Apple sues for "forcing" iPhone 4 and 4s owners to upgrade to iOS 7

No, we are not in 2013; but you didn't read the wrong title either. Apple is, in fact, facing another lawsuit, this time pending at the Florida District Court, where a class action lawsuit alleges that Apple "broke" the FaceTime to force users of iPhones 4 and 4s (released in 2010 and 2011, respectively) to upgrade their devices to iOS 7.

Don't you understand the ravines? I explain: Apple launched FaceTime in 2010 as a two-way video conferencing service iGadgets by two different methods. The first of them, “point to point”, transferred audio and video data over a direct connection between the devices; the second was known as the "relay method", which used third party servers to establish this connection.

Relayed connections were more expensive (because they used data and connections from other servers) to Apple than the option that connected two devices directly. At that time, Ma paid Akamai Technologies for the use of servers for FaceTime but this type of connection was minority, about 5% to 10% of all FaceTime traffic before November 7, 2012. Until VirnetX get in the way.

As many of you may know, the VirnetX-Apple plight may be one of the oldest lawsuits involving the Cupertino giant. It all started in 2010, when the company sued Ma for using VPN technologies on iPhones; later, several other processes between the two surfaced that included the technology used in FaceTime to connect two devices directly.

It would be counterproductive to go into the details of these VirnetX actions, but it is important to understand that this has led Apple to adopt the relay method for all FaceTime calls to avoid paying royalties VirtnetX. As a result, this situation was crucial for the Cupertino giant to start paying even higher amounts for relay servers. One possible solution to this came with iOS 7, released in September 2013.

Naturally, when a new operating system is released, many users would rather wait to update their devices (or even not at all). This also happened in 2013, but Apple allegedly requested, on April 16, 2014, the expiration of a FaceTime certificate that basically "broke" the main function of the service and that is why the company is being sued this time, as reported. fur Law360.

According to the process, users were “forced” to upgrade to iOS 7 so that they could use FaceTime, which led to several performance issues on iPhones 4 and 4s (slow, among others). In short, the plaintiffs accuse Apple of “pushing” users to buy newer devices (at the time, iPhones 5, 5c and 5s).

In addition, the lawsuit alleges that while Apple attributed the failure of FaceTime to an error that would be corrected with the new operating system, the company intentionally caused the application to fail to force users to upgrade their devices and thus reduce retransmission costs that still ran based on calls made from gadgets running iOS 6 and earlier.

Finally, the action requires Apple to be investigated to find out whether the company “violated Florida's laws on fraudulent and unfair business practices”, as well as the possibility that the company had “invaded” the private property (iPhones) of the United States. users. For all this, the plaintiffs seek restitution, damages and the payment of attorney's fees.

Whether stillborn or not, the fact that they took a situation from the bottom of the bay to try to frame Apple. We'll see what that gives

via AppleInsider