The $395 is only for people who've gotten multiple repairs done, $125 for a single keyboard replacement, and $50 for only having keycaps replaced (was that even a thing?). What about those of us who just put up with it because we couldn't give up our work computer for however long a repair would take?
I agree on one point: Apple should be refunding a fractional laptop value to anyone who bought a device with the butterfly keyboard. This is a pretty underwhelming agreement.
I disagree on your other point: I think Apple absolutely did the right thing removing the charger. Everyone's got a charger at this point, and making it a nominal option during the purchase of the device would be good enough.
And in fact, I think the law should be that anything that can be charged by a Lightning/USB-* charger should be. I recently acquired a rechargeable flossing device, and an electric razor and I see no reason why these should have their own proprietary chargers.
I have an M1 now and it is glorious but back when I had the MBA with the butterfly keys, someone pointed me to https://github.com/aahung/Unshaky and it helped eliminate 99% of the double-typing or ghost keys. You will have to tweak the ms until you find the right number that fits your typing speed but once you get it all setup, the butterfly keyboard will become much more tolerable.
All of us will forever be baffled about how not only did Apple produce the dumbest laptop keyboard ever, but then defended it.
If there was a museum of terrible technology, Apple's butterfly keyboard would be right up there with Windows ME, the Virtualboy, Juicero, etc.
(Also removing Magsafe was clearly a dumbass decision. And at some point people will realize that current Apple laptops are once again thick enough to have K-lock slots again.)
Jony Ive was one of the top decision makers at Apple, maybe second only to Tim Cook.
Jony believed the butterfly keyboard was his crowning achievement & legacy, and was willing to fight to the death to preserve it. Loss of the butterfly keyboard was actually the definitive factor in Jony Ive's departure.
Do you not remember the faulty AC adapter design that they refused to fix for years? There was eventually a class action, but I think they just replaced them instead of fixing the design.
Her MacBook pro wouldn't turn on. It was less than a year old and she paid for AppleCare+ so she was told it would be covered under warranty.
She got a call to pick it up and when she arrived she was told there was internal water damage and she had to pay $450. Also that the screen was scratched and they would replace it when the part came in. Her screen was not scratched when she dropped it off.
But she noticed her stickers were gone and the shell was all scratched on the top and bottom.
She asked someone if this was even her laptop and they checked and ensured her it was and the shell had to be replaced and that's why her stickers were gone but the shell wasn't new as it was all scratched.
Then she asked why the background would have changed and they told her they had to reset everything and she lost all of her files.
She was devastated as they said they would call and discuss options if it came to that.
They said they could undo the repair and she could take it somewhere else but if Apple can't recover the files then no one else would be able to recover them.
Are you seriously saying that Apple wiped all your “friend’s” files - completely obliterated what could have been unique work or memories - without even telling her, or asking permission first. Then effectively said “seeya!”
This doesn’t even remotely match any experience I’ve had with Apple or Apple devices in almost 25 years of use.
I’d check back with your “friend” and make sure she was telling you the whole truth.
PS: the serial number of her laptop is printed on the bottom of the case - which should address this very, very strange story implying the Apple staff slipped her a dodgy beat-up old laptop. The number should match her invoice and the box (but I guess your friend doesn’t have an invoice or a box, or probably any other way of identifying her laptop other than ‘stickers’)
Ironically I had a covered device that failed prematurely but not for the recall reason. I was suspicious of the keyboard redesign so I bought and used a keyboard cover from day one, and I never had a problem with any of the keys.
Instead the ribbon connecting the screen failed. I took it to a reputable repair shop, who told me based on their experience the failure rate on these for other display-related reasons was high enough that in their opinion I'd be throwing good money after bad. So I told them to just use mine for parts or recycle it. (It was old enough by then that the latest OS X no longer supported it, thus defeating its purpose for software development. In return I decided to simply no longer support Mac versions of software I write.)
These generations of MacBook does not only have faulty keyboard design, everything is just wrong.
My 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro is constantly overheating. The heat significantly degrades the battery, resulting a battery warning at the one-year mark; and the screen was also burned yellowish/pinkish after a few months’ use.
I was lucky to have that Apple Care, I went to Apple Store, they replace the whole body — everything except the board because they don’t take off the screen / battery at the store.
So no, I don’t have a receipt for keyboard replacement, even if the keyboard get stuck once a while, that is not the worst issue for me. It is just the tip of the iceberg. But for that, I won’t get compensated for whatsoever.
Last spring, I replaced it with a M1-Pro MacBook Pro and never looked back.
Yeah I worked in an organization that bought a lot of Macs. They always bought Apple Care for the laptops. They had enough experience to feel it was worth the cost. I have always bought Apple Care for the MacBooks I have bought personally.
Been having to stutter through typing on a 2018 MBP right now with four broken butterfly keys, one of which is entirely missing now. Attempting to organize a repair from rural east africa not easy.
I was chiding myself for causing it because I snacked on crackers too close to the keyboard, and crumbs got in causing the key breaks. I didn't realize this was a widely known failure mode and design flaw. I feel a little less sheepish about it now.
In this case I praise the act relating to consumer purchases in Norway. I bought a butterfly MacBook Pro in January 2017. After numerous repairs and complaints to the reseller, I decided to make my case to the consumer council in January 2020, and boy did that resolve the problem: It took the reseller less than 24 hours to replace the old faulty MacBook with a new one with a post butterfly keyboard. I did spend some time going through the consumer law to make my case, and the resellers' poor customer relations and inability to resolve the issue ended up working in my favor. It's bonkers that this issue still isn't resolved for many people.
It's amazing how fast many private companies will fix something when regulators or courts get involved. I've actually found Apple to be very responsive to problems, including the keyboard issue for Intel MBPs from the late teens (mine was replaced and they also gave me a nice loaner for a week, an M1).
Other large companies - not so much, until the authorities get involved.
For instance, I had a bad experience with a telco in my U.S. state some years ago. As soon as I called the state regulator about being strung along over a bait and switch, the telco bent over backwards to clear up the issue.
There was also the time I took an airline to small claims court after repeated customer service calls and a demand notice failed to get their attention; the airline's chief counsel called me up at work after they received the notice from the court. They still failed to resolve the problem and also didn't show up for the hearing, so it was a summary judgement in my favor with damages multiplied x3.
Tip if you do escalate to a court or regulator: Keep copies of everything including postage receipts with tracking info and records of phone calls (screenshots of call logs, notes about each call, etc.)
If you live in the UK or the EU, I think you can follow the process I went through in 2019, provided that you bought the laptop in the last N years, where N seems to change depending on which country you're in. England is 6 years, Scotland is 5.
Hmm. I'm in England and have an affected 2017 MacBook Pro 13", purchased October 2017, which already had the keyboard replaced once by Apple under the repair programme.
But I assume this process only applies if I bought the laptop directly from Apple? Since I bought it from John Lewis, I'd have to make a claim through John Lewis, right?
I'd like to know that as well. My 2016 MacBook Pro is one of the worst laptops that I've ever owned and I had to have that stupid keyboard fixed 3 times during its lifespan.
I'd really like to know the answer to this too. Mine needs a replacement keyboard but I haven't been able to be without it for that long (!) and worry both about the cost and time requirement.
Only for US citizens. I received communications on the progress of this thing for years, kind of a letdown.
I have to assume there isn't a special case for that time I happened to be in the US, booked a Genius bar appointment, and the Genius promptly ruined the spacebar on my keyboard, and just straight up lied to my face about it. By far the most bizarre interaction I have ever had with another human face to face.
I took my car into a dealership near work once because it'd been hit by a coworker in the car park. While at the dealership the rear windscreen somehow was shattered, but they didn't tell me about it for a week, and didn't want to pay for fixing it. They eventually did, but left all the broken glass in my boot. Some people are shameless :)
At the Stanford shopping mall Apple Store, they told me that they don’t even try to fix space bars there because they’re so tricky, and can end up making matters worse. Whenever a space bar needs work, they literally send it to Texas.
What made the IBM ThinkPad 701 special was the butterfly keyboard designed by John Karidis solved the problem of making a portable computer with a full-size keyboard. It had a better action than modern laptops in terms typist feedback and was a compact full size keyboard. This was unheard of at the time. It was delicate the way it folded into place as one opened the lid on the laptop and robust enough to cope with travails of mobile working.
Which unfortunately provides no compensation for the time lost each time a mail-in repair has to be done, which takes 2 business days minimum, usually 3-5 even when they're not behind schedule.
During 2020 I had a repair take a few weeks... It was free, but this settlement will provide some small amount of compensation for that hassle.
And of course, I recycled the laptop for a gift card at exactly the 4 year mark to buy an M1 Air - I could've sold it privately but it was defective so I had to accept Apple's valuation. Another spot where I lost money, probably more than the $300 will cover.
I received 4 new keyboards over the life of my old MacBook and swore I'd never buy a Mac again. Apple wanted to charge me $1000 for a 5th logic board/keyboard. I did end up getting a M1 Max MBP, and I guess the $395 is nice. It'd be nicer if Apple admitted it was a defective design and recalled the product.
I'm still kind of shocked I let myself work with MacBooks for years with a 1-5% chance that any given week, random commonly used built-in keys would just stop working.
"I should definitely have switched to any other vendor", I write from my MacBook Air.
Kind of funny, I'm still on my most recent replacement/repaired unit, and it's still working great since my AppleCare Protection Plan expired (knock on wood). But I guess it's only a matter of time until I'll have to buy a new one.
The really frustrating aspect of this whole story were the attacks to the users who were reporting these issues. Apple was officially ignoring them, but their army of fanboys and payroll-“journalists” were straight out making fun of people: “you don’t know how to maintain a laptop”, “you are dirty” etc
If not for Casey Johnston and Joanna Stern, who clearly have some journalistic integrity and went against the giant, we would still not have acknowledged the problem.
Sadly I never got repairs done because the wait was longer than I could afford to wait. I ended up having to replace the laptops with different laptops.
Too bad class-action lawsuits only (apparently) apply for that class of people in a particular legal jurisdiction. I went through two broken-keyboard leading to topcase-replacements for my 12" MacBook over the years, but I live in Canada, so I'm guessing there's no $395 coming my way.
[+] [-] rideontime|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] md8|3 years ago|reply
Apple under Tim Cook has gone into a state where it doesnt care about the customer.
The whole no adapter thing moved the entire industry into suck a Scam-Customer state that even Trimmer companies are not offering adapters.
Apple is spoiling entire electronics industry.
I will keep typing 'i' in my keyboard, and it will instead type 'ii'
Apple - You need to send a full refund for manufacturing such as pathetic laptop.
[+] [-] browningstreet|3 years ago|reply
I disagree on your other point: I think Apple absolutely did the right thing removing the charger. Everyone's got a charger at this point, and making it a nominal option during the purchase of the device would be good enough.
And in fact, I think the law should be that anything that can be charged by a Lightning/USB-* charger should be. I recently acquired a rechargeable flossing device, and an electric razor and I see no reason why these should have their own proprietary chargers.
[+] [-] kinkora|3 years ago|reply
Or.. you could just swap it for an M1. :)
[+] [-] intsunny|3 years ago|reply
If there was a museum of terrible technology, Apple's butterfly keyboard would be right up there with Windows ME, the Virtualboy, Juicero, etc.
(Also removing Magsafe was clearly a dumbass decision. And at some point people will realize that current Apple laptops are once again thick enough to have K-lock slots again.)
[+] [-] bluedino|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nerdponx|3 years ago|reply
It's obvious: they thought they could get away with it. The settlement is for $50m. If they saved $50m on keyboards then it was worth it for them.
[+] [-] droopyEyelids|3 years ago|reply
Jony believed the butterfly keyboard was his crowning achievement & legacy, and was willing to fight to the death to preserve it. Loss of the butterfly keyboard was actually the definitive factor in Jony Ive's departure.
[+] [-] annoyingnoob|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] manicennui|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DocTomoe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mikeb85|3 years ago|reply
Haha haven't seen many references to this recently. Not gonna lie, was cool, way ahead of it's time but yeah, not the best overall experience.
[+] [-] Siecje|3 years ago|reply
Her MacBook pro wouldn't turn on. It was less than a year old and she paid for AppleCare+ so she was told it would be covered under warranty.
She got a call to pick it up and when she arrived she was told there was internal water damage and she had to pay $450. Also that the screen was scratched and they would replace it when the part came in. Her screen was not scratched when she dropped it off.
But she noticed her stickers were gone and the shell was all scratched on the top and bottom.
She asked someone if this was even her laptop and they checked and ensured her it was and the shell had to be replaced and that's why her stickers were gone but the shell wasn't new as it was all scratched.
Then she asked why the background would have changed and they told her they had to reset everything and she lost all of her files.
She was devastated as they said they would call and discuss options if it came to that.
They said they could undo the repair and she could take it somewhere else but if Apple can't recover the files then no one else would be able to recover them.
[+] [-] salil999|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] null_object|3 years ago|reply
This doesn’t even remotely match any experience I’ve had with Apple or Apple devices in almost 25 years of use.
I’d check back with your “friend” and make sure she was telling you the whole truth.
PS: the serial number of her laptop is printed on the bottom of the case - which should address this very, very strange story implying the Apple staff slipped her a dodgy beat-up old laptop. The number should match her invoice and the box (but I guess your friend doesn’t have an invoice or a box, or probably any other way of identifying her laptop other than ‘stickers’)
[+] [-] phaedrus|3 years ago|reply
Instead the ribbon connecting the screen failed. I took it to a reputable repair shop, who told me based on their experience the failure rate on these for other display-related reasons was high enough that in their opinion I'd be throwing good money after bad. So I told them to just use mine for parts or recycle it. (It was old enough by then that the latest OS X no longer supported it, thus defeating its purpose for software development. In return I decided to simply no longer support Mac versions of software I write.)
[+] [-] bombcar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chazeon|3 years ago|reply
My 2018 15-inch MacBook Pro is constantly overheating. The heat significantly degrades the battery, resulting a battery warning at the one-year mark; and the screen was also burned yellowish/pinkish after a few months’ use.
I was lucky to have that Apple Care, I went to Apple Store, they replace the whole body — everything except the board because they don’t take off the screen / battery at the store.
So no, I don’t have a receipt for keyboard replacement, even if the keyboard get stuck once a while, that is not the worst issue for me. It is just the tip of the iceberg. But for that, I won’t get compensated for whatsoever.
Last spring, I replaced it with a M1-Pro MacBook Pro and never looked back.
[+] [-] SoftTalker|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ricksunny|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tambarskjelve|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilamont|3 years ago|reply
Other large companies - not so much, until the authorities get involved.
For instance, I had a bad experience with a telco in my U.S. state some years ago. As soon as I called the state regulator about being strung along over a bait and switch, the telco bent over backwards to clear up the issue.
There was also the time I took an airline to small claims court after repeated customer service calls and a demand notice failed to get their attention; the airline's chief counsel called me up at work after they received the notice from the court. They still failed to resolve the problem and also didn't show up for the hearing, so it was a summary judgement in my favor with damages multiplied x3.
Tip if you do escalate to a court or regulator: Keep copies of everything including postage receipts with tracking info and records of phone calls (screenshots of call logs, notes about each call, etc.)
[+] [-] charlieegan3|3 years ago|reply
https://charlieegan3.com/posts/2019-11-02-refunding-another-...
[+] [-] Reason077|3 years ago|reply
But I assume this process only applies if I bought the laptop directly from Apple? Since I bought it from John Lewis, I'd have to make a claim through John Lewis, right?
[+] [-] opra59|3 years ago|reply
I have the exact same problem with my Late 2017 15" MacBook Pro. It's been repaired 3 times already.
[+] [-] butler14|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charlieegan3|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drooopy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] w1nst0nsm1th|3 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4rI4-q4uYQ
But you will have to do it every month if you don't use a cover.
[+] [-] azalemeth|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vkoskiv|3 years ago|reply
I have to assume there isn't a special case for that time I happened to be in the US, booked a Genius bar appointment, and the Genius promptly ruined the spacebar on my keyboard, and just straight up lied to my face about it. By far the most bizarre interaction I have ever had with another human face to face.
[+] [-] robertlagrant|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geekrax|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnicholas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neilv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilamont|3 years ago|reply
https://renaissancechambara.jp/2012/04/26/ibm-thinkpad-701/
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ezfe|3 years ago|reply
During 2020 I had a repair take a few weeks... It was free, but this settlement will provide some small amount of compensation for that hassle.
And of course, I recycled the laptop for a gift card at exactly the 4 year mark to buy an M1 Air - I could've sold it privately but it was defective so I had to accept Apple's valuation. Another spot where I lost money, probably more than the $300 will cover.
[+] [-] KMnO4|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digisocialnet|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ClassyJacket|3 years ago|reply
I don't even have a proble with the low key travel on touchbar acs, just how easily they break.
EDIT: My mistake, this is about claiming copensation, not about the replaceent progra.
[+] [-] mherdeg|3 years ago|reply
"I should definitely have switched to any other vendor", I write from my MacBook Air.
[+] [-] ThePowerOfFuet|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pqvst|3 years ago|reply
Kind of funny, I'm still on my most recent replacement/repaired unit, and it's still working great since my AppleCare Protection Plan expired (knock on wood). But I guess it's only a matter of time until I'll have to buy a new one.
[+] [-] whatever1|3 years ago|reply
If not for Casey Johnston and Joanna Stern, who clearly have some journalistic integrity and went against the giant, we would still not have acknowledged the problem.
[+] [-] ohCh6zos|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2143|3 years ago|reply
Unheard of in my country.
Is it Apple or the law-firm that built the site?
Is this kind of thing common with class-action lawsuits in USA?
[1] https://www.keyboardsettlement.com/
[+] [-] cmeacham98|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rr888|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derefr|3 years ago|reply