Thinking of putting my senior MacBook in assisted living – MacRumors

I have a faithful mid-2014 15″ MacBook Pro. It has served me well over the years and still meets my needs for the most part. However, I’ve had a sporadically functioning keyboard for the past number of months. The problematic keys are “z”, “x”, “c”, “v” and the left command key. As you may notice, these keys are adjacent. Short of connecting an external keyboard, I have used the virtual accessibility keyboard to get around the non-working keys. The Genius at the Apple Store ran the diagnostics test and claimed it was a software issue, recommended I do a clean install of the OS. I did so and the keys worked for a while, then erratically, but haven’t worked at all for a long stretch of time now, wonder if they ever will.

Without rattling on further, my decision is to either replace the keyboard (if it’s feasible and cost-effective) or just take this issue as a cue to upgrade to the latest base level 16″. I find this recent refresh to be better than most: now using Apple’s chip architecture, return of important I/O, better keyboard, etc. So, it’d be a good time to buy a new computer.

I know you guys can’t make your decision for me, but your input would be valuable to me. Thanks!

I doubt anyone here is going to recommend staying with an 8-year old MacBook instead of upgrading to the phenomenal Apple silicon, unless money is the issue, and only you know that.

True. Always best to be frugal. But, these very periodic Apple notebook purchases always seem to be worth every penny. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of them, dating back to my first 2004 Powerbook. I’m not the type to upgrade every other year. Which is why I’m particular about the strength of a refresh. As I said, this latest one seems to be above average.