Although Apple has been forced to go back on the keyboard technology that they implemented a while ago, the truth is that there are still Mac computers with butterfly keyboards. Although they are older models, this information can be very useful to identify your Mac model, or if you are thinking of buying one of these second-hand or refurbished computers.
The butterfly effect of Apple keyboards
What was going to be a technology that was intended to improve the quality of user writing, ended up becoming a nightmare for the company. Keys that stopped working over time, repeated keystrokes, a touch that didn’t quite convince many people and, in the most serious cases, free keyboard repairs and replacements on models that presented more severe errors.
With all this panorama on the table, Apple decided to return to the classic scissor keyboard system. Although it was an “older” technology, it is a much more reliable and durable technology. For a few years, all Macs already have a scissor system again, however, there is a period of time and a number of computer models which still have this type of butterfly keyboard:
- 12-inch MacBook with Retina display (Early 2015)
- 12-inch MacBook with Retina display (Early 2016)
- MacBook 12-inch with retina display (2017)
- MacBook Air 13-inch 2018
- 2019 13-inch MacBook Air
- MacBook Pro 13-inch, with two USB Type-C ports (2016)
- MacBook Pro 13-inch, with four USB Type-C ports (2016)
- MacBook Pro 13-inch, with two USB Type-C ports (2017)
- MacBook Pro 13-inch, with four USB Type-C ports (2017)
- MacBook Pro 13-inch, with two USB Type-C ports (2018)
- MacBook Pro 13-inch, with four USB Type-C ports (2018)
- MacBook Pro 13-inch, with two USB Type-C ports (2019)
- MacBook Pro 13-inch, with four USB Type-C ports (2019)
- MacBook Pro 15-inch 2016
- MacBook Pro 15-inch 2017
- MacBook Pro 15-inch 2018
- 2019 15-inch MacBook Pro
Therefore, from the year 2015 to the year 2019, the butterfly keyboard system was present on Apple computers. However, the most “common” models that you can come across are the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. These two product families have more models, which have been on sale for much longer. Starting with the new generations of Apple Silicon processors, and the new computer models introduced from late 2019 and early 2020, the scissor keyboard has been present again.
The bad news is that not all computers on this list, with a butterfly keyboard, are covered by Apple’s keyboard service program. In this way, although almost all of them are present, if we have a model that is not included, we will not be able to repair it for free and we will have to pay the amount of the repair.
