Yes, but you should at least be neat when eating food.
That is a bit extreme, don’t you think?
Pouring Coca-Cola into a keyboard or laptop? Nah, seen often enough.
They didn’t tell me, but at least one or two of my repairs were after AppleCare expired. This is a 2016 computer so I think AppleCare ran out around 2019.
New battery? Yes. New computer? Nope. 
I didn’t eat over my keyboard, much less Doritos or Cheetos.
I used to eat breakfast at my (Toshiba Win 98) laptop, with a tall glass of orange juice… had to replace the keyboard after a spill.
I’m with you. I love typing on the butterfly keyboard, but I had to endure months of wonkiness until I had to time to get it replaced. That has happened to me twice so far. I hope this one lasts, but I am not too hopeful.
1 Like
So…is your argument that the problems with these keyboards are user-inflicted, due to a lack of cleanliness?
That seems to be the gist of what you’re saying.
Right. And it can’t really be cleaned out much of the time - only replaced. Every other laptop keyboard I’ve run into was just fine after a nice blast of compressed air.
We actually cleaned a IIgs keyboard after an errant Coca Cola way back in the day. Put the whole thing in the dishwasher without heat, on the more gentle cycle. Good as new.
1 Like
This is my running joke about fixing anything to do with computer hardware problems. Don’t ruin this for me by having had it actually work! 
While some users have surgically clean workspaces (there’s a thread on that) and use their computers only there, a laptop is, by definition, a computer that can be used anywhere. Not only clean desks.
This is the abuse my laptop gets: Your fans running the whole time...clean your Mac!
So, having a keyboard that implodes at the sight of a dust speck, makes a laptop unusable for me. Apples are expensive computers and they repeat often enough that they are “best quality”. With that keyboard, they weren’t. At all. That keyboard prevented me from upgrading my MBP. Knowing how I abuse hardware, buying a new Mac wouldn’t have been an option. During the “butterfly keyboard”-phase I would have bought a Lenovo to use on the road. I would have missed macOS every single day, but I can deal with that better than living in constant fear of the keyboard failing if a single speck of dust decides to approach it.
3 Likes
I’d never suggest it now, of course. This was mid 80s when the necessary replacement keyboard was probably well over $100, so no harm in trying - and the dishwasher was run on cold, no detergent, etc. In other words, we were as smart as possible about being stupid.
I was 10 at the time, and I remember being shocked that it worked myself.
1 Like
The thing is, that doesn’t look like “abuse” to me - it looks like a laptop being used in basically anything other than a super-clean office environment. Air fans pull in the stuff that’s already in the air, and concentrate it inside the computer…but the stuff is in the air (and thus, likely in the keyboard soon enough) already.
And honestly, even super-tidy offices accumulate piles of dust inside their computers…it just takes longer.
Maybe I’m too used to taking care of my MacBook keyboard…
Yes, that’s what I’m trying to say.
Not everybody works as a designer/blogger/podcaster/writer. And not everybody spends his holidays in hotels. 
My father was a geologist and after survey trips or visiting remote mines, he washed himself, the car and half his stuff with a garden hose. And yes, geologists have laptops with them. Architects/construction engineers take laptops to construction sites. Laptops are used in remote research ares (under canopies, in tents, powered by generators).
My laptop was full of desert sand because of astrophotography in Namibia, wildlife photography in Kenia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, and so on. Covid killed my planned trip to Kamtchatka (muddy, dirty, wet). And my laptop goes with me.
So, no. We are not slobs or too dumb. I just find don’t fulfillment in spending my holidays in spotless clean environments and work has also taken me to the weirdest locations.
1 Like
They need a Panasonic toughbook
1 Like
If they made one with macOS… 
1 Like
Prefably an M1 chip 
Meantime load it with Linux and know how to administer it so you can be self reliant in the middle of nowhere…
So what do you say about the fact that it’s never been a problem for other Apple keyboards, past or present? Or the fact that other manufacturers don’t seem to have this problem with their keyboards?
FWIW, even just working plain ol’ construction (like a general contractor) yields a pretty filthy laptop. I’ve done customer work where their laptop was basically encrusted with a layer of dirt.
Oddly enough, the keyboard still worked.
1 Like
I am pretty handy with Linux, but it’s not my OS of choice (except servers).
1 Like
Apple seems to build products using user-centered design. Not saying they always give people what they want, but for the most part their stuff works the way we work. I can’t remember the last Apple instruction manual I read. (May have been with the ][gs).
I think they’re still that way, but they just took a misstep. They realized it and tried to fix it (silicon layer underneath keyboard), but then realized it was time to abandon the idea.
I’m glad to have a new keyboard on the M1 MBP and especially happy to have the T-shaped arrow keys.
3 Likes