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Apple Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Erroneous 'This Accessory May Not Be Supported' Alerts
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California resident Monica Emerson has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple this week, accusing the company of releasing iOS updates which were "specifically designed and programmed to reject, starting on November of 2016, old iPhone chargers from properly charging the iPhones."
The complaint, obtained by MacRumors, alleges that Emerson bought an iPhone 7 in September 2016 and charged the device with Apple's power adapter included in the box without issue until around October 2017, when it stopped working alongside the alert "this accessory may not be supported."The alert is part of Apple's system that aims to protect iOS devices against potentially dangerous aftermarket accessories.
Emerson believes the alert forced her and thousands of other customers in her situation to buy new chargers, with total claims exceeding $5 million. As a result, she is suing Apple for damages, accusing the company of false advertising, unfair business practices, fraud, and other violations of California laws.
Emerson supposedly always used Apple's first-party charger, but it's unclear whether it was connected to the iPhone with an Apple-certified Lightning to USB cable under the Made for iPhone program. If she was using an Apple power adapter with an uncertified cable, then the message was correctly displayed.
While it's hard to believe that Apple released an iOS update that prevented its own chargers from working--it simply doesn't make sense--there have been scattered complaints of the "this accessory may not be supported" system throwing false positives for Apple-certified chargers and cables over the years.
False positives can occur for a variety of reasons, including something as simple as a dirty pin on the Lightning connector.
Emerson is seeking a jury trial in the U.S. District Court for Central California.
Emerson v. Apple Inc. et al by on Scribd
Article Link: Apple Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Erroneous 'This Accessory May Not Be Supported' Alerts
If this doesn't get thrown out i'd be surprised. Dirty connector, worn cable, bad brick anything like that can cause this. Your charger wearing out after usage is not "unfair competition" or "Unfair Businesses Practice" and not only that Apple doesn't force you to buy another Apple brand charger.
And if it's out of warranty and worn out she has even less of a case.
Some sympathy for this; my iPad Pro keyboard (1st gen) started throwing up that "not compatible" message constantly over the last few weeks and last night stopped working at all. 2 years until obsolescence isn't good design, Jonny...
I'm wondering if this may be a particularly egregious case of 'bad UI design' when what could be a hardware failure in an accessory just throws up the 'incompatible' flag rather than being identified as broken. It's a subtle distinction from a hardware detection sense, but a HUGE difference from a public interaction viewpoint.
Being informed that a charger, or keyboard, is BROKEN would be far less irritating than the implication that it was deemed incompatible, which implies a malicious choice to exclude hardware that was once compatible.
I'm wondering if this may be a particularly egregious case of 'bad UI design' when what could be a hardware failure in an accessory just throws up the 'incompatible' flag rather than being identified as broken. It's a subtle distinction from a hardware detection sense, but a HUGE difference from a public interaction viewpoint.
Being informed that a charger, or keyboard, is BROKEN would be far less irritating than the implication that it was deemed incompatible, which implies a malicious choice to exclude hardware that was once compatible.
That's not really the point here though. The point is she claims Apple did this to force her to go buy a new charger but who ever told her it had to be bought from Apple?
It wasn't fun when I was on holiday and my Apple phone started saying that my Apple cable wasn't supported and refused to charge.
BTW this also does NOTHING to protect people from unsafe chargers since if the iPhone has no battery it will allow the charger to work up until the phone has enough charge to boot and then start doing software checks of the cable being "authorised". Then it will refuse to charge any more.
Apple has this same warning to "Protect" us from using adapters for headphones.
Thank you for protecting me Apple.
California resident Monica Emerson has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple this week, accusing the company of releasing iOS updates which were "specifically designed and programmed to reject, starting on November of 2016, old iPhone chargers from properly charging the iPhones."
The complaint, obtained by MacRumors, alleges that Emerson bought an iPhone 7 in September 2016 and charged the device with Apple's power adapter included in the box without issue until around October 2017, when it stopped working alongside the alert "this accessory may not be supported."The alert is part of Apple's system that aims to protect iOS devices against potentially dangerous aftermarket accessories.
Emerson believes the alert forced her and thousands of other customers in her situation to buy new chargers, with total claims exceeding $5 million. As a result, she is suing Apple for damages, accusing the company of false advertising, unfair business practices, fraud, and other violations of California laws.
Emerson supposedly always used Apple's first-party charger, but it's unclear whether it was connected to the iPhone with an Apple-certified Lightning to USB cable under the Made for iPhone program. If she was using an Apple power adapter with an uncertified cable, then the message was correctly displayed.
While it's hard to believe that Apple released an iOS update that prevented its own chargers from working--it simply doesn't make sense--there have been scattered complaints of the "this accessory may not be supported" system throwing false positives for Apple-certified chargers and cables over the years.
False positives can occur for a variety of reasons, including something as simple as a dirty pin on the Lightning connector.
Emerson is seeking a jury trial in the U.S. District Court for Central California.
Emerson v. Apple Inc. et al by on Scribd
Article Link: Apple Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over Erroneous 'This Accessory May Not Be Supported' Alerts
Good. This isn't frivolous. It's a small amount per person but there are many people. It's like taking an iphone to get the battery replaced and when they hand it back the headphone jack has been removed. Now I'm pissed.
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And it's not just the cost of replacing the original Apple charger that came with the iphone. It was a $650+ investment.
Return them and get them exchanged. Or look after your cables, I’ve never once seen it with any apple lightning cables.
$200 bucks says Monica's boyfriend/husband cheated on her, and she's not past the anger phase yet.
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Yes, agreed, but ultimately it's the fault of the system that encourages such lawsuits. When people see loopholes, they will take advantage. Put a piece of bread 6 inches from a beggar's mouth and he will grab it.
Well.. imagine that your are part of a class of people that actually suffered a genuine injury (not this case it doesn’t seem)... if no one reported about the case, how do you inform potentially affected people about the litigation, affording them chance to join...?
This. The bogosity level in this complaint pegs the meter high.
I've had that come up and a trip to the genius bar solved it; I am sure a call would have done the same. Once I learned it could be a dirt issue the first thing I try is cleaning the connectors. Problem solved. Apple has had some real issues with their hardware and software, this, IMHO, is not one.
True, though in fairness in the EU people would clamor for government action instead. Same whine, different bottle and label. It is easier, however, to sue than move a governmental body to action.
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Come on, none of the cheap knockoff manufacturers would put fake labels on their products? Don't tell me all those $10 Nike labeled footballer jerseys are knock offs?
It boggles my mind that people think you can get a genuine new Apple item at 50% off.
None of us knows whether there's merit here. Why? If Apple said, publicly, that house-burning things aren't supported, fine.
Now, remember the wall plugs that were "pre-green-sticker"? They still work. So any "house burn down" argument is spurious. I'm not saying she has a case, but don't be quick to dismiss this.
Now, remember the wall plugs that were "pre-green-sticker"? They still work. So any "house burn down" argument is spurious. I'm not saying she has a case, but don't be quick to dismiss this.
I think this may be the case here.
According to the article, she purchased iPhone 7 in September 2016.
I believe that the default iPhone warranty is 1 year, extended to 2 years if you pay extra for AppleCare.
With that being said, if she purchased her iPhone in September 2016, it is now out of warranty and no longer covered by AppleCare even if she did have it.
If you take this iPhone to Genius Bar, my guess that that the best that Apple techs will do is check/clean the Lightning port on that iPhone and if that doesn't help, they will test with their spare native Apple charger/cable. If the error no longer occurs, then they would suggest that you buy new charger/cable (my guess is that even if you are using the ones that came with iPhone the same warranty applies to everything in the box, so charger/cable are out of warranty just as the iPhone is). Or if the error still occurs with known good charger/cable, then the problem is with the iPhone itself, and since it's out of warranty, you'd have to pay full price for repairs.
My guess is that she's pissed that she has to pay extra to get her 2 year old iPhone to good working order and is trying to get money out of Apple instead.
On top of that, if this does go to court, wear and tear of the phone and/or charger/cable will also be a factor.
A lack of specific technical knowledge and/or expertise can frequently lead to a misdiagnosis of a given problem; I would assert that this is extremely likely, in the scenario you're describing.
As an example: One time, I happened to see this alert on an iPad being charged via a known bad cable. I noted with annoyance that the charging icon was white without the lightning bolt next to it, but I couldn't really do anything about it at the time; thus, I ignored it and went about my business with the iPad still plugged-in. Later, when I came back to that iPad, it was more charged than it had been before -- not fully charged as it should have been, mind you, but that old crapped out cable had none-the-less still passed at least some current to the iPad. Now, how do you suppose that happened? Could it be that the fault was severe enough that Apple's software noticed it (and reported it, rightfully so), but not severe enough that the cable was entirely non-functional? Further, could it be that a part of the "unsafe charger" safety measures was simply to reduce the voltage to something which was deemed to be "safe enough"? More interestingly... could it be possible that a similar situation existed with your cable?
Another (slightly more complex) example: I've also specifically seen this dialog before when charging multiple iDevices on a fairly cheap multi-port charging brick, which doesn't have enough umph to supply all of the ports at maximum output simultaneously. -- (Actually, let me interrupt myself for a second: I've had quite a run of multi-port chargers, thanks to a household full of kids and corresponding iDevices. One of my favorite multi-port chargers has this little LCD display which indicates exactly how many amps are going out on each port. I would venture to say that I am far more educated on this process than I would be otherwise, after having observed that very informative little screen.) -- So, does this mean that the iDevices which complain aren't going to charge? Not necessarily; sometimes, it just means that one or more is going to be charging at a rate which Apple's software has deemed unacceptably slow... until the other iDevices have finished charging, at which point the output shifts to supply the higher amperage to the devices which had initially been shortchanged. All devices eventually end up fully charged -- barring other issues, of course -- but iOS still gets all nit-picky about the amperage it's seeing on some of those devices.
Apple's software is actually pretty good, in my experience. It's by no means always perfect, but it's pretty good. Pretty good is never going to account for every single fringe scenario. It doesn't even necessarily account for some slightly-more-common-but-non-optimal scenarios perfectly every time. And yet, some people seem to automatically assume that everything Apple produces has to be perfect, and get all huffy when their high expectations are inevitably eventually dashed.
Maybe the real issue here, is that it's long past time for people to start having realistic expectations.
Really do you have sources? I mean I have heard of iPhone batteries exploding in Apple storesBecause the other devices apparently just burn your house down without warning you.
https://www.newsweek.com/iphone-battery-mysterious-explosion-causes-apple-store-evacuation-776529
Was that from using a non certified lightning cable?