That's fair. But, they also haven't said anything publicly about the keyboard being shit, despite two attempts now to make it not (with middling results). All this means is that the Mac Pro was a complete failure, while the MBP keyboard is only a train wreck with no casualties. And don't even get me started on the touchbar, which you may have noticed, no one has bothered to copy yet :)
They've said that it's had issues, but you're right: they haven't said that they're going to replace it anytime soon (though rumors point towards this). Also, note that the Touch Bar is quite difficult to copy, even if companies wanted to.
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.
