MacBook Pro keyboard and possible new purchase
The keyboard on my top-of-the-line 2018 MacBook Pro laptop is failing again. A few months ago, before lockdown, I popped into the Apple Store in Cambridge where it replaced a few keycaps that were fading away. But now I have various keys that keep double bouncing. Or doooouble booooouncing, as they would like to type. I checked the Apple website, and there are instructions on how to use a can of compressed air to try to clear out underneath the keys. I’ve tried that, and it made no difference whatsoever. There are various YouTube tutorials explaining how to remove the keycaps, but this is a very delicate procedure.
If times were normal, I’d drop into the Cambridge store again and ask the nice people there to replace the entire keyboard panel. The MacBook Pro is still covered by AppleCare, so this shouldn’t be a problem, and the person at the store confided that they had quite a lot of keycap and keyboard failures. Indeed, there’s even a recall programme for some of these models.
In the meantime, it has been sufficiently annoying that I’ve looked at an upgrade to a new model, which, of course, comes with the properly designed keyboard. The new 16in MacBook Pro, you say? With the 2.4GHz i9 eight-core processor? And a handy 64GB of RAM? I wouldn’t skimp by choosing the 4GB of RAM version of the AMD Radeon Pro 5500M, so let’s tick the 8GB box. Storage? Well, I suppose 1TB would be adequate, but 2TB would be nicer. That comes to a grand total £4,299. And it doesn’t even have Wi-Fi 6, which is a limitation for a device with at least a working life of the next four years. I know that if I was to buy this laptop, Apple would release an update within a few months with 802.11ax
Network scanning stumbling block
Sometimes you really need to find something on your network, and to search by IP address. There are some fine tools out there – I particularly like IP Scanner Pro on macOS, and have found Advanced IP Scanner ( advanced-ipscanner.com) to work well on Windows. The idea is simple: fire up the tool, check that the IP address and subnet matches your network and intended target range, and hit the Go button.
The tool then pings every IP address looking for a response, and attempts to make some sort of intelligent informed guess about what the device is. One easy guessing method is to reverse lookup on the MAC address, which usually gets you to the vendor of the network chipset. Grown-up companies have their own registered MAC address. If not, your shiny new network device might register as a “Murata washing machine”, which happened when I checked the MAC address of an expensive piece of UK-designed hi-fi last week.
However, yesterday both of the tools were defeated. They simply couldn’t find the device. I knew it was there – I could reach out and touch it.