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.

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.”

Jonathan Mann:

“I’m pressing the spacebar and nothing is happening!”

Marco Arment:

“Butterfly keyswitches are a design failure…. they are fatally unreliable.”

Mike Wuerthele:

“The failure rate of the keyboard in the first year on the 2016 MacBook Pro is a ticking time bomb for users.”

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.

If you, Apple, want to continue to pretend this isn’t a problem, your head is buried deep in the silicon. “Design is how it works.” These don’t. Everyone who bought this computer bought a Lemon, or at the least, a potential Lemon when one speck of dust gets under the keys. There should be a Lemon Law for laptops.

Appe, (yup - the L key failed again), I am tempted to write a bunch of stuff about how I’ve been using Apple computers since 1981, how I’ve purchased tens of thousands of dollars of your gear, how I’ve recommended you to all of my friends and colleagues. But, I really shouldn’t have to say all of that because this issue should matter to you whether I’m a long-term Apple customer, or this MacBook Pro was my first-ever purchase. This should matter to you because you should care about Apple products working. Given the denial and obfuscation with which your customer service team has handled this issue, I have lost a lot of faith.

Recalling all of these MBPs would be costly. Billions? It would be a recall of perhaps unprecedented size, implications, and complexity.



And, it’s the right thing to do. If you can incinerate tens of billions on a stock repurchase program that creates nothing of real value, surely you can deploy some of your cash hoard for replacement laptop keyboards that work.



To be clear: we don’t want another of the same keyboard, which is going to fail again, as Casey Johnston’s replacement did. We want a redesigned keyboard, that works reliably. Stand behind your signature.

P.S. - And no, we don’t want a can of compressed air. The fact that you have a support page about that is not only perplexing — we never had to use compressed air on past MacBook Pro keyboards — it's a sign of Big Problems in Cupertino.

P.P.S. - For the Jim Dalrympes of the world who like this keyboard and have been lucky enough not to experience key failures, we are not proposing a forcible recall. If those folks, with full awareness of this problem, want to play Russian Roulette and hope their keyboards don't fail later, let them. We are requesting a recall program to provide redesigned, replacement keyboards for those of us who want our keyboards to work reliably, and for consumers who may not even be aware of the 'ticking time bomb' they own. Sorry I misspelled your, surname, Jim. The L key failed. Again.