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Apple DRM Lawsuit Might Be Dismissed: Plaintiffs Didn't Own Affected iPods
UnknowingFool writes The lawsuit involving Apple and iTunes DRM may be thrown out because the plaintiffs did not own the iPods for which they are suing. The lawsuit covers iPods for the time period between September of 2006 and March of 2009. When Apple checked the serial numbers of the iPods of the plaintiffs, it appears they were not manufactured during this time. One plaintiff did purchase an iPod in 2005 and in 2010 and has withdrawn from the suit. The second plaintiff's iPod was manufactured in July 2009 but claims purchasing another iPod in 2008. Since the two plaintiffs were the only ones in the suit, the case may be dismissed for lack of standing.
Personally I own a Mac where the DVD superdrive drive broke right away. My wife's Macbook has a dying battery (after just a year or two), an audio-out that insists on outputting to S/PDIF (which has never actually been used), and had a hard drive that died. After I replaced the hard drive with one that worked, I found out that Mac disables TRIM support in non-Apple SSD drives and performance will steadily decline.
Is that what I pay the extra money to Apple for? Shouldn't I be getting better hardware, not worse? I use Linux and Windows as well, and honestly the only hardware problem I've ever had has been laptop batteries slowly degrading. And who gives a fuck about the OS. On any of them, I just load the program and it works. Windows has more games, but the difference between Mac and Linux for me is the color of the icons.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Apple defends its action and claims it was just worried its users were at the hands of hackers. Apple’s security director Augustin Farrugia informed the court that hackers “DVD John” and “Requiem” were potential threats to users and thus removed non-Apple music files from iPods. Farrugia reasons Apple did not inform users of the deletion because the company does not want to “confuse users” with “too much information.” ....
http://www.digitaltrends.com/m...
Ultimately, I value my time enough that I will generally not purchase things I think will break and require fixing or taking to a repair shop. I'll spend extra on a dependable product. Apple computers have shown to not be dependable, despite being more expensive, and despite not having an OS that revolutionizes how effective you are with your computer or whatever Mac OS is supposed to do for you.
Even a warranty isn't a real solution, because obviously there's time required to deal with Mac and find out what the issue is, and then get the computer replaced. They don't send a technician to your house while you're away at work. Personally, a friend of mine had a Macbook refuse to respond after a standard OS upgrade. Eventually, after speaking to customer service and driving to the genius bar a couple times, he was given a new computer. My friend charges by the hour (not a hooker lol), and with the amount of time he put into it he could have charged several hundred dollars. At the prices involved, it makes more economic sense just to buy a mid-priced non-Apple laptop and throw it away every time anything goes wrong.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
or perhaps, allegedly, Apple's legal team put these people (the plaintiffs) up to it just so they could easily dismiss future suits of this type. I wouldn't put it past them.