Apple agrees to a $50 million settlement for its butterfly keyboard lawsuit
Apple's butterfly keyboard was a disaster, and now they are paying for it
Published: 20th July 2022 | Source: Reuters |
Apple settles its butterfly keyboard class action - Affected users could be paid up to $395
Apple launched their first MacBooks with "butterfly keyboards" in 2015, a launch that was quickly followed by a sea of complaints about their reliability, and other hardware issues. Apple revised their butterfly key switches in an attempt to address their design flaws, but years of failures forced the company to eventually abandon them in 2019.
In time, Apple launched a free repair program for affected users, but that did not stop a class action lawsuit starting over the situation. Now, Apple has agreed to settle this lawsuit for $50 million, and eligible customers in the US can now ask for a piece of that payout.
Apple's settlement covers customers who bought a MacBook, MacBook Air, and almost all MacBook Pro models between 2015 and 2019. This settlement covers seven U.S. states, including California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Washington. Apple has denied wrongdoing by agreeing to settle.
Affected customers can now seek payouts of up to $395. $395 will be given to those who have had to replace several keyboards, $125 will be given to those who have replaced a single keyboard, and $50 is available for those who needed their keycaps replaced.
From 2020 onwards, Apple has used a new keyboard switch type with their new MacBooks. These new key switches are similar to traditional scissor key switches, and have proven to be much more reliable than Apple's butterfly key switch design.
Apple's butterfly key switches are one of Apple's biggest failures over the past decade, forcing many of their hardcore users to have large parts of their MacBooks replaced multiple times. This failure likely led to many hardcore MacBook users to seek alternative products, as heavy users tend to type a lot. You can't work on a laptop that had a faulty keyboard.
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