Roger Fingas
A teardown of the newly-released 2019 MacBook Pro finds that Apple has made some changes to switch covers and to the dome switches themselves, but it isn't clear what, if anything, the material shift will do to alleviate keyboard complaints.
Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy shows that switch covers for the keyboard have moved to polyamide — nylon — from the polyacetylene with aromatic urethane side groups used in 2018 Pros, iFixit said on Friday. The metal dome switches for the keyboards also appear to have changed, whether through new surface treatments or a new alloy. It could be ferritic stainless steel with a thin polymer coating.
If those domes crack or deform, keyboards can malfunction, iFixit noted. Apple's changes are likely to deal with long-standing complaints about MacBook keys double-typing or becoming unresponsive. A free repair program was recently extended to more MacBooks.
The company promised enhanced butterfly keyboards when launching the new Pros earlier this week, but has been relatively vague on what's actually been done.
Apple doesn't appear to have made any changes to address the thermal situation inside the MacBook Pro, and repairability is still minimal, iFixit added. While the trackpad can be replaced with little effort, the processor, RAM, and SSD are soldered to the logic board.
The entire top case assembly — including the battery, keyboard, speakers, and Touch Bar — is glued together as it has been since the 2012 Retina MacBook Pro. Additionally, since the Touch ID sensor doubles as the power switch and is linked with Apple's T2 coprocessor, simply fixing that switch may force people to go to Apple or get a new logic board.
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
47 Comments
If you believe that the actual failure rate of MacBook Pro keyboards is far lower than it appears from reports in the press (which is Apple's claim), there may not be anything Apple can do to reduce the "apparent" failure rate, except wait it all out while making whatever small changes, if any, are suggested by actual field failure analysis.
Oh boy...the internet is going to explode with this report!
Instead of playing the wait and see approach, let's just jump to conclusions and bitch about the keyboard instead.
Every laptop manufacturer on the planet has keyboard complaints. It's one of the parts that can fail. Nobody has designed a failure proof mechanical keyboard.
Despite tech media hand-waiving from the usual players, we just haven't seen any real data to imply Apple is, in fact, lying. Personally I doubt they're lying, as they're a publicly traded company and can get into hot water if they lie about the state of their company. AI has hinted at having some guesses of repair incidents based on a insider leakers at an unknown number of stores, but I don't recall seeing the actual numbers, in black & white. In the interest of transparency, we'd need to know the number of stores in the survey group, the number of general incidents, and the number of keyboard specific incidents.
It's pretty clear that Apple's recent "update" to the MacBook Pro is just a stop gate until the re-designed 16" model gets released. If you go to their website it's buried under "Mac" and not even on the front page. I have been waiting for a few years to upgrade and now I'll wait another 6 months (or more) I guess. I wish there was the "fire" burning under the team like there used to be back before 2011-2012 period. It just feels like everyone is coasting, more concerned with the design of their Pacific Heights mansions or traveling for awards shows or speeches than kicking ass and staying on top of things. I'm just disappointed to say the least.