back to article Crumbs. Apple has tweaked the MacBook Pro keyboard

Apple gave part of its MacBook Pro line of laptops a speed bump today. But all you'll want to know really is whether the machine can still be paralysed by a crumb, or a speck of dust. A child with a butterfly, from shutterstock The butterfly defect: MacBook keys wrecked by single grain of sand READ MORE We can't say until …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    other options, or closed shop?

    can we use any other eGPU thunderbolt-based box...or is the system locked to this Blackmagic mark-up only ?

    1. AS1

      Re: other options, or closed shop?

      Other boxes should work; there was no lock in High Sierra and Apple's own dev kit comes with a Sonnet eGPU. However, the choice of graphics card is limited (hint: AMD) https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208544

      The Blackmagic box includes a Radeon Pro 580 8GB, so about half the price of the box goes on the card.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      A fully spec'd 15'' macbook pro is now £6209.

      £2880 'proprietary' option (integrated into the motherboard) upgrade for a 4TB SSD is just taking the piss with falling SSD prices.

      (obviously too, they don't supply the standard 512GB SSD when taking this option)

      Good luck with that when you drop your laptop.

      1. Rainer

        Re: A fully spec'd 15'' macbook pro is now £6209.

        These are enterprise-grade NVMe PCIe SSDs.

        Not SATA.

        The price isn't even overly expensive, AFAIK.

        There's a reason people use these laptops for video-editing, even if they have no liking to Apple in every other aspect.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: A fully spec'd 15'' macbook pro is now £6209.

          I use my £2.5k pc laptop for 4k video editing, in a professional capacity, for money. 2 years old -and it's a monster desktop replacement with 4 hdd slots (including 2 NVME), 4k screen with a fair crack at adobe srgb, 64Gb Ram, proper desktop i7, desktop level gtx1080. basically STILLL better than this new macbook. It's a bit heavy and hot but at least I had the option to buy this as a tradeoff!

          Nearly every diehard motion graphics artist/editor/3d designer I know still using a mac who haven't already switched (not many, any more) have finally started asking me discreet questions about moving to pc. I've even got a stock document written for them. It's dated 2016. I've sent it to 15 people so far. They are all happy with their switch.

          Apple do not care about professionals. That is the message that's been going out for years, and it has been received by professionals, loud and clear.

          1. Rainer

            Re: A fully spec'd 15'' macbook pro is now £6209.

            This is not a laptop. As you say, it's more of a desktop-replacement.

            How much does it weigh?

            Personally, I can't stand Windows 10. I'd rather pay more for something I like to use than pay less for something that I hate switching on.

            I don't need any of the Windows-apps, there would be no benefit for me to switch to Windows, except saving a bit of money every couple of years.

            That said, I currently don't need a laptop anyway. My hardware-requirements are very modest (satisfied with a 2012 i7 MacMini, 512 GB SSD, 16GB RAM).

  2. Paradroid

    Crumbs indeed

    Love the pun.

    Are they just quieter because there's some sort of rubber protective rings around the ultra-delicate switches?

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. stephanh

    "an improved third-generation keyboard for quieter typing"

    Well, sure happy they have resolved the main issue with the keyboard then. The noise. Right.

    1. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: "an improved third-generation keyboard for quieter typing"

      No I don't think you will stop people such as me moaning about Apple.

      Although I had a shock yesterday, someone with an Apple mac wanted to use a projector, they had an HDMI port. I almost fainted.

      1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: "I almost fainted."

        You mean that your projector has only a VGA input then?

        Mines the one with a HDMI to VGA and a HDMI to DVI adapters in the pocket

        1. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
          Facepalm

          Re: "I almost fainted."

          What no it has hdmi? Havent bothered with VGA for years (Although we have a hdmi to vga converter just in case).

          Every bloody mac that has been here before has had thunderbolt and mini thunderbolt

      2. Ilsa Loving

        Re: "an improved third-generation keyboard for quieter typing"

        "Although I had a shock yesterday, someone with an Apple mac wanted to use a projector, they had an HDMI port. I almost fainted"

        That would be the 2015 model MBP that they just discontinued. Presumably because people (like me) were buying those instead of their ridiculously-overpriced-but-garbage new models.

  4. Lee D Silver badge

    God, the PC you could get for the same money that wouldn't have a pathetic 13" screen...

    If I was GIVEN one of these, I'd flog it and buy a decent laptop and spend the difference on all kinds of stuff.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So, you're saying pick up a blue-tooth keyboard too.

    Well, ok than.

  6. djstardust

    How much?

    Bloody hell .....

    At least the displays are decent. That's about it.

  7. pwl

    ffs why so little RAM?

    the 13” has been stuck on 16GB max ram since at least 2013 - this limitation is the main reason i haven’t upgraded since then. i don’t understand why they are dragging their feet so hard on this.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: ffs why so little RAM?

      What do you run that needs more RAM?

      I'm sitting here with a 10+ year old Macbook Pro that has 8GB. I use it to develop software and often have something like a Windows 10 VM running at the same time.

      I'm wanting to upgrade, but, if I'm really honest, there's not a lot wrong with this old work-horse other than it no longer gets OS upgrades (but does still get security updates). It'll be interesting to see how much faster a 12 thread machine (vs 2) with four times the RAM will be.

      It wasn't cheap when I got it, but it was cheaper than the equivalent Dell I was about to get when someone suggested I look at Apple. However, it has lasted between two and three times the life I ever managed to get out out of a high-end Windows laptop.

      1. IsJustabloke
        Meh

        Re: ffs why so little RAM?

        "What do you run that needs more RAM?"

        Well, I'm often running lightroom, photoshop and various other tools running and I'll be working on image files that are several gigs in size each... my PC has 32 gig of ram and uses it all sometimes.

        I do wish people would consider that *their* use case is not *everyone's* uses case. It's the same with people who scream that people should switch to *nix. That's a no brainer for me the software I use on a daily basis simply isn't available on *nix

    2. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: ffs why so little RAM?

      > i don’t understand why they are dragging their feet so hard on this.

      Because of this:

      "All of the 4th generation MBPs have been limited to a maximum of 16GB of RAM; this is due to Intel CPU limitations where Intel doesn’t support the current generation of low power RAM (LPDDR4) that Apple favors, and the LPDDR3 that Intel does support only goes up to 16GB. However it is possible to pair more than 16GB of memory with these Intel processors – so long as you give up the use of low power RAM – and this is the route Apple is taking" - Anandtech

      So as a result, Apple are using more power hungry RAM and making the battery bigger to compensate.

  8. Sureo

    ...six-core i9 ... 4.8Ghz ... 32GB of DDR4 ... Radeon GPU with 4GB DDR5 ...4TB of SSD...

    what good it is if the keyboard doesn't work?

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      The keyboard has been revised, so wait and see if that's fixed the issues.

  9. msknight
    Mushroom

    yeah, right...

    " A Keyboard Service scheme covers models made between 2015 and 2017"

    *ring ring* - "Hello? Yes, this is Apple. I'm afraid that we can't repair your keyboard under the scheme because we found a bread crumb in it. This counts as user damage and you'll have to pay the £300 minimum charge." *click* - "Hello? ... Hello?"

  10. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Cookie Monster need to review one ASAP.

    While munching on cookies.

  11. ninjaturtle
    Facepalm

    So does this also mean that their keyboard replacement scheme just exchanges the (nearly-new) faulty keyboards for... brand new faulty keyboards?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What happened to the commonsense approach.

    What happened to the commonsense approach regards design where a keyboard was a singular modular part that could easily be replaced in 2 minutes by removing 4 screws.

    The sheer contempt Apple has for its users today, more fool you.

    Integrating a 4TB SSD into the motherboard is the epitaph of commodity and stupidy.

    ---------------------------------------------------------

    There is nothing Pro about Apple anymore.

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