Skip to main content

Apple to offer free repair for faulty butterfly keyboards on select MacBooks



After a number of user complaints about Apple's faulty butterfly keyboard built into some of the recent MacBooks, the company has finally decided to take some action. Apple late last week announced that it would an extended keyboard service program for select MacBook and MacBook Pro models with faulty butterfly switches. Several people have complained that the butterfly keyboard allows for dust to seep in easily and the design makes it difficult to repair.
Apple's new extended warranty will cover the replacement of the one or more keys or the entire keyboard free of cost. Apple acknowledges that a small percentage of keyboards show issues like letters or characters repeating unexpectedly, unregistered keys and sticky keys that do not respond in a consistent manner. If users face any of these issues, Apple or an Apple Authorised Service Provider will service the affected laptops (up to four years since the date of purchase) after it deems it eligible for the program. Notably, Apple's service page includes every MacBook and MacBook Pro model with the butterfly switches and you can check the models out here. Additionally, Apple is also offering a refund for users who have already paid to have their keyboards repaired.
The butterfly keyboard is designed as a low-profile switch that Apple claims is more responsive and robust than the traditional scissor-type keyboard. However, there have been a number of complaints over the past months from users claiming that the design of the keyboard is such that even small amounts of dust or debris that creep under the keyboard can render the keys non-responsive. Additionally, the design also doesn't allow you to remove individual keys, so if the keyboard does malfunction it will require elaborate and expensive remedies. Extreme cases have required users to take their laptops for service at a Genius Bar or authorised Apple repair facility, which can be a pricey affair.
Last month, some MacBook users filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple for knowingly selling MacBooks with faulty keyboards. The lawsuit claimed that Apple was aware of the issues with the butterfly keyboards before they reached the public back in 2015 and accuse the company for failing to notify consumers. They also accuse Apple of suggesting "self-help remedies" like using compressed air, a technique that consumers have found does not always work.
Apple's acknowledgement of the issue has taken a while and the company is yet to answer to the claims on whether it was always aware of the issue. For now, Apple's extended keyboard service program should help affected users repair their keyboards without having to pay large sums of money. The underlying issue regarding the design of the keyboard, however, is yet to be addressed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Spring Security with JWT for REST API

Spring is considered a trusted framework in the Java ecosystem and is widely used. It’s no longer valid to refer to Spring as a framework, as it’s more of an umbrella term that covers various frameworks. One of these frameworks is Spring Security , which is a powerful and customizable authentication and authorization framework. It is considered the de facto standard for securing Spring-based applications. Despite its popularity, I must admit that when it comes to single-page applications , it’s not simple and straightforward to configure. I suspect the reason is that it started more as an MVC application -oriented framework, where webpage rendering happens on the server-side and communication is session-based. If the back end is based on Java and Spring, it makes sense to use Spring Security for authentication/authorization and configure it for stateless communication. While there are a lot of articles explaining how this is done, for me, it was still frustrating to set it up for the f...
Post a Comment
Read more

Java Functional Interfaces

  The term   Java functional interface   was introduced in Java 8. A   functional interface   in Java is an interface that contains only a single abstract (unimplemented) method. A functional interface can contain default and static methods which do have an implementation, in addition to the single unimplemented method. Here is a Java functional interface example: public interface MyFunctionalInterface { public void execute(); } The above counts as a functional interface in Java because it only contains a single method, and that method has no implementation. Normally a Java interface does not contain implementations of the methods it declares, but it can contain implementations in default methods, or in static methods. Below is another example of a Java functional interface, with implementations of some of the methods: public interface MyFunctionalInterface2{ public void execute(); public default void print(String text) { System.out.println(t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Java Logger

In Java, logging is an important feature that helps developers to trace out the errors. Java is the programming language that comes with the logging approach. It provides a Logging API that was introduced in Java 1.4 version. It provides the ability to capture the log file. In this section, we are going to deep dive into the Java Logger API. Also, we will cover logging level, components, Logging handlers or appenders, logging formatters or layouts, Java Logger class, What is logging in Java? In Java, Logging is an API that provides the ability to trace out the errors of the applications. When an application generates the logging call, the Logger records the event in the LogRecord. After that, it sends to the corresponding handlers or appenders. Before sending it to the console or file, the appenders format that log record by using the formatter or layouts. Need for Logging It provides the complete tracing information of the application. It records the critical failure if any occur in ...
Post a Comment
Read more