My 2017 Macbook Pro is five months old and the A, D, R, and T keys will lift right off with my fingers as I type.<p>I looked at them with a magnifying glass. The C-clamps that hold them in aren't broken. They just are stretched an extra micronanometer such that they don't hold the spoke anymore. It alone wastes a bunch of my time every minute as I have to fix the keys as I type a line of code, but the anger it provokes is even more distracting.<p>If I could go back in time five month ago, I would've simply bought a Macbook Air which still has the older keyboard. My previous computer was a 2014 Macbook Air and it's the best computer I've used. The battery lasted longer as well.<p>Another surprising quirk of the Macbook Pro is how hot it gets. I can't watch Netflix with it perched on my belly in bed like I did for three years with my Air.<p>It's comical how much I hate this computer. If I wasn't roughing it on minimal expenses in Mexico, I'd sell it and get a new Air. I'm glad I didn't sell my old Air because I guarantee inside of three months I'll be using it over this MBP. It just needs a new battery but there aren't any Apple stores here.
I tried out the MBP keyboard before buying and thought it would be ok. Unfortunately, the experience of using it for a few minutes in a store is very different from using it several hours a day. My fingers literally hurt most days. I cannot believe that "upgrading" to a new computer could be such a big step backward on this important metric.
I’m holding off an MBP update for as long as possible until Apple: 1. Gets rid of the touchbar, 2. Fixes that daft keyboard, 3. Slaps Intel and makes them ship 32GB lpddr4, and an 8 core iWhateger.
I've only had a few issues with my 15" 2017 MBP, mostly dust and dirt easily fixed with compressed air. That said, I never had a problem with any MBP keyboard before this machine. It seems some people are having way more issues than others, which speaks of a significant inconsistency in quality and wear/tear over time.
Good initiative to push Apple. There are around 7k signatures now as its trending here. Let's assume it gets up to 10-20k over the trending period.<p>Some X% of the people petitioning there would be actual users of the model in scope (Macbook Pro 2017 and beyond). And Y% of those people may actually have this issue.<p>Problem is, nobody would ever know X and Y, and its really bad to speculate. It makes the whole petition basically a guessing game.<p>Realistically speaking, the only outcome would be to force Apple to take note, or at best issue a statement. Either way, the keyboard is not going away. It would be announced that it would get "better over time" - which it would have anyways. Its hard to do worse than this going by the feedback.
I'm currently keeping an 'e' in my clipboard and using paste to type it every time I need it because my e key is totally broken. i, k and spacebar on the way out as well...
I think emails to Apple would be more effective. Petitions to companies tend to have a bandwagon effect and seem to be largely ignored, especially by Apple.
I agree this keyboard is the worst. I also have aching fingers from using it, compared to my previous 2013 pro 15", and beloved thinkpads.<p>I currently have a broken 'S' key (a couple of the very fragile teeny tiny clips have broken off the keycap) after just a few months - Admittedly, becaue a liquid spill rendered the 'S' intermittently unresponsive, so I removed the keycap to clean with alcohol, which did at least fix the contacts, so the key works, but broke the keycap.
Hopefully I can get a replacement keycap to keep me going until probably the liquid spill (a splash of beer, countered immediately with turning the laptop off and upside down in front of a fan overnight etc) starts corroding.<p>But regardless, the most egregious fault is that the keyboard can't be replaced without also replacing half the laptop, at excessive cost, not to mention the affront of having to pay again for the same crappy keyboard.<p>This is unacceptable, as the keyboard is one of the few moving parts on the device, and the one most exposed to external dangers.
I'm having issues with my 2015 Macbook Pro display getting weird unremovable marks and stains from interaction with the keyboard. I hope they'll replace it for me but these quality issues are really annoying. Here's a (bad) pic to show what I mean: <a href="https://i.imgur.com/LIK4qq5.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/LIK4qq5.jpg</a>
They have a similar design flaw in the 2015 macbook pros.<p>The keyboard and trackpad will stop working after about a year. It happens because the trackpad ribbon cable sits on the battery, and as the battery heats and expands it destroys the ribbon cable. This design flaw was introduced in the 2015 line.<p>When you take it to Apple, they say you can either pay $500 to get the keyboard and trackpad replaced, or pay $100 for them to swap out the ribbon cable. Mind you, that ribbon cable only costs $10 if you order it online and swap it out yourself.<p>Here’s a youtube video that shows how to fix it. It has tens of thousands of views:<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0AVoXTd-N0Q" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0AVoXTd-N0Q</a><p>And there are tons of these fix-it videos on youtube for this specific issue. Lots of people are having this same exact problem. Apple does not acknowledge that this is a problem.
This one could really do _without_ the special HN apple weighting, I'm sure there are plenty of HN apple users who would benefit from seeing/signing this.
The 2017 keyboard seems to not have any of those issues. The touchbar can sometimes be really annoying when I accidentally hit the Siri key when typing fast.<p>Overall I prefer my 2017 15" pro to my 2015 one mainly because it is thinner, supports USB-C charging, and the screen is much much better
I have issues, too, but it's with random keystroke repeats. The fingerprint button has been making strange noises since I got the brand new MacBook Pro. I'm hugely disappointed, but Apple is arrogant and won't fix this for us, though!
I've got a late 2016 MBP and the right command key does not register about 1/10 of the time I press it. I use that key a lot. I'm taking it to the Apple Store tomorrow to see what they say about it.
I wonder if Apple is being subtly sabotaged by competitors who have double agent employees that wormed their way into Apple and gained access to Tim Cook's ear.
I own a 15" MacBook Pro 2016 and already this keyboard has given me more trouble than any other laptop keyboard. Several of the keys are "mushy" and harder to press than most of the others, and there have been times where a spec of dust rendered some of the keys temporarily defective. None of the keys have outright stopped working, and I thankfully haven't run into the double-keypress issue, so at the moment the mushy keys are not worth risking getting an even worse keyboard if I were to try to get a replacement before my warranty expires (I purchased this less than a year ago Apple refurbished).<p>This petition may not amount to anything, but I'm sure <i>someone</i> in Cupertino has taken notice. Apple has "we know what's best for our customers, better than they do" engrained in their culture, and when it comes to design decisions, <i>sometimes</i> they are right, but I don't see how anyone there could justify a defective or unreliable (at best) keyboard being the right thing for any of its customers. You know what would take courage? To publicly acknowledge the issue and do right by your customers. That takes way more courage than removing a headphone jack.<p>Unless a recall actually happens (not likely, but I'm really hoping so), we'll never know what--if any--kind of impact this petition has had, but I'm hoping it will cause Apple to (at minimum) go back to the drawing board on this thing and give us a better keyboard the next time around. They should also expose the keyboard to more rigorous testing (that includes dust and other air debris). I just hope the keyboard I have lasts until I'm ready for an upgrade because I don't see myself spending $700 on a repair when this is already the most expensive laptop I've ever purchased (and the $700 is a gamble considering you could get an even worse keyboard).<p>The sad thing is, back in 2006 I was in the US Military stationed in Baghdad, and I had with me a cheap $600 Dell laptop. That thing survived sand storms that would leave the inside of our tent (and all of our belongings) covered in dust (even with the laptop lid closed and inside of a locker). I highly doubt this keyboard would have survived that deployment. It's sad that a low-end DELL computer from 2006 had a keyboard that's more reliable than Apple's top of the line notebook. If it weren't for macOS, which I love probably more than Apple does, this whole keyboard saga would have caused me to ditched Apple laptops and go with Lenovo.<p>At the time of this writing, 16,778 people have signed the petition. If each one of those people are a MBP owner, and let's round down the average cost to $2000, that's $33,556,000. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the 5.8 billion in Mac revenue in Q2; however, the Mac business seems big enough to at least please the thousands of customers who feel cheated.
Easiest way for Apple to fix this is to expand the TouchBar thing to handle the whole keyboard and add some haptics.<p>Everyone will hate it but... it will be reliable and amazingly thin.<p>Maybe use too much power?