Apple totally leaves broken keys on display, right?
Literally have google maps location history data to prove my visits. Anyways.
In my case, they absolutely did. On launch day fall '16 I found 2 laptops on display at Apple Carlsbad in San Diego with issues. I noticed this after bringing back my own 13" I picked up that morning with a skipping key. Probably spent a good 30 minutes in the store to put those display devices through their paces as I was alarmed this was happening right out of the box.
One thing to note is it usually only impacted one key - at least to start - and it didn't always occur... sometimes it would be a missed key, sometimes it would double type. Sometimes it would happen like every fifth time you'd hit the key. Sometimes it would happen when the laptop was a bit hot, you could go hours before it would happen then all of a sudden during a meeting it starts happening. So if you're just casually inspecting a machine it could be easy to miss.
That replacement machine I picked up that day required a topcase replacement 6 months later, and yet another a year after that. During that period 2 other engineers in my 40 person startup required replacements for their machines as well. So many pairing sessions someone would be cursing their keyboard, it was ridiculous.
I do believe the 2nd rev greatly ameliorated the issue, the 3rd rev had all but solved it, but the 1st gen was pretty bad. I had a 15" Macbook Pro purchased in 2018 that experienced no issues at all.
Happy to get the settlement check for my hassles.
I've had keys on scissor switch Mac keyboards and MacBook keyboards break.
I've owned computers since '82 and can't recall having a keyswitch failure on any other keyboard. I've been a professional software developer since '98 and have typed 90+ WPM since '92. I have had a keyboard or two die outright from a controller failure but that's a different thing. This includes probably close to 20 laptops (first a Duo 280c in '94) and at least that many desktop keyboards.
I was also a system admin at a startup overseeing 120 machines, including about 20 blackbird Macbooks, in '96-'97 and don't recall any keyswitch failures.
I get that it happens, but IME it is truly a rare event. Unless you're a gamer slamming the living crap out of your keyboard. This was not a rare event in the least. For those keeping count above, that's 7 incidents of failure I personally witnessed vs. none (that I can recall) over a much, much wider set of touchpoints.