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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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
"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.
The debate between 1K = 1,000 and 1K=1,024 has been going on for decades. As long as the terms are precisely defined, I don't think there's a case there. And Apple documents exactly how much storage each of their devices comes with, including the footnote that "1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less." I wouldn't expect a consumer device to get into the details of directory blocks, etc. If a consumer wants to know how much storage the device has available, they can easily check by looking in Settings / General / Usage, and it shows the exact storage used and available. They'll even show you how much storage is used by each app, and for some apps (e.g. videos, podcasts) you can drill down into individual files in the app and delete them. It's really, really easy to manage storage in iOS 8.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
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.
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?
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... --
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.
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....
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.
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 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"
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 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.