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