Apple to Pay $50M Settlement over MacBook Butterfly Keyboard Lawsuit | Hacker News Reader

Apple to Pay $50M Settlement over MacBook Butterfly Keyboard Lawsuit

wsj.com

37 pointsgnicholas16 comments

Glad to see this. My 2017 MBP has required keyboard-related repairs on 3 occasions, and each time it had to be sent to a national repair center in TX, which takes a week roundtrip.

All of the incidents either occurred under the AppleCare warranty I purchased or under a repeat-repair warranty that follows any Apple repairs. So I didn't end up out-of-pocket on these repairs, but they were quite inconvenient. Other keyboard types are much easier to repair in-store. On the most recent repair, I was told that they wouldn't even try to replace the space bar because there was such a great risk that the key would break, which would require it to be shipped out anyway.

The issue now, as people are upgrading away from these laptops, is that no one wants to buy them. Even a single issue would result in hundreds of dollars of repairs. It's no wonder the trade-in value for my MBP is a measly $200. The market must be flooded with unwanted laptops whose keyboards are ticking time bombs (the fact that M2s are so much better surely doesn't help the resale value either).

I look forward to getting whatever amount is owed under the settlement. It will help make up for the pain of repeated week-long repairs (to say nothing of the discomfort of the keyboard itself!).

Hence why Jony Ive got the boot from Apple.

It's the same issue that happened with the infamous 2011 MBPs with fried Radeongate gpus. When Apple finally started a repair program years later no one wanted those machines.

That repair program was completely useless because of course I already had bought another MBP by then.

IIRC they extended the warranty on the keyboard up to 4 years. For people who didn't buy AppleCare, that's an extension of 3 years from the standard warranty (at least in the US). For people who did buy AppleCare, it's just 1 extra year.

IMO they should have indefinitely extended the warranty on keyboard-related issues on those machines. It was a design flaw, and they should be required to fix it. The cost would dwindle as people stop using the machines, but it would have made it much more likely that people could find buyers for the used machines. I honestly wouldn't feel right selling mine, knowing how much it would cost to fix in the (likely) event that dust/crumbs/etc. get under a key.

IMO the ethical thing to do for Apple would have been to completely replace the product with one that doesn't have the design flaw. Or at the very least take those machines back and offer say 60% of its RSP price in credit towards a new Apple laptop.

When it first happened, I wondered if they would try to replace the affected keyboards with slightly different units. I think they just didn't have enough time to design and manufacture parts that (1) would fix the problem, and (2) would fit in the very limited space available.

A credit would have been nice, though it would have only worked once they actually fixed the problem, which I think was in 2020!

I had an issue with the MBP 2017 model and had a positive outcome.

I had issues with the Keyboard and Bluetooth (mouse, AirPods, and AirPods pro) and one speaker.

After a couple of years, I used the Apple keyboard replacement recall for free. They replaced pretty much almost the whole laptop and kept the bottom cover. The new one has been working flawlessly.

My trade-in value is $300.

I barely know anyone using the butterfly keyboard in a work environment who doesn’t have problems with it after a few years. Mine is now out of the repair program period and it would cost more to fix it than its worth. It’s basically EOL and I wonder how many MacBooks face the same fate. What a big waste of resources.

I've been using Apple products for 20 years and Butterfly MBP - for me - has been the worst MacBook experience ever. You know, that feeling that your tool of trade can fail on you at any moment. Extremely low trust levels.

Only for residents in 7 states in the USA, the lawyers take $15M from the $50M settlement. As usual they're the true winners.

Highly disappointed with the butterfly keys. Not only are they uncomfortable but I just cannot get used to them.

Luckily, they came to their senses with the newer MacBooks.

I have a problem with the MacBook butterfly keyboard, but it was during pandemic and it would have been extremely difficult to get it repaired (no Apple stories were open).

Warranty is now expired, is it still possible to get it repaired without out-of-pocket expenses?

Yes, it's just very expensive (a couple hundred bucks, I think). If you documented the case during the pandemic by calling AppleCare, they'd probably have covered it if you brought it in immediately after stores reopened. But at this point you're probably on your own...

I don’t want to be an Apple apologist here - I really didn’t care for the butterfly keyboard - but I do want to note that in spite of the design, there are millions of MBPs that butterfly keyboards that weren’t problematic, and even people who liked it.

I have a mac with a butterfly keyboard. It did not stop working or neither the keys came out, but coz of its design, dust gets lodged in the keys and if I press once its types out multiple characters and this just drives me insane. This is horrible specifically while typing passwords. I need to regularly clean the keyboard and cleaning it also is a chore.

I think that would qualify as one of the 'broken' keyboards, and could have been replaced.

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