Slashdot Mirror
Apple Faces Class Action Lawsuit For Shrinking Storage Space In iOS 8
An anonymous reader notes that Apple is being sued over claims that iOS 8 uses too much storage space on the company's devices.
"Ever wonder why there never is enough space on your iPhone or iPad? A lawsuit filed this week against Apple Inc. alleges that upgrades to the iOS 8 operating system are to blame, and that the company has misled customers about it. In the legal complaint filed in California, Miami residents Paul Orshan and Christopher Endara accuse Apple of "storage capacity misrepresentations and omissions" relating to Apple's 8 GB and 16GB iPhones, iPads and iPods. Orshan has two iPhone 5 and two iPads while Endara had purchased an iPhone 6. They contend the upgrades to the operating system end up taking up as much as 23 percent of the storage space on their devices."
Why TF don't Apple have a slot for microSD card ike most smartphones these days.
Anyway I gave up on Apple in 1988
Not so easy. What if Apple is adding wasted space to their OS distributions in order to coerce/trick customers into upgrading the older, lower capacity devices? Bear in mind that I don't know that they are, but I think it's certainly okay to pose the question if the larger space required by the newer operating systems is actually being used by new features or not. It may not be illegal for them to do so, but it's certainly morally questionable, and if they're doing this, I'd at least like to know.
who brought us the "Google includes its own advertisements in search" complainers. They developed the product, so they get to say how it behaves or how much of their own product they include with their own product. Or should we conclude that these companies represent a significant presence in our life that we should all pay a mandatory fee to them and treat them as otherwise some sort of necessary corporations that simply have to exist? But then they would be like governments. Because that is the only way we will have a say in what they produce, except with our wallets.
Society use your Sciences
Apple already does report base-10 capacities:
http://support.apple.com/en-us...
Well, kinda? sorta? sometimes? tl;dr for me.
And how do you figure they are wasting space? Ever examined the content of their apps?
It's all about distribution issues. One-size-fits-all ends up requiring App developers to ship with 1x, 2x and now 3x bitmaps for the artwork. This does inflate apps, just as having multiple interface files specialization for multiple device sizes (~iphone & ~ipad xib files, or the bloating AutoLayout + Size Classes super storyboards). It's inevitable.
But Apple is also taking steps towards reduced bitmap footprints.
As of iOS 7, there has been FAR fewer bitmaps in the core OS in favour of lighter (visually and storage-wise) user interfaces.
With the introduction of PDF-based image assets that auto-compiles all the required resolutions, developers are now in a position to gradually rid themselves of the burden of maintaining multiple bitmaps (those where getting quite a hassle in large projects where every image was a trio of increasing sized bitmaps).
In OS X, PDF images are rendered natively and bypass the asset compiler. In iOS 8, the path is paved for abandoning bitmaps altogether.
So, no, Apple is not making their OS fatter on purpose. It's the cost of added features and backward compatibility that does that.
So they're upset that new features in an OS consumes more memory?
I felt like a million IT people cried out "DUH!" and then were silenced.
Just for reference, Orshan is a bankruptcy lawyer, but, while he's a named plaintiff, there are other lawyers handling the case. Christopher Endara was VP of a generic orthopedic screw manufacturer (Internal Fixation Systems, OTC stock IFIXQ) that went bankrupt; the company assets were bought up by US Orthopedics.
The class action filing can be read at https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2893306/1-main.0.pdf .
Not that anyone cares, but background is fun; let the fanboi wars begin.
You bought an 8 or 16gb iPhone. You got 8 or 16gb iPhone. How were you misled ?
There has always been an OS overhead in every computing device I ever seen, if you did not factor
that in when you bought an iPhone, it's your problem.
The core reality in anything having to do with personal computers or similar devices
is that older hardware in the computer industry is always made obsolete by increasing
requirements for storage or performance ( or both ).
The idea that older hardware should have made allowances for software which did not
even exist when the hardware was spec'd and manufactured is simply absurd.
The only hope for this lawsuit is for the plaintiffs to somehow make sure the judge or jury
are technically illiterate. However I am pretty sure that Apple's counsel will make sure that
the case does not proceed when such conditions exist, because a non-tech savvy person
cannot possibly make a sound judgement of the merits of this suit.
Frankly, suits like this should result in punishment for those who file the suits. It's such obvious bullshit
and it wastes the court's time and also wastes the resources of the company which must defend itself.
This just in: That 500 GB HD in your laptop doesn't actually let you store 500 GB of files because of the OS!
This thing will get thrown out if it ever gets to court to begin with. It's patently absurd if you have any idea how technology works.
And if a computer is advertised as having a 250GB HDD and 16GB of RAM, that should be after factoring in what Windows 8 will need, am I right?
Entitlement, and trying to profit from willful ignorance and opportunistic lawyers. All operating systems consume space. And upgrades usually take more space.
They contend the upgrades to the operating system end up taking up as much as 23 percent of the storage space on their devices
So, let them revert to the older version and gain back the space lost in the upgrade. Oh, they can't? C'est la vie.
"These misrepresentations and omissions cause these consumers to 'upgrade' their Devices from iOS 7 (or other operating systems) to iOS 8," it said. "Apple fails to disclose that upgrading from iOS 7 to iOS 8 will cost a Device user between 600 MB and 1.3 GB of storage space - a result that no consumer could reasonably anticipate."
Did they think that iOS 7 took zero space? Tellingly, the chart they provide doesn't have any figures on how much space the previous OS took up. Guess they only decided to sue AFTER they noticed people complaining about how much space iOS8 took, and never bothered to check how much space was consumed by the OS before the upgrade, so they don't even know how much space the upgrade cost them.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The Problem with this case is if they win, it would open the door for other lawsuits against other makers for same. samsung, LG, etc.
In the history of computers it has *never* been like that. You always have overhead in your MBR, your partition tables, your filesystem (block allocation overhead), your OS, and etc.
iOS has always taken up a percentage of your storage space. It's just getting more bloated as time passes. Don't like iOS 8's space requirements? Don't use it. Stay on iOS 6 or 7.
I personally don't like iPhones, especially their lack of an SD card slot. That's why i use Android. I haven't saw fit to purchase what I see as a lacking device and the proceeded to sue Apple over it.
that all apples already have a bite taken out?
Is this a serious question?! Apple wants to add wasted space to their iOS distributions in order to take up more space while downloading, use up more space during the upgrade, and once the upgrade is over, return the wasted space to the user (because once you've upgraded, the upgrade file is deleted).
And Apple would do this so that they can reduce the number of people running their latest iOS?
*ARE YOU SHITTING ME?* How the hell is this even an insightful comment?
Flash is already a bit weirdly sized because of extra bits for Flash Translation Layer to do block management. Maybe we just need flash parts that are big enough for a 1GB OS partition and don't even advertise the user visible partition. As a software engineer (on Android mostly) it would be pretty simple for the OS to manage a private partition because we already partition flash today.
The obvious would be to label devices as 7GB, 15GB, 31GB, etc. But unless all devices did this universally I don't think the public would accept that either. It would be better to secretly charge the consumer for the extra GB for the OS.
ps - I picked GB out of the air at random as a somewhat future-proof number for sub-64GB flash memories. Android uses significantly less than 1 GB, I assume iOS is approximately the same size.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
We want them to start putting the OS on its OWN memory space, while having a full 8 GB of the user to use. Apple could do this easily without ruining their profit margins. hey are purposefully holding back on flash memory and we shouldnt just sit back and take it. The profit rake from memory is OBSCENE right now.
Good-bye
...just provide a clear indication on packaging and promotional materials of how much space is actually usable.
Except they stop supporting older OS's and try and force you to upgrade, ending up with slower and worse experience. Speaking from experience with iPhone 4 and FaceTime stopped working last April and Apple refusing to update FaceTime to fix the issue.
Are you seriously saying that apple can be sued because of this? What about Windows surface? the same story right? the ads says 80 G space and end up having around 20. WTF is this. LOL
Robotic vacuum Information:
http://www.h5v.net/best-robotic-vacuum/
What's so fucking hard about giving us more than 16Gb anyways? I got a 120 Gb SSD for under $100. What's so fucking hard about a MicroSD slot? That would put this argument to rest right away.
And strangely enough, even though Samsung used up to half of the memory on a 16GB Android phone, that's not an issue to these lawyers.
You have too much crap on your phones. If you bought a 16GB iPhone, you bought a phone with enough capacity for your contacts, calendar, email, etc. It's not for storing all your music and photos. If you want to do that, buy one of the phones with more memory. Idiots.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
"And Apple would do this so that they can reduce the number of people running their latest iOS?" No, Apple would do this to have a "legit" reason to tell people to upgrade to the newest "magical and amazing" device.
We want them to start putting the OS on its OWN memory space, while having a full 8 GB of the user to use. Apple could do this easily without ruining their profit margins. hey are purposefully holding back on flash memory and we shouldnt just sit back and take it. The profit rake from memory is OBSCENE right now.
Or you can just not buy Apple. Also, all the devices mentioned are 16gig, not 8gig. And it's not like you need to drag along all your videos and photos in you iThingee ... you should be moving them to both a laptop and a USB key or flash card. That will free up memory. If you don't back up and you lose or break your iDevice, then what?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Imagine if they'd bought Microsoft's Surface. A Surface 2 with 32Gigs has 18Gigs free. Yes, I realise that there's a copy of Office in there, so what? Surface 2 Pro with 64Gig winds up with 47Gig usable.
It's all about what features/software the maker wants to include.
Don't people read specs before they upgrade?
Help me understand how temporary wasted space (the specific OP claim) that goes away (is not an issue) after the upgrade, is going to make people go buy a new phone again?
There has been a series of these hare-brained law suits against Apple of late. Their only aim, certainly their only effect, seems to be to damage Apple's name.
Add to these the series of articles, on the BBC no less, about "Apple's factories", re-hashing discredited reports from a couple of years ago.
Apple probably has its share of bodies buried in the South 40 but this is starting to sound organised.
Then they wouldn't be able to sell iCloud as much. Same reason they don't let you easily transfer files back and forth to your PC via USB: so they can sell you something else that does. Same reason Finder sucks shit so bad, so you need to buy a file manager that works. And Apple at the very least gets a cut of everything sold from their store. Not only are Apple products overpriced, they nickle and dime you to death on everything else. The OS on its own is alright. It's all the other shit etc. that I just talked about that keeps me from buying one. PCs work fine for me. As does my Linux laptop.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
No one has (yet) paid the lawyers to sue Samsung. Nothing is an issue to lawyers until someone pays them.
Thanks to Apple's recent victory in court, they can remove mp3s to make up the difference.
Up to half? My Galaxy S4 was definitely over half. Just shy of 60% taken up by the firmware and uninstallable bloatware.
It's already assumed on desktops and laptops: saying it has a 500GB hard drive means it has a 500GB hard drive, not 500GB of free space after Windows and all the other software is installed. Saying it has 8GB of RAM means 8GB of RAM, not 8GB of memory free after device drivers and services and Windows and run-on-startup programs have loaded. So why on a phone or tablet should 16GB of storage not mean 16GB of storage, why is it supposed to mean 16GB free after the operating system and software is installed? It may be simply that phones and tablets have so much less storage compared to desktops, so people are more sensitive to how much is used by the pre-loaded software. The solution to that, though, is simply to either buy a model with enough storage or one with an SD card slot so you can add storage.
I generally love everything Apple does and makes. That said, they botched iOS 8 from a user perspective. Everyone I know who had a small flash went and deleted all their apps and data first so they could download the update. They needed to tell people that they could do a tethered upgrade and use less space for the upgrade.
The way they did it reinforces the "upgrades are bad" mentality which is dangerous. Apple can do better.
Try Windows. Cheap Windows 8.1 (full Windows, not RT) tablets are popping up like mushrooms. The recovery partition, OS, and its first round of updates take nearly 16 gigs. And they're selling tablets with 16 gigs of storage. So you power on your tablet, connect to your network, install the updates, and you've got a few hundred megs of storage left. I bought a $100 32 gig tablet just to play around and see how it works. I've installed Chrome and a couple little games and have 9.85 gigs free. Out of the 23.5 gigs that's left after they lopped off a 5.2 gig recovery partition. 5.2 gigs which, unless something goes terribly wrong, will never be used.
Well, at least they're uninstallable. As for mine, they don't even give the choice, except to update.
Democracy is for the people; you only vote once per season and we'll do the rest of the work for you don't have to.
The real problem isn't the space the OS takes up, but the "Other" usage that seems to accumulate irrevocably over time. It's been a known problem for years and has never been addressed or officially confirmed. It can quickly consume even the highest capacity devices, and unless you're savvy to the problem the only solution appears to be to buy a larger device next time because you somehow messed up your phone.
The other problem is high capacity devices themselves, which command a large up front premium but also require a monthly fee to back up since Apple only provides a small amount of iCloud backup space for free. You might say that it's obvious that a company should charge more for more backup space, but then why is the first 5 GB free? When you're paying an inflated price for additional capacity up front, shouldn't that also cover backing up that capacity, especially with the collapsing cost of transit bandwidth and server storage?
There are reasons one could bring a suit against Apple, but small percentages of additional OS usage don't seem like a compelling one.
I don't, that means there will be wasted memory that i could otherwise be using. I'd rather free up space for an upgrade if I want it, than have excess space I can't use.
What "we" as consumers really want is less $ per GB for the upgrade iDevices, but that would require someone other than Apple producing decent hardware, when the trend is Chinese shitshops producing junk.
Yes, the upgrade took way too much space, 16GB devices that were almost full were a mess to upgrade.
Frankly, given the price of these things, 64GB as the default size, 128GB as the second size and 256GB as the third makes more sense now.
Apple wants me to spend money in the App Store and on iTunes? Great, make it easier to download stuff.
How do you buy more stuff when you have no room?
Gee who would have thought ridiculously high resolution retina displays would need such high resolution graphics across every application so things don't look like blurry trash, I can easily see a 20% jump as Apple updates graphics and adds new apps needing new assets. Plus 3rd party apps must do the same. This isn't Apple misleading people, this is people not understanding simple things.
Once they fill their iDevice with all their U2 and other IToons garbage, they fill up the free space so that there is no longer room for the bloated "temporary" upgrade package files to download. Then, they are stuck unless they remove some of their media (and THAT ain't gonna happen)...
I have similar shit happen with my old Android phone, running CM7 as that is all that's available for it, and large package updates like WasteOfSpaceBook run out of memory. Then I get to go all techy with it and delete caches and program data until there's enough free space left to download the updates, one of my favorite activities, truly a joy untold, not helped by the fact that the idiots keep updating the apps weekly for some stupid reason(s). The main problem with Android is it's not media files eating up all the space, since they sit in a different memory area. It's a pre-reserved "system" memory area that is very small to start with and the newer apps push the limit of that "free" space to the edge. Feh.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
What if Apple is adding wasted space to their OS distributions in order to coerce/trick customers into upgrading the older, lower capacity devices?
Incredibly unlikely given the lowest model iPhone 6 is a 16GB device, and the lowest model of the iPhone 3GS is a 16GB device.
Not that i think the Apple wasting space point is valid, but lowest 3gs was not 16 but 8 gigs. In fact 8 gigs was entry level even two generations later, in 4s.
I would think you were crazy except for the fact that they get rid of their higher capacity phones as they introduce new ones which leaves people wanting any decent amount of space having to buy the newest model.
Samsung doesn't have this issue because they consume most of the space with bloatware crap before you buy the device. If that's a problem, then you can return it to the shop as soon as you discover it (or just not buy it, if you've done your research properly before hand). This is different from the Apple case, where the extra space was consumed after purchase.
My first Android phone was an HTC Desire, which had 512MB of flash. The OS was on a separate partition to the user-accessible space, so it only allowed 100MB for apps that I installed. A big chunk of the 400MB or so was filled up with crap like Facebook and Twitter apps that I never used, and with things like the Android Browser that had to be upgraded because of security holes and ended up with the real copy in the 100MB. They put so much crap in the default image that they couldn't figure out how to squeeze 2.3 onto the device.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The difference is, if you installed Win2K on a machine that had been running Windows 95, and it runs like shit, you can put 95 back on it. If you 'upgrade' to IOS 8, you can't go back to 7. Even you can see that there's a difference there, I imagine.
All of my devices have microSD slots and have file systems that are accessible from my PC's file manager via USB. I won't buy one that doesn't meet these requirements.
By sheer coincidence, none of my mobile devices are sold by Apple.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
...the same 2 people filed a class action suite against all computer and operating system authors because their computers, after being booted up, don't have the stated amount of memory available for use.
Normally I'd lawsuits like this frivolous. However, Apple purposely does not add any memory expansion capabilities in the form of an SD card slot. This is one way to force the consumer to purchase a whole new model for more memory. Note: most other smartphones have memory expansion capability.
If only Apple provided another way to upgrade the OS that didn't involve the extra space. Maybe they could let you connect it to a computer and use iTunes.
Oh wait....
People are dumb and cheap and this is another frivolous lawsuit blaming a company because the end user was too cheap to buy enough storage. Any of these devices tablets, phones, even some laptops have limited upgrades or even no upgrades in memory or storage. It is what it is and I think many end users need to better figure out how to use cloud storage to their advantage or make better choices when buying hardware that has limited abilities to expand.
Microsoft did something similair with windows 8, and it resulted in a system that had lower requirements and used less resources than the previous versions if their operating system.
Why can't Apple do that?
i had an IPhone 4 16 GB for 4 years and never had a problem with storage. Same with my IPad 2. In August had to get a new phone so I went with the same 16GB and next thing I knew I didn't even have enough space to do the updates. I call apple and they were nice enough to help me get it through my laptop, and while they were at it updated my IPad too, so now I'm screwed on both. Not enough space. I have purchased space on the cloud but I'm in real estate. I have spent time on the phone with Apple asking why even bother selling something that doesn't have enough storage and then they try and sell me this case like thing that will make my phone larger and add GB to my storage, for only $169 for the cheapest. They are not just trying to sell iCloud storage. I want in on the lawsuit.
funny how no one is running and suing Samsung for their misrepresentation of space on their devices.
It's easier to get results out of a diet when you start out with a lot of weight to lose.
Here's the issue as I see it.
I owned an iPhone 4 for all four years of its lifeâ"release to EOL. It was the 16GB version and I got by by managing my music playlists carefully and occasionally offloading the photos. Even in iOS 7, this was fine. When I was deciding which iPhone 6 to buy, I figured that I'd pretty much work the same way I always had. Sure, I can't carry as much with me, but I'm rarely away from home so long that it matters, and I was already planning to buy the iCloud storage package.
Even still, the space problem on my 16GB iPhone 6 is getting on my nerves. I've had to delete and restore my music at least once. Connecting to my Mac first uses a bit less space, but not so much less that I don't have to delete things. The iCloud photo system now works well enough that I'm definitely saving space there, but as a whole I'm running much closer to my limits. I get low space warnings from time to time, and I've started to monitor whether or not I REALLY need certain apps on my phone.
I would've paid the extra $100 for the upgraded version if I'd known the delta between 16GB on iOS 7 and 8 was so large. Apples cloud services just aren't good enough for me to rely on, and I cross into the USA all the time, so I go fairly long periods without reliable mobile data frequently (I had to have a GPS app that relies on stored data, I can't stream music or podcasts, etc.)
When availability is a bit better, I may sell this one off to someone that more easily gets by on 16GB, but Apple shouldn't have put me in this position in the first place. I use and enjoy their products, and I'm willing to pay for what I needâ"I'm just irritated that what I need changed with no behavioural change from me. It's all on Apple here.
If you install the new iOS version, it occupies more storage than the old one did ... and if you choose to remain on the old iOS version then Apple will auto push the updates package onto your device where it will occupy even more storage just sitting there.
That still doesn't answer the question. Not being able to upgrade because you're out of space is different issue from the temporary (bloated) space usage OP claimed would make people buy a new iPhone.
And as someone else pointed out, you can always use iTunes to upgrade.
Enjoy shoe horning that 120gb SSD into that iPhone over there. It'll fit just fine, right?
If there was an older version of the app available that supports your OS. You are automatically given the option of downloading the old version.
1) factually wrong -- it's "if there is an app version available that [the developer has explicitly told Apple they are willing to still support]". Apple let's developers make the choice and the choice defaults to taking away old versions.
2) functionally wrong -- No matter how computationally powerful phones and tablets get, they are not computers. Fewer and fewer apps (especially for useful ones) actually run on your device -- the only thing that runs on your device is the client end so whenever the developer chooses to stop allowing your old client version to connect to their server then your old app version dies.
Every iCloud user has 5gb for free. You remember 5gb, it's 3gb more than DropBox starts with. 20gb is a buck a month.And 1tb costs identical to DropBox's 1tb plan. It's really not all that expensive.
iOS used to be a pain to transfer files via USB. You had to use iTunes, and you could send files into specific apps only. The new iCloud Drive isn't quite as versatile as a DropBox, but it's awfully close, especially for simple things like copying a file in (without needing the cable, btw).
I don't know. I make my living in IT, but I manage to use Finder without buying a third party file manager. But even if I did, I'd probably go right to PathFinder, which I owned a copy of years and years ago when Finder truly was much worse than it is today. And incidentally, it's available without the App Store and Apple makes no cut on the sale of it.
Nobody begrudges you sticking to Linux on a laptop or refusing Apple products because they have limitations. Well, obviously this is Slashdot, someone will very violently begrudge you, but that's unavoidable. Most people don't care / don't mind. But the truth is, for the vast majority of people, off the shelf, non-rooted or jailbroke Apple or Android phones do 99.9999% to 100% of what most people care about.
Believe me, I'm not (strictly) an Apple apologist. My phone is the 2014 Moto X (no flash slot, by the way, just like the Nexus and many other non-Samsung phones). My current laptop is a Surface Pro 3. And my current tablet is an iPad Air.
It's all balance. I loved my old MacBook Air, but for $200 more than a new one I chose the Surface Pro, which is lighter, has the stylus I wanted for taking notes in meetings without banging on a keyboard, and has a high definition screen. I loved my old iPhone, but the Moto X was far cheaper when I went to upgrade (under $400 unlocked, contract free thanks to the Black Friday $150 coupon), and let me do some customization I really wanted to do on a phone. And on the Tablet side, I wasn't interested in an Android tablet (I've certainly tried my fair share), because for media consumption, there's nothing that compares to the library of apps that are iPad native.
It is not to force an upgrade in a phone. It is for the future of all storage. They have been treating everyone like a drug dealer. I'll give you a little CLOUD storage and the when you need more I'll charge you for it. It is all about CLOUD service.. Example is Microsoft and the new Office programs. A service on the cloud and only a for a renewable subscription fee.
Nexus doesn't. Moto X doesn't. Samsung does. Apple doesn't. LG does. It's not like the entire industry either does, or does not supply removable memory. And even those that do, who says it's easy? For awhile, I had a Sony Xperia Z Ultra. I sold it on eBay for a slight loss because I got tired of it. Quickly. Only had 16gb, but I didn't care, because it had that vaunted memory slot. Then I got the phone, and perhaps it's easier in Android 5.0, but on 4.X here's what I had to do to get things off of internal memory:
1) Insert a Micro SD card formatted with two partitions, one Ext4 for app storage and one FAT for data storage.
2) Root my phone.
3) Install a SU utility.
4) Purchase and install an app that would let me "link" app data to the SD card, since there was no built in way to move apps (I understand some phones have the capability, others don't).
5) Purchase and install FolderSync to handle application data moves, for apps that didn't support specifying a non-standard directory.
Then I had to live with the fact that I could no longer stream TiVo content to the phone, thanks to step #2 above.
So while my Sony had 16gb internal and 64gb external, and the performance on the external was actually pretty good, since I bought a quality, premium, fast SanDisk Ultra MicroSDXC card, and actually became terrific after installing and configuring a tuning app that let me change the caching settings and other parameters, I have an easier time today with my Moto X 32gb. Less storage, less headaches. And TiVo works again.
I understand some of the why (try to make casual pirating of apps harder by keeping them on a partition type that most people outside of Slashdot won't be able to read), but frankly it just wasn't worth it. I'm a techie. I had no trouble getting those steps figured out. I just don't want to do that. Then Lollipop was about to ship, right after I sold my phone, and I thought "I wonder if all those apps still work, or what the new process is". I just didn't want to go through with that. Kudos to Samsung for support SD slots. I hope moving apps is easier, but I hate their UI so I never consider their phones. Had an S3 once. Hated it. I'm sure TouchWiz is much better now, but I like Google's own interface best. So I had a Sony Xperia GPE and now a Moto X Pure edition.
Incidentally, Microsoft has figured it out better than Apple or Google and their phone OEMs. Got my kids a Lumia (hard to pass up for under $50 at their age when they just want to play the few games that exist for every major platform anyway). Just tick a box and all apps default to SD storage, except for an occasional app whose developer prohibits the behavior, in which case you're prompted and allowed to install it on internal memory.
You had a shitty phone...
Apple products are still shit though....
Why the f*ck are you even posting then? That is irrelevant to the topic.
Not quite. I might not install an OS at all on the computer; could just boot it off from a live CD and all the 250GB will be at my disposal. The point is that apart from Apple, no other OS vendor (count Unix vendors out) sells you a computer directly - the OEM bundles the OS for you; and in some cases you can opt out of a preinstalled OS. With Apple you can't. I think the litigants do have a point here; if Apple claims to sell a xGB device, then all of the xGB should be available to the user; akin to boot space of a car. How would you react if your car's gearbox takes up 23% of the boot space?
If Apple is using "too much space" of their 16GB, how much do they think is using ENOUGH space...and how did they arrive at that number?
Since most phone vendors don't update the OS, you can never loose that storage space on our googled phone. Woo hoo!
That needs to be read in a Morpheus voice...
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
You are definitely right that they have taken steps to reduce the OS footprint, but I have a few issues with how their storage works:
1. The amount of space that they advertise doesn't include the OS and other apps meaning that if you purchase a device expecting 16GB to put music on, but learn that you have 12GB of usable space then that may cause me some annoyance in how I load my music and apps.
2. I believe another Slashdot article covered this but the total storage of apple devices in the first place tends to be rather low, and it was speculated that this is deliberate so that Apple can force people on to other services like iCloud to store their media which locks customers into their products.
3. On an 8 GB iPhone I had to delete every piece of media and almost every app just to be able to download the ios updates.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
Yeah, and you'll quickly blow through your data plan if you try to actually access all of that data over the air. Not to mention the fact that you're SOL if you want to play your tunes but you happen to be in a dead spot, riding the subway, or etc.
Apple customers complain about the silliest things.
You had a shitty phone...
Apple products are still shit though....
That's a laughable statement.
How can 16GB not be enough for apps? I'm really just wondering, not meaning to troll. I have more than I need in about 2GB: maps, facebook and a few other social networks, VNC, terminal emulator, some work apps like Trello, and a few toys. Do you need to have twenty variations of Angry Birds available at all times, or what?
Further down the tangent, I also don't have trouble keeping a good supply of music without using any cloud bullshit. It's not hard to set up syncing to rotate your music often enough to keep things interesting (while maintaining a core playlist of favorites). I guess if I had to go on a sudden multi-day hike through remote wilderness, I would run out of music, but that's not really a concern. I avoid cloud/streaming shit like the plague, and still consider the SD slot to be a negative; it takes up space, is failure-prone (in my experience at least), and contributes little.
On topic, I wouldn't mind if there were a notice like (*: Operating System occupies 3GB of space. Future updates may change this capacity, see inside for details), but I still think that this falls into the "common knowledge" side of things, like knowing that a 2x4 is measured in the unprocessed size, and in reality it'll be somewhere around 1.5"x3.5".
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
On an 8 GB iPhone I had to delete every piece of media and almost every app just to be able to download the ios updates.
Or you could have plugged into iTunes and upgraded, which would have downloaded and stored the IPSW firmware image on the computer and simply overwritten the existing OS image, not requiring the extra temp space.
Everyone bitched about not having over-the-air upgrading, right until they started bitching about how much storage it takes to do over-the-air upgrading.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I recently spent some time hepling a friend with his new iphone 6. I was not impressed. I would not buy a phone or a tablet that doesn't have a MicroSDHC card slot. My Lenovo tablet (its a couple of years old) has a MicroSDHC card slot. I have a 32Gb MicroSDHC card installed in it. It lets me install apps to internal memory or the MicroSDHC card. Even if it didn't, its worth having a MicroSDHC card slot just to save the internal space for apps instead of your data.
Many people do not (and never will) understand how storage works on a phone or tablet, as it is different than a PC (and many people do not understand how storage works on a PC either). (Cr)apple products are always vastly overpriced for what you get. Its price gouging pure and simple. (Cr)apple somehow managed years ago to convince idiots that their products were some sort of status symbol. Want to know what the i in iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc...stands for? It stands for iDiot!!!!! As in the iDiots that paid 3x to 5x or more for a product that is far inferior to less expensive but better made products on the market!
Except you are still missing what everyone else bitching about this is missing - you can PLUG YOUR FUCKING PHONE INTO YOUR COMPUTER, AND IT'S STORAGE IS USED FOR THE TEMPORARY SPACE INSTEAD. You know, just like every iOS upgrade there ever was before they introduced over-the-air upgrades that require temp space on device.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Never heard of Wi-Fi?
I've always had the lowest memory size in my iphone - never noticed a problem with upgrades. Computer and device upgrades have ALWAYS taken up more space and been slower in performance since the first computer I owned back in the 1980's. Suing apple over this is just stupid. They should sue EVERY device maker because every upgrade consumes more memory and works slower on the old hardware. This is a case of lawyers wanting to get rich off of a profitable company for doing something everyone in the industry has been doing for decades.
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002). May use without Persimmons
Use a fucking USB cable. Then it doesn't take the space required to have two full OS versions on the device at the same time.
Bunch of fucking whiners want to sue over every stupid little retarded thing. OMG I didn't read the fucking documentation and then it did the documented behavior! Where's my lawyer?!
hahahahahahha, burn
AC says "wifi", but also- everyone's data plan is different. I go for under 1GB per/month so yeah, I predownload everything, but I have friends with [nearly] unlimited plans on competitive (not at&t/verizon) carriers
The problem with that again is that it pressures me into using the Apple ecosystem. Apple is free to encourage me to use their other products and services, and many of them are quite useful, but if it is found that Apple has been deliberately gimping their hardware to pressure me into using their services then that is a legitimate anti trust issue. Personally I don't use any of Apple's other services, and I don't feel I should have to in order to do something as simple as update my OS.
Proving that Apple has been deliberately downgrading hardware to promote their services is probably impossible unless they find another video with Jobs being a dumb ass, but the limitations that I feel in their design still stand. And lets be honest. Packing a few more GBs into their $500 phones probably won't increase the cost in any meaningful way.
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
I just bought a Samsung Galaxy S5 with 16GB of onboard flash. Fully half of it is consumed by Samsung and Verizon crapware that I can't delete.
That's awesome for you, but Apple's intended customer base isn't going to deal with all that just to use their devices.
Uhm, 4.X only prevented WRITING everywhere to the SD card... Even unupdated file managers should have been able to open and "get things off of the memory card".
Putting things in specific places might have required the steps above (though you could just put it in the app specific folder and respective apps should have picked it up thanks to the mediascanner), but that's not what you said.
That would be a fail move that would make upgrades very difficult. What should be required by law is that you market it as "8GB, 4 usable" and "16GB, 12 usable" assuming the OS took 4GB. If the next iteration OS takes 5GB then it's up to you to decide whether you want to install it or not. Personally I do think you should be able to OS downgrade, but that's another battle.
I refuse to sign
I know a lot of people who flat out refuse to connect their iPhone to iTunes after the whole "iTunes deleting everything off your phone" debacle a few years back.
Giving non-fanbois a $200 credit to the Apple store after your software ate 5 years of grandkid pictures isn't going to make them stop being gunshy.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Google Drive user starts with 10Gb+ for free. Just FYI
Sorry, but I take deleting most media on my test iPhone, over having to install both Windows and iTunes(ARG!) on my computer.
at all the i fans in the Samsung thread lambasting Samsung for "bloat" and using a lot of internal memory for the OS...
And Samsung has more features and overhead to deal with. =P
So you're running a bunch of Nokia N900s? Because Android doesn't support USB Mass Storage anymore, just MTP, which means you don't have the filesystems accessible. You have a representation of some files that you are allowed access to.
It is to Apple's advantage to bloat up their OS upgrades beyond any reasonable technical need in order to force upgrades. A clear conflct with the customer, and since the customer has no real choice but to accept these OS upgrades, this practice seems sure to be on the wrong side of antitrust and/or consumer protection laws. However this is a self-remedying situation: by effectively making their products less useful and more expensive, Apple accelerates its market share erosion. In the not too distant future, only your mom will own an iphone.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
My G3 and my old S3 both had a "Move to SD Card" action in the app management screen. Did it work for all apps? No. But it worked for most. I both devices were running 4.2 or higher.
They needed to tell people that they could do a tethered upgrade and use less space for the upgrade.
I think people are forgetting that OTA updates on iOS were introduced in iOS5. That was October, 2011. Just over three years ago. We DIDN'T have OTA updates on iOS for longer than we have had them. With that said, sure, they could have made it more obvious (though wasn't there a dialog box that mentioned that option?) but I still don't see this as a huge issue.
That is only partially right. There was no 8GB 3GS model while the 3GS was current. The lower models were only previous editions. Based on Apple's timeline you could get any of the following concurrently (note I'm only listing 8GB and 16GB models, all 32GB and 64GB models were released with the 16GB ones:
2010:
iPhone 3G 8GB
iPhone 3GS 16GB
2011:
iPhone 3GS 8GB
iPhone 4 16GB
2012:
iPhone 4 8GB
iPhone 4S 16GB
2013: - bucks the trend slightly with the discontinuations:
iPhone 4 8GB (continued from previous year)
iPhone 4S 16GB (continued from previous year)
iPhone 5 16GB
2014: - Back to normal:
iPhone 4S 8GB
iPhone 5C 8GB (out of band release 6 months after the release of the 16GB model)
iPhone 5C 16GB
iPhone 5S 16GB
Current Lineup:
iPhone 5C 8GB
iPhone 6 16GB
iPhone 6+ 16GB
Apple hasn't released a current model 8GB phone since 2008. The only 8GB models released were released at a time when the successor came out to offer a severely discounted alternative to the current model and get people hooked for future upgrades.
My point still stands. The current bottom of the range model iPhone 6 is no less specced than the bottom of the range iPhone 3GS when it was released. The 8GB models made up a pittance of Apple sales due to their weird release dates.
Apparently they're not fully employed so the lawyers are having to make up absurd cases. Or maybe the lawyers are just starving.
The automatic updates of various apps, sometimes 2-3 a day suggests collusion in eating up storage memory. I only have 12 apps (that update with 20+Mb each time) and I now have no space to update for iOS 8. My 16 Gb iPad can no longer update - they all seem to be working together to eat up memory space, so you have to buy iCloud space. Cartel springs to mind.
Not to be too pedantic, but MTP actually has certain benefits over USB mass storage. It doesn't require the SD card be unmounted first, which causes many problems with appa which use SD card storage. Also file reads are atomic on MTP which is also important for these devices.
There are some downsides to MTP but practically it works. And is a lot better than Apples nonexistent file system access.
Have a nice day!
MTP is nonetheless a standard and my file manager of choice has no problems with it. I can easily copy media and other files back and forth between various mobile devices, PC, and network drives from my desktop.
It's true that there were issues with MTP support in Linux at one time, but my distro's handled it without any problems for a couple of years now.
There are certainly limitations in the protocol (no parallelism, no true remote edit), and I would not want to see it take over USB mass storage wholesale, but it does work atomically at the file level, and it's oblivious to the native file system on the device. IMO it works relatively well for the purpose for which it appears to be intended.
BTW, I don't own a single Nokia device.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I bet that your unixbeard is magnificent and odiferous.
The lawyers will get zillions, each user $10.
Yep, your Mom keeps stroking it while she sucks my cock and says the same thing...
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
You had the option to get more storage when you bought your phone. Apple didn't force you to buy an 8gb device.
You are nuts. Guess what, I can erase OS X off my new Mac's internal drive upon receiving it without ever booting it, and run it off a live CD as well. No company on the face of the planet that sells a computer with software preinstalled advertises the amount of free space available after all the preinstalls. Here in reality, the capacity of the device is advertised, regardless of how much of it is used by any preinstalled software. Not to mention capacity is still advertised in the archaic 1GB = 1 billion bytes method, not true GB's we all use and see on our devices.
Cool story bro. Have anything to say relevant to the issue?
They do tell everyone. It's no secret.
You surely can erase OSX off your Mac but what else are you going to put on it? Will it actually run Linux or Windows? By running another OS i imply getting the same level of functionality as Apple's OS provides. As for the archaic GB notation; every hard disk manufacturer/OEM reseller these days adds a footnote in tech specs saying that the actual storage space will be lesser than advertised space; as the OS uses a different (i.e. proper) method to compute the available space. I wonder in what age and what part of the world are you living in.
How can i sue Apple, after upgrades to the iOS 8 operating system in my mini iPad, my movies, music and videos were erased. New Apps that i don't want were added and I have no space. I've been 2 times at the store and hours with the chatting people. Have documentation of everything. by the way, they treated me like an idiot senior.
Windows, Linux, Unix, whatever you throw at it... or use a live CD and have the full HD wide open...