Personal News
$50 million settlement over poor design of Apple’s butterfly keyboard got final approval from a California federal court judge, Reuters reported yesterday.
US District Court Judge Edward Davila denied an attempt to change the agreement, writing in his ruling that 86,000 people had filed claims. This finally puts a number on how many affected people will get compensation for the repairs they paid for. Or at least the number of those who heard about the lawsuit and followed it through to the settlement agreement reached last July.
The original combination arose because Apple laptops from 2015 to 2019 had a new keyboard design that simply didn’t hold up under normal use; crumbs and dirt, or even just accumulated dust, can cause keys to fail or jam. Casey Johnston wrote in Contour that “The new MacBook keyboard is ruining my life.”
This latest wrinkle in the saga involved six objectors who advanced arguments saying the settlement wasn’t fair to MacBook owners who had never repaired their faulty keyboards (and therefore weren’t getting any money) or that the The $125 offered to those who only had to pay for one replacement was not enough to cover the cost of the repairs. But Davila denied their objections, saying just wanting more money isn’t enough to deny settlement approval.
In short, anyone who filed a verifiable claim for the keyboard money before the March deadline will soon receive their money.
Correction for May 27, 2023 at 7:05 p.m. ET: This article previously stated that the 2019 16-inch MacBook Pro contains an Apple M1 chip. In fact, it is not. We regret the error.
