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.
