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.
News source: C|Net News.com
