As you said, mixed reports (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26244093) and not much followup since then. The most common worst-case numbers from that thread, if sustained, would indicate a 4-5 year maximum lifetime.
If this actually turns out to be a widespread problem and Apple doesn't address it in a timely update you may see a class-action lawsuit and/or Apple warranty repair service in a few years.
Yes, it sucked that it took so long to redesign it. The bad keyboards started appearing around 2016, and it wasn’t until 2019 that a redesign first appeared, on the new 16” MacBook Pro.
But Apple have always been good about free, no-questions-asked, out of warranty replacements for faulty/sticky butterfly keyboards. Not really sure what more you could reasonably want them to do.
Because they extended the warranty replacement to four years for the keyboard? Once that's done and now they are going to push people towards buying entirely new models since an out of warranty keyboard repair on these things is something absurd like $600-700 IIRC.
Trust was eroded because every year they came out with some improvement on it that was supposed to fix the problem, then at the end of the year models with those keyboards were added to the expanded warranty program.
I think it would have been better if they had a real fix for this issue, it probably would have been expensive for them with a redesigned top and bottom case to fit a decent keyboard but right now the butterfly keyboards seem like ticking time bombs. Eventually they will die and Apple will either ask several hundred to repair it or say parts no longer exist and buy a new one.
>Not really sure what more you could reasonably want them to do.
1 Admit the issue before a class action lawsuit is running
2 Put immediately a statement that there "could" be an issue and it is investigated. Apple kept their mouth shut and the fanboys attacked the people that reported the issues that they use the keyboard wrong or some even claim that is is an anti-Apple conspiracy.
"it's okay that Apple made this mistake, because they were always willing to replace your useless trash when it broke for you!"
Maybe Apple should have just swallowed their pride and addressed it in a single product cycle. I was one of the people waiting for the keyboard to be fixed before buying a Mac, and I just ended up switching to Linux before it happened. I ended up buying an M1 Macbook Air, but it doesn't get much use these days besides multiplatform testing.
For Apple Laptops, more like 7-8, at least in the old days.
Typically you would only replace them when they (gradually) became annoyingly slow for daily use.
Agreed, I had to upgrade all of of my PowerBooks/MacBooks at some point with RAM and larger HDDs/SSDs.
And my last Apple Laptop is from 2012 and I learned that Apple now drops support by the OS considerably earlier than in the old days (i.e. unecesarily early, most 8-10 year old MacBooks would be perfectly fine for daily use, but now unsafe) - at least that was my impression.
And installing Linux on them is always a mixed bag (fans, trackpad, etc.), even though it sure is better with Intel Macs.
I bought a macbook air in ~2012 and it was unusably slow after a year. bought a thinkpad to put linux on after that that I'm still using today (although admittedly it's a bit of a wreck now - still, it lasted for 8 years)
The MacBook Air was not really a "high performance" machine to start with though - you can't compare that with a ThinkPad :)
And it was seldomly updated, so you could get very aged specs.
If you bought a MacBook 2011/2012 you would typically get an HDD and between 4 and 8GB RAM. Software requirements/demands sky-rocketed shortly after that. On a non-Air you could at least upgrade this yourself, which gave the machine new life ("just like new")
it did have a 128gb ssd. The thinkpad was also an x1 carbon (also 4gb of ram), so it had a similar form factor, not sure about cpu specs, I probably should have mentioned that.
Interesting, I wonder why mine slowed down so much then. From what I remember it was after an OS upgrade, it was my first time trying a mac, and I ended up being disappointed and going back to linux, but I also didn't do a deep dive into figuring out the reasons for it.
I believe the 2011 era MacBook Air (EveryMac.com confirms only the 11”) had an entry level 2GB RAM variant. That one probably got pretty painful after just a couple OS updates.
My HP laptop is 7 years old and still works well. 4xxx i7 8 threads, 32 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD (upgrades, of course.) A new laptop with a newer CPU and NVMe would be faster but it's still subjectively fast enough for my work. I'll upgrade when it breaks down and I won't be able to repair it. I keep an eye on candidates.
Not anymore. Now Apple will drop MacOS support for their computers way earlier. I tried to update my barely used MacBook from 2012/2013 somewhere last year and learned that it was dropped quite some time ago - so if I would have kept it on the newest release (there were serious bugs, I was hesitant), I think it would have got around 8 years max, if memory serves me right. No security updates at all anymore, not possible to download older release than the newest. I did not expect that.
And I had to upgrade SSD and RAM 2 and 4 years after buying, it became unusable for work (granted, it was not spec'ed out originally).
MacBook Pros and Airs from 2012 are supported by Catalina, and that is still getting security releases. It does require 4GB of RAM though if you didn’t have that to start with.
If you bought your MacBook until MID 2012, you're out of luck though.
And 10 years old would be early 2011, and those are also not supported.
Mojave has the same requirements basically, that leaves High Sierra, and High Sierra had a few months of support left (ended Dec 2020), so I just aborted.
Obviously that depends on a number of factors, including whether you purchase early or late in the generational cycle, whether you spring for the extra memory, total hours of runtime, exposure to rough handling / mechanical stress, and of course blind luck.
Not anymore? It's not like battery replacement is very viable on modern Macs, and the SSD wear issue means that most of these "daily driver" machines will end up dead in more like 3 or 4 years.
But yes, older Macs were notorious for being great machines.
> It's not like battery replacement is very viable on modern Macs
Why? Apple still offers battery replacements for modern Macs, and some more adventurous types of people still do it themselves. They're glued to the chassis, not spot welded.
Apple SSDs have historically had a lower TBW than the rest of the drives on the market, and combined with their swap abuse issue right now, I think it's fair for people to be alarmed.
Not if the computer becomes a paperweight after those 5 years. If Apple wants me to consider a Mac, they need to make the NVME user-servicable, no exceptions. If the current chassis leaks are true, Apple has no excuse not to use the extra space inside their Professional(!!!) machine to give it a relatively standard feature found in laptops half it's price. There's no excuse anymore.
Still I think a lot of Thinkpads need some parts (often the motherboard!) replaced before they run out of extended on-site repair warranty. The small sample from my co-workers seems to indicate that the rate for that is over 50%. Maybe I just happen to know all the people who use their laptops as shovels.
That said, my 2015 HP Zbook (previously in contracting work, now personal use) still works perfectly, only now with third keyboard, third battery, and a bit of superglue.
If this actually turns out to be a widespread problem and Apple doesn't address it in a timely update you may see a class-action lawsuit and/or Apple warranty repair service in a few years.