In laptops, companies started to use "scissor switches," crossed pieces of plastic that hold the switch up, because they took up less space than mechanisms like rubber domes (when you pop a key off and there's a tiny plastic nipple sticking up, that’s a rubber dome). Consumer computer keyboards in the 80s, like the IBM Model M, were very chunky and mechanical, with thick plastic keys and buckling spring mechanisms. “If a single piece of dusts lays the whole computer out, don't you think that's kind of a problem?”Īpple is one of very few technology companies that has tried to improve, so to speak, upon the notebook or laptop keyboard. Though Apple employees receive significant yearly discounts on computers, and this was the first significant redesign of the MacBook Pro’s body in eight years, he had chosen not to buy one of the new ones, even a year later. "I have one of those," he said apologetically. He cast around and pointed to a nearby pre-2015 MacBook Pro with relatively thicker keys. There is no fixing it there is only replacing half the computer. In fact, all of Apple's keyboards are now composed of a single, irreparable piece of technology. In every other computer I've owned before I bought the latest MacBook Pro last fall, fixing this would have begun by removing the key and peering around in its well to see if it was simply dirty. “If a single piece of dust lays the whole computer out, don't you think that's kind of a problem?” But this time, the third time, I was ready. The previous times I'd been to the Apple Store for the same computer with the same problem - a misbehaving keyboard - Geniuses had said to me these exact same nonchalant words, and I had been stunned into silence, the first time because it seemed so improbable to blame such a core problem on such a small thing, and the second time because I couldn't believe the first time I heard this line had not been a fluke. “Maybe it's a piece of dust,” the Genius had offered. But every time I pressed it once, it spaced twice. And not even physically broken - it still moved and acted normally. There were no mysteriously faulty innerworkings. The problem was not that its logic board was failing, that its battery was dying, or that its camera didn't respond. My computer was getting its third diagnostic test in 45 minutes.
I was in the Grand Central Station Apple Store for the third time in a year, watching a progress bar slowly creep across my computer's black screen as my Genius multi-tasked helping another customer with her iPad.