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00:00Apple came out with a statement yesterday where they publicly apologized for some of the issues that the 3rd generation MacBook Pro keyboards have had.
00:11So they said, we are aware that a small number of users are having issues with their 3rd generation butterfly keyboard, and for that, we are sorry.
00:20And they're referencing the keyboards in the 2018 MacBook Pro, so these are kind of like the 3rd generation of that butterfly switch keyboard.
00:27And it's Apple, it's a public statement, it's a obviously curated statement that admits a little bit of fault, but doesn't open them up to like too much attack.
00:36Now, to understand this issue a little bit better, I have to talk about their first butterfly keyboard.
00:42It was 2015, they built this 12 inch MacBook that was super thin, super light, and in order to have a keyboard in this thing, they had to build that new switch that could fit into that chassis.
00:51And then a year later, they came out with these devices, the 13 inch MacBook Pro, and the 15 inch MacBook Pro.
00:57Very popular devices, but keyboard issues started to happen right away.
01:01Like immediately, there were issues with how these keyboards were performing, just not the keyboard experience, right?
01:07Like, everyone's gonna have a different take on how these keyboards feel, but the reliability and the durability of these keyboards were questionable right from day one.
01:15And because of the number of issues that people were having with these keyboards, Apple actually put a page on their website to show people how to clean their keyboards with compressed air.
01:23The issue was that dust or other particulate matter was getting stuck underneath the key cap and messing up the switch mechanism.
01:29And on a key switch that is so shallow, with such a small travel distance, it is really easy to get jammed up.
01:36The thing is, the problem persisted.
01:39They continued selling MacBook Pros that had problems with keyboards.
01:42And then finally, in June of 2018, they announced a keyboard repair program, where you could take a MacBook or a MacBook Pro,
01:49as long as it had a butterfly switch keyboard, you could bring it to a store and they would fix it, give it back to you in a week.
01:54And then, in 2018, they also announced their third generation MacBook Pro, and that's where we are today.
02:01This device here is a 2018 MacBook Pro.
02:04This has a membraned keyboard, and it was supposed to fix these keyboard issues.
02:09They never publicly stated that the membrane was designed for this, but in repair documents sent to service centers, it was mentioned.
02:15But here we are today, in 2019, with a public apology from Apple stating that these third generation butterfly keyboards still have problems.
02:23Now, my personal experience with these butterfly keyboards, I've had two machines go down.
02:27I've owned a total of four keyboards that have butterfly switches in them, and two of them have had these issues.
02:33My 12-inch MacBook, as well as my 2018 13-inch MacBook Pro.
02:37And this issue is very widespread.
02:39If you go on Twitter, or just search around on YouTube, you will see a lot of content creators have had issues with these particular keyboards.
02:46The big picture here, though, is that these keyboards, undeniably, have some sort of problem.
02:51It doesn't matter how much you like or dislike Apple, a keyboard on a laptop should not fail with this frequency.
02:57It's abnormal, and it's just, it's unfortunate.
03:01Now, it's good that they've addressed it in the past, and they will probably include the new 2018 third generation keyboards into that list for the keyboard repair program.
03:11But the biggest problem is that they are not actually fixing this problem.
03:15They're not re-engineering a keyboard and putting a new problem-free keyboard in here.
03:19They're using the exact same keyboard that your laptop shipped with.
03:23They're not even putting the membrane version in the older ones.
03:26So, they're not really fixing the problem.
03:29They're putting band-aids all over the place, and I've seen a lot of reports on Reddit of people just going through their second, third, fourth repair process,
03:37and it's just like, that's what we have.
03:39And it's because I don't think Apple can actually fix these keyboards in this chassis.
03:45They've done what they can, the membrane helps it a little bit, I'm sure, but they're confined by the design of these laptops.
03:51They're thin, they're beautiful, they're lightweight, but you clearly have issues with things like keyboard and other issues that I've mentioned in the past.
03:59So, my advice is this.
04:01If you're thinking of buying a MacBook Pro right now, I would hold out.
04:04I really think that they're redesigned this year, the 2019 version is gonna fix this.
04:08I think they're gonna redesign the whole chassis, because they have to.
04:11There's a lot of issues with these devices.
04:13The keyboard is one of the things that they need to fix.