I keep hearing this. I've been using the new keyboard for > 1 yr and I literally have no complaints. I have adjusted my typing style to a bit lighter of a touch as the keys don't travel as far, but I've not experienced any discomfort.
At work I’m surrounded by people rattling away in the latest MBP (I don’t use one myself).
From listening to the room as machines were replaced, I actually got the impression that the opposite was true; it sounded like people were typing harder.
From trying one of the keyboards out, I found myself typing more percussively too. Without tactile feedback I ended up slapping the keys pretty hard to be certain about actuation/bottoming-out (the same thing?).
There was a learning curve teaching my fingers to use two distinct pressure techniques depending on the surface.
I've had keys stick and unstick. I'm glum about it. Feels like a matter of time before one doesn't unstick.
Of course I am typing this is on an mechanical keyboard with Cherry Switches, which is the only way to type
When you push hard enough to move them, they pass through an optical sensor and then can move a lot further, so there's effectively no equivalent to keys bottoming out, or the feeling of jamming your finger into a hard surface.
It's such a good design to invert both those problems and make them non-problems, I'm a bit sad I haven't seen it anywhere else on a more common style of keyboard.
But the clicky punch immediately degrades even if you don't get a nanoparticle under one of your keys. They regress quickly to a mushy tactile feel.
It's as if nobody at Apple tested the keyboard for more than a week, nor outside of a pristine cleanroom. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the root cause of all this, because I could see why someone would think the keyboard was an upgrade if that was the extent of the QA testing.
If the keyboard felt like it did the first week but for four years, I would consider it an upgrade. But it's a comically far cry from that.