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Apple Faces $5 Million Lawsuit Over Allegedly Slowing the iPhone 4S With iOS 9 (mashable.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A $5 million lawsuit filed in New York federal court alleges that Apple's iOS 9 mobile operating software significantly slows down the iPhone 4S. According to the complaint: "The update significantly slowed down their iPhones and interfered with the normal usage of the device, leaving Plaintiff with a difficult choice: use a slow and buggy device that disrupts everyday life or spend hundreds of dollars to buy a new phone. Apple explicitly represented to the public that iOS 9 is compatible with and supports the iPhone 4S. And Apple failed to warn iPhone 4S owners that the update may or will interfere with the device's performance."

15 of 344 comments (clear)

  1. Darn! by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

    Would have got the frosty, but my iphooooone is toooo sloooooowelevetyone.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. Meanwhile in cuppertino... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Oh crap, not again, we're so screw.... wait! That's *million*...? Search the couch cushion in the lawyers-lounge and pay the ticket..."

    1. Re: Meanwhile in cuppertino... by Miamicanes · · Score: 3, Interesting

      there *is* one possible valid complaint they might have: Apple's refusal to allow reverting or reinstalling old versions after they quit issuing keys.

    2. Re:Meanwhile in cuppertino... by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 3, Informative

      The only graph you need to know about Android security

      In case you don't want to click, it's a chart of percentage of in use android phones with a known vulnerability. And it's real bad for android.

      Evidently people like the android model where a text message can pwn you... and you can't do anything about it because your update needs to go through your carrier and your manufacturer who both have incentives to make you buy a new phone.

    3. Re:Meanwhile in cuppertino... by fluffernutter · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Samsung Galaxy S3 here, still going strong. They said the USB port would fail, they said the plastic back was cheap or that the replaceable battery would make it break but they are all fine. I don't believe in replacing things that work, it's bad for the environment. Nor do I believe in artificially making things 'not work' through software.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  3. Could be easily solved by allowing ios downgrades. by sims+2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is there any reason other than vendor lockin for them to refuse to allow you to install an older version of ios?

    --
    Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
  4. Re:expectation? by Lab+Rat+Jason · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My wife and I just ordered new iPhone 6s' yesterday because of this exact issue. The issue is about expectations, but not in the way you think it is... we have been able to run apps in the past, that after the update no longer perform well. I've had to remove all of my music and much of my pictures just to provide enough free memory to operate. Previously the phone could switch between web browsing and other apps without issue, even with multiple tabs (pages) loaded at one time. Now if I switch from words with friends to the browser with just a single page loaded, then back to words, I find the latter app has been shut down and needs to completely re-initialize before I can use it. My expectation was SET by the way the phone performed before the update, and now it performs terribly.

    If you didn't experience this issue, perhaps it is because you were not using the phone to it's full potential.

    --
    Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
  5. iPad 2 as well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Thing was pretty much crippled. Even if you could get safari to not crash for 5 minutes it was still unusable slow. Should never have been certified to run on that hardware, unless as a blatant attempt to force upgrades to Galaxy tablets..

  6. Re: expectation? by slazzy · · Score: 4, Funny

    On behalf of us shareholders, thank you for upgrading!

    --
    Website Just Down For Me? Find out
  7. Re:expectation? by danomatika · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you didn't experience this issue, perhaps it is because you were not using the phone to it's full potential.

    Yep :)

    Then again, what if Apple decided people would be unhappy with the speed on iOS 9 so they decided to limit it to iPhone 5? I bet the same people grumbling about this issue would be grumbling about Apple's forced upgrades. They are stuck both ways via expectation. I'm defending the choices made but, considering how quickly the smartphone market is still developing, is it purely reasonable to expect a device multiple years old can run everyone up to snuff, that plus developers getting lazy with memory on new devices (same old same old).

  8. Re:Could be easily solved by allowing ios downgrad by jandrese · · Score: 4, Informative

    Compatibility with the baseband processor might be an issue since its firmware is usually upgraded at the same time and downgrades can be risky. The baseband is pretty scary really, a huge black box that runs underneath the regular phone OS and has total control over it. Also, it would be re-introducing security problems that were fixed in later iOS versions, which might come with its own liability problems. Plus, it would re-enable old jailbreaks that were fixed in the later versions.

    That said, as a 4s user I think this complaint is overblown and is some lawyer looking for a big class action payday. I do turn off the superfluous animations however, so maybe it's partially my fault that I'm not being tremendously inconvenienced. I guess I'm mostly hoping that Apple doesn't stop supporting older versions of the iPhone. I have an original model iPhone as well and most apps on the app store no longer work, even if they aren't big 3D extravaganzas. They're simply compiled against a version of iOS that is too new for that old phone. Pretty annoying when a simple to-do list app won't even work because your phone is too old.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  9. Re:My understanding is it depends on the carrier by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's not so much carrier but carrier tech. CDMA doesn't allow calls and data at the same time. GSM does.

  10. Re:expectation? by lucm · · Score: 3, Informative

    Enough already with the "fragmentation" bullshit. It is a LOT easier to create an app that works well on the Android tablet my grandma bought in 2011 and on my fancy new Moto X than an app that works on an iPod Touch bought in 2011 and an iPhone 6 with retina.

    Apple software and hardware is disposable and has a life expectancy of 4 years, if that. Meanwhile at the office we have a legacy piece of shit 20 years old VB5 application and it works on Windows 10.

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    lucm, indeed.
  11. Re:expectation? by fluffernutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Some people are more in tune with what their CPU is capable of. Some people may be more willing to settle for slowness; after all it is an old device *pout*. These are the types of people Apple love. On the other hand, other people will look at the OS and what it is capable of and what it does and realize that there is really no valid justification for the slowness issues.

    In other words, I think is is a 'willingness to settle' issue rather than an expectation issue.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  12. Re:expectation? by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Then again, what if Apple decided people would be unhappy with the speed on iOS 9 so they decided to limit it to iPhone 5? I bet the same people grumbling about this issue would be grumbling about Apple's forced upgrades.

    If they would let people downgrade OSes (or even if they didn't go out of their way to prevent people from downgrading the OS), then it wouldn't be a problem at all.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."