I'll Miss The Butterfly Keyboard (But Not Its Thinness)

I posit that the butterfly mechanism is not the flaw itself, but the apparently obsessive pursuit of thinness at Apple was. The media has failed to offer this view in their collective subjective hatred to a novel keyboard mechanism. Though a divisive keyboard overall, I find myself typing on it quite well, and I've loved the stability and the keystroke feedback mechanism ever since. The thinness of the keyboard, however, expected materials to be more robust, but were instead less, and my 'x', 'k', and 'g' keys on my 2016 MacBook Pro failed after about 1y5mo, but was covered under the recall. If the keyboard was made taller, less fragile and more user repairable, it would have been much more robust than silicone ingress protection. I recommend getting a silicone keyboard cover to mitigate key failures.

READ THESE:

'Stop p[r]ioritizing thinn[e]ss ov[er] usability… L[e]t [the butterfly keyboard] fly fa[r], fa[r] away."' - Joanna Stern/WSJ http://archive.is/okjAQ

'I come not to bury the MacBook keyboard, nor to praise it… Maybe my goal is just to provide a little perspective.' - Dan Ackerman/CNET https://www.cnet.com/news/in-defense-...

'The "problem" isn't the name or functionality of the keyboard mechanism, it's the thinness of the machine.' - Daniel Eran Dilger/AppleInsider https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/...
See also: 'Various bloggers… whip[ped] up a frenzy on non-scissor keyboards as ignorant or malicious as the campaigns to vilify vaccines." https://roughlydrafted.de/home/2019/1...

RECALL:

Most tech news use the existence of the free replacement programme as evidence for the butterfly mechanism being not robust. Unlike journalists who suggest their position of sensationalist reporting as a main factor in Apple's decision, Apple uses a standard protocol for having a threshold before a recall programme is initiated.

ON THE EMPIRICAL REPAIR DATA:

The second-generation butterfly mechanism keyboards have a 1.9x increased repair rate compared to the previous, scissor mechanism models. This was widely panned as a concern, but AppleInsider has not released full 2017 or 2018 statistics, only 'about the same'. Yet, they justify, by circular reasoning, that it is biased to call it a small percentage ('exacerbated by Apple echo chamber') because there is a 'loud group' of complaints, 'as it should be'.

There is also an argument about the repair data not being reflective of actual failure data. It is argued, however, by merely speculation and anecdotes, that the issue is great, and theorised that Apple is conspiring to cover up the situation. In another light, one could also speculate the opposite - a keyboard issue with stuck or repeated keys is a major concern for a portable notebook, even if external keyboards were used, especially since all MacBook models with a butterfly mechanism keyboard have no USB-A ports which most external keyboards require, and that adapters are a hassle.