A judge has given preliminary approval to a settlement that would allow some Mac OS X owners to get a refund.
Apple Computer had already reached a tentative agreement to settle a class-action lawsuit that claimed that the company had failed to fully support Mac OS X on some G3-based Macs. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge gave preliminary approval to the settlement at a hearing last month. Under the terms of the deal, owners of certain older Macs can get a refund if they return their copy of Mac OS X or, if they want to keep Mac OS X, they can obtain a coupon for $25 off of a $99 purchase at the Apple Store. Apple also agreed to pay $350,000 to King & Ferlauto, the law firm that brought the suit.
"I think it"s a fair deal," said attorney Thomas Ferlauto, who filed the lawsuit in January 2002 on behalf of himself and other Mac owners. The suit claimed that Apple had promised that OS X would be "fully optimized" to run on all G3 machines and that such optimization was not done. As a result of failing to write the necessary drivers, the suit said, performance on older G3s was degraded "so severely that OS X is rendered an unrealistic option." Apple denied those claims in court filings but said it was willing to settle in order to avoid the legal costs of continuing to fight them.