What you don’t know about Hunter Biden’s laptop may shock you | Opinion

It seems like no matter what I write about these days, be it the destruction of a nature preserve in Stafford or a police raid on the newspaper in Marion, the conversation in online comments always seems to turn to Hunter Biden’s laptop — as in, “Why don’t you ever write about that?”

The answer, of course, is that I am primarily a local and regional columnist, and there’s usually plenty going on in Wichita and Kansas to keep me plenty busy.

But, I like to respond to readers, so today, I am going to write about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

It’s actually more interesting than it sounds like, because Hunter Biden’s laptop is arguably the worst laptop Apple ever made. It was such a hunk of junk that it eventually cost Apple a $50 million settlement (more about that later).

If you haven’t been following this, Hunter Biden is a guy who made a lot of money and took a lot of drugs — sort of like Kid Rock without the hat.

He’s also the son of President Joe Biden, or no one would give a flyin’ fig about his laptop.

But apparently, some people do, because there have been entire books written about it.

In fact, one of them, “Laptop from Hell” by Miranda Devine, is the official sponsor of the Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, that says how much of the country likes Joe Biden on any given day.

So let’s take a deep dive into Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The laptop in question is an Apple MacBook Pro, which, according to Justice Department records is serial No. FVFXC2MMHV29.

Before I started researching this column, I didn’t know there are websites around the world where you can plug in an Apple serial number and get back the specs.

According to Techable.com, Hunter Biden’s laptop is a 2017 MacBook Pro, with a screen size of 13 inches, an Intel Core i5 processor with a CPU frequency of 2.3 gigahertz and eight gigabytes of RAM.

Not the best specs, but more than adequate for most users. Industry reviewers mostly gave it a 4 out of 5, praising its Retina display screen and thinness of the overall package.

But that thinness was to be the laptop’s downfall. To get there, Apple used what are called “butterfly” keys on the keyboard.

Most keyboards use “scissor” keys, where the internal mechanism is shaped like an X; butterfly keys are more like a V.

Butterfly keys were an elegant solution in a design lab in Cupertino, California. Problem was, most people don’t use their laptops in a design lab in Cupertino.

They use them at home, at job sites, in restaurants and a whole lot of other not-so-clean environments, and butterfly keys became notorious for going negative-function if you got any dust, crumbs or other daily detritus in them.

A class-action lawsuit was filed and to settle it, Apple agreed to spend up to $50 million to reimburse customers who had had their keyboards or keys replaced at Apple stores and authorized dealers.

As usual in such scenarios, the company admitted neither wrongdoing nor putting a defective product on the market. Customers who had their computers fixed by someone other than Apple were out of luck, and those who were eligible had to actually apply for compensation before the settlement was finalized.

But the lawyers who brought the suit cleaned up on legal fees, so that’s something, I guess.

Overall, I can’t say I’d recommend Hunter Biden laptops.

They’re still kind of expensive — about $400 to $600 is what I’m seeing — and six years haven’t improved the butterfly keyboard, which Apple quit using in 2020. Plus, 2017 MacBooks are getting a bit long in the tooth and Apple has this annoying habit of rendering their equipment useless when they decide it’s time for you to buy new.

My own MacBook Pro, circa 2007, still runs like a champ, as Joe Biden might say.

But I can’t update it to the version of Google Chrome I need to use it for work anymore.

That would require an update to the operating system that Apple won’t let me have because of its corporate policy which can best be summed up as: Buy a new computer, you cheapskate.

So there you have it. My story on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

To my frequent online commenters, you can now quit complaining about my alleged dereliction and maybe engage on local and Kansas issues that I write about regularly.

And to the rest of my readers, when you have your Labor Day picnic and crazy Aunt Agnes — whose lifestyle mainly consists of watching Newsmax all day — starts going off about Hunter Biden’s laptop, you’ll be able to wow her with a bunch of facts that she doesn’t know.

So this column isn’t a wretched waste of space after all.