If this actually turns out to be a widespread problem and Apple doesn't address it in a timely update you may see a class-action lawsuit and/or Apple warranty repair service in a few years.
The one which they called a "pig" internally where "lipstick won't fix it", but which they kept selling for years?
That totally broke my trust that Apple will address quality issues.
https://www.ped30.com/2021/03/23/apple-butterfly-lipstick-pi...
But Apple have always been good about free, no-questions-asked, out of warranty replacements for faulty/sticky butterfly keyboards. Not really sure what more you could reasonably want them to do.
1 Admit the issue before a class action lawsuit is running
2 Put immediately a statement that there "could" be an issue and it is investigated. Apple kept their mouth shut and the fanboys attacked the people that reported the issues that they use the keyboard wrong or some even claim that is is an anti-Apple conspiracy.
Trust was eroded because every year they came out with some improvement on it that was supposed to fix the problem, then at the end of the year models with those keyboards were added to the expanded warranty program.
I think it would have been better if they had a real fix for this issue, it probably would have been expensive for them with a redesigned top and bottom case to fit a decent keyboard but right now the butterfly keyboards seem like ticking time bombs. Eventually they will die and Apple will either ask several hundred to repair it or say parts no longer exist and buy a new one.
Maybe Apple should have just swallowed their pride and addressed it in a single product cycle. I was one of the people waiting for the keyboard to be fixed before buying a Mac, and I just ended up switching to Linux before it happened. I ended up buying an M1 Macbook Air, but it doesn't get much use these days besides multiplatform testing.
I've had one that gave up on 3 years, a couple months after warranty ended (that seemed to be quite common for that brand at the time).
And I had to upgrade SSD and RAM 2 and 4 years after buying, it became unusable for work (granted, it was not spec'ed out originally).
If you bought your MacBook until MID 2012, you're out of luck though.
And 10 years old would be early 2011, and those are also not supported.
Mojave has the same requirements basically, that leaves High Sierra, and High Sierra had a few months of support left (ended Dec 2020), so I just aborted.
But yes, older Macs were notorious for being great machines.
Why? Apple still offers battery replacements for modern Macs, and some more adventurous types of people still do it themselves. They're glued to the chassis, not spot welded.
Typically you would only replace them when they (gradually) became annoyingly slow for daily use.
Agreed, I had to upgrade all of of my PowerBooks/MacBooks at some point with RAM and larger HDDs/SSDs.
And my last Apple Laptop is from 2012 and I learned that Apple now drops support by the OS considerably earlier than in the old days (i.e. unecesarily early, most 8-10 year old MacBooks would be perfectly fine for daily use, but now unsafe) - at least that was my impression.
And installing Linux on them is always a mixed bag (fans, trackpad, etc.), even though it sure is better with Intel Macs.
And it was seldomly updated, so you could get very aged specs.
If you bought a MacBook 2011/2012 you would typically get an HDD and between 4 and 8GB RAM. Software requirements/demands sky-rocketed shortly after that. On a non-Air you could at least upgrade this yourself, which gave the machine new life ("just like new")
I think my current work laptop is 6-7 years old. My backup laptop is 11 years old.
That said, my 2015 HP Zbook (previously in contracting work, now personal use) still works perfectly, only now with third keyboard, third battery, and a bit of superglue.