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Lawsuit Alleges Apple Broke FaceTime on iOS 6 to Force iOS 7 Upgrades, Save Money
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Customers purchased and OWN iPads, iPhones and iPod touches with the the expectation FaceTime would work with or without upgrades. A bug/malware written by Apple meant staying on iOS 6 killed FaceTime, while moving to iOS 7 killed usability forcing upgrades. The case is damning for Apple and a complete embarrassment.
FACT CHECK!!! Please be thorough with your research and honest in your communications on the forum.
Thanks for your dishonest recollection of FaceTime and iOS 6. FaceTime on iOS 6 was heavily promoted unlike your portrayal of events. Christmas 2012, FaceTime on iOS6 promotion:
Not a very smart "business decision".
[doublepost=1486195657][/doublepost]Users should not be forced to upgrade, they should not expect termination of services as a threat. When customers buy a product, they buy it as it was described. iOS 6 was released in September of 2012. Apple's Christmas 2012 commercial suggests FaceTime on iOS6, then customers should expect FaceTime to work as they continue to use iOS6 into the future -- WITH NO PROBLEMS.
(As an aside, I actually prefer iOS 7 to any of the iOS releases to date. The app switcher is much simpler than the unbalanced app switcher in iOS 10. There's just too much going on in iOS 10, it has become a victim of function creep and not function consolidation. I can not keep count of the times while in an app accidentally triggering notification centre, or split view, or something else etc. This never occurred in iOS7. iOS 10 is not refined. I'd like to see Apple refine iOS in future updates.)
(PS see the beautiful MagSafe! So cool, so clever. And now it's gone, replaced with a more stupid interface, with lesser design credentials all round.
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The original Mac attitude has always been skepticism towards compulsive updating, which is just the opposite from the current Apple policies (force the user to update, in order to get more purchases). In fact this was publicized in the PC vs Mac ad campaign, where the PC always needed updating, while the Mac just worked forever. In that era, an OS X minor number update took just a few minutes. Nowadays, even a minor update takes a long time (30min to 1 hour or more) on latest hardware. Honestly, the Mac way of life has died, at least within Apple.
so what if they wanted to kill it, they made it. If by any means you are still using iOS6... you must be detrimentally afraid of change. In reality if you're a small business that needs to save money, you cut costs. This is the same thing they did, but in a gentler way rather than the full removal of facetime...move on.
Well, iOS 7, 8, 9 and 10 are not a good fit for the iPhone 4, 4S, 5 and iPad 3 if you don't know.
Those devices functioned much better with iOS 6. So, that's "the problem here".
Iphone 4 is stuck at ios 7 and my ipad 2 runs fine with ios 9, given the 100s of improvements over ios 5 or 6.
So $50 mil a year to maintain io6 FT functionality for maybe 1-2 years longer, so $100mil max, or 302m in charges?
The courts will now decide, if damage is warranted. Personally I see this as a non-issue.Customers purchased and OWN iPads, iPhones and iPod touches with the the expectation FaceTime would work with or without upgrades. A bug/malware written by Apple meant staying on iOS 6 killed FaceTime, while moving to iOS 7 killed usability forcing upgrades. The case is damning for Apple and a complete embarrassment.
FACT CHECK!!! Please be thorough with your research and honest in your communications on the forum.
Thanks for your dishonest recollection of FaceTime and iOS 6. FaceTime on iOS 6 was heavily promoted unlike your portrayal of events. Christmas 2012, FaceTime on iOS6 promotion:
[doublepost=1486194024][/doublepost]
Not a very smart "business decision".
[doublepost=1486195657][/doublepost]Users should not be forced to upgrade, they should not expect termination of services as a threat. When customers buy a product, they buy it as it was described. iOS 6 was released in September of 2012. Apple's Christmas 2012 commercial suggests FaceTime on iOS6, then customers should expect FaceTime to work as they continue to use iOS6 into the future -- WITH NO PROBLEMS.
(As an aside, I actually prefer iOS 7 to any of the iOS releases to date. The app switcher is much simpler than the unbalanced app switcher in iOS 10. There's just too much going on in iOS 10, it has become a victim of function creep and not function consolidation. I can not keep count of the times while in an app accidentally triggering notification centre, or split view, or something else etc. This never occurred in iOS7. iOS 10 is not refined. I'd like to see Apple refine iOS in future updates.)
(PS see the beautiful MagSafe! So cool, so clever. And now it's gone, replaced with a more stupid interface, with lesser design credentials all round.
It's an issue not personally specific to me BUT millions of customers are affected by this. On another level though it does affect me as well as yourself -- Apple built malware into iOS designed to kill devices/software, this act alone is something completely disturbing. It is something the courts should rule as unconscionable conduct awarding damages that will get executives rethinking their stupid strategy in the future.
So might you; it is alleged that Apple did this, its far from proven or even reasonable to assume. There are only two quotes from the emails and nothing to give context or rebuttal.
This is far, far from a foregone conclusion.
Well thankfully you're not in charge of consumer laws
Yes they are a business and they exist to make money - but they also have a duty to ensure products last a reasonable amount of time, and work to a good standard throughout that lifespan.
Well, yes, iOS 6 was released in Sept 2012, iOS 7 in Sept 2013... What should be "reasonable" in software? I suppose, if I'm honest, I genuinely don't know... I just think it's pathetic how obsessively litigious people have become.
Apple's developer page pegged iOS 7 adoption at 87 percent on April 7, 2014, nearly 10 days before Apple allegedly broke iOS 6. The lawsuit claims that forcing iPhone 4s and 4 users to upgrade to iOS 7 was harmful to them because the software would allegedly crash more and run more slowly.
Article Link: Lawsuit Alleges Apple Broke FaceTime on iOS 6 to Force iOS 7 Upgrades, Save Money
So this lawsuit claims that apple was 87% converted and THEN they broke iOS 6 just to push the last 13% of people over?
So you're ok with Apple crippling software to force an upgrade?
Keeping in mind that many times those free updates more so in the past than now ran noticeably slower on older devices.
If one chooses not to upgrade it's typically for a reason.
And now most of the devices aren't serviceable to add things like SSDs, more memory, etc. The damn things are glued together, forcing you to buy a new machine with higher specs if you want those options. At lest with Windows PCs you can add drives and memory with no problem. Granted, memory speeds have greatly increased, so if you want the faster memory you're going to need a new motherboard, but I am on a system that is probably 10 years old and it works just fine. Just throwing a SSD in it made all the difference in the world as far as speed - booting up, running programs, etc. And it handles my Xfinity 238/12 just fine. Though I wish upload speeds were better. At least with Fios the speeds match.
Aside from it all even being alleged, it also doesn't seem quite to the point of some "malware" that is "designed to kill devices", and more along the lines of disabling an older version of a service to save money in light of a newer version being available. There's certainly something that's not quite right about it if it holds up, but it's a ways off from something more sinister as "malware" that is "designed to kill devices".
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Given that it's built-in into an OS and only available in those particular OS versions from the manufacturer, it's more than just an "online service".
It simply doesn't.
Girlfriend had iPhone 4, became barely unusable with iOS 7 and the battery life was awful.
I had the iPhone 4S and 5, both of them became much slower and the battery life was heavily affected (especially the iPhone 5). The iPad 3 that I had? Was a piece of garbage with iOS 7 and specially with iOS 8, which btw forced me to sell due to stuttering all the animations across iOS. My cousin still has the iPad 2 and gave up on the device "because it's painfully slow" and "since the iOS 7 the design looks weird in the iPad".
Oh, yeah, my iPhone 5S still perform really, really good with iOS 10. The device was designed to operate with iOS 7+ and its different multitasking nature and a lot of other components of the OS. Just don't try to ******** us with those claims, almost everybody here did the transition from 6 to 7 and beyond and I bet I'm not the only one who noticed the performance degradation.
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Sure, this now needs to run a process. However, the quotes in context or out of context are damning, either way. The actions taken by Apple in iOS and the result on customers is clear and unambiguous.
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Ransomware instead maybe? Upgrade or lose the service? Or. Upgrade and slow down iOS thus destroying the user experience forcing an upgrade and purchase of new hardware. Either way the devices were crippled if users stayed on iOS 6 or upgraded to iOS 7 just like a trojan or virus. FaceTime was and still is a big part of how the devices are marketed. Wrong move by the executives.
It's a supreme example of how not taking care of your customer's needs for the allure of a shiny coin can backfire tremendously bad. It's a completely bad look for Apple, a company that publicly pretends customers are its focus but executes and undermines this relationship behind the scenes.
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I agree with the lawsuit, cause it seems intentional on Apple's part. That's far different than not being supported any longer.
It's a hyperbolic spin on what allegedly happened. It's a fun conspiracy and all, but the alleged conspiracy is much less sinister and thus less exciting than that.