Mac Keyboard Sucks. Please help!


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Hi, I have a Macbook Pro 3.1 (early 2008 I think - not sure as I was given it at work last year). In any case It's an OK system. My biggest concerns with it is that it gets unbarably hot and the fans go mad when it's practically doing anything. It's also pretty choppy when playing back Flash video - which I tend to do a lot. However my biggest gripe with it is that the keyboard is indescribably bad. I have to really thump the keys to maintain any kind of accuracy - and any kind of touch typing is completely out of the question. I even replaced the keyboard thinking that maybe the original keyboard was faulty, but the replacement was every bit as bad.

Anyhoo... That said, I do like OS X. So I was thinking of replacing my Macbook with one of the new 13 inch Macbook Pros. However I'm not so keen if the keyboard is likely to be as similarly sucky, or if it is prone to overheating - or if like it's older cousin it's likely to have issues playing back Flash videos.

Can anyone advise if these problems persist in these latest models?

Thanks!

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I don't get it? It's almost like no one wants to say anything negative about Mac hardware? I don't really care about that, all I care about is not wasting a bunch of money on a laptop that might not be practical or usable.

Hasn't anyone got anything to say at all?

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Oh believe me, there are PLENTY of people around here willing to say bad things about Mac, (This is a Windows Site After all)

I have not had the issues you have, i have a white plastic macbook and a brand new iMac, the keyboards keys are essentially the same on either, key press movement is far shorter on a mac keyboard nearly half the distance of most

wether that is intentional to make the keys a lil harder to press or just a side effect of shortening that distance i don't know.

Maybe you should go to an apple store or best buy and play around with the display models and see if they are all to your disliking

Edited by Phantom Helix
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I have similar issues with my macbook 3.1 Santa Rosa.. It is due to the graphics chipset being so lame. The new aluminum ones with the Nvidia graphics chipset run a lot better.

I have since replaced my macbook with a core i7. I didn't use the laptop for portability but rather to connect to my wall-mounted tv. Now I use the laptop for casual browsing/email and do everything else on the i7.

When it came to the typing on the Macbook I had no issues however I did use the small bluetooth apple keyboard most of the time.

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Flash videos have always been somewhat of an issue on OSX, it works but it takes a lot of CPU

Didn't I read somewhere that the newest Macs have built in Flash video acceleration as part of their graphics chips? (I'm not sure if I can find it anywhere now though).

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Didn't I read somewhere that the newest Macs have built in Flash video acceleration as part of their graphics chips? (I'm not sure if I can find it anywhere now though).

The newest Flashplayer on any system can use hardware acceleration, flash is just a resource hog, always has been

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Oh believe me, there are PLENTY of people around here willing to say bad things about Mac, (This is a Windows Site After all)

I have not had the issues you have, i have a white plastic macbook and a brand new iMac, the keyboards keys are essentially the same on either, key press movement is far shorter on a mac keyboard nearly half the distance of most

wether that is intentional to make the keys a lil harder to press or just a side effect of shortening that distance i don't know.

Maybe you should go to an apple store or best buy and play around with the display models and see if they are all to your disliking

I don't think the iMac is relevant, as it has an external keyboard. I've tried an external keyboard and these work fine. It's a bit screwed up that I have to use an external keyboard in order to be able to type accurately/reliably. This is probably my biggest gripe, as it cost me ?90 (which is maybe double that in USD) to have the keyboard replaced - and all to no effect.

I have similar issues with my macbook 3.1 Santa Rosa.. It is due to the graphics chipset being so lame. The new aluminum ones with the Nvidia graphics chipset run a lot better.

Yeah that's the one I have. So 'better' to the extent that the new Macs don't have these issues?

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The newest Flashplayer on any system can use hardware acceleration, flash is just a resource hog, always has been

So what does that mean for the latest Macs? No more choppy Flash video? Flash may or may not be a resource hog, but I can't say that until I used a Mac I ever considered it a problem. (At least not since Flash video first became popular on the web). I was very surprised at how badly it performed on my Macbook - which if it was a normal PC, one would think would have more than enough resources to handle it.

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I don't think the iMac is relevant, as it has an external keyboard. I've tried an external keyboard and these work fine. It's a bit screwed up that I have to use an external keyboard in order to be able to type accurately/reliably. This is probably my biggest gripe, as it cost me ?90 (which is maybe double that in USD) to have the keyboard replaced - and all to no effect.

All Mac keyboards laptop or desktop are extremely similar in design

The the standalone desktop keyboards (the small ones that are included) are identical to the matchbooks and the bluetooth wireless, the only real exception is the larger stand alone desktop with keypad

http://images.apple.com/keyboard/images/ga..._4_20090306.jpg

http://images.apple.com/keyboard/images/ga..._1_20070813.jpg

http://images.apple.com/keyboard/images/ga..._1_20070813.jpg

http://images.apple.com/macbook/images/ove...o2_20090828.png

http://images.apple.com/macbookpro/images/...y2-20090828.png

http://images.apple.com/macbookair/images/...o2_20090608.png

So what does that mean for the latest Macs? No more choppy Flash video? Flash may or may not be a resource hog, but I can't say that until I used a Mac I ever considered it a problem. (At least not since Flash video first became popular on the web). I was very surprised at how badly it performed on my Macbook - which if it was a normal PC, one would think would have more than enough resources to handle it.

Flash has had some recent version that were far worse than older ones, when flash 10 first came out i had serious problems on my iMac with choppy video, but they worked out the bugs and its fine now

Edited by Phantom Helix
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I have the early 2008 MBP model, but it is version 4,1. It's not one of the unibody designed ones. I do not have any of these issues that you've mentioned aside from the heat. The keyboard is fast and responsive for me. I'm also always running VMWare Fusion with Windows 7 and Aero enabled, and I'm not getting any slow down or choppiness while playing Flash. I alleviate the heat issue using SMC Fan Control.

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@Phantom Helix: I think for politeness you might do well to crop some of those images, or just post them as links. ;-) (But thanks anyway). In any case it's not the 'layout' of the keyboard that's the issue, it's how hard I have to thump the keys in order to be able to type reliably. If I don't thump them, or if I try touch typing, I end up with a huge number of missing characters in whatever it is I'm typing.

I've been typing for the best part of 20 years, so am pretty fast/accurate by most standards, but the keyboard on this Mac makes accurate typing like this almost impossible. As I said, I tried an external USB keyboard - and that worked fine - but I'm damned if I want to use an external keyboard on a laptop, just because the model it's supplied with sucks so bad.

I have the early 2008 MBP model, but it is version 4,1. It's not one of the unibody designed ones. I do not have any of these issues that you've mentioned aside from the heat. The keyboard is fast and responsive for me. I'm also always running VMWare Fusion with Windows 7 and Aero enabled, and I'm not getting any slow down or choppiness while playing Flash. I alleviate the heat issue using SMC Fan Control.

Well hopefully it might just be this earlier version then?

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By the way, PH, all of those that you showed in your screenshots are different than the model in question :). The keys are somewhat raised more so than what is pictured. I guess I can see why jebus may have issues with it. Though, it's nothing that I have trouble with.

Well hopefully it might just be this earlier version then?

It could be the previous year's model. The keyboard would be exactly the same, at least in appearance. The heat issues, I'm not sure. I hadn't used that model, so I could not say.

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With Snow Leopard just out the door, newer Macs (with Nvidia graphics) are now able to make use of OpenCL technology which enables some of the processing for things such as HD video to be outsourced to the graphics chip. I'm not sure if this applies to flash video in a browser yet (it may do), but certainly this is the direction the technology is headed. Imagine a low-powered machine with an Atom processor and a Nvidia chip being able to handle HD video much better, due to the graphics chip doing a lot more of the number crunching.

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By the way, PH, all of those that you showed in your screenshots are different than the model in question :). The keys are somewhat raised more so than what is pictured. I guess I can see why jebus may have issues with it. Though, it's nothing that I have trouble with.

All i was showing was Apple keyboards have always been similar to themselves yet drastically different to other manufacturers, and like i originally said, why don't you just go test out some display models at a store?

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I didn't mean any offense, PH. I was just trying to say that the model in question has a keyboard that is dramatically different than those pictured. I think I am partial to the feel of the newer ones, as I have used them and I also own two of the newer aluminum keyboards for my desktops at home.

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All i was showing was Apple keyboards have always been similar to themselves yet drastically different to other manufacturers, and like i originally said, why don't you just go test out some display models at a store?

You have to live with these things a while before you find out their quirks. I would be ordering online so the danger is getting it and then finding out I can't live with it. We don't have an apple store where I live in the UK anyway.

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You have to live with these things a while before you find out their quirks. I would be ordering online so the danger is getting it and then finding out I can't live with it. We don't have an apple store where I live in the UK anyway.

I can definitely say that you do not have to press the newer keys deep into the keyboard as you described with the model that you have. But I agree that it would be nice to get a feel for it before buying.

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I can definitely say that you do not have to press the newer keys deep into the keyboard as you described with the model that you have.

I'm not sure what you mean? What I mean is the keys seem very stiff and unresponsive and you pretty much have to thump each individual key with a fair amount of force if you want to be able to type accurately - and even then it doesn't always work.

Oh I get it, you mean you don't have to do this with he newer models? Fair enough...

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