I’m working on an early 2008 MacBook Pro. After 1 year it developed problems with the touchpad and keyboard. I let it repair at Apple in 2009/02 with new topcase, keyboard and touchpad. It worked fine for some month. Problems came back. See my full story about the frozen keyboard and touchpad here (thx for the many comments – it’s the most searched & found blog article at my site).

Now (2010/11) I suffer the problem very often again. I can only work with external keyboard and touchpad. Nothing that you can find on the internet to adress this problem (SMC/ PRAM Reset, the “ribbon” trick) has worked for me. And the crazy thing is there is no way to just “restart” the driver for the touchpad. It should be possible – but I havn’t found anything. It should be so easy to make it work again with just a command.

Apple has repaired already and the problem came back! I think there is no better prove that this MBP generation has a serious hardware design flaw. And there seem to be hardware flaws in Apple products (flickering displays, 1 gen iPhone with not working delete keys, etc.) I wonder why Steve Jobs is so proud about having software and hardware coming from the same hands. It does not make anything better.

I had problems with Windows, too – that was one small reason for switching to Apple in 2005. But it’s not quite better with Apples hardware+software model. Now I’m “locked in” (by my own choice: I will not go back with the desktop to Windows or Ubuntu/Debian. I LOVE OS X for so many reasons) and so I need to upgrade to my next MBP – but I really fear to buy new hardware from Apple again. After all my research I have seen how many problems are there even with the latest Apple products… I totally lost my confidence in the shiny Apple world of “good hardware and software” out of one hand.

Buying from Apple means to pay premium prices. I’m willing to do so – but I expect to have best hardware and best service. Maybe It’s just me who had bad luck? Make your research – the forums are full of problems like these. I.e. flickering displays, non functioning keyboards even on iPhones (the Delete key problem). Antenna-gate etc. Countless. (Yes I know I don’t have the full picture – I need to know how many percentage of customers face problems like I have – but take into account that I’m frustrated at the moment of writing…) If I could decide today I would not buy my Hardware from Apple again. But there is no choice because Apple wan’t OS X to run only on own hardware – that’s the main drawback in the Apple universe…

So I’ll pull my credit card with the next upgrade of the MBP line and hope I’ll have better hardware next time. And guess what? I’ll take Apple care for 3 years just because of murphy to make sure my next MBP will flawless for at least 3 years.

PS: My wife’s unibody MacBook seems to have no problems. Maybe there is hope…