Tausi Insider

These hands are typing “Fuck this crappy keyboard.” Photo : Angelika Smile ( Shutterstock ) MacBooks have, for the most part, been known to some of the best keyboards in the biz. For the most part . From 2015 through 2019, though, Apple “revolutionized” its laptops with the butterfly keyboard, a low-travel keyboard prone (or doomed) to failure. Sticky keys and double-presses have plagued so many users, Apple eventually dropped the design altogether. But they’re not off the hook for their poor design choices. In fact, they might owe you money for your pain and suffering. What happened to Apple’s butterfly keyboard? Apple’s butterfly keyboard was a disaster from the jump, but the company never wanted to admit fault. Soon after Apple implemented the design across their entire line of MacBooks, MacBook Airs, and MacBook Pros, users started complaining, and with good reason: While the keyboard’s low travel was polarizing (personally, I’ve always liked it), the design made it all too ...

Photo : SNAB ( Shutterstock ) Whether you love or hate Apple, we can all agree on one thing: Their products are expensive . Apple’s iPhones can easily cost over $1,000 , and MacBooks require a mortgage just to look at them. The thing is, you don’t need to buy these devices new in order to get the perks of buying new. The better way to shop Apple is to shop refurbished . If you haven’t heard of Apple’s Certified Refurbished store, that’s likely because Apple doesn’t advertise it much. After all, the company would prefer you to buy one of its latest products on the front page of its site. But if you’re not going to do that, it’d still like to sell you something, even if that something is previously used. With the Certified Refurbished store, Apple sells used devices at a discount. Depending on the device, the price cut can be modest or generous. As of this article, you can pick up a refurbished M1 MacBook Air for 15% off, leaving it $849 instead of $999. Apple lists this refurbi...

Photo : Raxsoller Malayte ( Shutterstock ) Whether you have a MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro, your charger likely has one fatal flaw: the plug. The power adapter needs to connect directly to an outlet, a design that works fine for smaller charging bricks. However, the bigger your MacBook, the bigger the brick, all without changing the design. As such, your massive power adapter needs to hang from the wall, or balance on top of a power strip, fighting against gravity for its life. Obviously, the weight is a major component here. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to prop my power strip up after my MacBook Pro’s charger knocked everything over. The other part of the problem, though, is the plug portion of the charger is removable. When you connect your 10-ton charger to the wall, its mass sometimes pulls the plug right out of the adapter (this has happened to me so many times). Have you ever wondered why the plug is removable? It doesn’t make much sense out of the bo...

Photo : Margirita_Puma ( Shutterstock ) Modern MacBooks generally don’t suffer from battery life woes, but when you do face unexpectedly high drain, it can be hard to diagnose the issue. Sleep Aid is a Mac app that helps you figure out exactly why your Mac’s battery is draining, and it’s geared toward idle battery drain. That is, when you put your MacBook to sleep, it shouldn’t be losing a large chunk of charge. If you lose more than a few percentage points of battery life when you’ve closed the Mac’s lid overnight, Sleep Aid can spot the issue. The utility shows a graph that marks various wake events on your MacBook and labels these events for you. That way, you can tell if your MacBook woke up due to some dust on the trackpad, an errant app, or interaction with Bluetooth accessories. Its graphs label potential issues in orange or red colors, making it easy to figure out when your Mac’s battery drain began and what caused it. For added battery support, the app automatically dis...

Image : Apple When Apple refreshed the MacBook Pro line with the M1 Pro and M1 Max models in the fall of 2021, I told you you didn’t need them . The design was great, MagSafe was back, and the upgraded M1 chips were beasts, but the machines were overkill for the average consumer. And the same holds true today for the new M2 Pro laptops Apple just dropped . I’m sorry to say you still don’t need a new MacBook Pro. What’s new with the 2023 MacBook Pros At first glance, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell Apple dropped new MacBook Pros at all. Certainly these new MacBooks look identical to the previous generation, so you can’t buy one for the bragging rights. What’s new is only visible on the inside: These new MacBook Pros sport Apple’s latest M2 Pro and M2 Max chipsets, which build on the performance gains of the M2 chip found in the latest MacBook Air. You can see that just by comparing the sizes of the chips—the M2 Pro is considerably larger than the M2, packing 40 billions transi...

Photo : guteksk7 ( Shutterstock ) If you’re worried about your MacBook’s webcam spying on you, you might be tempted to buy a cheap, plastic camera cover. You can get them for just around $5, but you should actually steer clear of them. The cons far outweigh the pros. Why you should avoid cheap camera covers When something is as expensive and hard-to-repair as a MacBook, you shouldn’t use cheap accessories that can damage them . That cheap camera cover may give you some peace of mind, but it also carries the risk of repair bill: With the cover mounted, you can damage your MacBook’s screen when you slam it shut. Apple builds MacBooks to be as thin and light as possible, and as a result, its fault tolerances are pretty low. If you stick a lump of plastic in between the trackpad and the display, you can end up damaging the screen and the trackpad if you’re not careful. Repairing that kind of damage is expensive even if you have an insurance plan like AppleCare+, and it’s not worth the...