Growing Petition Requests Apple Recall MacBook Pro With 'Defective Keyboard' (fortune.com)

Apple might have some explaining to do if a recent petition against its MacBook Pro continues to gain steam. From a report: A petition surfaced this week on Change.org that calls on Apple to recall MacBook Pro units released since late 2016 over what the petition author Matthew Taylor calls a "defective keyboard." The petition seeks 7,500 signatures and as of this writing, it's closing in on 6,200. Judging by the sheer number of signatures coming in each minute, it shouldn't take long for it to hit the goal.

"Apple, it's time: recall every MacBook Pro released since late 2016, and replace the keyboards on all of them with new, redesigned keyboards that just work," the petition reads. It goes on to say that "every one of Apple's current-gen MacBook Pro models, 13-inch and 15-inch, is sold with a keyboard that can become defective at any moment due to a design failure."

Comments

Apple vs Microsoft/Google

[darkain]

When comparing Apple to PC/Microsoft/Windows, and comparing Apple to Google/Android, Apple has always been seen as the higher "quality" product for one very important reason: Apple makes everything and only has higher-end products. In the PC/Android world, there are high-end devices, mid-tier, low-end, extreme-budget devices. Regardless of the outstanding quality of top-tier PC/Android devices out there, their ecosystems as a whole contain the stigma created from their bottom-tier devices. This is why Apple has always seem as "superior" in the multiemedia creation department, despite PCs having absolutely amazing high quality top-tier hardware. I still remember the first time I repaired a Mac computer as a kid, and shocked to see that it used SCSI HDDs instead of IDE. Contrast this to the Microsoft world where the absolute top reason a Windows box will crash will either be faulty hardware or faulty drivers from the hardware manufacturer (both out of MS control, but only reflects upon them and not the hardware vendors)

Since the passing of Steve Jobs, this push to be the best of the best in the hardware world has absolutely faltered. They don't give two fucks about quality anymore, and slowly but surely this is becoming more and more evident every single day. The higher price for assured reliability when purchasing Apple products is no longer there, sadly.

Re:Apple vs Microsoft/Google

[Solandri]

Apple has always been seen as the higher "quality" product for one very important reason: Apple makes everything and only has higher-end products. In the PC/Android world, there are high-end devices, mid-tier, low-end, extreme-budget devices.

Um, have you even looked inside a Macbook? CPU and chipset by Intel, memory by Samsung, SSD by Toshiba, networking by Broadcomm, display by LG, etc. Apple doesn't even make the Macbooks - Quanta does. And Quanta also makes laptops for nearly every other brand. There is no magical unicorn fairy dust inside the Macbooks.

The only hardware Apple makes is their Ax SoCs used in their phones and tablets (and those are manufactured at the same fabs other companies use). Everything else is outsourced, just like every other major computer brand does. The thing that distinguishes Apple products is the software - all that is created in-house. And they do a very good job of it.

This is why Apple has always seem as "superior" in the multiemedia creation department, despite PCs having absolutely amazing high quality top-tier hardware.

The multimedia creation market is tiny. The global movie + TV industry is less than $300 billion. The global music industry is less than $20 billion. Less than half a percent of world GDP. Walmart alone is bigger than those industries combined. Toyota and VW come close. The market for equipment to distribute and watch movies and TV and listen to music is bigger than the markets for content. The MPAA and RIAA are just very vocal about their complaints, since they literally have peoples eyes and ears watching and listening to them. This creates an extremely distorted sense of their importance to the overall economy.

That's why Windows was able to exist without features like color profiles for decades. And when they finally added it natively (Vista) they didn't bother fixing a persistent bug (Windows would lose the profile any time a UAC elevation prompt popped up) until Windows 8. It simply wasn't an important feature to the vast majority of their customers, so the companies which made color profiling equipment and software had to write work-arounds to the bug.

the first time I repaired a Mac computer as a kid, and shocked to see that it used SCSI HDDs instead of IDE. Contrast this to the Microsoft world where the absolute top reason a Windows box will crash will either be faulty hardware or faulty drivers from the hardware manufacturer (both out of MS control, but only reflects upon them and not the hardware vendors)

Windows crashes more often because it has to be designed to be universal - able to work with millions of different pieces of hardware. Apple tightly controls the hardware so only has to design and test their software against a few dozen hardware configurations. The price you pay for this reduced flexibility is (much) higher prices, and having to pay for features you may not need nor want. I've used SCSI drives in many of my PC builds since the early 1990s. SCSI is pointless in single-drive systems, and in many smaller multi-drive systems it adds unnecessary complexity.

Jumped the Shark

[lazarus]

In all seriousness, I've been buying their laptops for over a decade, and I have to tell you that they are now, suddenly, crap. If you've never tried typing on a new Macbook Pro keyboard (the ones in question) I encourage to try one out at an Apple store. It is *literally* like typing on a package of chicklets. They do this big sell job on you about how revolutionary the keys are now, but they don't move at all (well, not much anyway). If you think that the feeling of touch typing on your smartphone's screen is revolutionary, then you'll probably love them. If you still prefer buckling springs on your desktop keyboard then this is about as far away as you could possibly get from that.

I just had a go on a new Thinkpad and Lenovo seems to be going in the other direction - trying to get more travel in their keys. I don't know what Apple is smoking but they're about to throw away a very nice business. It used to be that the best Windows laptop you could buy was an Apple, now there is no way that would be true.

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