This issue is not overblown. I've used nothing but Macs since 2001, and am now at the third company I've worked at that maintains a substantial fleet of Macbooks. This most recent keyboard debacle is the worst thing that ever happened to the Macbook platform.
Literally every single MBP in our office has failed, some of them more than once. The failure mode is always the same: the keyboard gets flaky, then you lose a key for a couple hours until you manage to finagle it back into working, then you lose 1-2 more keys and they never work properly again. The only fix is to turn it over to Apple for several days, which means you can't count on a single MBP per employee, because at any given moment --- with near certainty --- someone's laptop will be taken out for several days.
On the plus side, it's a little bit like Chaos Monkey for backups, since you always know you're probably just a day or two away from needing to swap machines.
It sounds like a minor thing, I get it! "Sticking keys, oh no!" The problem is: you can't type. The only way to be typing again on your machine is to have it sent away for several days. That's a disaster.
All the modifier keys on the left side of my MBP 2017 are starting to get flaky. I have to press them longer and harder to get them to register and they often register a key up while they key is still down. I’m dreading finding a service center and being without a machine for who knows how long while I’m doing the digital nomad thing.
Between this and the mostly useless touch bar I’d gladly take a MBP 2015 design with an updated CPU any day. I get that Apple likes to take chances on new ideas and that often pays off spectacularly for them but not this time.
I brought my MBP (late 2016) in for repair because 2 keys‘ notches had broken off - thank god they could replace the keys on the spot, and also cleaned the whole keyboard with pressurized air. I must say, the thorough cleaning did restore most of the problematic keys back to normal. They only forgot the / key which is a bit annoying, but I might just buy a pressurized air can for a couple Euros and fix that myself.
I wonder if it could be prone to happenening to laptops ordered from a particular manufacturing center, or from a certain timeframe?
I work at a 300+ person company full of 2016/2017 macbooks and personally own a 2017 macbook pro, and I've not witnessed a single problem from that sample size.
Just like your sibling comment finds my claim (on a substantially smaller number of laptops) hard to believe, I find your claim impossible to believe. So either you're right and it's somehow regionalized, or people just aren't reporting the problem.
The latter wouldn't surprise me! Lots of people use external keyboards, or just deal with the petty frustration of having to hit certain keys much harder or backspace out the repeats.
For what it's worth, we have about a dozen Mac laptops with the new keyboard in my office and none have keyboard problems (I've asked).
It's obviously a serious issue because Apple has created a special program for it. But, it also seems obvious that only some machines are affected, for whatever reason. Maybe some people just type harder than others.
My laptop makes a case for the opposite. I hardly ever use the built in keyboard on my mbp 2017, but some of my keys are not functioning properly. A colleague of mine has a similar but worse case and had to return it about half a year ago. In total we have three of the mbp's in this office that qualify to be serviced.
Perhaps it's the dusty office? We are located in a old ship hangar.
What if it’s just climate? Dust and humidity are regionalized. Companies in drier, less dusty, less “sticky” climates might see few to no sticky keyboards.
Yes, you are absolutely right that I may not know of situations, and I definitely meant my experience to be anecdotal, not scientific.
I am not even trying to downplay the fact that it's happening a lot; It just seems so strange to read so many people on hacker news talking about extremely high rates of failure in their sample size, when neither myself nor anyone I've talked to has experienced it.
Literally every single MBP in our office has failed, some of them more than once. The failure mode is always the same: the keyboard gets flaky, then you lose a key for a couple hours until you manage to finagle it back into working, then you lose 1-2 more keys and they never work properly again. The only fix is to turn it over to Apple for several days, which means you can't count on a single MBP per employee, because at any given moment --- with near certainty --- someone's laptop will be taken out for several days.
On the plus side, it's a little bit like Chaos Monkey for backups, since you always know you're probably just a day or two away from needing to swap machines.
It sounds like a minor thing, I get it! "Sticking keys, oh no!" The problem is: you can't type. The only way to be typing again on your machine is to have it sent away for several days. That's a disaster.