Eligible MacBook owners are finally receiving payments related to Apple’s butterfly keyboard mechanism class action lawsuit in the U.S. According to Michael Burkhardt, an editor with 9to5Mac, he received two checks for $395 each in the mail on Saturday. Burkhardt and other affected users have experienced long waits for their payouts since the lawsuit was filed in 2018.
Apple introduced the butterfly keyboard mechanism in 2015, promoting it as an improvement over traditional scissor switches. The company claimed it would offer greater stability, precision, quietness, and comfort. However, as the technology spread to more laptops, significant reliability and durability issues became apparent.
The problem lay not in the mechanism itself but in its susceptibility to small amounts of dust and debris, which could disrupt key operations—an inevitable issue in any environment. Although Apple made several refinements to the butterfly design, it ultimately couldn’t effectively prevent dust ingress. In late 2019, Apple decided to abandon the butterfly mechanism and revert to scissor switches in its new laptops.
User experiences with the butterfly keyboard mechanism became a hot topic in the late 2010s, leading Apple to acknowledge a design flaw in 2018 finally. Around that time, several class-action lawsuits were filed regarding the butterfly mechanism. Affected users are just now beginning to receive payouts from this legal action, which stems from a no-fault $50 million settlement reached in 2022 for a lawsuit filed in 2018. The payouts for keyboard issues are as follows:
- Up to $395 for two or more top case replacements
- Up to $125 for one top case replacement
- Up to $50 for keycap replacements
However, these payments are not automatic. Only those who submitted a claim form for their MacBook issues from 2015 to 2019 were eligible (the application window opened in May 2023, but the deadline has passed). Additionally, the class action only covered residents in California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Washington.
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