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Lawsuit Alleges Apple Broke FaceTime on iOS 6 to Force iOS 7 Upgrades, Save Money
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Damaging to Apple if true... Apple's lives and dies on its reputation with consumers, and they are not doing enough to keep that reputation unblemished. If they want people to pay premium prices, Apple are going to have to stay above Machiavellian manoeuvres like this.
They didn't sell iOS, but many people's devices had to be replaced due to arbitrary incompatibility
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Also, if they done this once...what makes you think they didn't do this for other items, hence forcing us to upgrade. Could also be used to say, "hey look at our adaption rate. so many users have upgraded compared to Android." Never believe 100% what a bunch of strangers are telling you. Does anyone here know Tim Cook on a personal level like, bro to bro? Really don't think so
Do you miss this?
...other images removed...
Yes, to be honest. I embrace the Skeuomorphism in order to gain the superior app look and functionality.
[doublepost=1486125209][/doublepost]I will join the class.
Is a company under an obligation to support hardware indefinitely? If they decide to stop supporting something they sold, after all warranties have expired, it may be bad customer service and bad PR, but that's about it. I get annoyed at Apple as much as the next guy when it comes to things like needing $100s worth of adapters for my $3,000 computer to work, or my aluminum-hat-wearing glee of thinking I caught them in some "planned obsolescence", but in this case I don't see it.
The only iOS device with a front facong camera that was unable to upgrade past iOS 6 was the 4th gen iPod Touch. So in fairness, they are the only users with a legitimate issue here.
Why? Even Google phase out support of bundled Youtube app on iOS. Technology needs to move forward.
This person is certainly free to file a lawsuit and that's all that happened: a lawsuit filed. I suspect it'll be tossed before it ever reaches another stage in the process. A payday from a deep pocket defendant using twisted/tortured reasoning is all this amounts to.
As for "shady practices" that is ridiculous. Every company looks for ways to reduce the cost of doing business. There seems to be this running theme over recent years that a certain segment of society wants to hold businesses to standards far higher than they hold themselves to. This increasing need to search for things to be offended by and this need to be slighted by companies/government/people.
I'm betting we never hear from this again but with the publicity this has with the publicity from the "Apple doesn't force me to stop using my phone when in the car" lawsuits will just spur other people to start similar suits with even more ridiculous claims.
Maybe I should start a class action lawsuit against Apple for not making phones with screens designed so that people like me, with astigmatism, can use them without wearing glasses or contacts?
As for "shady practices" that is ridiculous. Every company looks for ways to reduce the cost of doing business. There seems to be this running theme over recent years that a certain segment of society wants to hold businesses to standards far higher than they hold themselves to. This increasing need to search for things to be offended by and this need to be slighted by companies/government/people.
I'm betting we never hear from this again but with the publicity this has with the publicity from the "Apple doesn't force me to stop using my phone when in the car" lawsuits will just spur other people to start similar suits with even more ridiculous claims.
Maybe I should start a class action lawsuit against Apple for not making phones with screens designed so that people like me, with astigmatism, can use them without wearing glasses or contacts?
Maybe I can file a lawsuit against my financial institution when I was forced to upgrade my computer so that it would be compatible with a newer version of software.
We have nothing better to do than bother with iOS 6, if it can even be proven?
Why not go back to the first iPhone and claim it wasn't any good with 8GB?
Someplace in the user agreement this is covered.
It doesn't matter what reason they give, you use software and tech moves on.
Whatever electronic item we have is old when we are done unwrapping it and power it up for the first time.
We should sue all the car companies , because when you drive a brand new car off the lot it's value plummets.
At least there is some damage with $$$ attached.
Why not go back to the first iPhone and claim it wasn't any good with 8GB?
Someplace in the user agreement this is covered.
It doesn't matter what reason they give, you use software and tech moves on.
Whatever electronic item we have is old when we are done unwrapping it and power it up for the first time.
We should sue all the car companies , because when you drive a brand new car off the lot it's value plummets.
At least there is some damage with $$$ attached.
Regarding Rogifan's post about missing all that green felt: I do!!! But seriously, I was so used to the smoothness of iOS 6, even in my old iPhone 4. It had a little bit of stuttering, yes, but its performance was so much better than iOS 7! Yes, I'm aware that iPhone 4 hardware was already old, but it's was not just about performance. If it was slow but usable, ok. But the bugs killed it. As someone already said, people were always looking forward for a new iOS version. After iOS 7 and 8 (killing iPhone 6), we always think twice when there's news about a new iOS version...
Edit: I just decided to research a little bit more and, here's what I found about the versions that corrected Facetime in iPod Touch 4th Gen:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...rades-save-money.2030813/page-6#post-24267593
But seriously, I was so used to the smoothness of iOS 6, even in my old iPhone 4. It had a little bit of stuttering, yes, but its performance was so much better than iOS 7! Yes, I'm aware that iPhone 4 hardware was already old, but it's was not just about performance. If it was slow but usable, ok. But the bugs killed it. As someone already said, people were always looking forward for a new iOS version. After iOS 7 and 8 (killing iPhone 6), we always think twice when there's news about a new iOS version...Edit: I just decided to research a little bit more and, here's what I found about the versions that corrected Facetime in iPod Touch 4th Gen:
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...rades-save-money.2030813/page-6#post-24267593
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It can be argued that they should not have to. But at the same time they intentionally "broke" a key feature that was costing them money so that the iOS people were using prematurely needed to be abandoned.
If I understand what @Rogifan was telling me, the people whose devices could not be updated did get a fix (for what Apple purposely broke) but those who had devices that could be updated that they did not want to update for whatever reason, were forced to upgrade their iOS if they wanted functionality restored.
I can understand why Apple did this, but I think it is one of those business practices that, as it comes to light, will alienate consumers and hurt their brand in the long run. Or at least it could--Apple's popularity in the US seems unshakable from what I can see. It's a risky and shady move to save money when eventually the problem would have taken care of itself naturally.
Now, am I going to stop buying iPhones over this? Nah. Not as long as I can get two years minimum trouble free use out of them. Passing along older units to family members, we've actually gotten more than that. I haven't seen evidence, personally, that Apple is crippling our older phones.
I remembered this odd situation. My mother-in-law iPhone (using iOS 6 at that time) couldn't FaceTime with us (using iOS 7). I knew something was up with that. I'm very curious what the verdict will be.
The main difference in my opinion is that Apple actively broke a working system. They did not just stop supporting a system, they programmed a bug into it and stopped it from working.
For example my old Powermac still runs under OS7 perfectly fine. All the old software and functionality still works fine. I can not use the internet anymore. But this is not because Apple somehow changed anything. Or my 10 year old car still drives fine. If VW would somehow disable the electronics so that I have to buy a new car I would be pretty pissed.
The allegation is they made the certificate expire early so FaceTime on iOS 6 would stop working because they didn't want to pay Akamai $50 million a year for their relay services.
Apple discontinues support of software all of the time. Crippling it is a bit underhanded. They should have just reported that it would no longer be supported and turn it off. Or, I guess maybe they could have upgraded FaceTime on iOS 6 but there may have been iOS dependencies that made that too difficult.
Of course he doesn't, since it's Apple. If it had been Microsoft or Google he would be frothing at the mouth over the evilness.
Apple's services are NOT free, you pay for them when you buy a device that can use them. The services are part of the whole package and used as incentives for people to buy the expensive hardware.
The real issue in this case, is that Apple weren't up-front with the fact that they wanted to change Facetime and instead intentionally crippled their customers devices that were still working perfectly fine. I can't say I agree with the lawsuit that claims customers suffered and are entitled to compensation, but something needs to be done to make it clear to companies that these kinds of business practices are not acceptable. And since it seems the only way to punish companies in the US is to force them to hand money over to someone else...
Unlike Apple, most technology companies don't patent mere ideas and and generic concepts, they patent actual technologies. So it's not that the patent was for "peer-to-peer", the patent concerned a specific technical implementation of peer-to-peer.
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The way I see it, it is not the free upgrade that's the problem. It's not even the fact they pushed people to a free upgrade, per se. It's how they implemented the push and WHY that's shady.
How...they set a bug to break a feature that works.
Why...to screw over Akamai and prevent Akamai from collecting any more fees for the use of their service.
It's like Apple was fine with Akamai when they needed them. Then when they didn't, instead of upfront negotiating a termination of their agreement and just plain informing consumers that FaceTime would no longer be supported on older iOS versions, they did this sneaky runaround that ended up not freeing them from all ties to Akamai after all, and just looks dodgy now that it's been dragged into the light of day.
I can't predict how consumers will react to this. How many Apple customers will know, let alone care? I can't imagine any of the iPhone toting moms and dads I hang out with giving it a second's thought, honestly.
But potential business partners might be leery. The people deciding the countless court cases Apple has against it might become a bit jaded and biased.
And when Apple cries foul against Qualcomm over various practices, they're liable now to get more fingers pointed back at them. Maybe. I'm no expert. It's all just food for thought and fodder for discussion as far as I'm concerned.