This. If anything, Apple has been guilty of shipping buggy _software_ earlier than it should, _not_ the hardware. And while Tim might be an expert at operations for shipping hardware, software dev is a different ballgame.
The iphone 6s battery could not last more than 18 months of daily use. After that it would not provide a stable voltage, causing the phone to randomly shutdown. The "fix" was sneaking in a permanent throttle at 20, 40, 60% of normal performance to hide the problem.
The new keyboards in the recent Macbook Pro redesign are hyper-fragile to the point that Apple's own service technicians have trouble fixing keys and end up having to replace the entire thing.
The Mac line has a history of graphics card failures due to excessive heat from poor thermal design.
- The keyboards on the old MacBook Pro models (back when were silver) were also terrible. The keys kept falling off mine.
- MacBook graphics glitches also go way back (they even had a recall back in... 2010?). Several macOS releases had an issue where the screen was garbled when you got back from sleep.
- They've had tons of little USB issues, especially related to audio.
- My 2015 model has an issue where sometimes coming back from sleep, the internal keyboard no longer works. Everything is fine except no keyboard input.
(Etc.)
The new keyboards are not fragile in my experience. I'd say that they're probably more robust than the old keyboards in terms of standing up to normal use.
The issue is that they are very difficult to service. You can't easily remove the keys to clean out debris etc like you could with the old version, which could be a problem if they accumulate dust and grime underneath the keycaps.
I do worry about what they'll be like after a few years of use, however. What if stuff keeps accumulating under there, with no easy way to clean it out?