Do you own a MacBook with a butterfly keyboard that needed repair? Well, you can claim settlement money in a lawsuit on behalf of interested parties, and a judge in California has now given tentative approval to this settlement.
Apple has had many controversies surrounding its hardware (often referred to as “this gateway” or “that gateway”), one of which was the MacBook models that ran with a butterfly keyboard that was prone to defects and indeed needed to be replaced.
As noted Macworld (opens in a new tab), a $50 million settlement reached by Apple – and tentatively agreed in July – allows $33 million to be distributed among MacBook Pro owners affected by the issue, with sums of up to $395 paid to claimants. (Most of the rest of the money went to lawyers’ fees, as you might expect.)
To qualify as an applicant, you must own a MacBook purchased between 2015 and 2019 – the model with the aforementioned butterfly keyboard, of course, which includes the vanilla MacBook, MacBook Air, and most MacBook Pro variants. In addition, the laptop must have been purchased in the USA in one of the following states: California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Washington.
As mentioned, the maximum compensation is $395, which will be given to those who have had to replace multiple keyboards. Those who had only one keyboard replaced will receive $125, while those who had to replace the keycaps will have to pay $50.
Analysis: keyboard replacement was a thorny issue
It’s good to see Apple (finally) suing for damages in this case, but note that the company has admitted no wrongdoing in settling this class action lawsuit. No doubt Apple just wants to draw a line under that segment and move on.
One of the reasons why this issue was so frustrating is that replacing the keyboard was not a trivial affair and required tearing out other parts of the MacBook as well. Indeed, the entire top case of the laptop had to be replaced, i.e. case, keyboard and battery; a whole lot.
Needless to say, it was an expensive operation, but Apple has initiated a keyboard maintenance program to replace all affected keyboards free of charge (with the possibility of multiple replacements – and these folks will get the biggest payout here, as noted). By the way, the website for this Keyboard service program (opens in a new tab) contains a complete list of affected MacBook models.
The butterfly keyboard has gone through a few revisions, but all of these keyboards have remained problematic in one way or another – even if they were upgrades of earlier incarnations – so Apple has finally abandoned the project as of 2020, thankfully.
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