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Class Action Suit Filed Against Apple Over the Keyboards in MacBook Pro and MacBook Laptops (theoutline.com)
On Friday, Apple was hit with a class action lawsuit over the butterfly-switch keyboards, found on the current generation MacBook Pro and MacBook lineups, that have plagued its customers since they were released in 2015. The suit, filed in the Northern District Court of California, alleges that Apple "promoted and sold laptops it knew were defective in that they contain a keyboard that is substantially certain to fail prematurely," The Outline reports, and that selling these computers not only directly to its customers but also to third party retailers constitutes a violation of good faith. From the report: The Outline was the first outlet to substantially cover the magnitude of the issue, writing that Apple Geniuses responsible for diagnosing and repairing these Apple computers would benevolently attribute dead keys and double-spacing spacebars to a "piece of dust" stuck under the keyboard. Under Apple's warranty, Geniuses might offer to replace the entire top case of the computer, a process that takes about a week. Out of warranty, it costs about $700 to replace this part on a MacBook Pro. Apple has declined repeatedly to comment on the issue, but directs sufferers to a support page that instructs users how to tilt the computer at an angle, blow canned air under the malfunctioning keys, light candles arranged in the shape of a pentagram, and recite an incantation to Gaia in hopes of fixing their machines. Earlier this month, users kickstarted a petition on Change.org that calls on Apple to recall MacBook Pro units released since late 2016 over the defective keyboard. The petition has garnered about 20,000 signatures. Widely respected iOS developer and Apple commentator Marco Arment tweeted on the news, "We can't know for sure that Apple knew the 2016 keyboards were defective and sold them anyway. But it's hard to see how they couldn't have known. They were released 18 months earlier in the 12" MacBook, and those had the same problems with high failure rates from the start."
In most companies, if the first tier of tech support is unable to resolve your issue it gets escalated to a 2nd tier of support personnel. At Apple it gets escalated to black hole, requiring customers to file class actions to get resolution.
Hopefully the judge comes to his senses and tosses this lawsuit out.
I considered getting a new MacBook last year and typed a little on the new keyboards. All in all I felt they were an improvement. I am also the type of person who keeps their devices relatively clean and tidy. Which has me wondering: Are these accusations grounded in facts? Are the new keyboards susceptible to failure due to dust and dirt? What are your experiences if you've got one of those?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I guess these are for laptops on the go.
I've got several laptops, I generally don't open the lid though or use the built in keyboard, I hook it up to a tv via HDMI and use a logitech keyboard/mouse with a wireless USB dongle.
Doesn't everyone?
Buy a new one and replenish the warranty.
I haven't had extensive experience with these new keyboards. But my expectation of any keyboard is that it keeps working even if it gets a little dirty. My work laptop (an MSI with a thin "scissor" type keyboard) deals well with dirt, if a breadcrumb works its way under a key and blocks it, I just mash the key to break the crumb and keep working, and vacuum out the debris later. From what I hear, these Apple keyboards are very susceptible to dirt and mashing the keys doesn't help.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
maybe not....
A negative Apple story posted by msmash? Must be that day of the week that ends with "-day".
I considered getting a new MacBook last year and typed a little on the new keyboards. All in all I felt they were an improvement. I am also the type of person who keeps their devices relatively clean and tidy. Which has me wondering: Are these accusations grounded in facts? Are the new keyboards susceptible to failure due to dust and dirt? What are your experiences if you've got one of those?
Bought a MacBook about a bit over a year and a half ago. Soon after I got it some of the keys started 'collapsing', i.e. the butterfly structures under some of the the keys got caught under some kind of plastic structure the butterfly was attacked to. The keyboard still worked but the affected keys just didn't resist when you pressed them and then pop back up after you released them. Anyway, took it in for a keyboard replacement which they did free of charge and without a word of complaint. It has worked fine since then except a tiny amount of paint has started to peel from the inside of the 'A' and 'S' keys that is mildly irritating but then again I have a whole bunch of PC laptops at work which have the a similar problem of letters wearing off of the most used keys which is a problem easily fixed by simply replacing the keys which is a 60 second process. The whole keyboard replacement episode was a bit of an inconvenience but I won't be filing any class action lawsuits over it. The MacBook is the weight and size of a tablet but way more flexible, the keyboard feels different but then it has to in order to make the laptop that small, it's a trade-off. I'm not a militant fan of extremely springy mechanical keyboards so I'm generally happy with it, the compactness of the laptop matters more to me than the feel of the keyboard. As always your milage may vary.
Posting as AC because I work as an Apple service tech during the day.
These systems are probably the worst computers Apple has ever produced. The failure rate on them is astoundingly bad- so bad in fact, that the shop I work for is thinking about getting out of the Apple repair business just because we can't adequately support our customers when servicing these machines. We want to, but our hands are completely tied. It's a crap shoot if we can even get new chassis in stock these days (the keyboard is riveted to the lower chassis, which also contains the non-removable battery pack and a few other components). More and more we've been having to send the entire machine into Apple for servicing, at which point they just send you back someone else's refurb (yes, really, this is becoming an extremely common occurrence when servicing any of their portables) and you get to go through the whole process again when that inevitably breaks.
We've been swamped with these machines to the point that it's been clogging up our service centre for other customers with different machines. On any given week, there's as few as 5 machines awaiting parts (or to be shipped to Apple) and as many as 12. It's usually the keyboard that fails- either one or more keys refuse to work properly, or in some cases we've seen the entire board go tits up and totally scramble the input of the keys (ie, C types Z, J becomes backspace, etc). Other failures include bad or cracked touch bars (don't ask me how these get shattered so often, people keep swearing that they opened up their system one day and it was cracked- I'm starting to think the glass is shattering under the thermal stress from being positioned near the hot end of the system) and logic board failures presumably due to overheated components (we can't perform board level service on these machines, but that hasn't stopped me from putting a few systems under a microscope and poking around- there's a few power related ICs that seem to love blowing up and killing the entire system).
All in all, I've never seen anything like it. Our owner is pissed off enough he's thinking about dropping Apple entirely and pushing our customers to convert. We do service PC laptops, but it's rare we see keyboard issues with those that can't be fixed in 15 minutes using a $30 replacement part. With the MBPs, it's a $900 CAD piece, and you can't just buy one from Apple- you have to go through GSX to requisition one and send back the old part after you've removed it (they REALLY don't want spare parts getting out onto the second hand market). But again, that's assuming they're even in stock. The last time I was able to order a lower chassis was three weeks ago, and we've had to ship in about two dozen systems since then (which won't come back for 1-2 weeks).
Anyways, if you want my professional opinion- stay away from these machines. They're defective by design and Apple is clearly buckling under the service load (we're seeing something similar with the iMac Pro as well). I don't know what the fuck they're smoking over there these days, but it's nothing good. A keyboard should not be an integral part of a computer like this. It should be easily removable and serviced without having to scrap half the chassis in the process. Apple fucked up big time here, and it's finally swinging around to bite them in the ass. They won't admit it though, it's more likely you'll see some reference to a vague repair program in a few months promising to fix "affected" machines (hint: they're all affected).
If you bought a 3k laptop in which half the keys didn't work i bet you'd be pissed too.
Except nobody that actually bought one is complaining.
When I was younger I thought "oo a class action lawsuit! I could get free money and we'll show that evil corporation who's boss!" Now that I'm older that feels like it is only half-right. Oh I might get a little money or I might get my suit-worthy crap replaced with slightly improved crap. The corporation will get slapped with a nice penalty for being evil, but the only real winners are the lawyers. I'll probably take that free money and spend it on more of said evil corp's crap and evil corp will go right on existing and producing crap. The lawyers walk away with a fat paycheck.
In short, lawsuits might feel like you're flexing your consumerist muscle, but a boycott would work better. Especially if it got the attention of investors who are willing to sell their stock.
Are you sure you are holding it right?
Recently, I was prompted to install an OSX update. It bricked my laptop on reboot. Fortunately the installer was on a separate partition and I could boot back into the previous OS, but I have NEVER seen such shitty software releases from Apple in 14 years of usage. Ever since Steve died the company is ruder-less.
"Not complaining" in a good tradition of crapple cult followers. Crapple shills and cheerleaders will mock any heretic to the point of committing suicide.
A dumb shill replying to a completely unrelated issue - you must be some kind of special retard. Aren't you all, iSheeple?
That's a very likely scenario.
Stupid fuck Jony Ive the imbecile is running all the "design". I bet that the fatass bastard is telling every sane engineer to shut up or else.
I can't believe you admit to owning an Apple product from last year! That alone proves you're not really supportive of Apple and just using the failed hardware as an excuse to bash the company like the hater you are...
/sarc (do I really need it? In the day and age of ACs, probably yes...)
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
No they aren't, because Apple categorizes every complaint as a positive customer review,
If you bought a 3k laptop in which half the keys didn't work i bet you'd be pissed too.
But wait, aren't all Apple users happy with their 'experience'/'journey' with Apple products, which as we all know cost more but, "just works"? /s
"Not complaining" in a good tradition of musk cult followers. tesla shills and cheerleaders will mock any heretic to the point of committing suicide.
Fixed that for you. Tesla’s shit auto pilot just crashed again.
Generally Apple had top notch quality. This keyboard thing is an abberation.
Apple usually is in another class compared to the Wintel Crap vendors and their race to the bottom.
Isn't that 'whataboutism'?
Apple produces the Buick product in a world of Chevrolets.
Quit with the 'Mercedes' bullshit.
Itâ(TM)s not Ive, itâ(TM)s Timmy Cock fault
I've said many times on Slashdot that my keyboard is shit.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
So in your mind, a fast charging battery is more important than a keyboard that works?? Wow.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Whiners should be paid in round hockey puck mice
However the new macs are both awesomely nice and one of the word set of ergonomic choices ever since the puck mouse.
The touchbar is aweful for some people because just the slightest graze acts cares the key. No mechanical press tequired. I'm constantly activating the music pls button or hitting the escape key by accident . Since the keys move around there is no muscle memory and you have to look with your eyes to find the key to want. It sucks.
Astonishingly the track pad has finally reached a size where you can argue it's too large . It eats any use of the surface as a palm rest. Lots of accidental mousing results.
And the stroke depth on the keys is too shallow for what I've become used to. It feels hard against my fingers at the bottom . I dislike it compared to the old one.
But hell as far as durability goes this is vastly better than the crap HP serves up as a keyboard
Its just not up to apple level expectations.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Oh come on, Firetrucks are VERY hard to see in the open road.
Gone are the days when a corporation would acknowledge a problem and fix it. Now it takes lawsuits to get anything done. It would've been cheaper for Apple to acknowledge and fix the issue. As another poster stated, the 2nd tier of Apple's support is the class action lawsuit.
Mercedes had several systemic quality issues, too.
ECUs dying, Rust, injectors dying way too fast, etc.
As Job was fond of saying to Cook: "My kongfu is better than yours."
Cook's reality distortion field just isn't quite up to snuff.
(Yes, I made up the quote.)
1) An automobile is way more expensive then a laptop, 2) Automobile warranty's last way longer than on a laptop, 3) What does this have to do with anything? So Mercedes sucks as well apparently. That's between Mercedes and their customers.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
What I am saying is that Apple has a history of excellent products, just like Mercedes. They also have similar pricing differentials to crap vendors.
And sometimes they fail in some way. But saying that their products ate generally crap is the opposite of the truth.
Apple has had much worse problems with laptop keyboards in the past, so this is exaggerated.
My first Apple laptop was a 17" PowerBook in 2003. The G key was obviously broken out of the box. I had to fight to get it replaced and threatening a chargeback on a $3,500 laptop didn't even work. It took about 14 weeks to get it fixed because the part was new and the repair depot didn't have it in stock yet. I bought an iBook to make do while the PowerBook was gone, and I had to replace the keyboard twice. Admittedly, I was volunteer teaching a programming class in a middle school at the time and letting students use my laptop so that was hard use. At least the iBook keyboard was very easy to replace. My next laptop was a late-2008 MacBook. The left cmd key broke the first week. A little tab on the bottom of the key broke so it wouldn't stay in place. It took me about two years of going to Apple stores before I finally found one that happened to have a spare keycap of that key. Well, it was the other cmd key, so the label on the key was backwards. On my late-2012 MacBook Pro Retina, the keys would sometimes stick since either the case or the keyboard was a little off. That fixed itself for all of the commonly used keys after a few months of typing. The keycaps on the most commonly used keys are flaking plastic off. I've cut myself several times. I sent it back for repair the last week before AppleCare expired, and Apple annoyingly returned it without replacing the keycaps.
With my late 2016 MacBook Pro that I bought used about a year ago, I haven't had any problems with the keyboard. It's the first Apple laptop I haven't had keyboard problems with (well, at least yet). I eat at my desk and smoke while using the laptop, so I'm pretty much a worst-case user. Also, I work in a former warehouse without AC and my window is just above the building's loading dock so I get a lot of disgusting black, oily exhaust fumes on everything, but that hasn't caused a problem with the keyboard.
> flaking plastic off
Which just pisses me off since AppleCare doesn't cover "normal wear and tear." I manage a bunch of laptops that graphic artists use, and they hate the ugly keys on their laptops. We've sent several back for repairs, and they came back without replacement keys. Picture of one of them:
https://i.imgur.com/W0n0w5l.jpg
this cant be right, The Apple brain washing technique strictly prohibits an uprising against their over-lords, lets they be exposed to APPLE EX-COMMUNICATION. Regardless, remember the TYPICAL APPLE ELITEIST CRAPITITUDE " We are not the enemy, but if you do not blindly follow, your individual thinking will be seen as an act as an enemy to which we simply cannot tolerate."
Thus, I know this is a fucking lie, I mean, whom apart of the collective would attack the collective, right?
fucking stupid bitch..
take responsibility for your stupid antics, and how they affect your community. Stupid worthless bittch.
Personally I really don't like the new keyboard, I still use my older 15 inch pro for work and love going back to that keyboard. On the reliability front, I'm not sure what causes the failures (dust or otherwise) but mine failed within 3 months of buying it (which is about 5 months ago now). It was the spacebar that went on mine, it just stopped clicking every few taps. At the same time I had problems with the track pad too, conveniently they have to replace the whole top of the computer (including battery) to replace the keyboard since it's all glued together. Given how slow Apple have been updating their hardware these last few years and the restrictions, I'm planning to go hackintosh until they get their act together again.
You’re lying.
Mine is shit too. Noisy as hell compared to the thicker mushier keys on my old laptop, the arrow up/down keys only register if you press them hard enough (press them softly, and it feels like the key came down all the way but it doesn't register as a key press), the return key stopped working one day (but started working again after some strong wiggling, probably one of those infamous specks of dust), I can't wait for the next key to fail.
And don't get me started on the control strip above the keyboard, which would be great if it didn't register the slightest accidental brush of a partial finger as "send mail" or "clear calculator input" etc. That thing really ought to be force sensitive. (Fortunately the "Send Mail" button in Mail can be disabled in the settings). But I digress, that's not really a mechanical defect, just a bad design choice.
"apple usually is in another class' action lawsuit; yes.
Oh fuck off, fanboi.
what apple is worse at. Hardware or software.
but apple didnt get bought by ms or sun or hp or ibm.
I can confirm that Apple is censoring posts about the lawsuit on their forums. I had posts deleted for mentioning it in a thread about the keyboard problems. If history is a good indication, that means they are aware these is a problem and it will follow the typical Apple playbook, which unfolds step by step through 1-2 years on every issue: - Deny there is a problem, attempt censorship - Blame the users - When users get fed up, receive lawsuit notifications. - Admit that some units are defective, but claim the number is small - Settle with a crappy repair program It's the same steps every time they want to cover a design flaw.
Both are deal-killers for me. I have a 2014 MBP and it's fine but Apple would have to fix these two issues for me to upgrade. I just bought a 1 TB SSD and 4 GB of RAM to add to an old 17 inch 2008 MBP - better keyboard than everything that has come after. I usually hook up a mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Blues to my systems and only use the built-in keyboard when I'm at a coffee shop or otherwise mobile. So Apple: 1) fix the keyboards, 2) fix the video, 3) update the Mini, 4) Update the Pro. Give a little love to your Macs.
This. A thousand times, this. The mechanical parts of the keyboard are fine by comparison. No real problems, or at least none worse than my previous machines, which all occasionally had crumb problems (easily solved by massaging the key). But the touchbar? The touch bar needs to die in a fire. It is a perfect example of what SJ meant when he said that his most important job was saying no. Someone else should have said it, but apparently, nobody did, and as a result, we have the single most flaky laptop in the history of computing, constantly doing things that the user did not expect, all because somebody thought, "Let's add touch to the Mac, but let's not do it with an actual touchscreen." F**king wankers.
My previous MacBook Pro, as much as the bad top speaker annoyed me, was a great machine until some dirtbag stole it out of my car in a church parking lot. Now, I have this touchbar travesty, and I'm not amused.
The touchbar is orders of magnitude too sensitive, to the point that it is almost completely and utterly useless. I would estimate that fewer than one percent of detected touchbar touches were intentional. The rest were accidental triggers. It's so bad that I've literally disabled all of the touchbar buttons except for screen brightness, escape, keyboard brightness, and volume, and even with a mostly-empty touchbar, I STILL trigger them accidentally enough to be annoying. On my work machine, I even disabled the volume controls, because I kept accidentally unmuting it in the office while typing, and then wondered why I kept hearing Mail playing sounds every time an email arrived.
My favorite touchbar hassle is its behavior in Finale, where I routinely have to hold down modifier keys while hitting numbers. The probability of accidentally touching the touchbar while doing that approaches 100%, and to make matters worse, there's an undocumented "feature" where if you hold down option and touch the touchbar, it opens System Preferences to the related pane (e.g. the Sound preferences pane if you option-touch the volume buttons). In theory, that sounds like a good idea. In practice, there have been days when I've launched System Preferences accidentally more than twenty times in a single editing session.
The touchbar is, to be frank, so bad that I would gladly PAY Apple to replace it with a normal keyboard. That option was never available in the 15" model, or else I would never have gotten a touchbar to begin with, because frankly, it seemed like a gimmick, and I use the escape key a lot... but before I bought it, I never in my wildest dreams would have imagined that it would be anywhere near as bad as it is. I expected the escape key to be a headache. I didn't expect to have to basically disable the whole d**n touchbar just to get any work done.
So what can be done to fix it? The most guaranteed-reliable fix would be to put touch sensors in the upper row of keys. If you're hovering over the upper row of keys, any touchbar touch is pretty much guaranteed to be an accident. You *might* be able to solve it by using pressure sensing, but the better solution from a touch perspective would be actually ensuring that the touch happens somewhere in the vicinity of the middle of the touch bar vertically, rather than near the bottom edge. If they made it ignore all touches in the bottom half of the strip, that would probably take care of most of the problems most of the time. That might even be possible to do in software.
What I don't understand is how the folks in Apple's upper management could have believed that this worked well enough to ship it. We use MacBook Pros at work, and out of my
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The Tesla was in highway speed mode, doing over 60 mph. In this setting it purposely ignores stationary objects, else it would be braking constantly. In using this mode the human driver should have been alert for such an obvious obstacle, but was not. The driver survived with minor type injuries.
You've been sitting on an order of broken laptops for two months? Man if that was me, during the second week I'd have drove to Dell headquarters and starting slapping people with broken laptops.
"Except nobody that actually bought one is complaining."
Hard to complain online when the fucking keyboard doesn't work.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Prayers to Gaia? How is Captain Planet supposed to help?
Can't even make a decent laptop any more.
What a shame, what a turnaround.
Borrringg apple apology.
'Nuff said.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
If your keyboard is broken, you can't go and buy an Apple keyboard if you work in any industry that has mandatory security audits as all their new keyboards are wireless only and won't pass unless you work in a faraday cage.
I've said many times on Slashdot that my keyboard is shit.
Actually, all you DO on Slashdot is bitch about Apple, and then continue to support the platform with your iOS Development.
Why don't you just Develop for Android if you hate Apple so much, fucktard?
Do you have Parkinson's much?
1. There seems to be plenty of space between the center of the top row of keys to the bottom of the Touchbar to avoid "Accidental Touches" by all but the most ham-fisted "Typists".
2. If it bothers you that much, simply park an external keyboard (with a "real" ESC key!) in front of your MBP. Yes, it's a bit of a kludge, but since you can purchase a wireless keyboard for as little as $14 at Walmart, I have little sympathy for you. I did that when my work Samsung Laptop (which has a difficult-to-replace keyboard), suffered some key failures. It was that, or throw out an otherwise perfectly-functioning laptop.
3. You CAN disable the Touchbar in s/w. Have you tried this?
https://github.com/LumingYin/T...
Having said that, I DO believe Apple should update their TouchBar driver or firmware to include some sort of "sensitivity" or "glancing-blow" detection/adjustment, kind of like with the Trackpad. Another fix would be to mount the entire TouchBar on a "spring-loaded" mount; so that a bit of down-force (albeit anywhere on the TB) would be required to "register" a Tap. If Apple can make a "clicky" Trackpad, then they could easily do that.
I'm sympathetic, but frankly it's your own damned fault for buying Apple hardware.
It's not like they don't have a history of this sort of thing, but you still keep buying their over-priced consumer-unfriendly stuff - This tells them that what they are doing is okay!
Given how opposed they are to the right of consumers to repair their own stuff, I find it funny they are even giving you suggestions on how to fix the problem yourselves, nevermind the fact that that advice doesn't really help.
Wow. Ad hominem, three hacky solutions, then admission that there might be a problem anyway. The Kool Aid is strong with you bro. And I say this as a Mac user myself.
... for being stupid enough to buy Apple products.
Most Apple users don't have a clue how a computer works, hence they buy Apple because they think it will be easier to use than a 'scary' PC.
Classic apple apologist. You are an idiot
I know at least two...
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
3. You CAN disable the Touchbar in s/w. Have you tried this?
You mean he can disable the ESC and F-keys he just told you he actually needs in software? That seems super helpful!
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Well, I had an issue with my F key for a while, with two commercial air filters in my apartment and a dust cover on the keyboard, so I'm going to say yes, even if you keep your laptop clean and free of dust, these issues are real.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
You're in a church parking lot. Right away, you're in a place where two types of people gather: Those who lie and fool others for a living and are commended for it, and those who have been led to gullibility... people taught to believe in their own personal brand of deity, who will help them conquer their enemies and non-believers and send believers to permanent torture when they do not follow the deity's rules... which include threatening small children and women.
Don't you see you're in a bad place to begin with? You need help. Once you get away from that environment you will realize what a danger the churches are to society. You have value, and it can be best shown by first getting off your knees and brushing yourself off.
3. You CAN disable the Touchbar in s/w. Have you tried this?
You mean he can disable the ESC and F-keys he just told you he actually needs in software? That seems super helpful!
Actually, I kinda doubt it's that big of a problem.
I Googled for about a half hour, and I only turned-up about two reports of this "Hyper-Sensitivity" he spoke of. I don't doubt he experiences it; but if it was THAT much of an issue, Apple would have released a Firmware/Driver update to adjust sensitivity by now. Something as simple as defining the "hot spot" as a much smaller zone, instead of the entire "button" rectangle, and/or requiring a longer press, and/or a "larger" press, immediately come to mind.
I never claimed it was a problem, only that the proposed solution was unhelpful.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
That's a really a**hole thing to say to someone who has a close family member who is suffering from tremors. Shame on you.
Seems is the operative word. The most common situation in which I see this happening is when I have to hit option and a far-off number key (e.g. 7) with the left hand between mouse clicks with the right. In that situation, it isn't the finger on the key that brushes the touch bar, but rather my middle finger, which has no safe place to rest. Yes, these sorts of chording behaviors are un-ergonomic as heck, but they make note entry fast as long as you don't have a touchbar popping open System Preferences all the time and taking you completely out of the app.
A bit? I bought a laptop, not a desktop. I shouldn't have to use an external keyboard just because some engineer thought that putting a touch-sensitive strip less than an eighth of an inch from active keys was a good idea.
The right fix would have been to put the touchbar above the function key row, rather than replacing it. If almost nobody uses those keys (which is probably the case, with the exception of escape), then they would serve as an adequate buffer zone. But that doesn't fit the narrative of those being useless legacy baggage, so....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
That's a really a**hole thing to say to someone who has a close family member who is suffering from tremors. Shame on you.
You are entirely correct. Please accept my sincere apology for my unknowing gaffe and insensitivity.
Seems is the operative word. The most common situation in which I see this happening is when I have to hit option and a far-off number key (e.g. 7) with the left hand between mouse clicks with the right. In that situation, it isn't the finger on the key that brushes the touch bar, but rather my middle finger, which has no safe place to rest. Yes, these sorts of chording behaviors are un-ergonomic as heck, but they make note entry fast as long as you don't have a touchbar popping open System Preferences all the time and taking you completely out of the app.
Perhaps you should adjust your "chording" a bit. I am really not trying to be snarky.
A bit? I bought a laptop, not a desktop. I shouldn't have to use an external keyboard just because some engineer thought that putting a touch-sensitive strip less than an eighth of an inch from active keys was a good idea.
well, you can continue to bitch about the keyboard you can't change, or find a way to deal with it. But I think you are much more interested in the former "solution"
The right fix would have been to put the touchbar above the function key row, rather than replacing it. If almost nobody uses those keys (which is probably the case, with the exception of escape), then they would serve as an adequate buffer zone. But that doesn't fit the narrative of those being useless legacy baggage, so....
Well,that might be one solution, and my suggestion for Apple to "fix it in software", might be another...
That's a really a**hole thing to say to someone who has a close family member who is suffering from tremors. Shame on you.
You are entirely correct. Please accept my sincere apology for my unknowing gaffe and insensitivity.
No worries. To be fair, I chuckled a bit. :-)
Seems is the operative word. The most common situation in which I see this happening is when I have to hit option and a far-off number key (e.g. 7) with the left hand between mouse clicks with the right. In that situation, it isn't the finger on the key that brushes the touch bar, but rather my middle finger, which has no safe place to rest. Yes, these sorts of chording behaviors are un-ergonomic as heck, but they make note entry fast as long as you don't have a touchbar popping open System Preferences all the time and taking you completely out of the app.
Perhaps you should adjust your "chording" a bit. I am really not trying to be snarky.
Absolutely, though it turns out to be easier said than done. The easier solution, albeit a partial one, was just to make sure the parts of the touchbar that my middle finger gets near when holding option-6 through option-8 with my left hand are blank. That at least makes it tolerable.
A bit? I bought a laptop, not a desktop. I shouldn't have to use an external keyboard just because some engineer thought that putting a touch-sensitive strip less than an eighth of an inch from active keys was a good idea.
well, you can continue to bitch about the keyboard you can't change, or find a way to deal with it. But I think you are much more interested in the former "solution"
That's not a solution. At best it's a workaround, and isn't very practical when I'm not at home. The thing is, a lot of folks at Apple read Slashdot. Complaining about it might not solve the problem for me, but at least it might get somebody's attention who can solve it (whether through software or future design changes).
The biggest problem with the touchbar, honestly, is that the software that drives it is so underdeveloped. They provide support for app developers to customize it for a particular app, but they don't support letting users customize it for a specific app. (You can only choose between a few predefined sets or a single custom set.) If I could make the touchbar show nothing in Finale, show only the escape key in Terminal, etc. without fragile third-party hacks, it would be a lot less horrid. And the lack of touch sensitivity/glancing blow detection is just one of many examples of them shipping this hardware before the software was really ready.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Not complaining or not being listened to.
I've said many times on Slashdot that my keyboard is shit.
Considering you don't buy Apple products: so?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
That's a really a**hole thing to say to someone who has a close family member who is suffering from tremors. Shame on you.
You are entirely correct. Please accept my sincere apology for my unknowing gaffe and insensitivity.
No worries. To be fair, I chuckled a bit. :-)
You Insensitive Clod! ;-)
Seems is the operative word. The most common situation in which I see this happening is when I have to hit option and a far-off number key (e.g. 7) with the left hand between mouse clicks with the right. In that situation, it isn't the finger on the key that brushes the touch bar, but rather my middle finger, which has no safe place to rest. Yes, these sorts of chording behaviors are un-ergonomic as heck, but they make note entry fast as long as you don't have a touchbar popping open System Preferences all the time and taking you completely out of the app.
Perhaps you should adjust your "chording" a bit. I am really not trying to be snarky.
Absolutely, though it turns out to be easier said than done. The easier solution, albeit a partial one, was just to make sure the parts of the touchbar that my middle finger gets near when holding option-6 through option-8 with my left hand are blank. That at least makes it tolerable.
Ok.
A bit? I bought a laptop, not a desktop. I shouldn't have to use an external keyboard just because some engineer thought that putting a touch-sensitive strip less than an eighth of an inch from active keys was a good idea.
well, you can continue to bitch about the keyboard you can't change, or find a way to deal with it. But I think you are much more interested in the former "solution"
That's not a solution. At best it's a workaround, and isn't very practical when I'm not at home. The thing is, a lot of folks at Apple read Slashdot. Complaining about it might not solve the problem for me, but at least it might get somebody's attention who can solve it (whether through software or future design changes).
The biggest problem with the touchbar, honestly, is that the software that drives it is so underdeveloped. They provide support for app developers to customize it for a particular app, but they don't support letting users customize it for a specific app. (You can only choose between a few predefined sets or a single custom set.) If I could make the touchbar show nothing in Finale, show only the escape key in Terminal, etc. without fragile third-party hacks, it would be a lot less horrid. And the lack of touch sensitivity/glancing blow detection is just one of many examples of them shipping this hardware before the software was really ready.
I'd complain on MacRumors, too...
And to be fair, unless it has gotten a LOT better since I last dealt with it in 1988 or so (which is ENTIRELY possible!), Finale was not the most well-thought-out UI experience. Afterall, it is a high-end Music COMPOSITION and ARRANGEMENT tool; not "Performance" software.
It has gotten a lot better since 1988. But it is still just for composition and arrangement, not performance. Those weird key combinations I described are ways of changing the duration of notes as you enter them. You choose (for example) the eighth note tool, click in or hit enter to place the note, then hit option-# to change it from an eighth note to the actual duration that you intended. Once you know the key combinations, you can key stuff in much more quickly.
There are also keyboard combinations for things like articulations, where if you want something to be staccato (for example), you can choose the articulation tool and hold down the 'S' key while clicking, rather than clicking and then searching for the dot in the resulting menu afterwards.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It has gotten a lot better since 1988. But it is still just for composition and arrangement, not performance. Those weird key combinations I described are ways of changing the duration of notes as you enter them. You choose (for example) the eighth note tool, click in or hit enter to place the note, then hit option-# to change it from an eighth note to the actual duration that you intended. Once you know the key combinations, you can key stuff in much more quickly.
There are also keyboard combinations for things like articulations, where if you want something to be staccato (for example), you can choose the articulation tool and hold down the 'S' key while clicking, rather than clicking and then searching for the dot in the resulting menu afterwards.
As I said, not the best thought-out UI experience.
But why not just "enter" using a MIDI keyboard? Finale has supported that even back when I used it. That HAS to be the fastest way to enter music into Finale. Even one of those mini keyboard controllers, like the Korg one, would be better than entering music via point-n-click. Sure, you'll have to go back and put in your articulation stuff (like the Stacatto dots); but it gets the raw ideas down quickly.
I once worked at a High School Computer Lab, and one of the more tech-savvy English teachers would bring classes down to the lab to do English Comp. assignments on our 30+ Apple ][ computers and AppleWorks. She taught an interesting way, that has stuck with me. She taught "Get your thoughts down. Don't fret the spelling, punctuation, or even most grammar." Since it is a word-processor, those things are easy to go back and correct in a second-pass. But getting your thoughts down is the most important thing at first.
So, I am saying, the same thing goes for writing music. "Scribble it out" first with the AGO keyboard, then use your mouse and computer keyboard to edit.
> I Googled for about a half hour, and I only turned-up about two reports of this "Hyper-Sensitivity" he spoke of.
I have no problem believing everything he says.
Many years ago I bought a MacBook. The OS had this annoying mouse acceleration curve which was actually a step function, e.g. under N pixels/second and the multiplier was 1.0, over N pixels/second and it was 2.0, etc. It was unimaginably annoying as I tended to move the mouse at a speed right on the threshold, so it would constantly jump between two speeds.
So, I figure, why not just turn it off? Well, Apple in their infinite wisdom decided that having two sliders for mouse control, one for acceleration and one for speed, would be too confusing to users. So they made one slider control both. So the only way to disable acceleration completely was to slow the mouse to an absolute crawl, as if it were taking the number of pixels the mouse moved and dividing that by ten and moving the pointer that much.
Strangely, it was hard to find people with this same problem via Google. There were a few applications (some free, some $40 or more) that claimed they could fix it, but at least none of the free ones did anything that wasn't available from that single slider in the mouse settings, and I wasn't willing to spend $40 to *maybe* fix a fundamental design flaw. I also found one blog post complaining about the issue. Everyone else thought it was fine.
As best I could figure, everyone who used Apple was an Apple fan-boy and was just in denial. Everyone in forums would say it was fine. I even talked to someone in-person who thought it was fine, and they even tried to show me, as they carefully and slowly moved the mouse to point at an icon. My whole point was that I could quickly move the mouse to point at any small part of the screen in Linux and Windows, but in OSX, quickly moving the mouse always led to massively over-shooting or under-shooting the landing due to the randomness in mouse speed created by that speed step function.
I can see the same thing happening here. Major design flaw in the human interface, and the fanboys just tip-toe around it to pretend like there isn't a problem by typing so slowly and carefully that they can mostly avoid the problem rather than trying to use their machines at the same speed anyone who uses a PC can use it with no trouble whatsoever.
Same reason I don't carry an external typing keyboard. No room in my camera bag. :-)
But honestly, by the time you correct all the transcription/quantization mistakes, it's not actually faster, in my experience, than keying it in by hand with a computer keyboard — particularly while composing. Obviously YMMV.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Wow, why the hell is an automatized car self-driving at 60 mph on the road? It should slow down to 40 mph or 35 mph. Or lower still, like 15 mph max in town. With some kind of warning lights, or a normal car preceding it and another following it.
That is the power of apples reality distortion field.
The buckle (the pressure you have to push through for feeling the click) occurs before the click is registered. If you type fast and light you definitely will miss key-presses. Every user pounces these keyboards till they reach the bottom of the stroke. One of my collegues attributes his Repetitive Strain Injury to this new keyboard.
The best mobile keyboard Apple made is the MacBook Air keyboard, there is no reason to make laptops thinner, just remove the touch bar and use a good keyboard. I dream of an updated 11" MacBook Air, just the latest CPU and more memory/SSD, no USB C needed, no retina needed, if I need a high resolution, I just connect an external screen.