They've effectively made public statements that they feel the keyboard is not shit. They also put their money where their mouth was and created a 4 year replacement program for all butterfly keyboard issues.
Its a really notorious and popularized issue, but Apple has been repairing keyboard issues on these for four years - and even though they improved the design incrementally, they haven't made any significant changes generation-to-generation. Nor have taken such obvious steps as making the keyboard replaceable independent of the top cover - with all the attached hardware and batteries - to make repairs easier and more economical.
Since its hard to imagine Apple blissfully taking a financial hit on the keyboard repairs for four years, you have to imagine there are a combination of other factors at play:
- Some early generations had issues, either due to a manufacturing defect, and Apple thought they could do some combination of replacing keyboards as issues surfaced rather than do a recall, change manufacturing to make the keyboard more robust, and improve the design with new generations. Note that the MacBook Pro with the 2nd generation butterfly keyboard was released over a year after the MacBook Retina. So Apple already should have had substantial repair data on the keyboard at that point.
- Apple's numbers on issues are lower because people are living with the issue rather than getting it repaired. I believe Apple has gotten this feedback, which is why they have started to roll out on-site repairs to Apple stores to speed up the process
- People who are living with the issue or had the issue are more vocal than people who had issues with previous generations of keyboards - an echo chamber effect
- People without issues are also talking about the keyboard negatively
- People are contributing to the negativity about the keyboard for other reasons independent of reliability - for instance, a lot of people dislike the low-travel of the keys.