Apple Faces £3 Billion UK Trial Over iCloud Lock-In Claims

[MichaelOverton]

I just wish I could use my own NAS instead of iCloud to store my photos library and have it be integrated with Photos on Mac and iPhone, so that photos get uploaded automatically and appear on all devices.

My Nas does that? it sync all the photos in the photos app and i can access it anywhere.

 

[31 Flavas]

That's great.

I think others who don't like how Apple is doing it should buy an Android device. This lawsuit is nonsensical.

Too bad others won’t be able to afford an Android anymore. They lost their Epic v Google lawsuit — Google will just pass not only the legal costs on to their customers but the lost revenue, too. That’s gonna be a loooooot….. But, wait that’s not all… Google also lost against the U.S. DoJ which is going to be waaaaay more.

But, not to worry Google will just pass the cost on to their customers. So between that and inflation and AI hogging memory and, well, I guess Apple devices will just take over.

 

[Radeon85]

Good, 5GB of free storage is a bloody joke in 2026 let alone a few years ago. 5GB was introduced in June 2011, 15 years ago or around the time of the iPhone 4 christ sake. We have over twice that in RAM capacity these days!

Free should be 50GB by now, and then charge for the other tiers.

 

[dazzleb]

I just wish I could use my own NAS instead of iCloud to store my photos library and have it be integrated with Photos on Mac and iPhone, so that photos get uploaded automatically and appear on all devices.

What the hell is NAS if you buy a iPhone you would only trust iCloud? Like would you trust anyone else with your privacy?

 

[AppleMad98004]

This will make everything much more expensive in UK if that novel legal theory wins. Because companies will have to bake in non customers potentially making a claim. Makes no sense.

So could I sue Apple for making their RAM upgrades super expensive since I can't add my own post sale and I would have bought more if they had a "fair" price?

 

[surferfb]

This is the one thing you will never get, tho it's blindingly obvious that running your shared folder locally would be infinitely better there's no money in it for the shareholders, I mean you do want Apple to have another fabulous financial quarter.......... don't you ?

I know it's fun and en vogue to blame "greedy Tim Cook" or "greedy shareholders" for everything, but in all honestly this is almost certainly not it.

It's much more likely that building the feature isn't worth it because the number of users who would take advantage of such a system is infinitesimally small, it'd be a significant engineering effort, and the support complexities when things went wrong would be massive. I say this as someone who runs a Linux-based server and Synology NAS at home and would absolutely take advantage of the feature.

The reality is that Apple would need to support network discovery and authentication across dozens of NAS platforms (Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS, unRAID, Western Digital, and countless DIY setups) each running different firmware versions, file systems, and protocols (SMB, NFS, WebDAV, etc.). They'd need to QA every iOS update against this fragmented ecosystem, troubleshoot user network configurations, handle partial backup failures across unreliable home networks, and somehow ensure data integrity on storage they don't control. And when backups inevitably fail because someone's router rebooted or their NAS ran out of space, Apple Support would be stuck debugging home network infrastructure they have zero control over and then get blamed for losing user data.

Adding NAS support would explode their support costs and QA burden to serve maybe 0.1% of users who are tech-savvy enough to actually configure it properly and actually have a NAS at home. From a business perspective, it's simply not worth the engineering resources and support headaches.

 

[TracesOfArsenic]

I just wish I could use my own NAS instead of iCloud to store my photos library and have it be integrated with Photos on Mac and iPhone, so that photos get uploaded automatically and appear on all devices.

This is my biggest bugbear. Allow me to point my Photos app to another cloud service so it's seamless. Or, allow the same OS-level integration with a different photo app. Apple won't do this though because it means their software has to compete in a level playing field and they know they can't do that.

 

[Kkspire]

I really do think they should not do business in some of these regions. It’s kind of wild.

 

[crazytrain]

Also Brit here, I dont get this at all. I'm under no obligation to be on iCloud, I can just sync with my laptop if I want, I can download all my images if I want. Sure I've been paying 99p a month because it happens to be cheap and convenient purely for my apple stuff but even then I know how to cancel it and pull my data, and I remove my photos when it gets full. I have other cloud providers for my other stuff.

I don't see how I'm apparently 'locked in'? I'm not sure I see them winning this.

This, 100%... and to try and claim for those that don't use it is frankly ridiculous... I have a Sky subscription but don't have Sky Sports because its too expensive - can I sue Sky??

 

[Tr55]

Apple will lose this one.

It’s Britain, somehow helping the NHS will be mentioned.

 

[lotones]

This lawsuit is inherently anti-consumer. Would be kinda hard for Apple to guarantee security, on so many levels, if it had to send iCloud backups to third parties.

The only ones who would benefit from this are the third parties who want that sweet sweet Apple customer data and revenue.

Big ol' "no thanks" here.

 

[ginkobiloba]

suffered a tangible loss because they did not have the opportunity to buy a service they wanted at a fair price in a competitive market.

Of all the most ridiculous lawsuits and patent trolling we’ve seen in the last decade, this one might just sit in the top 3 leaderboard, if not the crown .

I suffered a tangible loss because i did not have the opportunity to buy a 1TB Apple VisionPro at a fair price in a competitive market. I want to pay 500 € for it , but Apple says it wants more than 4000 € for it.

I didn’t buy the AVP because of the price , and now i’ll be suing Apple on behalf of all people on the planet that might want a VisionPro , and even on the behalf of people that never heard of VR headsets. Apple should reimburse the full price of an AVP to every inhabitant of planet Earth, including to those who don’t care about VR, Apple or anything using electricity. They just don’t know yet that they’re suffering from an unconscious tangible loss of not owning a 1TB VisionPro.

 

[now i see it]

It’s hard to see a consumer group named “Which?” getting very far.

 

[DocMultimedia]

Luckily you can use icloud to back up your Android. /s

I use multiple devices to back up my media (after a miserable event back in 1993). Multiple backups... Very important, and easy to use other with Apple. D*mb UK, tricks with iCloud are for kids. 🤣

 

[ikramerica]

I’m really surprised it has taken so long for someone to sue over this really obvious lock in by Apple, they should have offered better plans years ago and the option to let people use other storage

I don’t usually agree on these lawsuits but I am on the fence on this.

iCloud photos is just a rip and could easily be hosted anywhere.

Not sure about the backups of the phone themselves, but I am in that group that is not paying Apple enough to back up all my devices so have to do it at home, a process that used to be easier but now seems intentionally slow, slower than it was 10 years ago despite usbc and an iPhone Pro Max.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

So could I sue Apple for making their RAM upgrades super expensive since I can't add my own post sale and I would have bought more if they had a "fair" price?

Their RAM upgrades are much more rationally priced than their SSD Storage upgrades. Let's have a lawsuit about storage prices, since, I'm forced to use Apple products. Oh, wait ...

From another perspective, though, iPhone is in the market-dominant position in most all of the English-speaking countries, and, the market in the English-speaking cell-phone world is an oligopoly. Hence, you can expect some level of regulation. The lawsuit is still a very strange idea, though.

 

[Ben11]

Yess please expand that 5gb of free iCloud! Who on earth will only use 5gb of data on a personal phone that you use daily!!

 

[ikramerica]

This is my biggest bugbear. Allow me to point my Photos app to another cloud service so it's seamless. Or, allow the same OS-level integration with a different photo app. Apple won't do this though because it means their software has to compete in a level playing field and they know they can't do that.

Photos is the weakest link on iOS and macOS in all respects. The apps are horrible, the sync is horrible, the cloud integration is horrible, the sharing is horrible.

And there is no reason for it. Years ago, they all worked rather well. But they were “improved” into crappiness.