade wrong, or your laptop will
start spinning and twisting, ad the end result will not be pretty.
I paid $6 to learn all this, by the way.
What they are really trying to say is, "stop eating over your keyboard. You've got so much cruft in there, I'm surprised any of your keys work. Dried Pepsi, cat hair, and Cornflakes are not good for your keyboard."
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
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.
I'd say the primary weakness of religion is that whatever is believed in is by definition untangible/undetectable/unprovable/etc,
I think you've mistaken the point of religion. The belief that it's better to wait to have kinds until after you're married is certainly measurable and testable, as are beliefs like "delaying gratification will get you ahead in the long run" and "it's good to keep a month's supply of necessities hidden away".
Looking to religion for scientific statements is as silly as looking to science for a moral code, and certainly isn't the reason religions persisted for millennia. You have to be a certain kind of nuts to think that e.g. it matters to the point of the story of Cain and Able whether two brothers with those names actually existed.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
From the perspective of their relative 'policy statements', I'd think that science would say "We need to characterize 'nothing' beyond our current understanding of spacetime and matter/energy", rather than "You don't know either, so you suck" (sorry if I'm misstating this).
Of course, humans typically identify better with the latter, which is why such arguments probably do better in the arena of public discourse. Maybe science's PR could maybe learn something from that.
Looking to religion for scientific statements is as silly as looking to science for a moral code, and certainly isn't the reason religions persisted for millennia.
Yes, this.
Or, as I like to put it... science is trying to answer the questions of "what" and "how", religion is trying to answer the question of "why".