A class-action lawsuit filed this month accuses Apple of misleading AirPods Pro customers and failing to adequately correct an audio defect reported shortly after the product’s 2019 launch.

The costume (via ClassAction.org) focuses on two seemingly widespread issues with the 1st generation AirPods Pro: unwanted crackling and failure of active noise cancellation to work properly. These issues were made public a few months after their release, but it took Apple almost a year to resolve them with a service program offering to replace units manufactured before October 2020 free of charge.

Apple’s own supporting document acknowledges that affected units may experience “crackling or static sounds that increase in noisy environments, with exercise, or when talking on the phone” and “active noise cancellation does not work as expected, such as a loss of bass or an increase in background sounds. , such as street noise or airplane noise.

A happy ending, then? Not quite. The theory was that AirPods Pro manufactured after October 2020 would not be affected by the audio flaw because Apple engineers had fixed the problem, which is why these units were not eligible for a free replacement. But according to the lawsuit, they hadn’t fixed the problem at all.

“…The AirPods Pro Gen 1 replacement set contained the same audio defect,” claims the trial. “In other words, these users simply received another faulty set of AirPods Pro Gen 1, and many users also later experienced an audio fault with the faulty replacement set.”

It adds that microscopic examination of AirPods Pro units sold before and after October 2020 “reveals that there are no significant differences between the components.” Although Apple apparently experimented with different microphones in 2020, this had no bearing on the defect and was later rolled back.

Apple’s own actions at the time are ambiguous, but may to some extent support the plaintiffs’ claims. First, even though it never extended the service program to AirPods Pro manufactured after October 2020, it nonetheless offered consumers one more year to make complaints, which suggests that he was aware that the complaints were continuing. (The lawsuit adamantly insists that Apple “expanded the program because it knew it could not fix the problem.” However, the extension only gave consumers more time to claim units from before October 2020 which would not have been affected in any way by Apple’s patch attempts, successful or not.)

Additionally, Apple changed the audio design of the 2nd generation AirPods Pro launching in September 2022, a move that the plaintiffs interpret as a sign that the company knew the 1st generation model was fatally flawed and needed to be overhauled. “In particular,” the suit claims, “Apple appears to have attempted to resolve the AirPods Pro Gen 1 audio defect when redesigning the AirPods Pro Gen 2 by (i) increasing the processing speed of the DSP processor (responsible for removing noise or decreasing background ambient noise), and (ii) redesigning the drivers to add angular ridges along its periphery to improve low frequency response (tone of base).

It’s a long and complicated saga, but the lawsuit’s argument boils down to four central allegations:

1. Apple knew the first generation AirPods Pro were defective and it couldn’t fix the problem without a redesign.
2. The service program was inadequate because it did not cover post-October 2020 units, which were also prone to the fault, and replaced the faulty units with other faulty units.
3. Apple has not contacted owners of defective AirPods Pro to inform them that they are entitled to a replacement.
4. Apple continued to knowingly sell defective AirPods Pro units at a premium through 2022 and made false claims about their audio capabilities in its marketing materials.

At this point, the class action lawsuit is in the filing stage. But at some point in the future, if the lawsuit is successful, readers who owned a set of first-generation AirPods Pro may be eligible for compensation.