Among my many hats, I do some official Apple work.

What you are talking about is not allowed for work done under Apple.

The top case is one part which cannot be disassembled so far as they are concerned. It contains the main part of the shell, the keyboard, the trackpad, and the battery. A failure in any part of it is to be serviced by a complete replacement of the top case.

It is not an exceptionally expensive component, but it is a significant amount of labor. The top case is pretty much the "base" that all other components are attached to. Which means you take everything else out (logic board, display, fans, vent, etc) and move it to the new one.

Also, the touch ID bit is a bitch to move.

Maybe something like this will finally force Apple to start making their laptops more serviceable.

After being an Apple user since 2006, I’ve just switched to a Thinkpad for my home machine. Compared to a MacBook Air, the X series is only 1mm thicker, but smaller in all other dimensions, including weight. Yet I can upgrade the storage and memory, and replace parts myself that fail (the battery can be swapped while it’s running). It also has a full array of ports including USB type A & C, HDMI, headphone jack, SD card slot (the latest version has replaced the Ethernet port with a dongle).

Admitidely they don’t look as nice, but I’m not really a design sensitive person.

How is the trackpad? I intentionally bought a MacBook Pro late 2015 version just before they went out of stock because I actually like all those “old” ports, the old keyboard and so on.

I’d prefer to stay on os/x because Linux is still tedious in the way that you have to configure it to make it tolerable and windows had gone from great (7) to something that annoys me on a daily basis (10).

But I’m mainly scared of the mouse. The MacBook trackpad is damn near magical and I’m not sure I could ever use a laptop with a trackpad that didn’t come close to it. The price point and the design choices on the MacBook line as well as it’s price point (price can be mitigated by buying older versions like I did) have made me consider other options, thinkpads being the main competitor. But how is the trackpad?

A coworker got himself a T470p (I think), the trackpad hardware is fine, albeit a bit small for my taste; the problem to me is more about how it is leveraged by the software (OS) side of things: both Linux DEs and Windows make visual feedback of multitouch gestures feel weird somehow. Maybe that's a habit of mine being used to macOS though. I'm not overly fond of the trackpoint, but that's a nice option and it's right on the home row next to HJKL. I hate how the B letter is offset though, kinda ridiculous but I find it a real eyesore and an aesthetic failure somehow.

I have a t460p for software development, which is basically the same machine as that t470p, and absolutely love it. It has workstation-class performance with the quad core i7, 32 gb ram and dedicated nvidia graphics, all of which can run full blast without throttling. But if I use it moderately it still has all day battery life.

I almost never use the trackpad, preferring a mouse. I don’t like them even on macbooks (I also have a macbook air for casual use). But it’s definitely worse than macbooks.

I never noticed the offset b, but now that you’ve pointed it out to me it’s going to bug me. Thanks. I do like the keyboard better than the air’s keyboard. I haven’t used the new mb pro’s keyboard to any extent so can’t compare, but I like a bit of key travel so probably would still prefer the lenovo.

Afaik Linux DEs treat gestures as hotkeys, hence the weirdness - you can't do them as gradually as with osx, it's all or nothing.a

I'm in the same boat. Got a second hand 2015 model like new because of screen and topcase repair program. At work I'm forced to use a Dell with Linux. I like that I can configure everything about Linux to reduce the difference to my Mac workflow (key shortcuts etc). But I hatr that I must configure almost everything to get to a basic workable environment. As for trackpads on the Dell, I avoid using it as it makes me cry compared to my macbook's also the keyboard just sucks, backspace and other keys not registering reliably.

That’s interesting to hear. I’m using a cheap HP running Ubuntu supplied by my current job. I was considering switching to an XPS13 for my personal machine.

What’s currently keeping me on my late 2013 MBP for the moment is poor default behaviour of desktop Linux.

Like the Bluetooth forgetting the state it was left in on every reboot.

Or something, I don’t know what, constantly reversing horizontal trackpad scroll direction (but leaving vertical alone). Or blanking the screen after 20s of inactivity regardless of the screen/power settings in Gnome.

I know that I’ll eventually get that stuff under control but it’s weird it doesn’t work out of the box without a trip to Stack Overflow.

Being an real mouse person, the trackpad is usually good enough (using Thinkpads since 2006), however when I don't have it around, I happen to be more heavy stick mouse user than the trackpad.

I really miss its ergonomics when using other brands.

I'm more interested in what the TrackPoint is like.

It takes time to get used to. But it is sooo worth it - I don't need to ever move my hands off the keyboard. I still prefer standalone mouse (but I'm still gamer, so nothing can beat speed & accuracy of dedicated mouse for me), but even when I have plugged it in I sometimes use trackpoint to keep hands on the keyboard. In cramped places (bus, train) I work without problems, and I wonder how awkward would it be with using standard touchpad with laptop in your lap - too close to your stomach, so not much space for hands. Also I don't ever have problems with accidental touching of touchpad - it is simply disabled.

Problem is, there are not many notebooks with trackpoint :/

Btw I can't talk about newest models, but this thing does not change much.

Yep I’ve got a 2013 MBP I’m too scared to upgrade at the moment. I’ve been weening myself off it and into a Windows 10 desktop recently this solving both problems.

Plus the desktop is second hand enterprise stuff and cost virtually nothing which was a pleasant surprise.

> Maybe something like this will finally force Apple to start making their laptops more serviceable.

I am afraid they will just increase the already huge margins, to account for similar cases in the future.

I'm pretty sure they charge based on what the market will bear rather than what it costs them to manufacture and service. If they have been effective at this it means there is no room for increases.

In other words if customers would accept higher prices then Apple would have already increased the prices.

They won't. So you can stop having that fear. There's no evidence whatsoever that they'd even consider that.

Off-topic, but what is the point of having a mini ethernet port if you still need a dongle anyway? USB ethernet adapters are cheap. They could just kill the port and save some pennies.

To have a fixed MAC address for the enterprise where it matters.

Spoof the adapter's MAC?

Apple can also just swap out the complete part and then ship the broken one to China to be disassembled and repaired cheaply.

Afaik this is what they do. Apple service centers need to return broken parts to Apple after 'repair'. Apple can then recycle/refurbish these parts of they seem fit. But they probably won't discount the customer for the benefit they receive from this approach.

> image safe for work

Is there any reason to expect an image of some screws and a grain of rice not to be safe for work? Genuinely curious. Like, what else would possibly be in that image? I think in general we expect all images on HN to be safe for work. And if they are not then people warn about that. Were there any NSFW images that you came across when searching for this one?

imgur.com hosts quite a few NSFW images. A company's firewall might be blocking images coming from there.

^^ This. I've had two instances where I'd used Imgur for image grabbing of screenshots and they turned out to be on the same page as NSFW images, which was out of my control.

That photo I took with the screws was ~3 years ago, my image hosting has changed since.

You get the sweats easily, I usually undress completely while unscrewing MacBook keyboards. It's a dirty business.

For any MacBook (Air/Pro) since they've been "unibody" (introduced in 2008), Apple's keyboard repair is (almost?) always a whole new "top case". More is moved than just the logic board — display, speakers, storage — but the keyboard itself isn't removed at the shop or repair depot. Now presumably they use all those bad top cases as refurb parts to some degree, so someone removes the keyboard . . .

For the older scissor keys, you can get replacement keycaps from ebay, and install them with a bit of fidgeting yourself. So even if Apple doesn't replace individual keys, you can do it yourself, and fix a broken keyboard for around 15€.

With the new butterfly keys that is apparently no longer possible.

Apple and Apple service providers can get replacement keycaps from Apple and replace keycaps, even for the butterfly keyboards. The linked article even says, "The type of service [...] may involve the replacement of one or more keys". The butterfly ones are more complicated to replace.

But this only helps with some kinds of key issues where the keycap or scissor mechanism is the problem, like sticking or rubbing keys (and dirty keys). It usually doesn't help with issues like no key response or wrong letter being typed. In this case the keyboard, and therefore the top case, would need to be replaced.

A few years ago I brought a 2011 Macbook Air to an Apple authorized repair shop, and they told me they could only replace the entire keyboard. So if they started replacing individual keys, that must be something new, I've never heard about that.

Everything I've read suggests that they only replace the entire keyboard, or in the case of the new Macbook, the entire top half of the computer.

I've also read that the scissor switch breaks when you try to remove the keycap, so I'm not sure how replacing individual keys would work.

I've replaced many Mac keycaps. All the "chicklet" style, starting with the white plastic MacBooks, can be replaced. (I don't know about the silver MBPs keys before that.) I honestly don't remember when key cap sets became available. Possibly after the retina MBPs came out, which use the same keycaps as the Airs. With the white MacBooks, with their infamous palmrest cracking issue, there were always extra top cases around to take a key from. This is still what is usually offered, at no cost, to someone who needs a key or a few, if they're off warranty.

The big thing is the keycaps and scissor aren't designed to be removed, unlike other parts of the machine, so you will break a large fraction of the ones you try to remove, and those will need to be replaced with a new key and/or scissor. And they're small and fiddly to replace. So there's a difference between replacing 1, 2 or 3 missing or wonky keys and half the keyboard. Many shops would probably only want to replace the whole top case after a certain threshold due to the time and work involved. If the keys are sticky it's different too, since the keycap, scissor plus the part of the top case below and around the key would need to be cleaned to get it moving well. With more than a few keys this starts to be a lot of work.

The butterfly keyboards don't have replaceable mechanisms, and the keycap's tabs are so small that they are not meant to be put back on, but instead always replaced.

OK, this sounds reasonable. In my case, there was a single broken key on the keyboard (either the cap or the scissor was broken, I ended up replacing both with a used key from ebay), and the Apple authorized service provider told me they could only replace the whole keyboard. Good to hear that this is not an actual Apple policy, because it seems ridiculous.

What's a source of MacBook tops?

Why do you transfer the logic board? Do you need to obtain a new logic board (as part of the "top", and trash the original machine's logic board? )

As I recall (no pun intended) from past recalls, a logic board change is $300 itself (but that includes some redundancy if you are already doing a service call to change another part of the device)

On the new MacBook Pros, and probably the MacBooks too, the chips that make up the SSD are soldered onto the logic board. The logic board change swap is required for the customer to keep their data.

The SSD is part of the motherboard for MBPs with Touch Bar, both 15- and 13-inch, and MacBooks. The 13-inch without the Touch Bar, internally a very different design, does still have a separate SSD.

This is very welcome news to me, and I've seen it nowhere else. Do you have a canonical source for it? How about the RAM?

The SSD is socketed but proprietary, using a non-standard connector and an Apple-designed controller chip. The RAM is soldered.

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Function...

My canonical source is my eyes, having opened up all three types ;-)

But the sibling comment has pictures and is right about the ram.

I'd assume "transfer the logic board" means that the user's original board moves to the new case. Sort of like how a head transplant is equivalent to a body transplant.

Correct.

This is the general trend in Apple in making almost everything difficult to service directly to make case more easily manufactured lighter. Course when something goes wrong...

Now the keyboards are riveted on from what I understand making it even more difficult.