Sometimes things which are made in such a way that there is essentially no way to take them apart without destroying them. When it stops working all you can do is throw it away. This is a reasonably new thing, and it makes me a little sad and frustrated.

Meet the Apple Bluetooth keyboard. I liked this keyboard quite a bit. It sipped power, was small enough to be a good companion to the Mac Mini that’s hooked up to my TV, resting comfortably on the arm of my couch. I had it for at least three years. However it eventually contracted some kind of slow rot. Keys started to stop working on it. First it was the zero key, then the X. I could work around those keys (it wasn’t my main keyboard and I used the Mac’s software keyboard when I really had to type the word “exquisite”). Then quickly in sequence the A, S, C and finally space stopped working, limiting my typing to single, awkward words.

An exact replacement is $70 and since as it was it was essentially worthless I had very little to lose by trying to fix it. Since I’m a bit familiar with how modern keyboards are made I wasn’t optimistic. At best I hoped that some conductive coating had come off and could be replaced.

If you don’t know how most thin keyboards work they’re a little sandwich. On top there’s the plastic key face. Below that there’s a little plastic mechanism for making sure the key goes straight up and down when it’s pressed. The key presses a rubbery dimple that works both as a spring and to press a membrane below. When the membrane is compressed it connects two electric traces which electronics in the keyboard recognize as a key press. They’re not very friendly to repair, but they’re cheap to make and there’s not a lot that can go wrong with them. (More information on dome switch keyboards.)

But there was something wrong with mine. So time to bust it open and see what I could do. First a I scoured the Internet for repair guides. The usual source didn’t have any advice, and general searching found no information at all. Apparently no one had yet documented fixing, or even taking apart an Apple Bluetooth keyboard. Not a good sign.

So I looked at the thing to see how to get into it. There were no external screws. That’s not unusual, they’re often hidden, maybe behind rubber feet. In this case they weren’t. Simply no screws. Okay, in that case usually prying at a bit of the case will pop it off. Nope. Prying at the plastic gave the feeling that there was something much more than some plastic tabs holding it in place.

It was already broken, so what the hell, might as well use some force. I crammed a screwdriver deep under the plastic and pried. After applying enough pressure to nearly crack the back it started giving. It turns out there was a thick and incredibly sticky membrane covering the entire back. I managed to get it off without damaging the workings of the keyboard but there were some gouges along the edge that seem inevitable given the amount of force required to get the back off.

Okay, the back’s off, it should be easier from here on out, right? Nope. The back revealed a stamped steel plate that both reinforces the keyboard and holds the key supports in place. This plate was completely coated with the sticky membrane (except where a bit of it stuck to the plastic back plate). A quick exploration made it obvious that the sticky crap was not going to come off even when I tried some Goo Gone and good old fashioned elbow grease.

Ah well, I think, I’ll work around it. At least there are around ten screws visible. The first couple tiny screws I remove suck up three times their volume in glue as I unscrew them. They’re the size of poppy seeds so I’m not going to clean the glue off. Ah well. I’ll deal with that later. That’s when I realize that the screws are in weird places. They’re not spread evenly or at stress points. They’re clustered near the upper left. That’s when I realize just how inaccessible this thing is….

The metal back plate had been welded to the case. In 87 different places.

It’s completely welded shut.

After prying off the back of the case here was a stamped steel plate covered with goo, 10 screws and 87 spot weld points. No only were there no user serviceable parts inside but no parts serviceable by anyone, even the manufacturer.

In theory these could be drilled out and then reattached somehow, probably with epoxy. In practice there’s a very good chance of screwing something up permanently when drilling and reattaching 87 precision welds. For the manufacturer it was cheaper to do it this way than to add another 87 screws to the mix. The existing screws were all near the ribbon connector where the electric traces were most dense and welding would risk damaging the connections.

A good pair of pliers and some leverage ripped the back right off. It was already doomed to the junk bin anyway, at least I might be able to see what was going wrong with it in the first place and maybe salvage or properly recycle some of the parts.

Inside were the expected components, the membranes with the traces, the rubbery dimples, etc. The only thing remarkable about it was how much effort it took to rip the thing apart.

At the end I recycled the steel back plate (If the recycling center accepts it with all the unknown sticky crap on it) and the key supports. I kept the routed metal case for a speculative tiny, back lit photo display. And I kept the plastic key faces since they’re somewhat iconic. If I find another 11 non-functioning keyboards I’ll have a full Scrabble set.

Oh, and I didn’t definitively find the cause of the creeping rot. There was obviously brown junk in between the membranes of the affected keys. Looking at the close-up photos the brown crap had some flow lines that look like some liquid might have gotten in there though I don’t think I ever spilled anything on it and they were completely dry when pried apart.

All in all I was very disappointed by how it was impossible to get inside this thing without completely destroying it. It’s one thing to be unfixable, that happens. But making it impossible to fix under any circumstances is troubling.

On the other hand when I took apart this keyboard I immediately noticed how clean it was inside. After three years of living room use and mishandling there was hardly anything under the keys. No gunk, no stray hairs, no Cheeto debris, nothing. I’ve seen the same thing in my Sony keyboard which has a similar design so this design with a front frame and nearly flush keys do offer at least one benefit.

Oh, and I should note that this keyboard has been redesigned at some point in the last few years (the new version takes one less battery for instance) and so newer versions may or may not be similar inside.