again, anecdotal and guessing. don't really see the point
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MacBook Pro Owners With Faulty Butterfly Keyboards Now Receiving Emails About $50 Million Lawsuit Settlement
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Yeah as multinational companies don't put global extended warranty schemes on an entire product line unless there is risk of significant financial exposure.
Apple did the bare minimum after four years of failure of the Butterfly Keyboard to protect itself, nothing more, nothing less.
What should have happened is Apple should have been forced by a court of law to replace all this junk with new. Only then will they cease this behaviour.
Being a senior QA/QC engineer, it's obvious to me that the Butterfly KB was rushed out without adequate qualification & testing. I hope Apple has learned a lesson...
Q-6
Not true. From what I remember Apple revised the design at least 3 times. From my recollection the third version was good, but the damage was already done. The style and branding was toxic, and a complete redesign was made.
The initial QA/QC was obviously piss poor. Management decided to sign off without question rest is history. Bottom line is splitting your user base is never a good idea, let alone the significant failure rate.
If your so into the Butterfly keyboard, confident their are plenty for sale, Just bear in mind only $700 to replace the KB on a 15" MBP, so enjoy.
Q-6
zero data showing widespread failures. entirely possible Apple put keyboard repair program in place due to customers being scared by the media that the MacBook keyboards were going to fail, causing sales to decline.
You can argue whether it was a good designed or not. Some love it, others don't. I personally prefer the new style myself. And it does suck that repairs aren't cheap. However to say "Apple did the bare minimum after four years" and then to double down and say "The initial QA/QC was obviously piss poor." doesn't help your argument at all. Mistakes happen. Ideas that work in a closed testing environment don't always carry over well in to the wild.
You really think Apple went in to production knowing they were going to have the issues that they did? You think they were willing to tarnish their brand and sales for four years? I'm interested to hear for what ultimate purpose? Were they looking to buy back some of their stock on the cheap?
I replaced my top case twice for my 2015 MacBook within my 3 year AppleCare. Both of them were in Apple Store Japan, though, so hopefully they keep track of repair work done overseas. Between two keyboard replacement, two battery replacement and a mainboard replacement, it was AppleCare extension well spent.
(And yes, the third keyboard has broken since, and battery even faster... hate the *&(#*&$ Simplo batteries as much as if not more than the butterfly keyboard)
(And yes, the third keyboard has broken since, and battery even faster... hate the *&(#*&$ Simplo batteries as much as if not more than the butterfly keyboard)
Apple knew exactly, but the cost was less to roll into production than redesigning the 2016 MBP. Being a senior QA/QC engineer is very obvious to me. Such large companies live on metrics, but this one blew up, escalated, backfired, and that did cost Apple...
Apple dropped the ball plain and simple, take it or leave it. Point being that with solid QA/QC "mistakes" don't happen...
Q-6
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I don’t know who told you the third version was good. The third version failed on me thrice… indeed it came back faulty after replacement too.
empirically, a high percentage failed.
That was what the entire class action was about.
Or you can just do the math:
Assume ~12 million butterfly MacBooks sold per year. That's ~50million total macbooks from 2015-2019.
Assume one repair costs $600 (source: )
$50 million / $600 = 83k faults
83000/50000000 or about 0.16% of butterfly MacBooks needed repairs.
Yeah I'm going to go with a small percentage.
Apple put its entire portable line on extended warranty for what a 0.16% failure rate LOL. Was more than 20% and that's being conservative. Butterfly keyboard was plain and simply garbage at best, worse unreliable and very costly to repair.
At just 0.16% we'd be still stuck with the Butterfly keyboard but, customers and money talk hard facts. I know as I owned and returned them all barring the 12" rMB due to its form factor. The 2016 MBP was one of the worst designs Apple has ever produced. It solely focused on the look and ignored the needs of the pro user.
Apple has moved on, with a port solutions that makes sense, adequate cooling and a reliable keyboard that doesn't fail...
KB simply wasn't qualified adequately, rushed to market...
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They put the entire portable line on "extended warranty" because MacBook sales were falling due to the overreaction by the media of the keyboards.
I just showed you the math showing that that's not true and you provided nothing valid to back that up that 20% number.
Anecdotal experience is not evidence of anything that affects the general user base and it doesn't beat hard statistical evidence.
I never had my keyboard repaired due to butterfly switches but that means nothing, yet you presented your experience as proof of somehow it being a widespread issue.
My sisters son works for Apple. Want to keep defending the Butterfly Keyboard knock yourself out, it wont help your resale price LOL...
Even Apple agrees as now were back to keyboards that don't fail. The Butterfly Keyboard was simply a disaster plain and simple.
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Deal with it, Apple has made its decision as did the customer. Butterfly keyboard didn't sell well as was unreliable and terrible to type on. Apple has moved on, so should you...
Q-6
The settlement is US only, so these assumptions are not relevant.
US only does not change the $50 million / $600 = 83k faults.
But, let's change $600 to $395 as the article says = 127k faults.
Assume 15 million total MacBook butterfly sales (which is generous considering Gartner estimates around 2mil USA Mac shipments per quarter from 2015-2019, number should be around 30 million, but let's be conservative) in USA would still be less than 1% of all MacBooks.
Same point still applies: butterfly switch keyboards are not a widespread issue.
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He's/she's defending an already dead & defunk KB which is laughable. Even this small sample of the Mac community here validates that there was significant issue at hand. Some requiring multiple KB replacements, threads upon threads. Prior to 2015/2016 portable Mac keyboard's were always praised, second only to ThinkPad's.
Apple has only taken such extended warrantees in the face of a court of law to pre-emptively mitigate damage to the company and for good reason...
Q-6
This is still not relevant for the simple reason that the $50 million number is what the lawyers managed to settle on, nothing more.
From the FAQ:
They are clearly betting on a large number of legitimate customers not being eligible for various reasons, and potentially eligible customers not submitting claims.
It is widespread enough that EVERY SINGLE owner I know personally has had at least one issue with their keyboard, including three in my immediate family. My mother's 2016 13" had its keyboard replaced twice. After the second repair the screen started glitching, so in the end everything except the bottom case had been replaced. Not cheap for Apple.
Sure, it is anecdotal, but adding the reports from podcasters and bloggers that typically provide balanced output to all the personal experience certainly adds up to enough smoke to prove fire for me. This was definitely a widespread issue.
Also, prior to this debacle, the only issue any of these people had ever had with their Apple keyboards is THEIR FINGERS WEARING THROGH THE DAMN KEYS.
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There are reports that repairs exceeded $395. some reached $600. So of course the lawyers agreed to something that doesn't completely cover all of it. It's what they managed to settle on, yes. But the max claim you can have is $395 which would be less than $600. That's why I decreased the number from my calculation.
They're calculating who will take the offer (which means you give up rights to sue Apple yourself). Some have a choice of refusing the claim and going out to sue Apple themselves.
And I used 15 million instead of 30 million total macbook sales in USA for that reason. My calculations are extremely conservative.
Statistically insignificant. It's weird you're accusing my calculations being not relevant and then write your anecdotal experience.
Media also wanted an iPhone mini. Look at the sales. Again, statistically insignificant.
Media also reported iPhone 4 antennagate and made it sound like it's unusable. Apple never fixed the issue for that model, offered everyone refunds, and it still sold like hotcakes. And other brands had the same issue, but no one cared.
What media reports is not relevant and is often overblown just to generate clicks. Looking at podcasters/bloggers is largely irrelevant.
Anecdotal and even more irrelevant to the topic.
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Got my email to update my address for the cheque. I’m in Canada so appears this applies North if the border. Apple automatically provided the lawyers with my info including serial number.
