Solution: turn feature off, problem solved!
I totally agree, I live in rural Canada and we get 50kbps download on a good day from our wifi. We have cellular LTE but it costs a fortune ($20/GB). I almost went over because of this feature, but at the same time, is it worth suing over? We always say companies need to innovate more, but it seems everytime they do someone sues them.
There are
Let's say you love on a house where you have bad cinema ficitiy to your wifi at the other end. You're streaming music while cleaning (or whatever) and not lying attention to you dropping off of wifi intermittently.
The problem is there isn't a potential suit there. You get what you sign up for. Who you have companies like att promising unlimited data and not delivering, you have the potential for a suit.
Realistically the only innovation this is stifling is a setting being on versus off by default. I think the number is absurd but it's a legitimate problem for some. Who have this on by default? Just add it to "tips" and make sure the user is alerted that there are a ton of newer features in iOS they don't know about before being given the option to turn tips off by default.
Even if it's in the foreground, I could be on a image intensive website in safari and use over 100 MB of data without realizing it, especially if my phone is in landscape mode which hides the status bar indicator.
A weird one. Whilst in isolation I agree it’s like why slap a Premiership footballer with a £10,000 fine? Some will earn that in a day.
I personally have the feature off because I would never use it. Should it be a step in Setup Assistant, yes. People can't pass the responsibility off to Apple though. If you own a device, you should know how it works and how to correct its problems. Then again, look who Apple markets to...You need a bit more realism in your thoughts. The general public doesn't read release notes. I would bet you most tech literate people don't read release notes. Release notes tend to be read by people specifically interested in that type of subject matter. Pro tip: If the term "release notes" is part of your defense, you've already lost.
Don't get me wrong. The feature is nice. It can be helpful. It should have been opt-in. Opt-in allows the consumer to make a conscious decision that could affect their cellular service. Default on allows for situations like this class action to occur.
And this is really what it all comes down to in the end. The functionality of all of this has been there in iOS pretty much from the beginning. WiFi assists simply enables it to be somewhat more sensitive to turn to cellular earlier when it is determined that the WiFi connection isn't really working instead of turning to the cellular a bit later in that same situation that a phone prior to iOS 9 would do.
And you can have the same issue before iOS 9 and WiFi assist when a bad WiFi connection would still be dropped and you would be on cellular data and you'd only know if you looked at the phone. Yet no lawsuits over that being misleading somehow all these years.
It works the same way, just a little more sensitive where it doesn't wait for WiFi to be completely dead and your phone not responding and getting anything for a few minutes and switches somewhat earlier to cut down on the phone not having a connection. The way it works and what you see on the phone is the same as before, just better sensitivity of connection quality (improvements that have more than likely been made in pretty much every iOS version before and hardware updates before, simply without an additional option available for the user in relation to those improvements).
And the same thing was there in iOS version prior to iOS 9 without WiFi assist, it would just take a few minutes longer of not having a working connection for the phone to drop it and switch over. Yet no one was filing lawsuits over it working that same way before with the only difference of it being less sensitive and making you struggle with a bad connection a little longer before dropping it and switching over.
We just need to wait a bit more for the next lawsuit which will claim the oppsite that Apple is making phones not have a working connection because when WiFi assist is turned off and the phones aren't switching from bad connections earlier people are missing important notifications and can't do anything on their phones.
