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Judge says class action over Apple's MacBook butterfly keyboards can continue
A federal judge in California rejected Apple's request to dismiss a class action lawsuit from customers who said it failed to address issues with the "butterfly" keyboard on its MacBook laptops.
In a ruling Monday, US District Judge Edward Davila wrote that upset MacBook customers could continue their lawsuit in part because Apple's attempted fixes over the years and further repair programs for the keyboards were possible signs it didn't provide an "effective fix" for the devices.
The ongoing suit is the latest ding for Apple's new laptop keyboards. The butterfly keyboards, as they were called, were announced alongside Apple's newest laptops in 2015, promising a thinner, yet still effective design. They were named butterfly because of how they worked. (You can watch Apple's video about that here.)
[...] Apple attempted to have the suit dismissed, claiming in part that the customers (called "plaintiffs" in court-speak) hadn't participated in its repair programs and thus couldn't prove it didn't do enough to fix their laptops.
"Plaintiffs sufficiently allege they have suffered an injury-in-fact: Apple's alleged failure to repair the defective keyboards, including through the Program, has caused a concrete, particularized, and actual injury to each Plaintiff," Davila wrote in the opinion, earlier reported on by Reuters. "Plaintiffs sufficiently plead that the Program is ineffective in remedying the allegedly defective design of the butterfly keyboards."
The judge was careful to add, however, he wasn't issuing a ruling on the actual case Monday. He was just allowing it to move forward despite Apple's objections.
Benjamin Johns, a lawyer representing the customers, said in a statement that he was pleased the court allowed the suit to continue. Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Wednesday December 04 2019, @12:12PM (2 children)
Capitalists: 'Remember that one time we let a hippie be a ceo' 'yeah what a pain, but we milked it for decades after he died young ha ha ha'
I wonder how easily we would have accepted mobile computing without a hippie elon musk figurehead. I wonder.
But it is also true no one could argue with him or wanted to, he won arguments because he had real insight, I believe, into the public, because he wasn't born in a penthouse.
Magsafe adapters failed due to the bad plastic chosen, not because of the design itself. For some reason a ton of magsafe had a kind of plastic that disintegrated over time, a flaw no other apple products I have known have had.
Even if you design something indestructable, the accountants will find a way to break it before the first production run. You run into this all over the system...there's that word again.
(Score: 3, Informative) by meustrus on Thursday December 05 2019, @10:37PM (1 child)
Jobs was NOT a hippie. He cavorted with hippies and knew a thing or two about them, even shared their disdain for personal markers of affluence, but he was not one himself.
Jobs was a capitalist. He was just different from most capitalists in that he took the long view. Jobs knew, among other things, that customers can't anticipate new technology that will change their own lives, and therefore market research will never be able to create the next paradigm-shifting (and massively profitable) invention. Along those lines, he also knew that releasing new technology before it's ready can create perceptual bias against that technology in the market, so sometimes the best thing to do is sit on an invention until the technology exists to really make it work right. Even if the bean counters think they need to release it now to placate shareholders.
His goal was always that next paradigm-shifting invention. He never cared about such things as the ethics of consumption. He was just better at capitalism than everyone else.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Friday December 06 2019, @01:50PM
Fair enough, using hippie very very loosely for jobs.
Maybe a romantacist? That he actually believed things besides money? There were things he would not do for any price? That he thought some things were beautiful?
I am not sure anyone is better at capitalism, because capitalism is just about having money and getting more, and putting together piles of it with other people.
Once you do that, almost all capitalists look about the same.
But not Steve Jobs. In most other cases those values are weeded out.