The suit covers anyone who purchased an Apple MacBook with a butterfly keyboard in California, New York, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Washington, and Michigan.

That includes people who bought a MacBook model dating between 2015 and 2017, a MacBook Pro model between 2016 and 2019, or a MacBook Air between 2018 and 2019.

Judge Edward Davila certified the case with seven subclasses on 8 March in California, but the order remained sealed until late last week. It raises the stakes for a suit that was first filed in 2018.

Apple added the butterfly switches to its laptops three years ago as part of its cunning plan to make its keyboard slimmer. That meant ditching the industry-standard scissor switches, but that was palmed off as being innovative, super and cool.  However, Apple didn’t know that there was a reason why scissor switches were used and that was because they were a lot stronger.

Many disgruntled MacBook users found that Apple's revamped keyboard failed when even tiny particles of dust accumulated around the switches. That resulted in keys that felt "sticky", failed to register keypresses, or registered multiple presses with a single hit.

Apple tweaked its butterfly keyboard multiple times, but after continued complaints, it admitted that it was not innovative it was just stupid and abandoned the switches in 2020.