Apple Settlement, Instagram DM Payments, Amazon Prime Facelift, Netflix Paid Tier Coming

 Apple has agreed to pay $50 million to settle a class-action lawsuit by customers who claimed it knew and concealed that the “butterfly” keyboards on its MacBook laptop computers were prone to failure. The proposed preliminary settlement was filed late Monday night in the federal court in San Jose. Reuters notes that it still requires a judge’s approval.

Customers claimed that MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro keyboards suffered from sticky and unresponsive keys. The settlement covers customers who bought MacBook, MacBook Air and most MacBook Pro models between 2015 and 2019 in seven U.S. states including California. 

Instagram is getting a new ‘payments in chat feature’. According to techcrunch.com, users can now buy products from small businesses and then track orders via direct messages. For now, the feature is only available in the US. You initiate it by sending a DM to a qualified small business you want to buy something from. In that same chat thread, you can then pay for the item, and track your order. In addition, you can pose any follow up questions to the business using the same thread. This is Meta’s latest effort to get people to use what they are now calling Meta Pay, which was originally Facebook Pay. Meta badly wants to get in on the digital wallet system for their  ‘metaverse,’ but as yet haven’t even dented Apple Pay or Google Pay. I’m 

Amazon is rolling out a redesigned interface for its Prime Video streaming service. Android Central reports that it includes a simplified navigation menu, a new Live TV page, and redesigned carousels for content discovery. Right now, it will run on Android phones and Fire TVs. iOS devices and the web will follow ‘soon.’ The main menu has been decluttered, with less options to select from. Nothing’s been deleted, they just dropped some choices down to sub menus. Also…in addition to discovery carousels, there is a new ‘Super Carousel,’ which showcases featured content. The Top 10 list will show you what’s trending, too. 

Netflix is angling to win over a new bloc of value-conscious consumers — and help turn around its declining subscriber numbers — with a new ad-supported streaming package set to debut in early 2023. 

Variety reports that Netflix has not revealed pricing for the ad-supported plan, but it’s promised to be less than the streamer’s most popular plan without any commercials: the Standard package ($15.49/month in the U.S.), which includes two HD streams.