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0 pointstlobes6y ago0 comments

I'd agree with the exception of the utterly awful keyboard & trackpad design that appeared in 2016 that seemed to skip any meaningful QA process inside Apple.

The popular dust complaints aside, a brand new machine has immediate problems for someone whose palms tend to touch the newly enlarged Force Touch trackpad during typing, a hand position I got used to with my Macbook Air 2013. Typing on the new design will cause repeated keystrokes, delayed or missing keystrokes, and instant cursor shifts during typing that make it so I need to approach the keyboard in the same way one would properly play a piano in order to get any meaningful work done. Great if you're a trained pianist, terrible if you want to get actual work done from a coffee shop where you don't have a stand or external keyboard on hand.

Apple knows they messed up with the butterfly mechanism and seem to be fixing that in the next design. In the meantime, there are a few things they could do now through software to alleviate these issues:

1. The ability to remap the Force Touch trackpad tracking area in Settings. Being able to remove 10mm from each side would fix my cursor shift issue. People currently use tape to solve this... on a $4000+ machine.

2. Ability to set a numeric value for Force Touch sensitivity as opposed to 3 constant values with a much higher threshold than is currently being used as "high".

I know Apple is all about limiting options for a customer's own good, however, these software changes would go a long way in helping people debrick an expensive laptop who don't happen to fit whatever hand size their QA team of classically trained pianists have.

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ebg136y ago

> The popular dust complaints aside, a brand new machine has immediate problems for someone whose palms tend to touch the newly enlarged Force Touch trackpad during typing

This has not been my experience. The errant contact dismissal in my 2017 MBP is so good that I never notice that my hands casually drape across swathes of touchpad geography.

rickyc0916y ago

So there has been a lot of complaints about the keyboard, but one thing they seemed to get right was protecting it from a coffee spill. A few weeks ago, I spilled coffee with milk over my laptop. Unsure what to do, I tilted it sideways covering every key with liquid; just imagine a pond over the keyboard. I ended up using a paper towel to absorb the liquid and then ran a damp paper towel across all the keys. The keyboard is still functional to this day!

I recall spilling coffee in the past and it would completely destroy the keyboard causing the need to replace the logic board. I'm sure if Apple dissembled my keyboard they would notice a gross stain under the plastic membrane now.

schappim6y ago

>> I'd agree with the exception of the utterly awful keyboard & trackpad design

Perhaps the purpose of which was to drive Touch ID adoption for those who "tend to use long passwords that you don't want to type in all the time". :-P

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