The MacBook is doing fine, but we had a bit of a scare.
After the euphoria of the first week dissipated somewhat as such things always must, I noticed it wasn’t just my clumsy thumb, that the trackpad button really wasn’t responding very well at all. Basically, the right side of the button failed to “click” audibly and had no effect on screen. In fact, it was like the right side had no bottom at all. The left side clicked but sometimes required a good hard push to make anything happen. Uh-oh.
That I could be so in love with the new machine that I went for a whole week before even noticing this obvious defect is good news for Apple. The trackpad button itself is not, but more on that directly. When I was finally convinced there was a problem, I did what I increasingly do when I want to know anything and went to Google. Lo and behold, I wasn’t the only one with a funky trackpad button, and someone had a fix posted online.
Now I know what some of you are thinking and will probably say in comments: just send the MacBook back or take it to a retail store, it ought to work perfectly out of the box. Well, certainly. But on this issue I have read of the following outcomes:
1. Apple Genius at an Apple Store says “they all do that.”
2. A customer brings in a MacBook with a mushy trackpad button, gets a new computer handed to him on the spot.
3. People have sent MacBooks back to Apple and gotten new ones.
4. People have sent MacBooks back to Apple and had the trackpad buttons repaired.
5. Some of the people who did #4 had to send their MacBooks back again.
6. Some MacBook owners get nowhere with Apple on the phone, others get sympathetic hearings.
And so on and so on. Probably par for the course with new model production when manufacturing tolerances are fine-tuned on the fly. I’m sure Apple means well, too, and that the variation in the tales is simply due to human foibles. As near as I can determine from piecing together bits of different forum threads and Web articles, a number of MacBooks exhibit this trait. Not most of them, however. On affected examples, and maybe even on healthy ones, button behavior is extraordinarily sensitive to pressure from the battery compartment underneath. You can verify this by pressing upward gently on the battery with one thumb and testing the trackpad button with the other.
But a fix was making the rounds. There’s a teeny little circle in the metal plate atop the battery, and the trackpad button mechanism must be just on the other side. By folding a very skinny little piece of paper into a square and placing it in just the right spot to act as a shim — I know, I know — the trackpad button’s behavior is miraculously restored. I tried it and the button clicks just fine now, but the battery isn’t absolutely flush with the rest of the case. Sticks out just a fraction of a millimeter, not a deal-breaker. (Just makes me go “hmm,” and you’ll notice I haven’t provided a link for this or the procedure in the next paragraph.)
Even more enterprising and daring MacBook users accomplished the same thing (creating a tighter fit between the button mechanism and the case) by pressing against the metal circle with a finger or the end of a small screwdriver to permanently bend the metal (!). A sort of very gentle dimple, from the sound of it — I know, I know, I know — however recklessly achieved, but I’ll bet the battery is flush.
And what will I do now? The MacBook came from Small Dog. I think I’ll ask them first. I’m already using it as my main communication & Web surfing machine, so I’d hate to have to send it back. The trackpad button works perfectly, but if I take a tiny 1/8 inch folded square of paper off the top of the battery, it won’t. Eh well. Meanwhile, I’ve ordered more RAM, a full two gigs. I predict great things for this upgrade, which should at least partially address the emulation issue in Photoshop.
I’m still loving it though. That’s the main thing. I don’t even want to turn on my older Macs.
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