Apple Will Face Lawsuit Over Phone-Switching iMessage Issue

[cjmillsnun]

Because it takes so long for Apple to correct its course of action? By offering the tool, Apple admitted that there is problem with iMessage. However, Apple did not do anything for years.

Or maybe they were trying other solutions and finally came to the conclusion that this was the only one that worked. You don't know if they did nothing or not. Only Apple's engineers know that.

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Looking forward to my portion of the settlement. While I happily own an iPhone 6, it was ridiculous for apple to allow this to happen. There was nothing in the iMessages welcome message that informed a user you were tied to their service. In fact, upon iPhone activation it automatically enrolls a user in iMessages. I ran into this issue and is one of several things to causes a little hate toward apple.

Enjoy your 2 cents. The lawyers will enjoy their millions.

 

[Urban Joe]

A bit confused

For the longest time if I can't iMessage a fellow iMessage user the text is routed as a normal SMS text. However, I won't argue since the issue has been well documented.

There really is no superficial excuse for Apple not correcting this problem so that iMessages to inactive iPhones will be sent as ordinary texts. The system should prioritize the phone numbers not the stupid phones. It seems as if, not surprisingly, Apple designed the system to prioritize their phones as the de-facto destination for messages rather than the actual phone number.

That said, iMessage overall has been an amazing service .... remember having to pay out the yin-yang to send texts.

 

[TimelessOne]

I don't know what amounts should be involved, but Apple DID do wrong and people WERE harmed by losing messages. Apple should have planned for this eventuality ahead of time.

I wouldn't sue over it personally, but at least it's not a fictional claim.

sadly this lawsuit is WHY apple finally offered the tool. It should not sock me that they had this tool written and working nearly 3 years ago for the most part. Now the only people who could see it was tech support but they had it working.

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Or maybe they were trying other solutions and finally came to the conclusion that this was the only one that worked. You don't know if they did nothing or not. Only Apple's engineers know that.

You still have 3 years of time to cover.

Your excuse maxes out at 6 months. What about the other 30 months?

 

[coolfactor]

"Moore is seeking both class-action status and unspecified damages from Apple."

Alright, so because she couldn't receive messages anymore, she thinks she is entitled to monetary compensation for damages? This is ridiculous.

Couldn't she have just disabled iMessage before switching to a new phone? So for her not disabling iMessages, she is now entitled to damages?

I agree. I think this situation was limited to situations where a person *only* had an iPhone and no other Apple devices? Had they had another Apple device, the problem could be corrected from it very easily by removing the offending phone number from the list, no? And why not be able to remove from the iCloud account online? It's interesting that a specialized "Deregister" tool was needed for this. I could be wrong with this interpretation. Since I never plan on getting a non-Apple phone, this problem will never affect me. I say suck-it-up-buttercup to anyone that switches to an inferior phone.

 

[69Mustang]

No. Imagine you were on AT&T with a phone number of 123-456-7890. Now, you leave AT&T without notifying them and start with Verizon, forcing them to give you 123-456-7890 on their network (not possible, but work with me here). Now, there are 2 numbers floating around out there. Where do the calls go? Who is on the hook? You for not telling AT&T or AT&T for not simply releasing your number after several weeks of you not answering a call?

It's pretty hard to work with you when you yourself admit your scenario is not even possible. When you leave AT&T and go to Verizon with your number, that's the end of it. Making without bold doesn't change the issue at all. You don't have to notify a carrier you're leaving them. You simply leave. If you owe them, they bill you.

I'm not sure what point you were trying to make, but your example doesn't make any point. It's pretty simple. Apple has no purview over a customers phone number. Once a customer chooses a different brand of phone, Apple's relationship with that phone number should be severed completely. iMessage was not letting that happen. No one should have to call Apple to get them to release their hold on the phone number. Especially when that phone call results in proper resolution some of the time. Same with the sim card removal. Worst, it's an issue Apple has known about for years; not days, weeks, or months. Years.

 

[wxman2003]

I hope she enjoys the spoils of her victory. A lovely bumper case.

 

[deeddawg]

sadly this lawsuit is WHY apple finally offered the tool

Are you claiming this as fact or opinion?

If fact, I'd be interested in seeing the citation.

 

[MisakixMikasa]

By this logic, any product improvement that benefits users is an admission by the vendor that there was previously a problem with the product. So, the best course of action for any developer is never to improve the product, thus freeing them from an admission of responsibility.

There are a number of valid points to be made against Apple in this case, but this isn't one of them.

Excuse me? How is providing tools to solve three years old problem that comes from bug is product improvement?

A product improvement is something you enhancing usability or adding new features. But this has nothing to do with product improvement.

 

[Nuvi]

This should be quite obvious that if you switch to an android device you will not be able to use iMessage, you should have noticed that it does not work at all when you message your android buddies... unless you are the biggest moron on earth you need to be advised about this fact...

It's not about Android users thinking they still can receive iMessages. It's about a fact that when user switches from iMessage device (iPhone) to Android or windows iMessage service doesn't delete the former iPhone owners number from Apple's iMessage server register and therefore any iPhone user trying to send SMS to former iPhone user is actually sending iMessage even though regular SMS should've been sent.

 

[djgamble]

This is the very definition of a frivolous lawsuit. Plus, it would be very hard to prove damage in this case.

US law is weird... in Australia they would have to prove that this breached a duty of care and there's some kind of measurable damage as a result (rather than inconvenience... and given they complained AFTER it had been fixed it's a bit suss).

 

[samcraig]

Excuse me? How is providing tools to solve three years old problem that comes from bug is product improvement?

A product improvement is something you enhancing usability or adding new features. But this has nothing to do with product improvement.

true - but it IS a new feature for Android phones haha

 

[C DM]

I agree that its good Apple have provided this tool. Whether it was a deliberate ploy to cause issues for people who move to Android or whatever, well I doubt it though who knows.

What is stupid is a lawsuit over this, but then we are talking about the American Legal System.

What is stupid is that this issue has been around for years and it finally took a thread of a lawsuit for Apple to actually do anything about it. Now that's what's stupid. (And at least there was an option to bring a lawsuit like this about to force Apple to actually look into the issue, because clearly without it nothing would be going on, as has been the case for years now.)

 

[topgunn]

Moore's lawsuit alleges...

Wait, isn't that the postulate that the number of lawsuits in a circuit double approximately every two years?

 

[C DM]

Wow! Maybe I can sue Chevrolet because all those old parts I bought when I had that old Chevy don't fit my new Ford!

Or maybe people could actually at least even pretend to comprehend what the issue is about before commenting on it. Otherwise the comments are just about random irrelevant things that make no sense at all.

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Then the article is wrong. If you turn off iMessage prior to switching there is no issue. I have done this several times without issue. The first time I went over to Android I had the problem, which was quickly solved by simply changing my Apple ID password. The other few times I've swapped, you turn off iMessage, then change devices.

Obviously since you didn't run into issues it must mean that an issue can't exist at all, despite many people running into it. Because logic clearly works like that.

 

[jonAppleSeed]

How do they NOT?

Verizon handle both your data and your cellular. Seems like Verizon could re-route an i-message to SMS because THEY are those ones who had to switch the phone service.

I'm not saying they should, but that they could. I'm sure Apple doesn't have the ability to track people who switch back and forth realtime but Verizon does.

They couldn't, and they won't.

To Verizon, all they would see is encrypted web traffic going through their servers. Could be anything. Could be iMessage, could be GMail, could be Outlook.

See, when an iDevice tries to send a iMessage, it'll first ask the Apple server, yo, you got someone with the number xxx-xxx-xxxx?? If Apple server says, yeah, why don't you send that message my way and I can give it to the recipient rather than you sending it over the air as an SMS, it would be encrypted and sent via TCP/IP rather than SMS.

 

[Born Again]

Apple is not in the business of ****** you up. High customer satisfaction is one of the things that put them where they are, and it's high on their priorities.

That doesn't mean every customer is satisfied.

I have no illusions about Apple being sweet and caring. But the idea that Apple is setting up ways to f me up is just you being paranoid.

Haha jeez - lighten up my friend

 

[mdlooker]

Wow! Maybe I can sue Chevrolet because all those old parts I bought when I had that old Chevy don't fit my new Ford!

Nope but I'd bet you'd have a gripe if you went to the Ford and a certain main electronic part of it wouldn't work because Chevrolet's similar electronic part is still tied to you and thus making you unable to use that part in your Ford.

 

[Renzatic]

Or maybe people could actually at least even pretend to comprehend what the issue is about before commenting on it. Otherwise the comments are just about random irrelevant things that make no sense at all.

I've come to learn that a shockingly large number of people here tend to knee-jerk over the headline, rather than take the time to read the first post to get the full story.

The way I see it, I think they believe that if they rush in to call someone stupid and entitled before it rolls over to page 2, people will think they're smart and witty by association.

 

[kcirtap00]

The replies in this thread are exactly why Apple fanboys have a bad name.

Apple is clearly in the wrong here: either on purpose to lock people into their ecosystem, or by being incompetent and unable to fix this sooner.

This de-register-tool is completely unnecessary: if someone wants to send an iMessage to someone who has no longer an iPhone, the Apple Server can figure this out very easily: if the message cannot be delivered it should notify the sender so he/she can try again as a green SMS message. Done.

It's that simple. Apple is control over the devices and the server. The whole chain. So technically this solution does not make any sense. They made a big mistake here, and this lawsuit is entirely justified.

If you buy an 800$ dollar communication device, you want to be able to send messages with it, even to friends that don't have an iPhone anymore. This is ridiculous.

They are certainly wrong but that doesn't mean this is lawsuit worthy in the slightest.

 

[MikeSmoke]

Okay. I apologize. My reaction was to frivolous lawsuits in general. Having read a little more this is different.

 

[Rogifan]

So how would the court determine damages? Or is this less about a monetary figure and more about embarrassing Apple and giving them a black eye because they didn't fix this issue fast enough (or prevent it from happening in the first place)?

 

[GfPQqmcRKUvP]

Good. They deserve it for letting this issue go unresolved for so long. If this were Google or another phone manufacturer everyone here would be up in arms at this cheap tactic that discourages people from switching phones.

 

[mdlooker]

They are certainly wrong but that doesn't mean this is lawsuit worthy in the slightest.

Thats the point of the lawsuit... one person is frivolous at face value but conceptually.. nahh literally when you group thousands of people that can't send/receive a basic function (txt) message because of a company's deliberate lack of action; well that becomes a real problem.

 

[RRmalvado]

It wasn't even realized to be an issue until quite a while after iMessage - and it was also something that seemed to be unintended. Yet, somehow it should have been released WITH iMessage?

If you troll a forum, you're going to incite people to disagree with you...so yeah, here they come to prove you wrong.

So it took Apple 3 years to realize it was a problem?

Did Apple not test migrating between phones when doing testing with iMessage?

Don't call me a troll as I'm not inciting anyone... unless you mean seeing fault with Apple makes it so, then sorry I don't have Apple-colored glasses.

 

[thelookingglass]

Can you imagine being Tim Cook for a month? When you're this big, there are just so many things that can go wrong.

But I also wonder why Apple waited so long to provide a fix. The timing of the latest fix clearly is not a coincidence.