Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Have MacBook keyboard problems? Apple may owe you some money

Alan Truly
By

Apple finally agreed to settle a long-running class-action lawsuit, with payouts reaching as high as $395 for MacBook owners who were most affected. The issue has to do with a particular type of MacBook keyboard that uses a faulty butterfly mechanism inside in order to reduce thickness, instead of the more common scissor type.

According to Reuters, the settlement applies to customers who bought Apple’s MacBook, MacBook Air, and some MacBook Pro models between 2015 and 2019 in California, Washington, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Florida.

MacBook Butterfly Keyboard
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Payouts are expected to be as high as $395 to MacBook owners who had to get multiple keyboard replacements. If the butterfly keyboard was replaced only once, the compensation is much less at $125. MacBook owners who only replaced keycaps are said to receive $50. Owners of the affected models will also receive four years of free keyboard repairs from date of purchase.

Recommended Videos

The total sum that Apple will pay to settle the 2018 class-action lawsuit is $50 million, a somewhat insignificant fee for such a large corporation. That amount includes up to $15 million in legal fees. Apple’s resistance was likely more about the principle of the matter and the company never admitted there was a flaw in the design.

Related

Apple introduced the new butterfly keyboard design for its 2015 MacBook, and the press release spoke at length about the new technology, boasting that a full-size keyboard was redesigned to be 34% thinner thanks to the butterfly mechanism that cut 40% off the height needed compared to the standard scissor keyboard.

Despite denying any wrongdoing, Apple did launch a keyboard repair program in 2018 and reverted to the more conventional scissor design in 2020, which is tantamount to an acknowledgement that there was an actual problem.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Alan Truly
Alan Truly
Computing Writer
Alan is a Computing Writer living in Nova Scotia, Canada. A tech-enthusiast since his youth, Alan stays current on what is…
The MacBook Air 15 vs. MacBook Pro 14: the easy way to decide
Apple's 15-inch MacBook Air placed on a desk with its lid closed.

Picking out a new MacBook isn't as easy as it used to be.

The hardest choice in the lineup might be between the 15-inch MacBook Air and the 14-inch MacBook Pro. Both are now offered with the same M3 chip, despite there being a $300 difference in the base models. But when similarly configured, there's actually only a $100 difference between these two laptops.

Read more
I needed to buy a new MacBook. Here’s why I bought a power bank instead
Baseus Blade 2 65W power bank for laptops kept on a green couch.

I rely on a 13-inch MacBook Pro from 2020 for most of my work. Despite its age and being a base variant model, it continues to stack up well against my expectations for all these years.

Since MacBooks are known for longevity, the fact that my MacBook Pro still holds up well a few years later shouldn't sound surprising. However, the first signs of aging recently arrived in the form of a warning about the battery's plummeting health. I was already dreading the idea of having to replace what was otherwise a perfectly good laptop.

Read more
Apple quietly backtracks on the MacBook Air’s biggest issue
The MacBook Air on a white table.

The new MacBook Air with M3 chip not only allows you to use it with two external displays, but it has also reportedly addressed a storage problem that plagued the previous M2 model. The laptop now finally has much faster storage performance since Apple has switched back to using two 128GB NAND modules instead of a single 256GB module on the SSD drive.

This was discovered by the YouTuber Max Tech, who tore down the entry-level model of the MacBook Air M3 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. In his tests, thanks to the two NAND modules, the M3 MacBook Air is nearly double faster than the M2 MacBook Air. Blackmagic Disk Speed tests show that the older M2 model with the problematic NAND chip had a 1584.3 Mb/s write speed, and the newer M3 model had 2108.9 Mb/s for the M3 model, for a 33% difference. In read speeds, it was 1576.4 Mb/s on the old model and 2880.2 Mb/s on the newer model.

Read more