Apple's sneaky fix for its butterfly keyboard

Last week Apple (finally) updated the internals of their Macbook Pro line with the latest Intel processors, among other improvements (optional 32GB of ram!). The news however was overshadowed because all focus was on whether or not Apple has fixed the issues with their butterfly-switch keyboards. The greatest laptop in the world would be quite useless if mere grains of sand can render keys wholly inoperative. Bold move indeed if Apple kept the same keyboard in the new refresh. 

The good news is Apple did update the keyboard in the new Macbook Pros, calling it their third generation butterfly mechanism. Missing from the PR literature however is any mention of fix for sticking and unresponsive keys. With multiple lawsuits in preparation against it, Apple is likely not at liberty to openly admit any faults innate to prior generation butterfly keyboards. Therefore the official company line is that the gen-three butterfly keys are quieter than the previous versions. 

Journalists who’ve had a first-hand look have found this to be true.   

The team at iFixit did their usual diligence and tore open a brand new 2018 Macbook Pro. They found that underneath each key-cap is a silicone membrane/gasket covering the butterfly mechanism. The new part appears to be what’s damping the clicking noise (ergo quieter as Apple says), though it also functions to prevent small dust particles from seeping in further underneath the key-caps - a de-facto remedy for the malfunctioning keys problem. 

So it seems Apple did fix the issues of the old butterfly keyboards; they just won’t say so officially, again probably due to the pending lawsuits. A PR move dictated by the needs of the lawyering brigade.

Nevertheless, owners of Mac laptops outfitted with the first or second generation butterfly mechanism ought to demand that Apple retrofit this rubber gasket solution onto their Macbooks. On the other hand I wouldn’t buy a Mac laptop that hasn’t got the gen-three butterfly keys; Apple needs to update the rest of its laptop lineup quickly.  

Apple should also continue to work on its 'Portrait Mode' algorithms. The blur on the stem as it meets the flower head is horrendous. 

I won't be saving the manuals?

There’s a solid chance my next car will not have a manual transmission. 

A few years ago I would’ve call that an unimaginably frightening prospect. All the cars I’ve owned thus far have had a stick, and I wasn’t planning on deviating from that for the next one. However, the price level of sports cars I can now afford have changed, and along with that the gearbox situation as well. 

First I must say I continue to adore the manual gearbox: it provides an analog and tactile connection to the driving dynamics that’s utterly lacking in an automatic, no matter how good of a dual-clutch transmission it may be. The beautiful euphoria and sense of accomplishment in executing a perfectly timed heel-toe downshift is incomparable and irreplaceable. 

As all car enthusiasts know, the manual gearbox is being left behind by manufacturers. People aren’t buying stick-shift cars therefore automakers aren’t incentivized to continue development. Often in high-power sports cars the manual transmission - if offered at all - seems to be an after-thought and not nearly as good as the automatic version. In the C7 Corvette for example it’s painfully obvious much of development money is spent on the slushbox. Chevy engineers have actually told journalists the Corvette with the auto is the spec to buy. 

Worse, once you start looking at sports cars into the six-figures, the landscape is almost barren for the manual transmission. 

Putting the lack of demand side, from a technical perspective it makes zero sense for manufacturers to engineer a stick-shift ‘box: modern automatics have gotten tremendously good. A proper dual-clutch unit can shift faster than any human ever and never miss a rev-match downshift. 

But what I most appreciate is the improved gearing: in chasing fuel-economy and top-speed figures, automakers have spaced gear ratios in cars super wide, making life difficult for the standard six-cog manuals. The latest automatics have higher gear counts so the engine’s power-band is better utilized - it's always in the sweet-spot. Driving the latest Golf GTI with a manual was very frustrating because by the end of second-gear the car’s already traveling beyond 70mph. Sacrilege it may be but I'd tick the option box for the 7-speed DSG. 

Due to these factors and the fact I will be looking at used sports cars in the low $100,000s, the manual transmission will likely be eluding me for the forseeable future. 

Daybreak clouds this morning. 

How good are the typical autobody shops?

On my bus commute to work everyday I pass by an auto-body repair shop that's constantly teeming with cars. I guess it’s always good business in that line of work due to law of large numbers dictating an adequate amount of vehicle accidents (the sheer number of cars in our little 7 by 7 mile peninsula never ceases to amaze). Like a well-oil assembly factory the particular shop takes in mangled metal and repair it to original condition in at most a few week's time. 

This is interesting to me because it brings me back to the last time I had a car accident and had to bring it in to a bodyshop. Thankfully that was almost a decade ago and fortune have since been kind to me in that regard. It wasn’t a particularly bad experience per se but the shop, in an effort to process as many cars a possible, definitely cut some corners in the repair. Outwardly the finished car looked fine, which is the most important part I guess? But the innards behind the repair wasn’t as lovely. 

I don’t suppose people would care about such minutiae as long as the car looks good and it drives straight. Can we rightly expect perfection when pressure is on the shop to perform the repair quickly so that we can get back on the road? Most drivers rely on their vehicles to get to work so after an accident it’s difficult to be without a car for an extended period. I’m sure repair shops get phoned many times from customers inquiring about progress.

Proper auto-body repair takes significant amount of time. Just look at Youtube videos of restoration shops putting in many thousand hours on a single car to get it back to showroom condition. Videos of DIY repair guys buying a body-damaged car and taking months to fix it themselves. No matter the skill-level of the repairer the time required to perform a stellar job is massive. 

Therefor I have no confidence in the typical auto-body shop "factories" where lead-time is measured in weeks and the aim is to get through as many customer cars as possible. I’ve experience with those results and while it may pass for the common driver, it’s utterly substandard for me. 

Think of why a car’s value is decreased after an accident; perhaps it’s tacitly understood the typical repair job won’t be perfect and there will be residual issues during the rest of the vehicle’s useful life. Compared that to say a properly restored vintage Porsche: no one would argue its former decrepit state decreases its value absolutely and permanently. 

If I am unlucky to get into a car accident in the future, I’ll take the car a shop that isn’t about chasing quantity but instead will take the appropriate time to do the job fully and correctly. It’ll likely take a few months for the repair but I can stomach that because my next car will not be a daily-driver so I can afford to let it sit. 

You would not believe your eyes, If ten million fireflies...

Why would you want to move here?

My work is hiring and I got selected to be on the search committee, therefore I get the pleasure of sorting through all the incoming resumes. It’s always surprising when I get an applicant that isn’t from the Bay Area, because the immediate question becomes:

Why do you want to move here?

Here, to San Francisco, which by many measures is the richest city in the world and has the most expensive housing cost in these United States. A metropolitan area where countless hours of productivity gets utterly forsaken due to endless traffic. The minimum wage just went up in July to $15 so that gourmet non-GMO grass-fed burger is going to cost a pretty penny. 

And you want to move here? 

I hope these applicants have read the job description thoroughly and understands that as an employee of the State of California you are not going to be paid anywhere near sufficient to live in San Francisco. I most certainly don’t. I am however native to the area so that allows me to offset the absurd rental prices by not paying them at all and instead live with my parents.

Needless to say I am fortunate to be of a culture that don’t tend to kick offsprings out of the house once they’ve matured into adulthood. 

Because housing cost is the crux of the affordability issue. If rents were at sane levels I would’ve move out long ago, and I wouldn’t be questioning why someone would want to move here whose job prospect isn’t with a tech company with salary deep into six figures. 

If I didn’t live here already and were choosing a city to move to, San Francisco Bay Area wouldn’t even be on the list. 

Two methods of emergency escape. 

Thoughts on Motor Trend going subscription model

One of my favorite car-related Youtube channels was Motor Trend. I say was because about a month ago Motor Trend took its amazing content and put it entirely behind a pay-wall on a dedicated website. I can still watch videos for free, but not without numerous ads littered throughout. Suffice it to say I did not follow Motor Trend’s exodus from Youtube. The videos are wonderful and entertaining (who doesn’t love Roadkill?), but the friction of having to go to another site is difficult to overcome. 

And I can’t be the only person. 

Indeed Youtube’s monetization model can’t possibly be sustainable for Motor Trend’s surely armada of personnel producing its videos. Supposedly the payout per one play of a video on Youtube is lower than the already absurd 0.007% of one cent per-stream earning to the artist on Spotify. Difficult for Motor Trend to feed its crew when 1 million views returns a scant $4,000 dollars. Only the Doug DeMuros of the world - one man operation with super low production value and cost - can make a decent living within than framework. 

So I understand completely why Motor Trend moved to a proprietary subscription platform. As an artist myself I appreciate the fundamental of creators getting paid for their output. 

However, Youtube is such a juggernaut in providing potential eyeballs. I bet Motor Trend’s pure viewership count have dropped significantly once it went off the platform, due partly to people’s unwillingness to pay for a monthly subscription, and due partly to viewers like me who can’t be bothered to leave Youtube. I don't wish ill towards the team: I hope Motor Trend has got enough subscribers to sustain them for a long long time. 

Few years ago another car Youtube channel I also favored called 'Drive' did the same as Motor Trend and put its content behind a subscription. The number of paying customers was more than enough to keep the lights on, but the raw view count on the videos decreased so dramatically that car manufacturers became reluctant to lend them cars to test - the kiss-of-death for an automotive channel focused on new cars. Needless to say Drive did not survive its prosperity. 

A historic and renowned publication like Motor Trend wouldn't have that problem, right? 

The one man mowing band. 

New Japan Pro Wrestling G1 Special in San Francisco

This past Saturday I went for the first time in two decades to the Cow Palace for the New Japan Pro Wrestling G1 Special show. Twenty years ago it was the Ringling Brothers Circus, which I guess is defunct now? Can’t go on abusing elephants forever without PETA ending your business totally. 

Going to shows at the Cow Palace is the easiest thing ever because I live but a couple blocks away. It was with excellent schadenfreude to see the lines of cars queuing for blocks to enter the parking lot while I taking my time walking and enjoying the sunshine.

I wonder what it was like in the era when the Warriors played in Cow Palace and the 49ers and Giants hosted games at Candlestick. Living in my neighborhood must have been super convenient as a local sports fan, able to simply walk to the stadiums and not have to contend with traffic or parking. 

Granted, back then Visitacion Valley wasn’t exactly the safest of districts. 

The Giants have moved downtown to AT&T Park since the turn of millennia, and the Warriors will join them in 2019 at the swanky new Chase Center. A half-hour metro ride takes me to both venues, which isn’t too bad in the grand scheme. The 49ers however skipped town entirely and now play football 40 miles south at Santa Clara, an inconvenience that completely prevents me from attending live games.

Perhaps it’s the gap in years between attendance but I did not realize just how small the Cow Palace is compared to the modern mega arenas: it utterly lacks an upper third section. The design and how it have aged over the decades gives off an old Texas cattle ranch vibe; smells like it, too. It may be hallowed grounds for some but to the millennial me it’s a decrepit building awaiting the implosion orders. The plot is prime real estate for desperately needed dense housing. 

The New Japan show was actually my first live wrestling event, and it was a great time. The smallness of Cow Palace meant that even with our lowest priced tickets, our view of the action was terrific. I obviously don’t watch NJPW shows so I had no idea who many of the wrestlers are, but I watch wrestling purely for the technique anyways, and New Japan has it in spades.

It was amazing to see wrestlers perform pile-driving maneuvers that WWE have banned for quite some time, the increased danger of concussion notwithstanding. 

The Cow Palace is decidedly old school. 

Porsche 919 EVO demolishes the Nordschleife record

Last week I wrote about not giving a damn about Volkswagen beating the Pikes Peak hillclimb overall record with their bespoke electric race-car. This week I am extremely excited to write about Porsche demolishing the Nurburgring Nordschleife overall record with their 919 EVO race-car. 

I am no fan of electric cars, but electric power in concert with combustion engine - hybrids, I can (somewhat) get behind. 

Porsche is celebrating their successful FIA WEC campaign - since retired - by throwing a tribute tour showcasing the 919 Hybrid LMP1 car all over the world. During the tour Porsche wanted to break a couple of track records. Utilizing a derestricted specification of the 919 (EVO) with more aero, less weight, increased hybrid boost, and grippier than race-spec Michelin tires, Porsche aimed squarely at two tracks steeped in motorsport tradition: Spa-Franchorchamps, and the Nordschleife. 

The Spa record fell back in April, and down went the Nurburgring record this past week with an incomprehensible lap of 5 minutes, 19.55 seconds. 

I drive virtually on the Nurburgring almost daily with my GT Sport simulation rig so I can confidently say a lap in the 5 minutes is truly bonkers. A mighty effort of not only the car, but most certainly the driver. The ceaseless attack of heavy g-forces and the reflexes required to navigate a lap that quick is indeed a supreme display of athleticism by Timo Bernard.

Spa is a wonderful track, but the Nordschleife holds all the mystique: the uneven undulating surface, the utter lack of runoff areas, and the immense variation of corners to familiarize. Sir Jackie Stewart nicknamed it “The Green Hell”; Formula One cars have long deemed too fast to race on the track. Only GT3 class cars and below currently do racing on the old Nurburgring. 

It makes what Porsche did all the more incredible. 

For the longest time fans have wanted manufacturers to take their F1 or LMP1 machinery to do one lap time-attacks on the Nordschleife - just as they do with road cars. There’s been a few demonstration runs over the years (Nick Heidfeld in a BMW F1 car), but nothing concretely timed have ever been done. 

Kudos to Porsche for having the balls to do it. 

The not white tree of not Gondor.