Apple Faces Class Action Lawsuit Over iOS Wi-Fi Assist (appleinsider.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A class-action suit has been filed against Apple in U.S. District Court over Wi-Fi Assist being turned on by default in iOS 9. Wi-Fi Assist is designed to switch to cellular data when a user is trying to perform an action over the internet on a poor Wi-Fi signal. This has the natural side effect of using cellular data. Since iOS 9 turned it on for many users, they weren't necessarily expecting that extra use, causing some of them to exceed their data caps. A former Apple employee who was in a leadership position for Mac OS X Wi-Fi software has commented on the issue, saying that the Wi-Fi Assist mess was unavoidable given how Apple's management treats that part of the business.

Quoting :"[O]ne particular directorial edict which I pushed back against at the end of my tenure sticks out as not just particularly telling, but deeply misguided: 'Make it self-healing.' Self healing in this context meaning that the networking system, Wi-Fi in particular, should try to correct problems that caused the network to fail, which, if you have spent any time trying to diagnose networking issues is a clear misunderstanding of the issues involved. ... Asking the devices which connect to this vast complex network of networks to detect, and then transparently fix problems in the infrastructure without the permission of the administrators is, well, it's absolutely the pinnacle of buzzword driven product management. Real pointy-haired boss territory."

Comments

a good feature is pointy-hair boss territory now?

[Escogido]

are you kidding me?

this is a pretty awesome feature, and very apple'y in that it does things under the hood without bothering the user with stupid prompts. as long as the user consented to it, there should absolutely be no problem with it. now since it seems they didn't request that user's consent, and since people were charged money because of that, looks like there may well be grounds for a lawsuit. but the quote from an employee presented doesn't mention that!

there *may* have been technical (and possibly even legal, at least it seems from the tone in the quotation) problems that management didn't want to hear about it, and there *may* have been good reasons to invoke the PHB's image - but, as Wikipedia would put it, {{Not in citation given}}.

Can smartphones know their data cap?

[swb]

It would seem to be pretty trivial to implement a feature where the phone is aware of the account's data plan details (used, available, etc).

The phone could then have some user configurable warning threshold when the plan's available data goes below that threshold.

Apps and features (like wifi-assist) could then have a setting that allow/prohibits them to use data when the threshold has been exceeded.

If there was some standardized method of obtaining and communicating this info, shared data plans could manage these settings on the carrier account page per device -- individual caps, thresholds relative to individual caps or total shared caps.

Re:Can smartphones know their data cap?

[thegarbz]

The phone could then have some user configurable warning threshold when the plan's available data goes below that threshold.

Android phones already have this.

The rest of your idea sounds great. It would be awesome if the system could define priority levels for traffic so that some traffic cuts off (youtube etc) if you're in a "warning zone". I can already set it to automatically cut off when I exceed my limit however..... that depends entirely on the ISP metering the same way the phone does. Somehow they never agree.

Re:An new case has to be filed be filed

[PopeRatzo]

To ban the sale of apple devices to people who dont know to turn off a default optiion.

That would mean losing about 90% of iPhone sales.

Remember, Apple has "strategic partnerships" with wireless providers. Do you really not think there was a discussion about this anywhere among the Apple executives and the brass from the telecoms?

If Apple is being sued ...

[Alain Williams]

how about a class action against Microsoft which made millions of PCs download 3GB being MS Windows 10 -- just in case they wanted to upgrade. This pushed people over monthly broadband limits, sometimes at great expense. Apparently possible to disable, but the default was on.

While they are at it: another class action suit for spying on their users and exporting private data to the MS servers; again on by default and impossible to switch off completely.

Re:It's a good idea, but shouldn't be on by defaul

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

He's not complaining that the data is metered, he's complaining about how the phone companies actually do it. For example: My wife's AT&T phone has the bare-minimum $15 plan. 200 megs a month. She's under wifi 99% of the time so we go as cheap as possible. We had to stay in a hotel one night and their wifi failed, meaning her phone flipped over into using LTE data. She got a text saying she had used three-quarters of her monthly allotment. Since it takes them some time to send that message, I used the AT&T app to see where she landed. It said 190/megs. She turned data off on her phone. Several hours later I got a text that she had gone over 200 megs and $10 had been added to my bill to give her another 200 megs, 40 of which had already been used. I called AT&T and asked how she could have used data when it was off. They said that it takes them four hours for them (and the app I used) to reflect our actual data usage. I asked them to set it up so that when her data goes over to just stop sending data when it's out. They said they cannot, their system was not set up that way. I told them that was bunk. When I had an iPad with a data plan through them. as soon as I ran out of data I got a message asking for permission to be charged for another allotment, clicking no cut me off. AT&T most certainly can do this but they choose not to. As a 'courtesy' they took off the charge which, and this is my favorite part, is the same amount it would cost me to get two gigs instead of 200 megs. Their approach is predatory and intended to trick their customers into going over. Oh, remember how I told you they mysteriously cannot turn off data when you run out? I asked why I would ever go through them to provide a cell phone to a misbehaving teenager if he or she could carelessly run up my bill? She was happy to tell me that for five dollars a month I could add parental controls to the line that included capping data usage. You know, the very service I was just told they cannot provide. I'm willing to bet that the original poster has a similar story to tell. American phone companies don't use metered data, they use tiered data, and if you had that sort of plan for power or water you'd be very upset the moment your routine changed.