An angry MacBook Pro owner has started an online petition calling on Apple to recall versions of its flagship laptop that include a keyboard using the much-maligned butterfly mechanism. Many users say the design of the keyboard is flawed.
MacBook Pro owner Matthew Taylor created the petition on Wednesday, calling for Apple to voluntarily recall and repair MacBook Pro units released since 2016.
Apple, it’s time: recall every MacBook Pro released since Late 2016, and replace the keyboards on all of them with new, redesigned keyboards that just work.
Because, these keyboards don’t work.
Every one of Apple’s current-gen MacBook Pro models, 13″ and 15″, is sold with a keyboard that can become defective at any moment due to a design failure.
The problems are widespread, consistent, and infuriating.
Since the release of the 2016 MacBook Pro lineup, users have complained that the keyboard has keys that are unresponsive. Taylor notes the issues are widespread, including quotes from frustrated users, some rather well-known:
Casey Johnston:
“My one-year-old MacBook Pro’s keyboard keys stopped working if a single piece of dust slipped under there, and more importantly, neither Apple nor its Geniuses would acknowledge that this was actually a problem…. Since I wrote about my experience, many have asked me what happened with the new top half of the computer that the Apple Geniuses installed, with its pristine keyboard and maybe-different key switches. The answer is that after a couple of months, I started to get temporarily dead keys for seemingly no reason. Again.”Jason Snell:
“Apple’s relative silence on this issue for existing customers is deafening. If these problems are remotely as common as they seem to be, this is an altogether defective product that should be recalled.”John Gruber:
“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.”
Taylor describes his own experience with the MBPro keyboard, using a bit of humor to illustrate how frustrating the issue is:
I’m writing this petition on a Late 2016 13″ MBP keyboard with a defective L key and a defective Shift Key. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. Oh boy, do I just ove proofreading my text to find missing Ls. Not. And, I meant ‘love.’ L key didn’t work there. Yes, I took this machine to a Genius Bar. They replaced the L key. The replacement L key failed. Then the Shift key failed.
An issue like this isn’t a cheap repair, as the tightly integrated design of the MacBook Pro doesn’t allow a simple keyboard replacement. Instead, if the keyboard needs replacement, the keyboard, battery, and upper metal section of the case all need to be swapped out. This can lead to repair costs as much as $700 or more.
At the time of this article, the petition has 3,865 signatures. (Visit Change.org to view and/or sign the petition.