Items tagged with butterfly keyboard
The hits just keep coming for Apple and its butterfly keyboard design that debuted back with the 2015 MacBook. A U.S. District judge nixed Apple's request to have a class action lawsuit brought against it over keyboard issues dismissed. As we have discussed on numerous occasions, the keyboards have been plagued with reliability issues, including keys that become stuck or fail completely after regular use. In some cases, a single speck of dust is enough to "kill" a key, resulting in an expensive keyboard replacement. Over the years, Apple has made refinements to the keyboard -- including the use of a silicone membrane to prevent debris from entering the key mechanism...
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Apple may be getting rid of a pain point for laptop buyers by doing away with the problematic butterfly keyboard found on its MacBook models, starting with the MacBook Air. Nothing is set in stone, but if Apple does ditch the butterfly keyboard, it could ease the frustration for both buyers and Apple store employees, who have been tasked with performing accelerated next-day repairs. The butterfly key mechanism found its way to MacBook models starting in 2015. Some customers reported premature failures, ultimately sparking a petition for a recall in 2018, followed by a class-action lawsuit. While Apple has maintained that only a small number of MacBooks have been affected, the lawsuit alleges...
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It's that time again; time for Apple's yearly update to its MacBook Pro family of notebooks. The company has just rolled out its 2019 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops which come with up to the latest 9th generation mobile Intel Core processors (at least for the latter model). As the red-headed stepchild of the MacBook Pro family, the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is getting faster 8th generation Core processors. In the base system, you'll find a quad-core 2.4GHz Core i5 processor (4.1GHz boost), which is up slightly from last year's model. You can optionally select a quad-core Core i7 processor that boosts up to 4.7GHz ($300 option). The 15-inch MacBook Pro, however, gets the...
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Apple just can’t seem to get it right when it comes to the keyboards on its MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro family of laptops. Even though the company is currently on the third-generation of its “butterfly key” keyboard design, customers are still complaining of premature failures. With that being said, the process of replacing a defective keyboard is not a simple one, and requires removing the whole top panel of the notebook (which includes the integrated battery). Not only is it time extensive – currently requiring a few business days for the machine to be shipped off-site, repaired, and then sent back – but it is an expensive repair (for Apple) as it’s...
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Keyboards aren’t an unknown quantity in the PC realm; we’ve been using them to input data into our computers for decades, and Apple seemingly was at the top of its game with keyboard design for its notebooks – that is until the 2015 MacBook and 2016 MacBook Pro redesigns occurred. A new report from The Wall Street Journal’sJoanna Stern indicates that Apple still has not exorcised its keyboard demons. Stern is already experiencing key failures on her new MacBook Air, which was redesigned late last year. That’s a relatively short span of time to begin seeing hardware failures on a brand-new piece of hardware. Stern rather interestingly highlighted...
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Apple has finally come clean about the keyboard on its 2018 MacBook Pro notebooks. Although we all knew why Apple put a silicon membrane under the key cap, the only "perk" that the company mentioned when announcing the new family of notebooks was that it is now quieter than the previous generation. However, a new leaked internal document confirms what iFixitfound after it began dissecting the 2018 13-inch MacBook Pro: it's meant to prevent keyboard failures from occurring on customer machines. The document specifically states: Keyboard and Keycaps The keyboard has a membrane under the keycaps to prevent debris from entering the butterfly mechanism. The procedure for the...
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Apple has taken more than a few hits to the chin over the keyboards used on recent MacBook and MacBook Pro notebooks. Besides the fact that the keys have less travel than the keyboards that preceded them and can be annoyingly loud when typing, they are prone to malfunctions or failing completely when dust or crumbs make their way into the butterfly key mechanism. When Apple announced its 2018 MacBook Pro family yesterday, it said that the keyboards are now “quieter”, but it made no mention of actually resolving the problem with the failure-prone keys. Luckily, the folks at iFixit were able to obtain an early production model of the 2018 15-inch MacBook...
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Apple has announced its 2018 refresh of the MacBook Pro family, and it brings some oft-requested updates. For starters, Apple is finally giving professionals a 32GB RAM option, doubling what was previously available to customers. Secondly, the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar is finally getting quad-core processors courtesy of a switch to Intel's 8th generation Coffee Lake architecture. For the 13-inch model, customers can choose from quad-core Core i5 or Core i7 processors, which have base clocks of up to 2.7GHz and can Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz. These processors feature Intel Iris Plus 655 integrated graphics that incorporate 128MB of eDRAM. For the 15-inch model, Apple is allowing...
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Apple has finally admitted to what we already knew: there is a serious problem with the butterfly key mechanism on its most recent MacBook and MacBook Pro keyboards. The company has announced a new repair program that affects every single laptop that uses the butterfly key mechanism from the 2015 MacBook to the 2017 MacBook Pro models. Apple says that affected MacBook Pro models may encounter one or more of the following symptoms: Letters or characters repeat unexpectedly Letters or characters do not appear Key(s) feel "sticky" or do not respond in a consistent manner These are exactly the same problems that users have been complaining about for years and have in recent months resulted in multiple...
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Earlier this week, we reported on the ongoing sage of Apple's 2016 and 2017 MacBook Pros, which are outfitted with its second-generation butterfly keyboards. The butterfly key mechanism allowed Apple to design its thinnest MacBook Pros to date, but it has come at the expensive of a subpar typing experience for many users and increased key failures that require the entire keyboard to be replaced. A new Change.org petition is calling on Apple to voluntarily recall all 2016 MacBook Pros. Petitioner Matthew Taylor says that recalling millions of MacBook Pros is probably a logistical nightmare and would be costly, but "it’s the right thing to do". Taylor goes on to detail his...
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