The MacBook keyboard fiasco is way worse than Apple thinks

“Apple keep insisting that only a ‘small number of customers have problems’ with the MacBook keyboards. That’s bollocks,” David Heinemeier Hansson writes for Signal v. Noise.This is a huge issue, it’s getting worse not better, and Apple is missing the forest for the trees.”
“Here’s some anecdata for Apple. I sampled the people at Basecamp. Out of the 47 people using MacBooks at the company, a staggering 30% are dealing with keyboard issues right now!! And that’s just the people dealing with current keyboard issues,” Hansson writes. “If you include all the people who used to have issues, but went through a repair or replacement process, the number would be even higher. Worth noting here is that the 3rd generation membrane keyboard did nothing to fix the issues. Six out of thirteen – nearly half!! – of the 2018+ MacBooks we have at the company have a failed keyboard.”
“This is a disaster. A complete unmitigated disaster,” Hansson writes. “But as always, in a time of crisis, the event itself is less indicative of the health of a company than the response. Is Apple going to accept that they’re currently alienating and undermining decades of goodwill by shipping broken computers in mass quantities?”
Read more in the full article here.
Apple CEO Tim CookMacDailyNews Take: Apple is the most successful broken company in the history of the world.
We’ve been warning that Apple’s management is not performing as well as the numbers indicate for years now. (But, don’t listen to us, we only basically described the iPhone five years before Steve Jobs held it up onstage.)
The butterfly keyboard is but one manifestation of Apple’s issues. The AirPower fiasco (printed on AirPods boxes no less) is another. Five+ years and counting with a dead-end goofball design on sale as the company’s flagship Mac, yet another. Need we go on? There have been many easily avoidable screwups over the years and, until the root cause is fixed — this stems from the very top with misplaced priorities and conflict aversion, to name just two biggies — these snafus will likely continue, further eroding Apple’s brand in the process.
Incessant virtue-signaling can hide systemic mismanagement for a time, but not forever.
SEE ALSO:
Tim Cook is not the best person to be CEO of Apple – April 2, 2019
Apple’s AirPower: a fiasco beyond imagination – April 1, 2019
Apple apologizes for ongoing reliability problems with its MacBook ‘butterfly’ keyboards – March 27, 2019
Tim Cook’s Apple vs. Steve Jobs’ Apple – February 28, 2019
Apple CEO Tim Cook plummets in Glassdoor’s tech CEO rankings – June 20, 2018
Apple CEO Tim Cook condemns ‘inhumane’ U.S. detention of children – June 19, 2018
Apple CEO Cook meets with members of the Congressional Black Caucus to discuss diversity – May 1, 2018
Apple CEO Cook says DACA shouldn’t have been revoked and that he’s ‘personally offended’ by the situation – April 5, 2018
Tim Cook: ‘Maybe we should have been clearer’ over throttling iPhones with aging batteries – January 18, 2018
Apple product delays have more than doubled under CEO Tim Cook – January 5, 2018
Apple CEO Tim Cook paid close to $102 million for fiscal 2017 – December 28, 2017
At Tim Cook’s Apple, Steve Jobs is long gone, and so is the ‘it just works’ ethos – December 19, 2017
Tim Cook’s sloppy, unfocused Apple rushes to fix a major Mac security bug – November 29, 2017
Under ‘operations genius’ Tim Cook, product delays and other problems are no longer unusual for Apple – November 20, 2017
Apple CEO Tim Cook: The ‘operations genius’ who never has enough products to sell at launch – October 23, 2017
U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Patrick Leahy blast Apple CEO Tim Cook for removing VPN apps from App Store in China – October 20, 2017
Apple CEO Tim Cook talks climate change, immigration, and more with Michael Bloomberg – September 20, 2017
Apple’s Tim Cook barnstorms the U.S. for ‘moral responsibility’ – August 29, 2017
Apple’s Tim Cook reaped $145 million last year, most of S&P 500 CEOs – June 30, 2017
Apple CEO Tim Cook plummets 45 spots in employee ratings – June 22, 2017
Apple CEO Cook slams President Trump’s decision to withdraw from climate deal; says it’s ‘wrong for our planet’ – June 1, 2017
The culture at Apple changed when Tim Cook took over as CEO – April 10, 2017
Apple’s desperate Mac Pro damage control message hints at a confused, divided company – April 6, 2017
Apple CEO Cook speaks out publicly against President Trump’s executive order, ‘Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States’ – February 9, 2017
Tim Cook: Apple does not support President Trump’s executive order, ‘Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States’ – January 30, 2017
Apple CEO Tim Cook dines with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, senior advisor to President Trump – January 27, 2017
Tim Cook explains to Apple employees why he met with President-elect Trump – December 20, 2016
President-elect Trump meets privately with Apple CEO Cook, tells tech leaders: ‘I’m here to help you folks do well’ – December 14, 2016
Lazy Apple. It’s not hard to imagine Steve Jobs asking, ‘What have you been doing for the last four years?’ – December 9, 2016
Apple CEO Cook emails employees, calls for unity after Donald Trump presidential win – November 10, 2016
Apple CEO Tim Cook and the rest of Silicon Valley throw big money at Clinton and pretty much bupkis at Trump – August 23, 2016
Apple CEO Tim Cook attends secret meeting with tech CEOs, top Republicans in plot to stop Trump – March 8, 2016
What Steve Jobs gave Apple that Tim Cook cannot – November 18, 2015
Tim Cook has let his personal politics affect Apple; Board may have to rein him in – June 25, 2015
Open letter to Tim Cook: Apple needs to do better – January 5, 2015
Apple CEO Tim Cook falls from 1st to 18th in Glassdoor’s tech CEO rankings – March 15, 2013
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]