Remember, Apple had created a gigantic scandal with the famous butterfly keyboard of the MacBook Pro from 2015 to 2019, which had caused many difficulties with keys that sometimes lacked responsiveness due to a defective mechanism. Today, Apple reverted to the old keyboard, but the plaintiffs never dropped the case, prompting Apple to offer a financial settlement.
The judge accepts the amicable settlement
A California federal court today granted preliminary clearance to Apple’s proposal to pay 50 millions dollars to resolve a long-standing class complaint about the defective butterfly keyboard in MacBooks. The payment will cover several expenses of the disgruntled consumer group: $13.6 million in legal costs, $2 million in litigation costs and $1.4 million in settlement administration costs. The rest of the money will be distributed among plaintiffs.
In this case, Apple has never claimed its innocence, the company quickly realized that there had been a big mistake with the butterfly keyboard. This mechanism, which was to be a “revolution” in the way of writing on the Mac, was a real nightmare for thousands of customers around the world. The keys were unstable, did not always respond, repeated themselves several times…
With this $50 million payment, Apple avoids a conviction that could have cost it much more expensive, especially if it would have been necessary to compensate each MacBook Pro customer with butterfly keyboards who encountered a difficulty. Apple is doing very well in the end, because the damage in this lawsuit is extremely limits.
A repair program that was a failure
To avoid legal action, Apple quickly created a international repair program, this one was intended to cover MacBook Pros with a butterfly keyboard for 4 years (out of warranty). The concern is that Apple replaced the butterfly keyboard with another keyboard of the same type, which did not resolve never the problem among customers who spent hours with Apple technical support on the phone.
The attack in the collective complaint has proven that Apple had failed to resolve the anomalies related to butterfly keyboards, despite 3 generations aimed at making the keys more efficient.
In 2020, Apple has completely deleted the use of butterfly keyboards in favor of scissor switch keyboards, which are more durable and efficient. The scissor switch mechanism, which has no such problems, is now standard on all Macs.