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MacBook Owners' Butterfly Keyboard Lawsuit Against Apple Gets Class Action Certification

I had a terrible terrible time with Apple about the keyboard and other issues (heat, customer service).

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2017 MacBook Pro 13 non-TB Review

This is my review for the 2017 MacBook Pro 13 non-TB - it will be updated again to reflect any changed opinion after weeks / months of use. Use I am a technology professional - and use the MacBook for several tasks: browsing, emailing programming - sometimes pretty intense CPU and memory...
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I think Apple got away unpunished for the huge costs they incurred for customers.

Also - for anyone who says "I never had a problem", .. well lucky you. There were plenty at the time diminishing this issue. It slowly emerged that there were huge numbers effected. The most compelling evidence, since Apple themselves are so secretive, was a large enterprise with a fleet of thousands of macbooks saying the mean time to failure was 3 months and the filature rate was about 0.5. That was pretty damning. I also remember several UK Apple staff unofficially telling me "the repair rooms are full of them".

Disgraceful episode on Apple's history.
 
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iFan said:
Had my 2015 MacBook keyboard replaced under this repair program, and the problem re-appeared within months. Program expired and a bunch of keys have issues. I just deal with it, but it would have been nicer if Apple created a replacement that didn't have the same issues as the initial keyboard...without having to purchase a new machine.
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The problem reappeared because Apple replaced your keyboard with the same keyboard.
 
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Butterfly was simply over-enginering.

I say this as a warranty return yielded me a new butterfly and battery.
 
iu
 
I preferred the butterfly keyboard, I found my typing was significantly more accurate, and the low travel I preferred too, and the keys were more stable (it wasn't only to reduce height), I can understand Apple why did it... but...
But... along with that design came regression in a few key areas. It made the keyboard less reliable, suspect to foreign object damage, subject to heat, and more keyboard noise.
 
Holy crap, I just skimmed through the documents regarding this case, and an Apple exec internally said "No matter how much lipstick you try to put on this pig (Referring to the butterfly keyboard), it's still ugly". Damn, that's rough.
 
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Wishing them luck. Here in Germany Apple is constantly ripping people off and you can’t do anything. To me it happened 4 times and it cost me a lot of money and time. They just ignore you if you have a good case and good arguments. Support is pathetic. In a 20 minute phone call the guy literally said „the biggest company in the world ... bla bla bla“ 5 times! All this while my complaint was rejected by him. Apple is a joke and of course like myself as a loyal „fan“ has brainwashed people thinking they care. Noooo. They absolutely don’t.
- I am not saying that other companies do it any better. I am just stating my experiences.
 
DanTSX said:
Never had an issue. Maybe everyone who had problems was simply typing wrong...
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HAH! I was saying that too, until a key refused to work. *DAMN* Yeah, and now, I get all kinds of repeating keys, and a space bar that decided to stop working unless I really thumped it a couple of weeks ago. I get extra n's and g's, and sometimes spaces, and it's spreading. I freaking hate it, and, damn, so much in my world is falling apart. It's like I'm holding my life wrong...

But seriously, so many 'stores' don't have parts, and the idea of sending my MacBook Pro in 'to have work done' is obnoxious. The stuff you have to do before it's sent in is ridiculous. Makes me think they might just toss my MBP, and I get a 'refurbished' one? Yeah, no... And turnn off 'Find my MacBook'? Why? Where is it going?

And, please people correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't some of the external keyboards ALSO 'butterfly' hot messes?

I had one key that refused to work, and I had to thump it really hard to break whatever was underneath it to get it to work.

So, the 'fixed' keyboards: are they the ones with the silicon condom around the contacts, or is it just the 'same old POC hot mess' it came with originally?

If it's the same crap, why get it fixed? Is the 'scissor keyboard' really that much thicker than the 'butterfly mess'?
 
BootsWalking said:
I'm glad there are treatments for cancer. But I personally never had cancer issues.
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That’s a pretty sick analogy. I never had cancer but knew a few people who ended up dying from it, including my parents. Now here I am in my late 50’s diagnosed with terminal cancer out of the blue.
 
cmaier said:
Disagree all you want. No way in hell apple settles for $400 a machine. To do so, Apple would have to believe that a jury would award MORE than that. And no user has suffered $400 loss from the keyboard flaw. So no jury could award that if they wanted to (a judge would cut the verdict to the damages actually suffered by the users, which is at most the hassle of getting things repaired, given that apple has been paying for repairs itself. Doesn’t even seem to be a loss of resale value if you compare to past machines.)
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Actually, $400 is way less than a new top case would cost from Apple. And before you say that you can buy a top case from a third party for only $200 bucks, let me point out that this is only true because Apple is doing almost all of the repairs themselves for free right now.

For most Apple laptops, a top case failure out of warranty would be no big deal, because there's a huge glut of keyboards pulled out of scrapped machines that failed for other reasons. But for these models, because the rate of failure is so high, you can safely assume that any keyboard pulled from a scrap machine is likely to be nonfunctional. That means there's going to be a big shortage of replacement parts as soon as Apple stops manufacturing new ones, and prices for used parts are also going to skyrocket.

You can safely assume that the moment the repair extension program ends, these things are all scrap, because you won't be able to get replacement parts for them at a price that anybody is willing to pay.

I think a cost of $1,500 per unit would be much more reasonable, because it's high enough that it might convince Apple to actually spend the engineering effort to FIX the problem by building a reengineered top case with a scissor keyboard for those models, rather than just blowing it off as a tiny slap on the wrist and a cost of doing business.

That said, it would be better if the lawsuit actually attempted to compel a permanent fix.
 
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Apple extended butterfly keyboard warranty for 4 more years but increasing to 8-10 years from the purchase date should be acceptable because that would be natural end of life for most of the Macbooks or laptops.
 
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fncd said:
Tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of people spent money on these things only to find out they were buying a fundamentally flawed product.
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Yeah show me proof of this hundreds of thousands of people. If you can't then you're making it up.
fncd said:
How anyone can sit back and defend the "almighty apple" in this situation beyond comprehension.
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I did not defend Apple in my post you quoted. Don't make stuff up. And if I want to defend Apple that's my right to and if you can't deal with it skip over to another member that says things you wanna hear. 🙄
 
aorr said:
So does this mean if you don't live in "California, New York, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Washington, and Michigan." then you're SOL for getting in on this lawsuit?! That's awful it is restricted to only those states.
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I’m guessing the lawyers were just looking for enough people in enough states to make a nice chunk of change if they win. WA is number 13 in population, but all the others are more populous.

Class action lawsuits aren’t about “making things right for the little guy”. Maybe they used to be, but now, you’d end up with $150 off the price of a new computer if you’re lucky and the lawyers walk out with MILLIONS. I had a problem and mine was replaced (replacement still working fine) so I’m good. Still, though, I wouldn’t enter into this class action.
 
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mkldev said:
Actually, $400 is way less than a new top case would cost from Apple. And before you say that you can buy a top case from a third party for only $200 bucks, let me point out that this is only true because Apple is doing almost all of the repairs themselves for free right now.

For most Apple laptops, a top case failure out of warranty would be no big deal, because there's a huge glut of keyboards pulled out of scrapped machines that failed for other reasons. But for these models, because the rate of failure is so high, you can safely assume that any keyboard pulled from a scrap machine is likely to be nonfunctional. That means there's going to be a big shortage of replacement parts as soon as Apple stops manufacturing new ones, and prices for used parts are also going to skyrocket.

You can safely assume that the moment the repair extension program ends, these things are all scrap, because you won't be able to get replacement parts for them at a price that anybody is willing to pay.

I think a cost of $1,500 per unit would be much more reasonable, because it's high enough that it might convince Apple to actually spend the engineering effort to FIX the problem by building a reengineered top case with a scissor keyboard for those models, rather than just blowing it off as a tiny slap on the wrist and a cost of doing business.

That said, it would be better if the lawsuit actually attempted to compel a permanent fix.
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They already replaced the top cases of people in the class. They wouldn’t have to do so again, regardless.
 
mkldev said:
Actually, $400 is way less than a new top case would cost from Apple. And before you say that you can buy a top case from a third party for only $200 bucks, let me point out that this is only true because Apple is doing almost all of the repairs themselves for free right now.
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Haha nice way to rationalize it! Haha nope! Firstly when a company has to create a warranty program to cover an issue outside of the normal warranty the costs for those repairs are written off at the end of the year on their tax sheet as a loss to the company. If Apple gives out $400 coupons to buy a new Mac (In your dreams 😂😂😂) they cannot write that off as a loss. Furthermore be real about it Apple isn't stupid they KNOW customers will put those coupons or gift cards on Ebay and make a profit from it and that's not what the company would want you to do with the $400 credit. And if you think I'm wrong about this I'm not because it happens every year when Apple does the Back To School promotion. They include a pair of Beats headphones free with a new Mac and those headphones end up on Ebay every time.
Let the unicorn dream go. If Apple loses this case you won't get much more than a $10 gift card. 😊
 
Good - Now there needs to be pressure on Apple to start a repair program for the Flexgate screen issue. I went through hell to try and get my screen replaced due to an Apple manufacturing defect and they wanted to charge me $670+.
 
I lost a lot (to me) of money thanks to this terrible keyboard. Bought a 2016 new, one of the first, and it was troubled within months. It was new to Apple at that point, they had to basically keep it a while. Great, got it back. Maybe a month or two later, same thing. Rinse and repeat this a few times before the store manager at my local Apple Store gave me a 2017 replacement, claiming the keyboard was better. I think that one did make it about a year before I had to take it for its first "keyboard cleaning". I usually re-sell my MacBook Pro every 3 years for a fair price and they retain about 80% of their value. These poor keyboard MacBooks were lucky to get half of that. The resale was terrible when the 2020s came out, I was still due, so I bought it to avoid anymore issues. Now, to rub more salt, Apple (basically) obsoleted my 2020 by releasing the M1 so shortly after. Lovely to be a MacBook Pro owner the last 4 years.

I'm a primary plaintiff on the lawsuit. I've kept *excellent* records of all my trouble, including comparable for sale listings at the time of my resale. It was a defective product, plain and simple, and they continued to sell it fully aware that it would not last.
 
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PinkyMacGodess said:
I get extra n's and g's
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Ha, I was unfortunate enough to have 'e' repeating on my work machine. You quickly realize that it is indeed the most common letter in the alphabet.. My home 2018 mbp got the keyboard repalced, and honestly now I'm scared to use it without an external keyboard because I know it's going to break soon.
 
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