Casey Johnston Bought a 2018 MacBook Air and You Know Exactly Where This Is Going

Casey Johnston, writing at The Outline:

Fueled by equal parts irrational hope I knew I shouldn’t trust and deep skepticism to which I should have listened, I bought the 2018 MacBook Air.

Sure enough, a couple months into owning this computer, the keys started to act up. As before, problems would come and go; the E or B key would be unresponsive for a day or so before whatever was jamming them up mysteriously went away. The spacebar was the worst offender. For a long while it doubled spaces from a single keypress, but only sometimes. Finally, it seemed to get something lodged under it big or annoying enough that it couldn’t shake itself loose, and I had to pound it to get a space out of it; for two days, my sentencescame outlikethis. I made a Genius Bar appointment.

These keyboards are the biggest mistake in Apple’s history.*

Even if they ship a truly new, reliable keyboard this summer (which I think they will, because if they don’t, it means they’re in deep denial of a huge problem), how long will it take for that new keyboard to roll out across the entire MacBook line? Even if Apple is on the case, hard at work on a new keyboard, there are likely to be brand-new MacBooks in the lineup with the unreliable butterfly keyboards for at least another year.

The real harm is to the long-term reputation of the entire MacBook brand.

* Or at least modern Apple history — post-NeXT-reunification. There’s no point comparing it to the Apple III or Lisa.

★ Friday, 26 April 2019