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Lawsuit Claims Apple Forced Users To iOS 7 By Breaking FaceTime (appleinsider.com)
According to Apple Insider, a class-action lawsuit has been filed in California that claims Apple broke FaceTime in iOS 6 to force users to upgrade to iOS 7. The lawsuit says Apple forced users to upgrade so it could avoid payments on a data deal with Akamai. From the report: When FaceTime launched in 2010, Apple included two methods of connecting one iPhone to another. The first, a peer-to-peer technology, transferred audio and video data over a direct connection, while a second "relay method" used third-party servers run by Akamai to shuttle data back and forth. Initially, calls routed through Akamai's relay servers only accounted for only 5 to 10 percent of FaceTime traffic, but usage quickly spiked. On Nov. 7, 2012, a jury found Apple's peer-to-peer FaceTime call technology in infringement of patents owned by VirnetX. Along with a $368 million fine, the ruling meant Apple would have to shift away from peer-to-peer to avoid further infringement. Apple began to incur multi-million dollar monthly charges from Akamai as a result of the change. Testimony from the 2016 VirnetX retrial pegged relay fees at about $50 million between April 2013 and September 2013, rates that according to today's lawsuit were of concern to Apple executives. After eating rising relay service charges for nearly a year, Apple saw a chance to slow down or completely negate the fees in iOS 7. Among other system improvements, the next-generation OS included a method of creating peer-to-peer FaceTime connections without infringing on VirnetX patents. The only problem, according to the lawsuit, was that users continued to operate devices running iOS 6. Citing internal emails and sworn testimony from the VirnetX trial, the lawsuit alleges Apple devised a plan to "break" FaceTime on iOS 6 or earlier by causing a vital digital certificate to prematurely expire. Apple supposedly implemented the "FaceTime Break" on April 16, 2014, then blamed the sudden incompatibility on a bug, the lawsuit claims.
Apple would never do anything to force you to upgrade your iOS version, right?
They just pull shit like this as often as they can. My new favourite one is them forcing iOS 9 on iPhone 4S users when they need a new battery- if you take the device into the service centre, you're getting upgraded whether you want it or not. Enjoy your new slow ass phone with a replaced battery.
When people say "Apple doesn't force you to upgrade", it's pure bullshit. Sooner or later they'll fuck you somehow. Either with their complete and utter lack of backwards compatibility (just wait until 64-bit iOS builds become mandatory and they flush all the 32-bit arm compilers down the drain), or at the service centre, or with shenanigans like this.
Remember folks, Apple isn't in the business of making hardware worth upgrading to. They're in the business of planned obsolescence. That's how they keep the ball rolling these days.
No but to break it artificially is a different story
If these people (somehow) win, the precedent could be insane.
Game consoles do this all the time. You update or lose access to all online services, period. If this lawsuit wins, Sony and Microsoft could both be on the hook in a big way. I'm sure many other devices are similar.