Skip to main content

Listen as a MacBook Pro user sets his ‘sticky key’ frustrations to music

I Am Pressing The Spacebar and Nothing Is Happening
If the keyboard on your new MacBook Pro is hassling you, then Jonathan Mann of
Recommended Videos
a-song-a-day fame has created a ditty just for you.

The MacBook Pro’s keys have a habit of getting a bit sticky after extended exposure to dust and other debris, leaving some owners of the machine wondering if they’ll ever again experience the joys of a full alphabet and all that it has to offer.

Mann had his MacBook Pro about a year before experiencing the problem. In his case, the space bar stopped responding, and the situation has left him so frustrated that he decided to write a song about it called I Am Pressing The Space Bar And Nothing Is Happening.

The prolific YouTuber, who for years has been posting one song a day to his channel, sings how “nothing is happening” when he presses the key, which really can’t be much fun for Mann if he uses the laptop to tap out his lyrics.

The catchy tune describes how he waited a very long time to upgrade his Apple laptop, but having done so, the pricey Pro is no longer working as it should.

Mann’s video shows his awkward efforts at trying to clean the keyboard by holding it at an angle of 75 degrees and squirting compressed air at it — exactly as suggested by Apple on its support pages.

Fifty-four percent of people who responded told Apple they found the advice “helpful,” indicating that nearly half of those experiencing the issue ended up either taking it to an Apple Store, searching for alternative solutions online, or throwing it out of the window.

In 2016, the MacBook Pro incorporated Apple’s “butterfly” keyboard switch that debuted with the newly launched MacBook a year earlier. It offers hardly any key travel and as a consequence has proved uncomfortable for many users who type a lot. And, as Mann’s song highlights, it really doesn’t like dust.

DT reported on key-actuation issues with both the MacBook and 2016 MacBook Pro machines at the start of this year, with some owners at that time on their second or third repair after taking it back to the store. Hit the “stuck key” forum on Apple’s site and you’ll see page after page of contributions from users who are continuing to experience issues.

Hopefully Mann has managed to fix his MacBook Pro by now; perhaps he can write a song about that, too.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
An all-glass MacBook? Here’s what Apple thinks it would look like
Bladur's Gate 3 being played on the M3 MacBook Air.

Patents and clues pointing to all-glass MacBooks and iMacs have been floating around since 2011, and this week, another patent has appeared on Patently Apple -- a "glass housing" for a MacBook-like device. It has a virtual keyboard and trackpad, and there's even a separate patent for "finger devices" that would decrease the strain of typing on a glass surface.

One of the most interesting things about the glass housing is that it "provides I/O functionality." This means, that instead of inserting a separate trackpad or keyboard keys into the housing for users to interact with, the housing itself would provide a method of input and output. In some areas and contexts, the surface would function simply as housing to protect internal components, and in others, it would display information and react to user input.

Read more
The M4 MacBook Pro is apparently listed for sale on Facebook — but I don’t buy it
An open MacBook Pro on a table.

According to analysts and industry experts like Mark Gurman and Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is expected to announce an M4 refresh of the MacBook Pro possibly this month and most likely before the end of the year. No event announcements have come yet, though Apple has historically held an October Mac event. But now, an online leak discovered by Wccftech claims the new model is up for sale on a private Facebook group. The claim is backed up by alleged images of the retail box, but there's plenty to be suspicious about.

While the images were posted by known leaker ShrimpApplePro, the information was sent to them from an unknown source. There are two posts so far, one with an image of the back of the retail box -- with comments from AppleShrimpPro saying to take it with asome skepticism -- and one showing additional images and claiming it's for sale on Facebook.

Read more
Your 2018 MacBook Air is officially ‘vintage’
apple 2015 notebook market share macbook close up snow leopard mac

Apple has added 12 more Macs to its vintage and obsolete lists, affecting the hardware service users can access. If your Mac has joined one of the lists, it could become harder to get it repaired by Apple.

As spotted by MacRumors, these three Macs have been added to the vintage list:

Read more