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Apple Sued Over Meltdown and Spectre in U.S. as iPhone Slowdown Lawsuits Now Total 45
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Not really. Nice try thou. Since they DID throttle phones they are getting sued
Don't people read? This has nothing to do with the phone throttling issue but the CPU issue that affects all computing devices!!
I am ok with my iPhone being throttled having been on the other side and had my iPhone 5 shutdown lots when loading apps outside in the cold on a worn battery. I know which i would rather it do.
The phone shut down due to using a degraded battery. Which cant properly power the phone
Then offer a battery replacement when asked. Don’t say it’s fine and then cripple the phone.
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Rather than shutting down or being hacked...
The first Macbook Air was throttled for heat reasons. Many CPUs have DVFS and overheat protection. The alternative is to have them run slow all the time or to burn out prematurely.
Apple faces its first legal action over Meltdown and Spectre in the United States, even though the vulnerabilities were found to affect nearly all computers and other devices, according to court documents reviewed by MacRumors.
Meltdown and Spectre are serious hardware-based vulnerabilities that take advantage of the speculative execution mechanism of a CPU, allowing hackers to gain access to sensitive information. All modern Intel, ARM, AMD, and Nvidia processors are affected, with many patches and mitigations already released.
Anthony Bartling and Jacqueline Olson filed a class action complaint against Apple last week in a U.S. district court in San Jose on behalf of anyone who purchased a device with an ARM-based processor designed by Apple, ranging from the A4 to A11 Bionic chips used in iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV models.
The complaint alleges that Apple has known about the design defects giving rise to the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities since at least June 2017, and could have disclosed details to the public more promptly.
An excerpt from the complaint:The complaint added that it is unlikely Apple would be able to fully and adequately release fixes for Meltdown and Spectre without the performance of its processors decreasing by between five and 30 percent.
Apple addressed Meltdown in macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 and iOS 11.2, while Spectre mitigations were introduced in a macOS 10.13.2 supplemental update and iOS 11.2.2, both of which were released early last week. The vulnerabilities have also been addressed in older versions of macOS and OS X.
Despite one dubious claim that Apple's patch for Spectre resulted in a significant performance decrease on one developer's iPhone 6, Apple said its testing indicated that its mitigations had no measurable impact on its Speedometer and ARES-6 tests and an impact of less than 2.5 percent on the JetStream benchmark.
The complaint expects at least 100 customers to be part of the proposed class, with the combined sum of compensatory and punitive damages expected to exceed $5 million if the case proceeds to trial.
A group of Israelis have filed a request with the Haifa District Court to file a class action lawsuit against Apple, Intel, and ARM over Meltdown and Spectre as well, according to local news publication Hamodia.
iPhone Slowdown Lawsuits Continue to Mount
Apple continues to face an increasing number of lawsuits that either accuse the company of intentionally slowing down older iPhones, or at least of failing to disclose power management changes it made starting in iOS 10.2.1.
In the United States, the iPhone maker now faces at least 39 class action complaints as of January 15, according to court documents compiled by MacRumors. Additional lawsuits have been filed in France, Israel, Russia, Korea, and Vietnam, with another pending in Canada, bringing the total to 45.
Many of the lawsuits demand Apple compensate all iPhone users who have experienced slowdowns, offer free battery replacements, refund customers who purchased brand new iPhones to regain maximum performance, and as Apple has already promised, add more detailed info to iOS about a device's battery health.
We've already answered many frequently asked questions about Apple's power management process, and covered the issue extensively, so read our past coverage for more information about the matter.
Article Link: Apple Sued Over Meltdown and Spectre in U.S. as iPhone Slowdown Lawsuits Now Total 45
Fanboys and Apple Groupies need to understand that this has everything to do w Apple and this is just the beginning. Once more investigative work is done by the FTC and possibly the DOJ more info will be revealed. IMHO it is not going to be pretty. To say this is a lawyer feeding frenzy is just not true.
Imagine if your vehicle was updated with this “feature”. Now it wont stall, but it drives a lot slower. That’s right, a brand new feature you didn’t ask for. And you weren’t even told about it.
You’re welcome.
-Apple
Explain, this is on the chip manufacturers and all OS and computing device types are affected.
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Last post on this thread - this is NOT ABOUT PHONE THROTTLING PEOPLE.
Apple Sued Over Meltdown and Spectre in U.S. as “iPhone Slowdown” Lawsuits Now Total 45
It’s right there in the title my friend.
Except the two issues are separate - please explain how Apple or say Microsoft, Google, Samsung are responsible for the Meltdown and Spectre issue please?
You often given over to hysterical hyperbole, or you just get triggered on lawsuits facing Apple? Genuine question here since you've now gone from lawsuits, to the FTC and the DoJ in one single post.
Quite impressive bit of scaremongering there - my only surprise is that you didn't managed to bring in the FBI (well, you kinda did with the DoJ) or CIA into this mix.
Your post is akin to one I'd expect from a child wishing to impress adults "look at me, I know of the FTC and DoJ! Arn't I clever?" However it it falls flat on its fact the moment you examine some facts as the the roles and responsibilities of the organizations involved.
The FTC is a comparatively toothless animal; heck, last I checked they still can't even hold AT&T accountable for obvious throttling of it's customers. Just how the heck you think they're going to stand a chance here - a case much more complex? Their last 'big' win with Apple was a paltry $32M over in-app payments. In the meantime they've ensnared them in the Qualcomm dispute, hitting them with 'failure to produce' fines. The biggest one before that? The infamous e-Book price fixing gig which hit them with a $450M fine.
However, on both of those cases (e-books and in-app purchases) the evidence of harm was obvious and clear. Hardly the case with any of the current issues.
And as for the DoJ - just what in the heck you really think they're going to do here? This issue is totally NOT in their purview. This case is so totally out of their radar it's not funny! If Apple knew about all this AND they did things methodically and with malice (so far fetched as to further in space than Voyager 2) then, and only then, could it even be considered a criminal probe that the DoJ would look at. Until then, then this is still going to be a class action lawsuit thing.
Now, if Apple had undermined the United States by it's actions - then - criminal law may have been broken. Then - and only then, will the DoJ even consider looking at this. At that point, they look at the Corporate Compliance programs - and start examining "Filip Factors" to see if a crime was attempted; key factors here: Root cause analysis, Prior Indications and Remediation.
Heck, as for the battery issues: Remediation is already here: $29 and you get a new battery. It's even possible that a later 11.x will have the option (with big huge warnings attached) to turn off the throttling.
As for Meltdown\Spectre: yeah, good luck with that one. Since we're dealing with the ability to know exploit the previously unexploitable bugs like this will come to light. You no more chance of suing Apple over that than you have Intel.
Each and every class member will have to provide proof of injury (and no, I'm not talking physical). Simply owning an affected device isn't enough. We've plenty of anecdotal evidence on both sides to show the effect is reported to range from 'severe' to 'none at all'. That being the case, simple ownership of an affected device will be discounted.
Apple have been very canny here with the $29 deal. They know that by doing this, every single person who takes them up on the deal will take them out of class action membership since they've been now made whole. "Crap battery giving performance gip? Here, have a new one at a discount (oh, by the way, thanks for opting yourself out of any potential class action lawsuits)."
And you think I'm off the beaten track then you've not been involved in too many class action lawsuits as I have (payday was Duke Energy with $50, everyone else netted me $5 or less) - you can be identified easily - however being classed as a class action member who receives a payout - now that can be significantly more rigorous and will require absolute proof of harm. SCOTUS ruled a couple of years ago in a different class action that members must demonstrate "concrete and particularized" evidence of harm. Granted this was around FCRA lawsuits, but its effect will be felt on all class action lawsuits.
And that's assuming this even makes it to trial - very very very few do. Most get settled out of court for a big payday for the lawyers and bupkis for the members.
And please, oh please, do not mistake the number of investigations and lawsuits as an indication of outcome since there's zero correlation between the two.
As for one of the most recent lawsuits: "Plaintiffs would not have purchased the iDevices had they known of the Security Vulnerabilities," is how it starts off. Talk about a hard sell to the courts! Because the lawyers wanted a simple avenue into this they chose a simple statement that's gonna be a tough sell because now the plaintiffs will have to demonstrate what it is they would have brought. And that's damn nearly impossible to prove. However what will be telling is the number of iDevices sold since the flaws were made public. If the trend continues to be either flat or growth - then that shows what most normal people expect - Joe Q Public doesn't give a flying fig about ANY of this and the class action lawsuits are without merit and will be tossed or settled for peanuts on the dollar.
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Suing Apple? WTF are they stupid or something?
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Try reading the article and try to understand it rather than just skimming over the headline, yeah?
It will save you a lot of embarrassment in future.
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Try reading the article and try to understand it rather than just skimming over the headline, yeah?
It will save you a lot of embarrassment in future.
My point is this is not Apple's fault, it isn't a throttling issue, and is separate to the actual throttling issue we have seen recently.
iPhone Slowdown Lawsuits Continue to Mount
Apple continues to face an increasing number of lawsuits that either accuse the company of intentionally slowing down older iPhones, or at least of failing to disclose power management changes it made starting in iOS 10.2.1.
Which throttling issue are you talking about?
See this is why I said read the articles and understand the issue rather than just reading the headline...
The throttling issue was the battery degradation issue which resulted in throttling. The CPU's clockspeed was throttled. This is Apple's fault and responsibility.
Spectre and Meltdown fixes alter the way the CPU processes data, resulting in a slowdown. The CPU's clockspeed is not throttled. This is Intel's fault and responsibility.
Intel didn't design the ARM chips that Apple base their SoC's on.
That said, consumers are going to be hard pushed to get anything out of suing Apple over it because they'll have to demonstrate actual harm. Performance on a smartphone is so variable as to be unreal & reports go from zero effect to 'OMG I had to throw the phone away' - all anecdotal and thus all inadmissible in a legal case.
Almost, but not quite. The Axx chips are designed and manufactured by Apple and also have the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. Apple is sued for those CPU's. Intel has nothing to do with those chips. Intel, ARM and other brands are already sued, separate from Apple.
To say: 'This is Intel's fault and responsibility' is a bit far fetched since Apple, AMD, ARM, and even some IBM processor's have these vulnerabilities too. More news is pouring in about vulnerabilities in Qualcomm and Samsung processors also.
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I see others before me, already reacted on this too. So my remark is now a bit superfluous
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