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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."
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
For our international friends OfCOM is the government watch body for communications, a few years back they made the statement that unlocking your phone so it will work on different networks is perfectly legal and carriers have to unlock a phone if asked to do so (not tried it myself.) Apple's recent american update would fly in the face of that and OfCOM aren't afraid to fine companies and force them to follow their rules. OfCOM is currently looking into forcing broadband adverts to be more truthfull so marketing speak like "upto 8MBPS" or "unlimited" won't be allowed (even if they are legal) for Americans out there this is to protect consumers and is a good thing.
I doubt its going to sell many units to the teenage "cool and hip" crowd because every teenager I know in the UK doesn't want to bring an expensive phone out on the town and I doubt your "power manager" type will end up with one because, from my albiet limited expearence with O2 stores. 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.
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.
Warnings were given multiple times. Apple release a press release, posted a warning before your computer downloads the new software and then posted an aditional and seperate warning (completely seperate from the EULA) before you could CHOOSE to install the software.
Am I the only person who thinks that Apple probably does not mind this lawsuit? Apple doesn't seem like the company who would want to sell service tied to one provider anyway, they would either want to sell devices that work with any provider or provide the service themselves. They were likely forced to lock the phones as a condition of getting on anyone's network, and starting their own network is impossible until more spectrum gets auctioned off. I'll bet that Apple was counting on a reaction like this, and has a provision buried in their contract with AT&T that says if a court forces them to unlock the phones, they can do so without invalidating their access to the network and AT&T can't complain.
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.