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I desperately hope this is true. I have the first MacBook Pro that came with the Touch Bar, and it's the worst computer I've ever owned. The keyboard has failed
by Perceptes 7y ago
I desperately hope this is true. I have the first MacBook Pro that came with the Touch Bar, and it's the worst computer I've ever owned. The keyboard has failed twice, and the Touch Bar is inferior to the old hardware keys in every way. I hate it. The only reason I got it is because the MacBook Air it replaced was dying and I couldn't wait any more. Assuming this report is true, my only remaining worry is that they won't offer a version of this new Pro without a Touch Bar, or that only a model with a smaller display will offer hardware function keys, like they've done in the past.
- cs02rm0 7y agoOh, it's definitely true. I've just bought one after holding out for 6 years since my last MBP. Everyone's wishes will be granted imminently.
- maayank 7y agoI'm on the exact same boat (Air then 1st touch bar Mac). I've resigned to using it docked only both at work and home.
- meerita 7y agoI've bought the non Touch Bar model after using 2 months the TB one. I have never regret this decision.
- kypro 7y agoI am sat here trying to work on a computer with about 8 buttons loose and two buttons which double press. I've had the keyboard replaced once already for exactly the same problem, but I'm a contractor and Apple can take weeks to repair the keyboard so I'm probably going to be stuck working like this for a while longer - at least until I take holiday. It's far from acceptable for a $2,000 [pro]fessional machine.
- meerita 7y agoWhen the iPhone was announced and Steve Jobs commented how they were going to replace the keyboards on the screen, it seemed like a great idea. The adaptation was instantaneous. But when they announced this for the Macbook Pro models, the experience was not the same. Not to mention the bugs I had.
- rorykoehler 7y agoI bought a maxed out 2013 mbp instead. Was ready to buy a brand new one cash in hand but couldn't bring myself to do it. Still waiting...
- fastball 7y agoI have the 2015 MBP and I think it's the best laptop they've ever built.
- jonplackett 7y agoAgreed. Still on a 2013 model at home and every time I use it after the new one I have at work I love it even more. Please please hold out another year so I can upgrade to something that actually works
- reneherse 7y agoI just purchased an Apple-refurbed 2015 MBP. It was a little surreal to be paying almost full price for a 4 year old model. The list of "pros" for the purchase decision was mostly a mirror of the "cons" of the more recent generations. Overall, the 2015's are reliable machines with only the relatively minor annoyances of the battery recall and the "staingate" anti-glare coating issue. Really hoping Apple returns to the ethos of their older designs, with serviceability and modularity higher on the list of design goals.
- dickeytk 7y agoThis isn’t about the Touch Bar, it’s about the butterfly mechanism.
- buzzerbetrayed 7y agoRereading their comment, I am positive they knows that.
- FabHK 7y ago> I have the first MacBook Pro that came with the Touch Bar, and it's the worst computer I've ever owned. Same here (well, I have the "cheap" one without the Touch Bar). Everything has been replaced at least once (on Apple Care, fortunately) except the bottom plate. > The only reason I got it is because the MacBook Air it replaced was dying Same here. That MBA was a fine machine.
- breck 7y agoI got a maxed out MBA in 2016 after going with my gut and thinking that year’s MBP keyboard felt like a step down. My MBA is still going strong and I love this machine. I was worried I was going to have to switch in a few years to the worse new line, so if this is true I’m very excited.
- iamben 7y agoI'm still using my MBA from mid 2013. It's a wonderful thing. Battery is "replace soon" but it's mostly plugged in. It's battered and bruised, but still fast enough. I've been debating a change for a while and figured at the start of the year I'd wait to see if they were going to ditch the bf keyboard if they release a new MBA. Super glad I waited, fingers crossed I get the same life out of the next one! Say what you want about Apple and price, but I've had PCs since 1994 and the two Macs I've had have (usefully) outlasted every other machine by quite some margin - this one in particular. 6 years without formatting a Windows machine (I can't talk for now, but especially back then) would be crazy.
- aloukissas 7y agoBest era ever, have the same one. For ~120 bucks you can get a fresh battery, too.
- iamben 7y agoIf I could upgrade the SSD for about the same, I'd probably just keep using this until it died. Alas, upgrading that is a bit of a faff.
- 7y ago
- fogetti 7y agoI have a Macbook Air (2017 version) which I spilled a can of beer into. I thought it was dead but after leaving it to rest for a few days it resurrected from the dead and it works ever since like nothing happened. I love that machine. Indestructible.
- ghostpepper 7y agoWhile I am happy for you, I am also pretty surprised and would be interested in more details. A full can of beer is 355 mL, so how much beer are we talking about here? Are the keys not sticky at all?
- fogetti 7y agoThe can wasn't full luckily. It might have been 150 ml or so. It mostly flowed under the keys from the grill right under the screen next to the hinge on the right side. Of course the machine shut off immediately and first I thought I bricked it. But I didn't. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- ghostpepper 7y agoThat's actually pretty impressive. Did you wash it with water? Did you do anything special to dry it out?
- kumoflow 7y agoI have a mbp 2018 (with touch bar) I dropped a full bottle of gin on it last week. The bottle literally broke over my open backpack with the mbp there. It seemed like I threw it on the distillery. After letting it fully dry, isssues are: - Couple small spots on the monitor. I think water got inside between the glass and display. They were very big (20% of the screen) and been reducing and now just 2 small spots (maybe 2-3%). These don't seem to reduce anymore but I will try to see if applying some subtle heat over will make them disappear. - At first a couple keys didn't work, but now just the P and S seem to sometimes not register a tap, but when I press again, I get two of them. Not exactly sure what is going on or if it will go away. I would say it happens once every 20 or so taps (funny, writing happens there caused it on both the s and the p :)) Apart from that, all seems to be working fine. I can't say if it will continue, but I was sure it would be 'trash' after I saw what happen. Super happy it is working
- dmix 7y agoIf Apple gets rid of the TouchBar + fixes the keyboard that'd eliminate 90% of the complaints against Macbook Pros.
- briandear 7y agoThe Touchbar is a source of many complaints? Or just a small slice of people who complain loudly? Anecdotally, I have many relatives with touchbar MacBook Pros and they haven’t complained about it. Is it possible that many people actually like the touchbar but they don’t spend their time on specialized forums singing its praises? It just seems like the assumption that people hate the touchbar is selection bias. Aside from the aforementioned relatives, I have a few friends in the pro video/audio/photo world who love the touchbar. I would caution Apple against placing too much weight on any particular opinion. Pleasing the curmudgeonly neckbeards might mean that you piss off the creatives, or vice versa.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jonplackett 7y agoGuaranteed anyone who doesn’t mind just doesn’t need to use escape very much. The problem with touchbar is it’s hard to use without looking at it - like most professionals do because it’s just muscle memory. Give me a real escape and I won’t mind the rest being a touch Bar. But I hope they make it like gaming keyboards that have real keys with tiny lcd displays on so you can customise the function but still have a real key to press.
- tomp 7y agoWhat will likely happen is Apple will replace Touch Bar with keys, and add OLED / e-ink screens on those keys.
- jonplackett 7y agoThis would be superb
- ljm 7y agoI imagined they’d expand it with more functionality, but I don’t think it’s getting any update in the new models? At the minute it doesn’t do much except replace your function keys with a display. If it could render the dock or maybe take over some of notification centre, it might have some novel functionality. What I’ve been trying to do so far is see if I can integrate it with emacs through a dynamic module, so it could render the modeline.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Chris_Chambers 7y agoHow is this “likely”? Didn’t you just make this up?
- pier25 7y agoThat would have made more sense than the TB. You get a dynamic input method without sacrificing usability.
- elamje 7y agoI totally understand, as do I. If you are trying to make a MacBook Pro more usable than they are currently, you have to get https://pock.dev https://pock.dev It has been the best $0 app I have ever downloaded, and has changed my Touch Bar experience completely. I makes your Touch Bar into your dock, and can include the date time, battery life, a mini Spotify/music controller, and several other useful things.
- rbanffy 7y agoNow, if we could get a durable keyboard and two keys at the touchbar row, esc to the left and power/fingerprint to the right and a nice touchbar in the middle with haptic feedback, that would be perfect. I don't use function keys much, and I need to confess the emoji keyboard is pretty neat.
- Chris_Chambers 7y agoStop trying to normalize the Touch Bar by casually acting as if its existence is remotely acceptable. It never was.
- andrei_says_ 7y agoYou could buy a 2015 MacBook Pro and upgrade to rock solid keyboard, sane-sized trackpad, MagSafe, hdmi, USB ports and an SD card port. It’s not thin enough to slice salami but I am a vegetarian so that’s not a big deal.
- rayiner 7y agoBut the bulblet and bought a used 2013 15” MBP after a year in Lenovo exile. Cost me $600 for a six year old computer, but it feels great.
- robdachshund 7y agoMan you guys really have Stockholm syndrome.
- rayiner 7y agoI gave it a serious go for a year. Spent $1,600 on a Lenovo X1 Carbon. Wiped the disk and installed LTSC. The one feature it had that Apple didn’t (the built-in LTE) never worked properly. Stability was good, but lots of odd nits. (Auto-hiding taskbar would sometimes stop hiding.) Battery life was a crap-shoot. Rage quit and ordered the MacBook when it went from estimated 30 minutes remaining to dead in 5 minutes. Speaking of which: Do you want to buy an X1 Carbon 6th gen? i7 8650U with 16Gb RAM and 256GB SSD.
- woah 7y agoI use both a 12” MacBook (for Go and JS), and a Dell XPS13 with Ubuntu (for Rust). The UX on the MacBook is better in every way. Gestures, the window and desktop management, touchpad, Bluetooth, WiFi and printer drivers, etc. The screen, speakers, and other hardware components are much better as well. The fast XPS 13 with Ubuntu also seems to really be taxed pretty heavily by electron apps, while the MacBook that is 8 times slower does just fine. When I switched, I finally understood why so many people on hacker news complain about electron. Everything on the Mac feels like someone thought really hard about how to make it as good as possible, even if they were wrong in the end (like the keyboard). Everything in Linux always feels like someone said “ehhh... good enough!”.
- 7ewis 7y agoHave the same MBP as you, and haven’t really had any issues. I actually almost prefer the keyboard, I feel like having less travel means I have to press slightly less and can type marginally faster on my Mac keyboard than a normal one. I’ve not had to replace anything, I’ve had a key that felt stuck once or twice, but after a good bash it fixed itself. But it is almost 3 years old now! The Touch Bar is a bit useless I’ll admit, but using BetterTouchTool I’ve made it more useful. Shows me my company share price live, tube status and the time of my next train as well as shortcuts to my most used apps.
- cptskippy 7y ago> I actually almost prefer the keyboard, I feel like having less travel means I have to press slightly less and can type marginally faster on my Mac keyboard than a normal one. There are actually mechanical switches, like the Cherry MX Brown, that register the keypress before actuating. They're usually preferred by gamers because you can rapidly tap the keys without fully depressing them. It's a shame there isn't a convenient way for people test out the variety of switches out there to find the style they prefer. Like Warby Parker for mechanical keyboards.
- GordonS 7y agoI also have the first (13") MBP model to ship with a touchbar, which is also the only Mac I've ever had. TBH, I think it's put me off Macs for life. While I haven't had a hardware failure, the keyboard is simply horrible - there isn't nearly enough key travel or feedback, and swapping useful physical keys for a useless touchpad is completely pointless - I have a cheap 13" netbook kicking around which has a far superior keyboard! After having Macbook aficionados harp on for yeara about how wonderful Macbook keyboards are, I feel cheated. I wish Apple would stop valuing thinness above all else - it's important, but there are diminishing returns. We've got the point where I don't want it to be any thinner - I want ports, good battery life and good heat dissipation (my MBP is quiet, but it gets bloody hot!)
- spraak 7y agoI made a custom plate that sits over the default keyboard and I put my own better keyboard on top. I've been kinda curious if anyone else would buy one if I produced them for a nominal fee.
- alfonsodev 7y agodo you have pictures to see how it looks? I'm not sure exactly what you mean, why do you need the plate? for extra stability ? I've seen a colleague carrying a wireless keyboard with the macbook >2016, and putting it on top of the macbook directly, no plate.
- spraak 7y agoHm, I have the new MacBook Pro 15in and if I don't use the plate my own keyboard presses buttons on the default keyboard.
- GordonS 7y agoI've love to see some pictures of this setup? Also, what's the plate made from and what alt keyboard do you use?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nicwolff 7y agoApple actually still sells the last of the MacBook Air models with the good old keyboards: the 2017 13-inch 2.2 GHz i7.
- nicwolff 7y agoWhoops – they stopped selling that model today! Glad I got mine...