Apple To Face Lawsuit For iMessage Glitch

An anonymous reader writes "We've all heard about iPhone users switching over to Android-powered phones and no longer being able to receive text messages from friends and family still using iPhones. Well, a woman with exactly this issue has filed a lawsuit against Apple, complaining that '[p]eople who replace their Apple devices with non-Apple wireless phones and tablets are "penalized and unable to obtain the full benefits of their wireless-service contracts."' To be specific, '[t]he suit is based on contractual interference and unfair competition laws.' She is seeking class action status and undetermined damages."

Comments

Anti-competitive

[Animats]

This is the kind of anti-competitive behavior that gets companies in trouble and causes regulatory crackdowns. Phone companies that make it hard to switch carriers. domain registrars that make it hard to switch registrars, and banks which make it hard to switch banks have all gotten in trouble for this.

Re:good

[imunfair]

I've dealt with this issue for people at work, and it's enough of a pain that for business accounts you just pony up the extra cash for a new iPhone, rather than trying to explain to multiple clients why their text messages are failing.

I'm glad someone is suing Apple for it, because it's a terrible design to hijack SMS messages without explicit user permission - especially if you don't immediately switch back over to using normal SMS after a failed iMessage delivery. It should be automatic, or at very most one manual resend - but they require multiple failures to be manually resent before switching back.

I really don't understand why anyone would defend this behavior since transparently hijacking any type of data without permission is obviously a violation of user trust, and possibly a privacy issue as well.