Apple begins paying customers for their bad butterfly keyboards
Mac users are beginning to receive checks from Apple to compensate them for having to spend money when their MacBooks’ badly designed butterfly keyboards malfunctioned.
As the payments go out, Apple is closing the book on an issue with stuck or otherwise unusable keys that plagued owners of Mac laptops made between 2015 and 2019.
The checks are the result of Apple’s $50 million settlement of a class action lawsuit over the keyboards in 2022. People who filed during the claims window starting late last year were eligible for payments of $50, $125, or $395, depending on how extensive or frequent the repairs were. A court in June ordered Apple to begin paying out. Verge reporter and smart home expert Jennifer Pattison Tuohy received one for the maximum amount, offered to anyone for whom the issue recurred after having the keyboard replaced.
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MacDailyNews Take: Close the MacBook on this one.
Apple’s new Magic Keyboard with a traditional scissor mechanism replaced the company’s butterfly mechanism fiasco. It debuted in the 16-inch MacBook Pro in late 2019, followed by the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro in early 2020. All of Apple’s current MacBook products ship with the Magic Keyboard which is about 0.5mm thicker than the lawsuit-worthy “butterfly” keyboard models.
We’ve had to endure years of inferior keyboards in order to shave off half a millimeter about which no one not named Jony gave a rat’s ass. — MacDailyNews, April 2, 2019
Hey, Jony: Enough with the thin. Everything is thin enough. Sometimes too thin. Thinner isn’t the answer to everything, nor is thinness intrinsic to good design. We’d gladly take a bit more robustness and battery life over more unnecessary thinness, thanks. – MacDailyNews, June 25, 2018
The law of diminishing returns can also be applied to industrial design. Apple’s eternal quest for thinness eventually runs into issues such as bulging camera assemblies, battery capacity, strength (breakability), etc. – is Apple’s quest for thinness now bordering on the quixotic? So, is it “you can never be too thin” or is it “thin enough is thin enough?” — MacDailyNews, December 21, 2015
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