A California federal court judge has given final approval to a $50 million settlement over Apple’s poor butterfly keyboard design, Reuters reported yesterday. U.S. District Judge Edward Davila rejected the attempt to amend the agreement, writing in his ruling that 86,000 people had filed claims. This finally provides a concrete figure for those affected who will be compensated for the repairs they paid for. Or at least how many people heard about the lawsuit and followed it to the settlement reached last July.
The original lawsuit was because Apple laptops from 2015 to 2019 had a new keyboard design that just didn’t hold up under normal use, and debris and dust, or even just accumulated dust, could cause the keys to fail or Adhesion. Kathy Johnston once wrote: “The new MacBook keyboard is ruining my life”.
Despite Apple’s repeated attempts to iterate on the keyboard, the problem didn’t go away until it released the 16-inch M1 MacBook Pro in 2019, bringing back the “scissor switch” design that also appeared on the MacBook Pro of Apple’s desktop. control keyboard. When Apple released a redesigned 13-inch MacBook Pro a few months later, the design was completely eliminated in its products.
Apple’s settlement does not include an admission of wrongdoing but will pay some people up to $395 for repairs. The final round of the affair involved half a dozen naysayers who argued that the settlement was unfair to MacBook owners who never had their faulty keyboard repaired (and thus didn’t get any cash), or to those who only had to pay for a one-time replacement The $125 offered was not enough to cover the repairs. But Judge Davila rejected their objection, saying simply wanting more money was not a reason enough to deny the settlement.
In short, any users who make a verifiable keyboard-damaged claim before the March deadline will get their money back pretty quickly.
