Taika Waititi dodges union question with rant about Apple keyboards

Now, THIS is how you dodge a dicey question. 

While Taika Waititi gave backstage interviews after accepting his Academy Award for best adapted screenplay Sunday, he busted out a rant about an extremely relatable irk rather than weigh in on a question regarding the contentious negotiations between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the producers’ association.

A reporter asked Waititi about the needs “writers should be asking for” in negotiations, to which Waititi gave an about-face answer on the terribleness of… Apple keyboards.

“Apple needs to fix those keyboards,” Waititi said. “They are impossible to write on.”

Forget one-sided contracts that pay agencies more than their clients and a possible impending strike. The main problem is KEYBOARDS!

To be fair, Waititi is absolutely right. The butterfly design of the close-to-flush keys has several huge problems. First, since they are so slim, they just don’t feel as satisfying to write on. More importantly, they are extremely vulnerable to getting messed up by the tiniest particle of dust or crumb; your keyboard can be working fine, and then, out of nowhere, one key will stop being as responsive as others, causing typos galore. It is maddening! Perhaps most important, fixing a single lame key requires replacing the whole damn keyboard. WHY, APPLE, WHY?

After Waititi gave his somewhat stunning initial answer, he met the silence of the reporters by doubling down on keyboard complaints. He griped about how writing on the Mac keyboards just didn’t feel as good as the more mechanical-feeling PCs.

“It makes me want to go back to PCs,” Waititi said. “The bounce back for your fingers is way better. You know what I’m talking about.”

Yes, Taika Waititi, Oscar Winner. So relatable. 

Waititi also complained about how writing on a laptop is bad for his shoulder (again, to be fair, it is!). Waititi smartly appealed to the room of reporters, known for our terrible posture and eyesight: “You know what I’m talking about, you guys who are writing.”

Good news, Taika: The WGA may not need to pressure Apple so hard. Apple acknowledged the faultiness of the keyboards when it revamped the design for more durability in the 2019 line, and added an extended warranty program for older models. Even better, Apple’s 16-inch MacBook Pro has actually reverted back to its old scissor-style keyboard, which makes them less thin and less vulnerable.

Still, totally understandable that a fair share for writers in the proceeds of their work was not on Waititi’s mind when he had a global platform to advocate for his peers and colleagues. Union negotiation, shmunion shmeshmoshiation. 

“You’ve just gotta fix those keyboards,” Waititi said. “WGA needs to step in and actually do something.”