The only thing I miss from prior to my last major MacBook update is being able to type fast without losing letters.
idk what it was, and I've searched for this and checked my settings, but my keyboard sensitivity changed. I now have to very squarely hit the center of each key, rather hard, or it misses letters.
Somehow we have enshittified physical keyboards on expensive computers.
While I did look into settings to fix this, and frustratingly didn't find any the first time, I tried again today and what a relief – it's fixed! I was getting so tired of missing letters. A real crimp on my style.
Not only was I able to set the sensitivity really high so that my keyboard registers every keypress like it did before the update no matter how fast I type, but there's a setting to turn on clicky noises!
idk if I'll leave that on. Not as satisfying as a mechanical keyboard, but it's fun for now.
Here's the article on where to find these settings:
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-your-keyboards-response-speed-mchlp2264/mac
[Edit for additional information. I noticed that turning that setting on made repeat-backspace get really weird. It still worked, but only backspaced one character a second. I turned slow keys off but left the setting on "slow" and my ability to type fast remained. But no clicky sounds! Probably for the best.]
This didn't entirely fix the issue, and the frustrations typing on a real keyboard are beginning to mirror my frustrations "typing" on a phone. It makes me feel drained in exactly the same way, and my brain is reforming in the same way, where I'm needing to recheck 3-words ago instead of focusing on what comes next. A keyboard has always been my most comfortable interface, disappearing from my awareness as I put my thoughts directly into the machine at real-time speeds. I no longer have access to that capability in any device. "Flow state" is impossible.
It's a very tiny lag. And it misses keys. I am having to pound very hard. The above fix helped a little, but it is still there. I also turned on clicks, and I swear to god I hear it click when it fails to register the letter. This is not my fingers' fault, nor the physical keys.
I feel like it's related to a scroll bug that also appeared in Scrivener on that update. I found an in-app workaround for that, but I notice scroll lag (sometimes) now in Word, too.
It really feels like software "lag," like there's a short delay, milliseconds where it's processing something, and it's not only that am I sensing this delay, but that it's dropping letters if my finger is not still on the key after the delay stops. I am a very, very fast (if sloppy) typer.
The mental fatigue this is giving me (holding my thoughts while I go back to fix, plus trying to be aware of what letter is being missed, plus trying to be aware of hitting the keys squarely, and listening for the click) is so draining. The same drain I feel when trying to write in this here phone. I hate what this is doing to my productivity and my mind.
Are we going to be done with #enshittification soon? I paid a lot of money for this laptop, and I hate that this happened because I decided to do an OS update so I could run necessary things that refused my previous version. I intentionally did not update to the very latest major release to avoid this sort of thing.
I will try harder to troubleshoot, but I'm expecting a black-box layer of impenetrability that will be beyond my skills. (I'm not great with reverse engineering tools, so I will not be going so far as memory dumps or whatever.) If the dev team at Scrivener couldn't figure it out (if related to the scroll lag), then I don't see how I'll manage...
That said, I did discover the scroll lag workaround when Scrivener's team did not... ;)
Mx. Luna Corbden 🐸