A MacBook Butterfly keyboard with a keycap off revealing the inner workings of the key
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All Apple MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs made from 2015-2019 have the dreaded butterfly keyboard, which was mentioned in a post long, long ago about a similar topic. These keyboards were not only uncomfortable to type on because they were 100% flat and had almost zero key travel, but were extremely unreliable, and most people had to send their MacBooks in for repair because something got into the keys and the whole thing failed. I actually had this problem a couple years ago with a 2017 MacBook Pro where some of the keys were doubling and even tripling. Even a small speck of dust getting into the keyboards can ruin the whole thing; normal keyboards I see have all kinds of dust in them and this Butterfly keyboard design can’t even handle anything. So many customers have gotten upset about it in the 4 years that it was in production. Eventually Apple realized this and went back to the scissor-switch design that they had been on before.
Well, in certain states Apple is now changing things up so that you pay a reduced amount of money to get your Butterfly keyboard repaired if you’ve had it repaired a certain number of times before. This is because that when your keyboard is repaired, they just put another Butterfly type right back in there, so even though these Macs come with an extended 4-year warranty, even the replacement ones are still going to be susceptible to failing. So if it’s been repaired two times before and now it’s failing again, Apple says they’re not going to charge quite as much for the third repair. However, this only applies in certain states, and if you’re not in one of those states, you’re pretty much screwed. Fortunately, all new MacBooks no longer have this issue, as Apple has thankfully decided to go back to the original scissor switch design.
In fact, Apple is saying that they might pay customers up to $375 if the customer has already had repairs done on the keyboard repair. However, like mentioned above, this is not applicable for customers in the unsupported states. Overall, the Butterfly keyboard situation is getting better, but I’m pretty sure Apple’s never going to go so far as to replace failing Butterfly keyboards with new scissor-switch ones, because they’ll just be too expensive. Right now, I think Apple’s finally making some good progress on this situation, but in the wake of the calamitous first years of the Butterfly keyboard, many customers are still very dissatisfied with the situation. Yes, Apple has made simply typing a chore with their horrible Butterfly keyboard design.
