Judge Dismisses Android-Switching iMessage Lawsuit Against Apple

[OTACORB]

Perhaps someone recently bought her an iPhone cos she was the judge who basically couldnt understand technology and sided every time against Apple. Perhaps she is trying to present as "balanced" now. Anyone keeping score on her awarded amounts against Apple?

Yeah, she was hard as hell on Apple during the Samsung/Apple Trial. She has also called Tim Cook down on multiple occasions, the most recent being when lawyers tried to convince her that Tim Cook had no say in the salaries of employees. She said she didn't buy it and that he will have to testify. She is also handling the colluding case against Apple, Google and several other tech companies. I've certainly not found her to be in Apple's back pocket. By the way she gets these cases randomly based on the system that is in place within the court. She has never had any of these cases transfer to her. Anyway.. all one has to do is actually look at the record and you'll quickly learn she doesn't always rule in favor of Apple.

 

[coolfactor]

I usually despise class action lawsuits. But iMessages are still being gobbled up by Apple and not being sent as SMSs to my Android device. It is infuriating, and Apple is of no help. I used their web tool, and no improvement.

I won't buy a new Apple device until they fix this. At this point, it appears that I will never be buying another Apple product again. I have missed several very important messages, and had a few peeved friends and family members think I was ignoring them.

Sit down at any Mac, create a new user account, plug into your iCloud settings, open iMessage, deselect your phone number, quit, delete user account. Done. 10 minutes of your life to solve the problem.

I hear that California needs their crops watered. Maybe you can go cry a river over there....

 

[MH01]

My post was addressing those that had tried all the solutions and yet say they are continuing to have the issue. From my experience and those of others I've given this suggestion too this has resolved the issue 100%. I never in any of my post said I was addressing the original posters complaint, only ongoing issues.

However, with that said I don't think drawing the conclusion that this judge didn't have evidence to support a law suit, much less a class action lawsuit is defending Apple. She has in fact ruled against Apple on several occasions if anyone cares to look up the record. All I am saying is sure there will always be Apple defenders and I don't really care about that. In this case she ruled properly based on the evidence she had even though we all know this has been and apparently continues to be a REAL issue.

I agree with you, her ruling was correct. And if you looked at my posts on this thread my opinion has changed. If I went back and changed my postings, it would not be transparent . I'm happy demonstrate that as the debate evolves , my initial comments were rash through debating my position has moved.

 

[nad8e]

So I use my iPhone to message someone with iOS. It reads delivered. If it does not read delivered, I know something is up.

Unless anyone can prove it currently is saying "delivered" when a number is switched, there really is no longer an issue.

If someone on iMessage is sending it to your email address and it's going to your computer or iPad - that's your problem - nothing to do with your phone number.

 

[palebluedot]

So I use my iPhone to message someone with iOS. It reads delivered. If it does not read delivered, I know something is up.

Unless anyone can prove it currently is saying "delivered" when a number is switched, there really is no longer an issue.

If someone on iMessage is sending it to your email address and it's going to your computer or iPad - that's your problem - nothing to do with your phone number.

You obviously dont have threads that have former iPhone users who switched to Android. Group iMessage becomes a NIGHTMARE when someone leaves. More importantly, there is literally no way to create a new group SMS thread with the person and other iPhone users short of deleting every single thread on every device you have. iMessage is more infuriating than MobileMe, and I was one of the few MobileMe users from day one.

 

[Br@Ves15]

I have an iPhone 5s, when I started my job, my bosses, and everyone I needed to communicate with, for my job, had iPhone 4's or iPhone 4S's. When I had the contact information, and sent them messages, iMessage of course was utilized automatically. They then switched to Samsungs, at first I couldn't text them, however I fixed the issue without dealing with Apple, or filing a lawsuit. With my example, I believe it is on the iPhone users side, and not the switched Android user side. It's been a while since then, and I don't recall doing more, I believe all I did was from the message, I told my iPhone in the messages app to send the message as a text message. I may had to do it a few times, but eventually the iOS device, and/or Apples iMessage system learned that the number wasn't with an iPhone anymore. Since then, I've had zero issues.

 

[Reksy]

... Really?

Our court system makes no sense. It rules that Apple has a monopoly on ebooks (a claim that would make sense if you were talking about Amazon, and by extension, none if you talk about any other company), but that it's totally cool for Apple to hold phone numbers hostage.

I disagree on that. I had tried an iPhone before the web portal even existed, and when I had the problem I chatted in and they deregistered the device from iMessage. Was very painless.

The only issue was discovering the issue in the first place. If I hadnt been sitting near someone with an iPhone that had trouble texting me I wouldnt have known there was an issue.

 

[krizalidzero]

People are failing to realize that iMessage's problem has to do with the way messages are sent, rather than received.

Say, when you text an iMessage account it's like WhatsApp, even though it registers by phone number, it's not sending a text message, it's sending an iMessage, so probably if a sender sued Apple he'd have a stand for not being able to switch to a standard SMS sending system on his own mobile, rather than a receiver who literally never was supposed to receive the "SMS" (which was actually an iMessage)

 

[kdarling]

Just takes a search of MR or any search engine, to realise this was a quite big issue. So how come the judge saw it as a non issue ? Seems weird to me based on the data available.

According to Law 360, this is much of what happened:

The lawsuit accused Apple of violating both wiretapping laws prohibiting interception and storage of messages, and California law prohibiting unfair competition.

The plaintiffs had argued that the iMessage server caused their messages to be intercepted at the point of transmission, which is illegal under the Wiretap Act.

However, Judge Koh decided that, “There can be no interception for purposes of the Wiretap Act if the acquisition of the message occurs while the message is in storage, even if it is in temporary storage incidental to the transmission of the communication.”

So, according to her ruling (much of which is redacted, probably at Apple's request), the message interception did NOT occur at transmission from the source iPhone, but instead while the transmitted iMessage was sitting in Apple's servers.

 

[myrv]

So this was not a bug. This was how iMessage was designed to super secede your regular text messages. The issue comes when you leave the hive mind and failed to shut down your iMessage account before you wiped your handset. This left your iMessage account active in the system. So other apple users who tried to message you had there messages sent to the cloud to await download and decryption. This was all done to keep as much of your messages as encrypted as possible. They went very BBM when they designed this system. I think apple should have had a tool from the word go to deactivate your account on there servers, however they failed there. This was a case of users not knowing how to properly shut down a service they were using when they decided to migrate to a different environment. I have to say i am sorry for those users but it does not rise to the level of a lawsuit. This should have been addressed sure but it also should have been addressed as a FAQ or a PSA from apple or verizion or att or Tmobile etc.

This was not a bug in there system it was a design choice. The choice was to allow your device to not be able to respond for a long period of time and have the message wait on you to download it in the future when you're secure device was ready to receive them. This meant people who were in the hive were trying to communicate with you in a secure why and nothing was happening.

I am all for going after apple when they screw there users or former users out of intent. The macbook screen debacle, the graphics card debacle the bumper case debacle.

Dumb users do not warrant a lawsuit

There was more of an issue to it than that. I disabled a friend's imessage before they swapped to android. The thing is, my phone kept thinking they were using an iphone and the messages didn't get delivered. Is this something to sue over? Only if Apple were doing it intentionally to manipulate consumers.

While I don't personally think this deserved a lawsuit, the defense of "dumb users do not warrant a lawsuit," doesn't really work. A lot of tort law is based on dumb users doing something that anyone with half of a brain wouldn't do, then holding the company that manufactured the product responsible. One of the sample cases we had was someone operating a weed trimmer without a guard and slinging a rock into a neighbors yard. The rock hits the neighbor in the eye and they have to have surgery. Who could be held responsible? Well, apparently if there wasn't a warning on the blade guard telling you to not operate without guard in place, the manufacturer could be added to the list. WTF is that? I'm surprised cars don't have to have warning labels saying to not operate without steering wheel in place.

 

[I7guy]

There was more of an issue to it than that. I disabled a friend's imessage before they swapped to android. The thing is, my phone kept thinking they were using an iphone and the messages didn't get delivered. Is this something to sue over? Only if Apple were doing it intentionally to manipulate consumers.

While I don't personally think this deserved a lawsuit, the defense of "dumb users do not warrant a lawsuit," doesn't really work. A lot of tort law is based on dumb users doing something that anyone with half of a brain wouldn't do, then holding the company that manufactured the product responsible. One of the sample cases we had was someone operating a weed trimmer without a guard and slinging a rock into a neighbors yard. The rock hits the neighbor in the eye and they have to have surgery. Who could be held responsible? Well, apparently if there wasn't a warning on the blade guard telling you to not operate without guard in place, the manufacturer could be added to the list. WTF is that? I'm surprised cars don't have to have warning labels saying to not operate without steering wheel in place.

Like the MacDonalds' hot coffee cup case?

 

[kdarling]

Like the MacDonalds' hot coffee cup case?

Not a good example.

McDonald's had already paid out a half million dollars to hundreds of previous coffee burn victims. So it was already an acknowledged problem.

The difference was, the old lady required skin grafts, and McD's didn't want to pay for them or her daughter's lost wages taking care of her. Of course, in the end it cost them far more than the cost reimbursement she had asked for.

 

[I7guy]

Not a good example.

McDonald's had already paid out a half million dollars to hundreds of previous coffee burn victims. So it was already an acknowledged problem.

The difference was, the old lady required skin grafts, and McD's didn't want to pay for them or her daughter's lost wages taking care of her. Of course, in the end it cost them far more than the cost reimbursement she had asked for.

I was agreeing that people do stupid things and then look to the court system for remediation; which is why there are the dumbest of disclaimers on everything now-a-days. Even the hot cups I buy at the supermarket has a caution on it without any liquid in it! Sometimes the lawsuits are for the plaintiffs, sometimes they are not. But since the courts want to reward stupid, we end up with cautionary warnings on everything.