$50 million to fix Apple’s butterfly keyboard problem

A novel about keyboard malfunctions on MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs released between 2015 and 2019 adds a new chapter. Will it be the final? In that Apple offered to pay $50 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed by clients who repeatedly suffered from the shortcomings of the butterfly mechanism.

Cupertino’s representatives have submitted a possible settlement to a federal court in San Jose, California, and are now awaiting approval from a judge. However, Apple insists that the allegations made by the plaintiffs are not true and that the compensation offer this is not “an admission of guilt or misconduct”.

According to customers who sued Apple, the company knew that butterfly keyboards they were prone to failurebut decided to hide the information and continue to implement it on different versions of their laptops.

Apple’s filing explains that the proposed out-of-court settlement does not apply to all affected customers in the US, but to those who reside in one of these seven states: California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Washington.

For affected models, compensation covers the following:

• macbook 12″ 2015, 2016 and 2017 models.
• Macbook Air 13 inches 2018 and 2019.
• Macbook Pro 13″ and 15″ models introduced in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Apple wants to end disputes over laptop keyboards

The $50 million that Apple is offering to pay to end this dispute will not make the plaintiffs rich. Maybe, yes, to their lawyers, but we’ll talk about that later.

As explained Reuterslegal representatives of affected clients are awaiting payment $50 to $395, depending on the case. The lowest compensation will be received by those people who were forced to change individual keys on their laptops.

At the same time, those who changed full keyboard more than once, given that the same problems were with spare parts. On the other hand, those who replaced the entire keyboard only once would enter a kind of intermediate step for which they could get about $125.

But, as we predicted, if the judge approves Apple’s settlement proposal, the real winners will be the lawyers who led the lawsuit. Girard Sharp LLP and Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith LLP could pocket up to $15 million for their work. The amount that will come out of the $50 million that Apple will pay, which will leave only $35,000,000 for distribution to affected customers.

It will be necessary to see if the proposal proposed by the representatives of Cupertino will finally receive the approval of justice. Let’s not forget that Apple ditched the butterfly keyboard in 2020 to make room for the return of the scissor system.

This modification was extremely profitable for the firm headed by Tim Cook. In 2020 and 2021 their warranty costs have dropped markedly compared to previous years. And it’s thought that changing the type of keyboard was critical to making that happen, reducing the chance of crashes and the need to remove the entire top case of the MacBook to replace them.