[vijayp]

The design is terrible. I never use the touchpad for anything regular keys wouldn't do better. The keyboard on my 2017 MBP13 failed three times in the year I've owned it. The first time, the Apple Store person "cleaned" the keyboard, fixed things for a while. A couple of weeks later, the problem came back. I insisted on a better solution, and they replaced the keyboard.

Five months later, a different key failed, and the Apple Store people sent it to Memphis. This time, it came back with one of the "new and improved" keyboards. They also replaced the screen because of 'delamination' which I hadn't noticed. The total amount they spent to repair this computer is approaching the cost of the machine at this point! So far, the new keyboard hasn't failed yet but I'm not holding my breath…

[nexensis]

I had a similar experience with a top spec late 2016 MBP, which I switched to from a PC for web development. It was my first and last Apple product.

After opening the lid one day there was a loud crackling noise and the speakers were both blown. To repair it, the Apple store had to replace the entire top case (top half of the chassis including keyboard, trackpad, speakers) and also replaced the battery, which would have cost ~£500.

I got it back two weeks later after dealing with a smug 'Genius' who treated me like an idiot. He also claimed that the software diagnostics were clean, so there was nothing wrong with the laptop. I had to drive 1 1/2 hours each way to the store for a second time during business hours just to argue in person with them, because the speakers were clearly broken.

The exact same problem happened twice more over the next year, taking two weeks to fix each time. The final time was outside of the 1yr AppleCare warranty, and they wanted to replace the top case, battery and logic board for ~£800.

Coupled with the useless touch bar, 16GM RAM cap, awful display scaling issues/confusion when external monitors were attached, sluggish performance for video editing and OS updates that broke the machine, it convinced me to avoid Apple products completely.

I got a full £3100 refund after 18 months under EU consumer law and build a powerful desktop PC (16 core ThreadRipper, 32GB RAM, 1080ti) with £1500 left over.

[gall]

Are the touchbar Macbook Pros still experiencing widespread screen delamination? I thought that was specific to the previous generation.

[IOT_Apprentice]

would love to see a parts list for the ThreadRipper build.

[smohare]

I personally find function keys useless (I’m mostly in Vim and map things to leader + mnemonic key sequences), so the Touch Bar tends to offer more value for things like media control. It really boils down to personal use, rather than a fundamentally flawed design.

[fiddlerwoaroof]

Yeah, I’ve been interested in the touchbar as a way to get emacs-mode-specific shortcut keys.