Taking down Apple’s Butterfly Keyobard

Despite feeling sure the keyboards were bad, I bought one of the ‘improved’ design MacBook Airs when they were released in 2018. I had the exact same problems, again, and broke the story that the Apple Store simply had a new set of deflections to tell customers.

I broke the story that the butterfly keyboard was a functionally bankrupt design element of Apple’s notebook computers. I documented my problems, my visits to the Apple Store, and Apple’s attempts to explain the problem away.

I can’t believe this; look at all of the people tweeting at me that they thought the keyboards wouldn’t be a problem, and saying within days or months they found out they were wrong.

I can’t believe this—a bunch of people who bought these computers with these keyboards sued Apple.

The company never admitted guilt, but it did extend the warranty of all the computers it sold with the butterfly keyboards to several years beyond the one-year warranty. It also subtly changed the keyboard design but did not publicly acknowledge that it was because the keyboards were bad before.

Surprise surprise—a bunch of people who thought maybe they were safe buying the tweaked butterfly keyboard design, were not!