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Apple Sued Over iPhone Bricking
An anonymous reader writes "The week's debate over the iPhone 1.1.1 has finally resulted in legal action. InfoWeek reports that on Friday, California resident Timothy Smith sued Apple in a class-action case in Santa Clara County Superior court. The suit was filed by Damian Fernandez, the lawyer who's been soliciting plaintiffs all week for a case against Apple. The suit doesn't ask for a specific dollar amount, but seeks an injunction against Apple, which prevents it from selling the iPhone with any software lock. It also asks that Apple be enjoined from denying warranty service to users of unlocked iPhone, and from requiring iPhone users to get their phone service through AT&T."
Maybe now I can get my Motorola C975 camera phone unlocked from the 3 network. They locked it, they can unlock the thing. Or give me a new phone that's a: similarly functional to the 975 and b: open to all networks. For no extra charge. And maybe some sort of credit compensation.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
If you modify an embedded system in a non-vendor approved way and then install a vendor update and the update brakes cause you did something incompatible.... Then it's your fault, not the vendors...
While i agree that Apple should be forced to sell unlocked phones, modifying a product in a non-approved way DOES invalidate your waranty. Why should the vendor be held reliable if YOU break his software?
Look, this thing is totally safe! Built it myself, you know. You just press that button like this and then turn that lev
... and this will settle the matter once and for all.
I mean when you have to buy numerous formats of a song because you are not allowed to pirate what you buy, to yourself for use on another device.... then of course At&T iphone lockin is acceptable.... If you want to use a different carrier you need to use a different format/device.
Anticompetitive practices is the only thing to argue here, but if you bring in a bunch of other non-issues then you can make the case lose.
Caveat Emptor - let the buyer beware.
Honestly, Apple has not attempted to deceive anyone on this issue, and they make it clear that service is with AT&T only. If you don't want to be locked-in with AT&T, then don't buy an iPhone. Period. If you still must absolutely have a class-action lawsuit, then do it against the Steve Jobs backdating accounting scandal.
Apple has great products. Which I want to pay for to own and to do with then whatever I am pleased to.
I say Apple should go down this time because they behave like bastards.
Having said that, I question the sanity of people rushing in to buy a USD500+ iPhone knowing it's blocked, relying on 3rd party software for unblocking and expect Apple to own up. It's not that you are deprived of essential things in life by NOT owning an iPhone.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
This lawsuit is just absurd.
OK, so I'm with everyone else hoping that before long the practice of locking phones to specific networks gets outlawed, but in this particular case, Apple haven't done anything wrong.
They are only responsible for providing updates which work with their software as supplied, and not software and iPhones which have been hacked specifically against Apple's advice, to get them working on other networks.
If your phone gets bricked by an Apple update after you've unlocked it, then it's entirely you fault. No-one else's. You did something that you knew full well at the time you shouldn't have done, and let's face it, it's not a simple process, so there can be no possible claim that you didn't know the consequences of your actions, and if you didn't understand this process and the implications, then you're even more of a fool for doing it. You've learned valuable lesson here - don't mess with things you don't understand. You immediately voided your warranty, again something you were fully aware that you'd be doing, and began using it in a way it was never intended or designed to be used, so you're not entitled to support. And now you've came out of it looking like a cock. With no phone. You bloody idiot.
Is it? I think the current situation is as follows:
I really see no true difference between using your iPhone (with a carrier OF YOUR CHOICE) and hooking your landline (with a carrier OF YOUR CHOICE) through your computer's modem so you can use a software phone and answering machine. Also, how is it any different from using your laptop with a cellular card (with a carrier OF YOUR CHOICE) to get internet connectivity on the go?
To my layman eyes, the law in this area seems ad hoc and gives special attention to handheld cellular devices. Fortunately, it seems likely that unlocking is legal. I seriously hope this case will be the first of many to push regulation of companies that maliciously sabotage their customers after they bought the product to maximize profit.
I'm currently a very satisfied Mac user (I'm writing this post from a 3 year old PowerBook G4 17" that still runs like a spotted assed ape) but these sorts of moves sour me on AAPL. I'll give them a few chances to mess up and be forgiven, but as a computer savvy person who's primary love of Apple is for how they've beautifully wrapped what's under the hood, I can just as easily go right back to Linux where I came from. After all, that's what I use on the desktop and in the server rack already. Why is it, just when Microsoft seems to have shot itself in the foot with Vista and controlling what users do with their hardware, that Apple jumps right of the cliff with them?
You moron.
I'm not an Apple fanboy. I don't own any Apple products, but I do know software and embedded development rather well (after 20+ years experience) and I also like to think I have sensible and objective opinions on matters like this. Something you obviously don't.
Oh, and stop swearing, it makes you come across as borderline illiterate and definitely someone in their early teens with a lot to learn about the world.
If the software in the phone is in an unknown state, then don't allow the upgrade to run.
Apple obviously wanted to brick the phones. Just about every other upgrade i've ever run checks the bits it's upgrading to make sure it's good to go.
The staff are actually quite good at matching the phone to the individual, it may not necessarily be the most expensive phone they have on offer nor might it be the coolest looking but it will be roughly what the customer is after.
It sounds like the sales staff are active advocates for the needs of the customer, like they listen to what the customer needs and earn their salary by tailoring a package to meet those needs.
That isn't allowed in the U.S. No Sales Manager would allow such a salesperson out on their retail floor. Here 'sales' is about maximizing return to the retail establishment at whatever expense. The customer is treated like a consumable.
Microsoft says legacy (serial/parallel) ports are bad. They don't obfuscate the hardware enough.
Well, if the contract is made so that most of the profit comes from the monthly fee, then you getting the contract but not using it is still a great deal for the provider. I guess in countries where unlocking support is mandatory, the contracts will reflect the possibility to unlock the phone.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Wasn't it announced *ahead of time* that the upgrade would brick unlocked phones?
That sure sounds like premeditation to me.
Nah, that sounds more like them taking into account that if you do some unsupported random modification, then there is no way for them to know what you did. And if they don't know what you did, how is the testing process going to know what to test for? Private APIs are always going to be changing, since they don't need to take into account third-party applications are using them and if they are they shouldn't be.
If you hack something then you should accept the risks associated with it. Yes I believe Apple should be making the iPhone more open, but until it is anything you do which is not officially supported is at your own risk.
BTW Haven't a number of people come up with solutions to unbrick the iPhone?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Is there also a law that an unlocked phone must be cheaper than a locked phone plus contract?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
One of the reasons for having unlocked phones is precisely that people can buy cheap sim cards when they travel and thereby create some competition.
So, I think "unlocked" means "unlocked".
What is now becoming clear is that many unlocked phones come through the upgrade unbricked, albeit re-locked. Considering that recognizing an unlocked phone should be a simple matter of a checksum, it seems clear that Apple was not intentionally "bricking" phones. There are reasons to believe that this is likely an unintended side effect of an update designed primarily to enhance iPhone security. If it was not intentional, Apple is in the clear, as they are under no legal obligation to debug an update to work with phones that have been modified in violation of warranty. And indeed, it seems that while Apple is under no legal obligation to do so, Apple sotres are restoring "bricked" iPhones. Moreover, it is not as if Apple failed to warn owners of unlocked iPhones that applying the update would likely harm their phones.
You don't need a contract to buy an iPhone. You can buy as many of them as you want for the regular price. Using it requires activation, which requires a 2-year contract. Once activated the phone is locked to that one sim card, and will not work with any others.
Why is it that every single thread about American businesses not having their own way in Europe ends up with comments like this? Is it a prick to the American ego that your beloved mega-corporations can't steamroll over the rest of the world like they can in the US?