Apple just issued its first apology to MacBook owners who are still experiencing keyboard issues

Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

• Apple customers who purchased MacBook laptops with butterfly keyboard mechanisms have been experiencing issues with typing, where keys get stuck or repeat.
• People have been reporting issues with their MacBook keyboards for about two years now, but Apple has said only a "small percentage" of keyboards appear to be affected by these issues.
• On Wednesday, Apple finally acknowledged persisting keyboard issues in a statement and apologized for the first time.

Customers that own Apple's MacBook laptops - specifically those with butterfly keyboard designs - have been experiencing issues ever since Apple decided to reinvent its keyboards to be thinner around 2015.

And on Wednesday, Apple finally released a statement apologizing to customers who are still affected.

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"We are aware that a small number of users are having issues with their third-generation butterfly keyboard and for that we are sorry," an Apple spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal. "The vast majority of Mac notebook customers are having a positive experience with the new keyboard."

The spokesperson added that people who are still having keyboard issues should get in contact with Apple Support, the company's customer service hotline.

Apple has been trying to improve its keyboards ever since it released the 12-inch MacBook with the first butterfly keyboard in 2015. At first, people complained that keyboards were too thin, and not satisfying to type on. So Apple released a second-generation keyboard a year later, and put that new keyboard in the new MacBook Pro, but people continued to encounter issues. People would complain about the keyboard not registering, or over-registering, certain common keys, like "E" and "R."

Apple launched a repair program for MacBook and MacBook Pro computers in June 2018. The following month, Apple released a new MacBook Pro with a redesigned keyboard - the third design in three years, mind you - that would apparently fix the issues. The new MacBook Air from late last year has the same keyboard.

Unfortunately for Apple, some of these keyboard issues, like repeating or missing keys, appear to be persisting among a handful of customers with the third-generation designs, including The Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern.

While this may be Apple's first apology about the third-generation keyboards, and how they don't appear to solve some of the problems that plague the butterfly keyboard design, it will be interesting to see how Apple proceeds in this scenario. The company keeps saying only a small number of people are affected, but lots of people are buying Apple's latest MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops. Hopefully there's a proper hardware fix for these computers (aside from buying cans of compressed air and hoping for the best), and that Apple considers another hardware iteration of its future keyboards.