New MacBook Keyboards are Plagued by Same Old Issues

Earlier this year, Casey Johnston shared her experience with the 2016 MacBook Pro keyboard featuring the second-generation “butterfly” switch mechanism, which started getting temporarily dead keys only a couple of months after having the entire top half of her out-of-warranty notebook replaced by Apple for the same reason.

Now, she has written another article over at The Outline, confirming that the third-generation butterfly switch keyboard on the latest MacBooks is plagued by the same issues as its predecessors.

Just got a new computer recently (MacBook Pro). For some reason, typing the letter “o” is weird. Sometimes it adds an extra “o” when I hit it. Sometimes it doesn’t register that I hit it at all. This is very annoying.

— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy)

October 15, 2018

She points at a bunch of tweets and forums where users have been sharing their experiences since Apple updated the design and it seems the number of affected users is growing with time. “Many users continue to report stuck keys, maybe it’s time for other companies to stop looking to Apple for design cues”, she writes.

“How is everyone lse’s keyboard doing? I rplaced th first one because ‘E’ and ‘O’ gave double output. The replacment ither eats “E”, “O”, “I” and “T”, or doubles them,” wrote one poster. “I didn’t correct the typos above on purpose.” “I have had to bring mine (maxed out version of 2018 15″) twice to a local [authorized Apple service provider] for repairs,” said another.

“Irritatingly, my 2016 rMB never had a problem that couldn’t be resolved with canned air,” wrote another, “yet this model with its Special Membranes does. Clearly Apple was telling the truth when saying the membranes do not improve reliability.”

Shouldn’t Apple just use the Magic Keyboard keys in all of its MacBooks as they are much more pleasant to use, quieter, and appear to not have the same sticky-keys issue?