Apple knew it was selling faulty MacBook screens, judge finds



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When Apple introduced its controversial MacBook Pro redesign in 2016, the company probably didn’t know it was preparing to be sued – but not only is a class action lawsuit underway over their infamous butterfly keyboards, it’s likely it. There will be a second for their notoriously fragile display cables, too. Judge Edward Davila decided to let the flexgate trial go ahead, ruling that Apple should have known they would fail and yet continued to sell them anyway.

“The court finds that the allegations of pre-release testing, coupled with the allegations of substantial customer complaints, are sufficient to show that Apple had sole knowledge of the alleged defect,” the judge wrote. Law360 and 9to5Mac). You can read the full order at the bottom of this article.

To see what the problem looked like, take a look at our photo at the top of this post; it is sometimes called the “stage light” problem because of how damage to the cable would produce these dark spots.

Part of the flexgate controversy revolves around how Apple addressed the issue in its first advertisement in late 2018 – first by silently swapping out a new, slightly longer cable on newer MacBooks, and only opening one of the its typical free repair programs months after 15,000 users signed a petition and it was called in the press. The company has been much more responsive with the issues since, such as with this free battery replacement program for a small number of those 2016 and 2017 MacBook Pro laptops that won’t charge anymore.

Unlike the butterfly keyboard lawsuit, the flexgate lawsuit does not yet appear to be a certified class action lawsuit – but there are now nine different plaintiffs lined up in this one case alone, and the judge invites them to submit a new amended complaint. We’ll be watching to see where it goes from there.

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