Agreed - it is amazing to me the number of things people will (falsely) blame on Apple having an uncompromising desire for thinness over all other criteria.

Apple makes their devices as thin as possible to meet within their design specs; they don't sacrifice their design for thinness. Thats different from Apple not accounting for any one person's needs/desires as part of their design.

I'll give keyboards as an example, since people are notorious for saying that apple put a "lousy" keyboard in all their modern laptops solely for thinness.

I'm sure there are a few people who would love a modern laptop that used Cherry MX switches in its keyboard, but that's not a demographic Apple is going to leap up and target.

From Apple's product page, describing the third generation butterfly keyboard in the MacBook Pro:

"The MacBook Pro keyboard features a butterfly mechanism — providing four times more key stability than a traditional scissor mechanism, along with greater comfort. The 13- and 15‑inch MacBook Pro models with Touch Bar now feature a keyboard with a quieter typing experience."

Note that the description does not mention thinness at all as a "primary" design goal - it mentions greater comfort, improved stability, and the newer model being quieter.

Was reducing keyboard depth part of the design goals for what became the butterfly keyboard? Of course! But I guarantee Apple's philosophy for the project was not "thinness at all costs" - the keyboard would not be released until they felt it was a better overall experience as well.

Now does everyone feel it is a better overall experience? Obviously not. I personally suspect Apple launched the keyboard originally on the Retina MacBook partially to gauge reaction, then was surprised at how much more negative the reaction was once it was added to the Pro line.

To me, a "me too" post by someone accusing Apple executives for purposely sacrificing quality for thinness is not something that encourages communication - it just encourages more ranting. A post talking about say, whether the keyboard issues that people have with the new design are related more around just the change compared to previous keyboard technology, or if it is an impact of say key travel distance, the force curve or key bounce, would be a really interesting discussion to participate in.