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Apple Sued Over Meltdown and Spectre in U.S. as iPhone Slowdown Lawsuits Now Total 45
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I'm all for this lawsuit. Apple is one of the few companies that can (and should from an ethical stand) provide such critical security updates. Apple has source code and can authorize updates to all version iOS to include mitigation measures to Meltdown and Spectre. Just like they still have the authority and code base for all version of MacOS 10.4 (Intel) and up.
Since this lawsuit is over just their "A" processors, they are fair game for a lawsuit there. Just as much as Intel and ARM are. A-Series processors are Apple's design and their responsibility to mitigate the vulnerability on.
Frankly I haven't seen a patch for a iPad 2 or iPhone 4S. Which Apple should be obliged to patch iOS 9 and lower. Any devices with A4 and up are Apple's hardware. Flaws in the A-Series are ultimate their responsibility, even if they are just mostly cribbing from ARM's spec sheet.
Since this lawsuit is over just their "A" processors, they are fair game for a lawsuit there. Just as much as Intel and ARM are. A-Series processors are Apple's design and their responsibility to mitigate the vulnerability on.
Frankly I haven't seen a patch for a iPad 2 or iPhone 4S. Which Apple should be obliged to patch iOS 9 and lower. Any devices with A4 and up are Apple's hardware. Flaws in the A-Series are ultimate their responsibility, even if they are just mostly cribbing from ARM's spec sheet.
If you've ever driven a car near it's limit you'd know just how big a difference new vs worn tires are. Next time you walk past your car look at it from a distance. You're driving a 3,000lb vehicle on four contact patches each roughly the size of a softball. The difference between 0% tread wear and 20% is massive under hard acceleration.
The issue is that Apple like many other companies are trying to contract out any of their liabilities which is unlawful in several countries. In my opinion, the above is typical example of that where one must accept this in order to use any of their products. In Australia, it can be seen as one sided contract. To quote Competition and Consumer act - "unfair" contracts will be set aside if one sided contract creates a “significant imbalance” between the parties, is not reasonably necessary to protect the benefiting party’s legitimate interests and would cause detriment to the other party.
ACCC (consumer watchdog) specifically points out that unfair agreements have themes of unilateral variation of rights and wide indemnities.
My 2c.
Cheers
Just read that the Chinese consumer group has given Apple until the 19th to respond to their questions.
I'm not sure which Microsoft and Google lawsuits you are referring to. Apple certainly has a crap ton of lawsuits as well. But keep in mind that a lot of the problems Microsoft and Google had relate to Antitrust and Monopoly issues. Microsoft had over 90% of market dominance with PCs. That raised big antitrust concerns. Google likewise now has overwhelming dominance in the internet search arena... also a big antitrust and monopoly concern. You cannot raise those same concerns with Apple. Their computers have never had any sizable market share. And their iPhone's... although hugely popular.... have stiff and healthy competition from Android phones.
Not the fanboys... the true fanboys usually don’t own an iPhone for longer than a year when the next iPhone comes out so they never have to worry about any of these issues!
It’s the idiots that think technology stays up to date and shiny like new out of the box for its whole lifespan that run into these issues. “Oh I just got my iPhone 3 years ago and it doesn’t run like it used to.” Really? Ever heard of this thing called Moore’s law? Do you realize how much the tech they put into these devices grows year over year? Apple doesn’t have to keep up software support for several years after a product gets released but they do anyway.
It's this type of societal legal behaviour that is bringing the US down, putting down ridiculous expectations on companies. This kind of predatory legal behaviour should be the one that get canned! Of course, it won't happen given all the legally trained politicians who'll protect their own.
Because lawyers.
Not that Apple can't handle this. Apple has teams of lawyers as well.
Apple did make some design decisions that led to this outcome, but I still think your attitude stinks. Apple's decision to throttle is based on the realities of battery physics. Is it their fault because they chose a battery design that doesn't last long enough? Yes, and they should pay a penalty in some form for that. But are they "evil" because they are trying to ensure the current devices continue to operate as long as possible? No way. That's a worthy effort, and people should be grateful, not angry about that. Be angry about batteries that are too small or don't have longevity, not because of some corrective action that's being taken in the best interest of customers. See the difference?
Anyway, the author invited this topic in by mentioning this, even though it's separate from the headlined topic. Let's stay on topic, shall we?
Apple is not guilty of anything surrounding Meltdown or Spectre, and those seeking "compensation" can go suck on a lemon, I say!
I powered up an old iPad Mini Retina (A7 processor and slower than an iPhone 6 with the A8) and ran some tests.
Unfortunately the browser benchmarks were useless. ARES-6 wouldn’t even run (this iPad was still on iOS 9) and after updating to iOS 11 they were actually faster (Safari is obviously optimized and quicker now than it was back on iOS 9). So all I’m left with is Geekbench.
My scores are pretty much the same before and after updating to iOS 11 with the Meltdown/Spectre fixes. They are also inline with what Geekbench shows in their results browser.
Bottom line: I need to go buy a PowerBall lottery ticket. Every device I’ve tested has performed as good as new, without any throttling or other issues. Considering this so-called epidemic is affecting just about everyone and their dog, I must be the luckiest guy on the planet to have a slew of iOS devices all working perfectly. /S
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Melvin has since removed his benchmarks, without even a single word about the battery-related throttling. Instead, he felt threatened by some online attacks, which is understandable, but not a reason to remove his benchmarks. Instead, he should have acknowledged his misdirected conclusions putting a cap on the discussion that way.
Why did you end your post in a /s tag? I found what you said perfectly reasonable... and I think that some people just need to jump onto the bandwagon of bashing others. It's easy to bash a company that the world says has been guilty of something, no matter what degree of truth.
It’s a matter of organizing. The rest of the world or even all the iPhone user base isn’t having these issues, so they won’t be joining any march against Apple. This will fizzle like every other class action or will be settled for very low numbers relatively speaking.
I am speculating, it I have every class action case to back up my thesis. It’s going to be under $5B and probably more like way under, if anything at all.
If they didn’t want to get sued they could have been upfront about the issue and said that they were going to throttle them to solve it, or you could get a battery replacement. Instead they decided not to advertise it, and allow people to buy new iPhones instead of battery replacements.
The other lawsuits though I think are frivolous.
to be honest, until a software fix actually slows down the phone or if an exploit has been found, i don't see how defendants can claim material damage considering EVERY DEVICE HAS THIS ISSUE.
class action against apple is interesting because i think Apple will settle just so they can avoid divulging trade secrets.
class action against apple is interesting because i think Apple will settle just so they can avoid divulging trade secrets.
Not every device, just the older ones like 6/6S and 7, but not too old like 5S. Apple decides when to apply it and to what models to apply it. If otherwise, this throttling code would not be iOS update dependent, especially for i7 being throttled only after 11.2. This is why this whole thing is fishy.
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Since when does Meltdown/Spectre only affect iPhones? Sigh.
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Some people here have difficulty detecting sarcasm or humour, so you have to be explicit.
The implication seems to be that the fix reduces performance on older iPhones. I didn’t see any change to be honest from the Spectre fix.Since when does Meltdown/Spectre only affect iPhones? Sigh.
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Some people here have difficulty detecting sarcasm or humour, so you have to be explicit.
Actually there is. If the hardware can not be sufficiently powered by degrading batteries, Apple is completely within their rights to modify their software to prevent system issues and expected shutdowns.
The batterygate lawsuits and the Meltdown/Spectre lawsuits should go nowhere. Apple made no promises regarding CPU speed upon purchase or continuing after purchase. Provided that the speed reduction was the result of security patches and/or continued reliability of the core iPhone functions (telephone, text, send/receive email, web browsing, etc.), their iOS patches were justified and the right thing to do. Only if the plaintiffs can prove that Apple’s purpose was to cripple the iPhone to encourage upgrading to newer devices, should the plaintiffs prevail.