As if three failures wasn’t enough, Apple has launched a fourth generation of what John Gruber calls the ‘worst product in Apple history,’ the Butterfly Keyboard. The new version is found in a revised line of MacBook Pros, likely ensuring another generation of users experience the grief of repeated keyboard failures.
Apple claims it’s putting some sort of new ‘material’ — what? titanium? kryptonite? — into these 4th gen editions to “substantially reduce” double or missed keystrokes. Reduce? By how much? Why are any double or missed keystrokes acceptable? I experience zero double/missed keystrokes on my 2015 MBP with a Scissor Switch keyboard. Literally, zero. Ever. I've been using MacBooks for over 17 years and have never had this problem pre- or post-Butterfly.
What kind of marketing slogan are you aiming for, Apple... "Buy our mid-2019 MacBook Pros, now with Reduced Keyboard Errors!"
Color me skeptical. I don’t think this new ‘material’ will solve the problems. It seems obvious that the entire butterfly design is irredeemably flawed. Different materials, silicone barriers, etc. are just band-aids on a broken leg.
The only solution, as this petition has advocated from day one, is for Apple to redesign the entire MacBook keyboard from scratch and/or return to the Scissor Switch technology found in the previous-generation 2015 MacBook Pro, and/or the Magic Keyboard 2. It. Just. Works.
What happened to the Apple that wanted to make Macs Insanely Great? Today, we get Mac laptops that land somewhere between 'mediocre,' 'unreliable,' and 'abominably flawed.'
Also, as this petition predicted nearly one year ago, Apple has added all of the 2018 – and 2019, to boot! – models of MacBook/Pro/Air to the Keyboard Service Program. Apple revealed to The Verge that it’s offering a revised version of the 3rd Generation Butterfly Keyboard with the secret new ‘material’ in it - should we call this version 3.5? - as part of the service program.
As we know from past experience, the Keyboard Service Program to date has been a catastrophic failure and a sham. Many signatories to this petition have taken their machines in for multiple consecutive repairs and experienced repeated failures. Will Butterfly 3.5 put an end to this nightmare merry-go-round of keyboard repairs that repeatedly fail? This petition author’s official prediction remains: there is no version of the butterfly keyboard, now or ever, that will be reliable in the way a MacBook keyboard should be reliable. Time will tell.
P.S. - Apple continues to deceive the public on its Keyboard Service Program web page, stating:
“Apple has determined that a small percentage of the keyboards in certain MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro models may exhibit one or more of the following behaviors:
• Letters or characters repeat unexpectedly
• Letters or characters do not appear
• Key(s) feel "sticky" or do not respond in a consistent manner”
"Small percentage?" Really, Apple?
References:
Apple announces more powerful 8-core MacBook Pro with updated butterfly keyboard design
https://9to5mac.com/2019/05/21/apple-announces-more-powerful-8-core-macbook-pro-with-updated-butterfly-keyboard-design/
Apple tweaks its troubled MacBook keyboard design yet again, expands repair program
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/21/18634247/macbook-butterfly-keyboard-problems-apple-repair-new-materials
Apple expands Keyboard Service Program to include 2018 MacBook Pro and current MacBook Air
https://9to5mac.com/2019/05/21/apple-expands-macbook-keyboard-service-program/
Apple’s Keyboard Service Program - Now Expanded to Included 2018 & 2019 Models
https://www.apple.com/support/keyboard-service-program-for-mac-notebooks/
Change.org Petition Update, in Which Predictions Were Made of Butterfly 3.0 Failures... Accurate Predictions...:
https://www.change.org/p/apple-apple-recall-macbook-pro-w-defective-keyboard-replace-with-different-working-keyboard/u/23003252
‘Worst product in Apple history’
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/03/27/strn-kyboard