Zit Seng's Blog

A Singaporean's technology and lifestyle blog

MacBook Trackpad Issues

My second MacBook finally arrived. The problem with “Under Promise, Over Deliver” is that your customers will come to expect you to deliver as well as you did the last time. Unfortunately, the delivery that was promised for 2pm to 6pm this afternoon eventually only arrived at about 6:20pm. Overall, it’s not that bad actually since I only placed my order about 5:04pm on 30th April (yes, the day before the May Day public holiday).

If you’ve been following my  previous posts, you’d know this second MacBook was ordered as a replacement for the first one that arrived with a defective trackpad. The trackpad was uneven and one corner jutted out in the top left corner. It was simply unacceptable given the quality one would have expected from Apple. Sadly, the second MacBook’s trackpad wasn’t quite so perfect either. It is definitely a whole lot better than the first, but if one were to examine carefully the edges where the trackpad meets the palm rest areas, they are simply not perfect. The first MacBook’s trackpad was clearly warped, the second one is simply less than perfect. I think I’d live with this one. But it is a little disappointing.

It’s funny to see the trackpad becoming an “issue”. I would have thought the more common problems would be with dead pixels on the LCD display. Dead pixels were definitely a major issue a couple of years ago. A few dead pixels then would actually have been considered “acceptable”. No doubt the manufacturing quality of LCD displays have improved tremendously. But still, of all things that could suffer a manufacturing defect, would you expect an imperfect trackpad?

The second MacBook came with the battery slightly “newer” than the first. When first opened up, and after quickly installing iStat pro, the battery cycle was reported as “2” in the first MacBook. For the second MacBook, the battery cycle was reported as “1”. I wonder if the first MacBook might have been a returned unit.

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