MacBook Pro Users Petition Apple To Recall Laptops With ‘Flawed’ Butterfly Keyboard

MacBook Pro owners are asking Apple to voluntarily recall and repair their laptops that have a “flawed” butterfly mechanism keyboard.

A disgruntled owner named Matthew Taylor recently started a Change.org petition, asking the Cupertino giant to recall MacBook Pro devices released in late 2016 and replace their keyboards with redesigned keyboards that work.

Taylor claimed that every one of the current-generation MacBook Pro models (13-inch and 15-inch variants) is sold with a keyboard that easily becomes defective because of a design failure. The keyboard design that Taylor is referring to in his petition is Apple’s butterfly mechanism keyboard, which has been a pet peeve among users since the 2016 MacBook Pro launched.

Taylor is joined by other MacBook Pro owners who are experiencing the same problem with their device’s keyboard. “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,” Casey Johnston wrote.

“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,” Jason Snell pointed out.

Taylor also voiced his own concerns, saying, “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 … 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.”

As of press time, Taylor’s petition has gathered 2,428 signatures. It needs just a little more to reach its goal of 2,500 signatures.

Earlier this week, AppleInsider brought attention to the problem with the butterfly mechanism keyboard of the 2016 MacBook Pro. In its report, the Apple-centric news site indicated that the data it collected from Apple Genius Bars and authorized repair outlets showed the 2016 MacBook Pro keyboard failing twice as often as previous models launched from 2014 and 2015. The 2017 model reportedly fared better, but the full dataset of the device is still unavailable because it has only been on the market for 11 months.

Most complaints against the 2016 MacBook Pro’s keyboard cited failed, unreliable and unresponsive keys. Another issue with the butterfly mechanism keyboard is the cost of having it repaired. Out-of-warranty bills reportedly reached upwards of $700 for a simple broken key.