Apple came out with the statement yesterday where they
publicly apologized for some of the issues that the third generation MacBook Pro keyboards have had so they said
We are aware that a small number of users are having issues with
Their third-generation butterfly keyboard and for that we are sorry and they're referencing the keyboards in the 2018 MacBook Pro
So these are the kind of like the third generation of that butterfly switch keyboard, and it's Apple. It's a public statement
It's a obviously curated statement that admits a little bit of fault, but doesn't open them up to like too much attack now
To understand this issue a little better. I have to talk about their first Butterfly keyboard. It was 2015
They built this 12-inch MacBook that was super thin super light and in order to have a keyboard in this thing
they had to build that new switch that could fit into that chassis and then a year later they
Came out with these devices the 13-inch MacBook Pro and the 15-inch MacBook Pro very popular devices
But keyboard issues start to happen right away like immediately there were issues with how these keyboards were performing
Just not the keyboard experience, right?
Like everyone's gonna have a different take on how these keyboards feel but the reliability and the durability of these keyboards are questionable
right from day one and
Because of the number of issues that people were having with these keyboards
Apple actually put a page on their website to show people how to clean their keyboards with compressed air the issue
Was that dust or other?
Particulate matter was getting stuck underneath the key cap and messing up the switch mechanism and on a key switch
That is so shallow with such a small travel distance. It is really easy to get jammed up. The thing is the problem persisted
They continued selling MacBook Pros that had problems with keyboards. And then finally in June of 2018
they announced a
keyboard repair program where you could take a
MacBook or a MacBook Pro as long as I had a butterfly switch keyboard
You could bring it to a store and they would fix it. Give it back to you in a week and then in
2018 they also announced their third
Generation MacBook Pro and that's where we are today. This device here is a 2018 MacBook Pro
This has a membrane keyboard and it was supposed to fix these keyboard issues
They never publicly stated that the membrane was designed for this but in repaired documents sent to service centers, it was mentioned
But here we are today in 2019 with a public apology from Apple stating that these third-generation butterfly keyboards
Still have problems now my personal experience with these butterfly keyboards. I've had two machines go down
I've owned a total of four key boards that have butterfly switches in them
and two of them have had these issues my 12-inch MacBook as well as my
2018 13-inch MacBook Pro and this issue is very widespread
If you go on Twitter or just search around on YouTube
You will see a lot of content creators have had issues with these particular keyboards the big picture here, though
Is that these keyboards undeniably have some sort of problem. It doesn't matter how much you like or dislike Apple a
Keyboard on a laptop should not fail with this frequency. It's abnormal and it's just it's unfortunate now
It's good that they've addressed it in the past and they will probably include the new
2018 third generation keywords into that list for the keyboard repair program
But the biggest problem is that they are not actually fixing this problem
They're not re-engineering a keyboard and putting a new problem-free keyboard in here
They're using the exact same keyboard that your laptop shipped with they're not even putting the membrane version in the older ones. So
They're not really fixing the problem. They're putting band-aids all over the place and
I've seen a lot of reports on Reddit of people just going through their second third fourth repair process and it's just like
That's what we have and it's because I don't think Apple can actually fix these keyboards in this chassis
They've done what they can a membrane helps it a little bit. I'm sure but they're confined by the design of these laptops
They're thin they're beautiful
They're lightweight, but you clearly have issues with things like keyboard and other issues that I've mentioned in the past
So my advice is this if you're thinking of buying a MacBook Pro right now?
I would hold out. I really think that their redesigned this year. The 2019 version is gonna fix this
I think they're gonna redesign the whole chassis because they have to there's a lot of issues with these devices
The key word is one of the things that they need to fix