A judge has approved Apple’s plan to pay $50 million to settle the keyboard butterfly lawsuit

Apple plans to pay $50 million to settle a long-running lawsuit over the defective butterfly keyboard Today he got the initial approval From a federal judge in California (trans Law360). The payment will include $13.6 million in attorneys’ fees, up to $2 million in litigation costs, and $1.4 million in settlement administration costs, with the rest distributed among class members.

It was created in 2018The lawsuit covers customers in California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and Washington, who complained that Apple was well aware of a faulty keyboard mechanism used in MacBook Pros between 2015 and 2019. The lawsuit alleged that Apple concealed the defect from consumers in order to continue to Hardware selling.

Apple added the butterfly keyboard to the MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro machines in 2015 and 2016, claiming that the keyboard offers superior key feel and stability while also allowing for a thinner design. Soon after the launch of the initial butterfly keyboard for Mac, customers learned they were prone to failure.

Thousands of people have had problems with duplicating keys, sticky keys, and keys that otherwise failed when dust and other particles got into the butterfly mechanism. The complaints led to a huge controversy over the butterfly technology, and Apple ended up releasing a Keyboard repair software in June 2018.

The repair program only covered the MacBook, MacBook Pro, and “MacBook Air” models for four years, and Apple was replacing butterfly keyboards with another butterfly keyboard, so some customers had repeated failures that were eventually no longer covered. The lawsuit alleged that Apple’s repair program was not sufficient for this reason.

Apple tried to replicate the butterfly mechanism to make it more durable, so there were three generations of the butterfly keyboard in total, but all of them were prone to failure. Apple has had to replace butterfly keyboards with more reliable scissor-switch keyboards, with the company phasing out the last butterfly keyboard in 2020. All Macs now use a scissor-switch mechanism that doesn’t have the same issues.

Initially Apple He agreed to settle in mid-2022, but has now received early approval from the judge overseeing the case. Rewards for customers from the settlement will depend on the number of repairs required, with amounts up to $395 for those who replace two or more top boxes.

Mac owners who received butterfly keyboard replacements will start receiving disconnection notices later in December.