It's all very well Apple[2] wanting customers to partake of its shiny, but perhaps not substantial, new services[3].
Cupertino's hardware, however, has increasingly been irritating customers for its lack of reliability.
First it was the MacBook's butterfly keyboard[4]. It allowed more dust under its keys than I have under my sofa. It was all supposed to be fixed with the new MacBook Air.
Sadly, that seems not to be the case. You know when Apple actually apologizes,[5] the situation is serious.
Last week, it was the iPad Pro's turn to suffer the wailings of customers[6]. Some iPad Pro screens have apparently become erratic.
I wondered whether stores had seen an increase in the decibel-level of complaints. I wondered what they'd say to reassure customers.
Are Geniuses being flooded with machines that insert unwanted double-spaces into artists' great works? Have they been poking more iPad screens that respond by sticking their noses in the air and doing what they feel like?
So I went to a Bay Area Apple store, browsed around the laptops, until a salesperson volunteered her help.
"I hear people are complaining that these keyboards don't work very well," I ventured. "Haven't there been problems with dust?"
"It's the opposite," she replied.
Naturally, I felt relieved. Reading The Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern typing out her MacBook Air horror[7] in misspelled words had made me a touch queasy.
Wait, what did the salesperson mean by "it's the opposite"?
"There's no way dust can get in because they've put an extra layer of