Why Did Apple Get Rid Of The Butterfly Keyboard?

Apple's butterfly keyboard was one of the company's biggest blunders. It cost them $50 million in a class-action lawsuit because the design was prone to breaking from even specks of dust or bits of fluff. It really was a rare moment of failure for the company after its 2000s revival. There were plenty of issues with the company's hardware, particularly when, now the former chief design officer for Apple, Jony Ive, had gained more authority over designs. The Magic Mouse has its charging port on the bottom, and between 2016 and 2021, the company seemed deathly afraid of anything not USB-C. All of these persisted, but the butterfly keyboard was completely phased out sooner than later, as Apple effectively admitted defeat on it.

Fitted to MacBooks between 2015 and 2019, the butterfly keyboard was also given the boot in 2020, when Apple ditched Intel for its in-house processors. Why is that? Well, not only did it cost them a lot of money thanks to a class-action lawsuit, but it was also really bad on a survivability level. Errant pieces of dust or debris could break the key, with no real way for someone at home to repair it. Towards the end, Apple began outfitting the butterfly design with more protection, including membranes and domes, to ensure it remained in working order.

On paper, it's a fairly mundane update to Apple's keyboard fare. A new design for how the keys are activated when pressed. It featured a hinge system that would press down when the key was pressed to hit the unprotected steel dome underneath. Typically, laptop keyboards use a membrane keyboard of some description, where the key pushes on the membrane, which then contacts with another layer of membrane, which then hits the conductive material to activate the key. However, keyboards have a little thickness to them to ensure protection of the contacts, but the butterfly design was 40% thinner than previous ones, and on top of the dust issue, users could press too hard and break their keyboard.

As pointed out by The Verge, no information is available on how widely the issue spread, but it must have been enough to warrant a class-action lawsuit. In 2023, Apple paid out $50 million to users impacted by their purchase, with some getting up to $395. Since 2020, the company has switched to the more stable Magic Keyboard.

Apple rarely phases out an entire piece of hardware due to customer complaints — look at the Magic Mouse. That said, the butterfly keyboard was clearly too much of a headache to keep around, and it was ultimately easier for the Cupertino company to ditch it.

Aside from the butterfly keyboard, you have to dig into Apple's past for some comparable product disasters. Devices like the Pippin, a failed games console, and the many different computers that tried to compete with the exploding PC market spring to mind. It's not like the butterfly keyboard has been the company's only failure in the 21st century, as those who wound up with an iPhone 4, with claims of its poor signal, that Apple even issued a letter over the potential PR disaster.