MacBook Users Demand Apple Recall Over Broken Keyboards

When Apple redesigned the MacBook Pro, it debuted a new type of keyboard based on a butterfly switch design that was supposed to provide better tactile characteristics in a fraction of the travel depth of the previous scissor mechanism. 

Apple’s goal was to shave a fraction of a millimeter off its designs, and it succeeded but more than a year after the design debuted, it’s clear the company made some compromises in the process. More than 3,500 MacBook Pro owners have now signed a Change.

Org petition calling for Apple to recall the 2016 MBP and “replace the keyboards on all of them with new, redesigned keyboards that just work. Because, these keyboards don’t work.

”What’s interesting are the number of high-profile voices in the Mac community backing up that conclusion. Casey Johnston of The Outline and formerly of Ars Technica notes that the keyboards are so terrible, she wouldn’t even buy the MacBook Pro on sale. 


In fact, she sold her 2016 system and now relies on an older MacBook Pro and a PC she built with the proceeds from selling the original.DaringFireball’s John Gruber writes, “This keyboard has to be one of the biggest design screwups in Apple history. Everyone who buys a MacBook depends upon the keyboard and this keyboard is undependable.” Designer Marco Arment writes:

Butterfly keyswitches are a design failure that should be abandoned. They’ve been controversial, fatally unreliable, and expensive to repair since their introduction on the first 12” MacBook in early 2015.

Their flaws were evident immediately, yet Apple brought them to the entire MacBook Pro lineup in late 2016.

After three significant revisions, Apple’s butterfly keyswitches remain as controversial and unreliable as ever. At best, they’re a compromise acceptable only on the ultra-thin 12” MacBook, and only if nothing else fits. They have no place in Apple’s mainstream or pro computers.