I've spent a year explaining to people that while the current MacBook Pro is a design triumph, it's a disaster of a product that you shouldn't spend money you're afraid to lose on — but it's been difficult to articulate why, particularly when the sample set is small.
Instead, I've decided to maintain this post, which is an ever-growing collection of public complaints about the 2016 and 2017 MacBook Pro so I can just send it back in response to anyone who says they're considering buying it.
If you see a legitimate complaint, send it to me in the comments or by emailing macbook@char.gd. I had many of the issues below, and had to argue with Apple repeatedly to get a replacement without paying hundreds of dollars to replace the logic board (again).
I hope that by collecting these people will realize there's an actual, serious problem with this machine and stop spending thousands on it just to be told that you're responsible for any repairs, too.
The keyboard is a huge problem
"what am i supposed to do when the space bar stops working. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING WITH THIS F⚠️CKING KEYBOARD"
— Casey Neistat
"The keyboard on my MBP has begun to fail, with the ‘b’ key sometimes giving me doubled characters and sometimes none."
— Shahid Kamal
"The new MacBook keyboard is ruining my life"
— Casey Johnston
"I liked the keyboard until something got stuck under my spacebar for two days and I was stuck slamming on it like a caveman to make it work."
— Serenity Caldwell
"5 employees with broken keys on their Macbook pros. That's 5 people that will have to be setup with loaners / temp machines while they wait 3-5 days for their ONE SINGLE KEYBOARD KEY to be replaced. Great design @Apple who cares about functionality so long as it looks good?!!"
— Tom Cattaneo
"I bought a 2016 MacBook Pro at a steep discount on Black Friday. It is the most beautiful machine I have ever laid hands on and I am immensely happy with it.*
* the keyboard is broken and cannot be repaired"
— Ivor Tossell
"Oh hey great, just over one year into owning this extremely expensive macbook and the "T" key has broken. And some cursory online research indicates there's no way to replace individual keys; that this will require replacing the whole keyboard. Good. Exciting. Good."
— Chris Caple
"My newly replaced keyboard on my new MacBook is broken again. If I find an acceptable linux alternative, I’m switching."
— Karl Seguin
"All this talk about 2016-2017 MacBook Pros reminds me my keyboard has been broken for a year and now warranty is out. I just hate everything about this laptop so much that I never use it without external keyboard + mouse + display so I can’t be bothered with taking it for repair."
— Filip Radelic
"I like the new MacBook Pro keyboard, but the durability is not the best. 3rd broken key after 2 month. Running out of keys to redefine soon."
— Julian Hein
"Tried getting my MacBook Pro keyboard fixed again today. The Command, E, X, and shift keys are either not working or super spongey and difficult to press. Despite being a known design flaw, Apple wants a "minimum" of $494.95 to fix it."
— Tony Webster
"I've bought 3 MacBooks/MacBook Pros over the past 1.5 years and there's not a single working keyboard between them. Over £5,000 well spent."
— Duncan Russell
"In the history of keyboards, I have never been as inept as I’ve been with the Touch Bar keyboard. I’ve been finishing this piece for the last hour and I’ve been keeping track of the number of times I’ve accidentally hit a Touch Bar button, and that number is nine. The total number for this article is likely 5x the number."
— Michael Lopp
"Bought new MacBook Pro. One of the keys didn’t work unless you really whacked it. Spent 4 weeks waiting for a replacement from Apple. On the replacement, another key is broken... it sometimes presses itself. Basically impossible to type correctly on this machine"
— Joel Spolsky
Bus-speed weirdness
Apple, inexplicably, wired the right-side USB-C ports on the MacBook Pro to the same Thunderbolt 3 channels used for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Plug in too much on the right-hand side of your computer, and poof, no internet!
Watch out for Wi-Fi drop out if you use the wrong ports on your new computer!
— Louis Rossman
"I have to unplug and replug my external monitor to be able to wake up my mbp."
— Jauny
"I've noticed that the daily insertion of power and DisplayPort cables into the 2 USB-C/Thunderbolt3 ports creates sparking. Every time I do it it happens, and I need to plug/unplug daily as I take my laptop on the road and bring it back to dock with the external 4K monitor and Apple power supply. The sparking is visible in normal lighting. This can't be good...."
— Macrumors forum
Dongles... wait what?
"TLDW; Certain devices connected to the USB-C ports will stop your internet from working"
— YouTube
"WHAT THE HELL. So here's my biggest issue with the 2017 MacBook Pro.
When I use a USB C to A dongle, the laptop becomes Incapable of connecting to WiFi on any level. Unplug the adapter, and it's fine."
— Alex Langley
"MacBook Pro 2017 touch bar - connecting a USB adaptor completely stops wifi working"
— Carla Mulas
Watch out for those cables
"I tripped on my macbook pro's usb-c cord, it fell, and now I have 1 dead usb-c port that can't power or accept data."
— Matt Haughey
"My robovac recently pulled the MacBook off the table and broke the dongle off in the usb-c port. I miss Magsafe."
— Bob Stoss
Other weird stuff
"Got MacBook Pro back from repair:
- screen replaced
- keyboard replaced
- battery replaced
...but now it randomly powers off every 15 min"
— Pieter Levels
"* The force touch trackpad randomly locks and unlocks. So I get constant crunching noises.
* You lose Wifi if you use a USB-C dongle (official or unofficial)
* The keyyyyyybooooarrrddddd liiikeeesss toooo reppeaaat
* The touchbar will sometimes not load up at all on start"
— Zach Inglis
" the screen hinge problems on the 15" model. Endless creaking and cracking noises as the machine warms and cools. Makes it impossible to record podcasts reliably."
— Andrew
"2016 MacBook Pro no touch bar: my screen glitches when I am on Safari, the keyboard sucks (works properly tho), and getting an external display to work is a pain in the ass [...] when it wakes up from stand by the screen only shows some kind of white noise for a few seconds."
— Francesco Lupo
"I have a 2017 Macbook Pro with a broken webcam, a freezing Touch Bar and random screen flickering issues. I have four bad keys; I rely on autocorrect to spell anything with an ‘e’ or ’n’ because only 1 in 20 key presses will register. The machine is ~6 months old."
— Shiba Computer
Got your own story? Fire me a message on Twitter and I'll add it here!
