OK, rather than continue to whinge about this macbook keyboard I took it in to an Apple Service Centre. As I’ve said, the symptom I have is that the keyboard works fine if I type slowly, but if I type fast, I get lots of characters missing. Some more than others (the L, P and J keys are worst). I keep thinking surely macbook keyboards can’t be this bad. There has to be a fault with mine.

Anyway I explain this all to the guy at the counter … and he generally looks at me in those “this user doesn’t know what he’s on about” eyes. Of course he types away on it and reckons there’s nothing wrong with it. He seems convinced that if I leave my laptop with them and a technician looks at it that I’ll probably get charged because they’ll find there’s nothing wrong with it. Hmmmm.

So I go and try typing on some of the other Macbooks in the shop and hey they seem just as bad as mine. I’m not sure if I’m enlightened or more disappointed at this stage. This guy could very well be right about the technician thinking I’m stupid.

So in the end I take my macbook and leave. I’m utterly disappointed. I really want to like this Macbook, but it’s so frustrating when you have to keep on going back and correcting sentences all the time. In contrast, each time I go back to using my T42’s keyboard I can type so much faster and make less errors. Perhaps the Thinkpad keyboards are just so much better than the rest and most other laptop user’s have simply accepted having a crappy keyboard. I don’t know.

Of course I’ve been using the macbook (and its keyboard) most of the time at work and home for the past few weeks. I was hoping that I would somehow adapt. That perhaps there is some different typing style I need to adapt to. But so far I haven’t been successful. The only typing style that seems to work is to simply slow down. Steve Jobs wants me to slow down. Thats what the macbook is really about. Nice one Steve. Thanks.

So for now I’m going to redo my hack of removing the keytops and sticking a small bit of cardboard under the keytop to both raise the keytop and push down a little more on the rubber key actuator. This had worked reasonably well for me … but it was never ideal.

Another alternative is to get an older macbook keyboard off ebay. In my research I have noted that apple has changed the underlying mechanism under the macbook keys over its lifespan. Perhaps the older keyboards are better.

Or get rid of the thing and get another Thinkpad.