Hacker News Reader

Comment by phaedrus | Hacker News Reader

Ironically I had a covered device that failed prematurely but not for the recall reason. I was suspicious of the keyboard redesign so I bought and used a keyboard cover from day one, and I never had a problem with any of the keys.

Instead the ribbon connecting the screen failed. I took it to a reputable repair shop, who told me based on their experience the failure rate on these for other display-related reasons was high enough that in their opinion I'd be throwing good money after bad. So I told them to just use mine for parts or recycle it. (It was old enough by then that the latest OS X no longer supported it, thus defeating its purpose for software development. In return I decided to simply no longer support Mac versions of software I write.)

View on HN

You have to be careful of those keyboard covers because the space between the keyboard and monitor is so small when closed it can crack the screen

I had ribbon cable break on my 2017 MacBook Pro w/ TouchBar. They replaced the entire top shell of the computer and also fixed the keyboard at the same time.

This was about 4 years ago. Keyboard started going bad again this last year, cmd key falling off, ‘O’ key always has multiple inputs for a single keystroke.

This sounds horrible.

I've never had a single issue like this on any of my Thinkpads running Linux.

They're built solid and take a lot of abuse.

> It was old enough by then that the latest OS X no longer supported it, thus defeating its purpose for software development.

For what it's worth, the very first butterfly keyboard MacBook is the only one that's fallen off of being supported by the latest macOS, and that only happened in October. So at least you got a good 6 years out of it, I guess?

Which is extremely annoying. Many new iOS features, like E2E encrypted backups and the shared photostream, require all devices to be on the latest OS.

Apple is forcing me to replace my otherwise functional device. I'll have to look into putting linux on it, because I won't be able to sign into my apple id on it.

You might want to try using OpenCore Legacy Patcher [1]. It basically turns your old unsupported mac into a hackintosh via a custom bootloader. I got Ventura running on my late 2012 MBP using the patcher.

[1] https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

Thanks for the tip. I never heard of that project before.

They did have a service program for this but only for certain models.

https://support.apple.com/13-inch-macbook-pro-display-backli...

Of course mine wasn't covered despite showing the same symptoms.

My work-issued 2019 also had this failure and it took Apple 5 weeks to send my laptop back.

Lol, Did work just buy you a new laptop. 5 Weeks is crazy.

Work had a stash of 2015 vintage mbps so I made do with that. Poor battery, magsafe, and slow as molasses - I was 'real' productive while waiting for the darn new laptop to be repaired and discussing the eta with various apple 'care experts'.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com