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posted by n1 on Friday January 02 2015, @10:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the size-matters dept.

Do you feel like your iPhone runs out of storage, just so Apple can sell you iCloud storage?  Well, there's a class action lawsuit for you.   Yesterday, Apple was sued in federal court by a class of plaintiffs alleging that the company engaged in unfair, deceptive, and fraudulent business acts and fraudulent advertising.

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  • (Score: 1) by Tork on Friday January 02 2015, @10:41AM

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 02 2015, @10:41AM (#130980)
    I'm not quite understanding the complaint, here. If you pay money for iCloud you don't magically get more space on your device. In fact, if you're trying to recover space by deleting videos you've recorded, even with iCloud you're far better off copying those files to your machine because if you delete the videos, they'll be deleted from the iCloud backup!
    --
    🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @12:02PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @12:02PM (#130992)

      Terrible summary with snarky iCloud joke.

      The point is that the device's storage capacity is significantly lowered by the OS. (and not properly advertised this fact).
      And that every subsequent OS update takes up even more space.
      Thus driving you to get a new device because you run out of space.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Friday January 02 2015, @01:44PM

      by Magic Oddball (3847) on Friday January 02 2015, @01:44PM (#131002) Journal

      That's not what the actual lawsuit is about. From TFA:

      The plaintiffs allege that the harm that flows from the less than advertised capacity on Apple devices is compounded by Apple’s “aggressive” marketing of iCloud, the monthly fee based storage system. In terms that are a bit dramatic, the plaintiffs write “[d]efendant gives less storage capacity than advertised [by about 20%], only to offer to sell that capacity in a desperate moment, e.g., when a consumer is trying to record or take photos at a child or grandchild’s recital, basketball game or wedding.” The complaint further criticizes Apple for not permitting the user to access cloud storage from other vendors, use an SD card or other non-Apple storage units, or freely transfer files between devices and a PC using a “file manager” utility.

      It goes on to add that Apple encourages users to upgrade to iOS8 without disclosing how much more storage capacity it will eat up (between 600mb and 1.3GB), then doesn't let users revert back to an earlier version after finding out the hard way how much more room it requires. (I'd say the customers should know better, but considering Apple markets to the most non-technical people fairly aggressively, it seems more like Apple should've known better.)

      • (Score: 2) by Teckla on Saturday January 03 2015, @02:16AM

        by Teckla (3812) on Saturday January 03 2015, @02:16AM (#131157)

        It goes on to add that Apple encourages users to upgrade to iOS8 without disclosing how much more storage capacity it will eat up (between 600mb and 1.3GB), then doesn't let users revert back to an earlier version after finding out the hard way how much more room it requires.

        I had to delete a lot of stuff in order to "upgrade" from iOS 7 to iOS 8, because the installation process needs a lot of temporary space. After the install, I discovered I lost a good chunk of storage permanently, because iOS 8 is a good chunk bigger than iOS 7.

        In addition, I discovered that my iPad 2 is really too slow for iOS 8. Even basic stuff like the software keyboard is really laggy now.

        Back when I bought my iPad 2, I think 16 GB of storage for the entry level model was pretty reasonable. Now with Retina apps (which end up requiring lots of storage), and with iOS ballooning in size, it's almost laughable that Apple sells brand spanking new iPads with just 16 GB of storage. And, of course, they really stick it to you when you upgrade to higher storage capacities.

        Considering the price of the flash memory that goes into iPhones and iPads has gone down in price something like 50% to 70% in the last 5 years, apps have gotten bigger, and iOS has gotten bigger, it's really obnoxious of Apple to keep selling entry level devices with just 16 GB of storage.

        But it makes sense from a profit point of view. Either people will spend far too much for higher capacity storage, or they'll pay for iCloud. Either way, Apple wins. (And customers lose.)

        Shame on Apple, imo.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by ground on Friday January 02 2015, @11:25AM

    by ground (120) on Friday January 02 2015, @11:25AM (#130988)
    At first read this law suit just doesn't make since. Windows PCs and Android phones also use some of the device's storage space for the OS. The real problem with Apple devices is that they use cryptographic signatures to prevent you from downgrading the OS. Found a show stopping bug in the latest IOS for your usage? That's just too bad. You better hope that Apple considers it a bug worth fixing or you'll just have to live with it.

    When it comes to storage and device speed this is a real problem. You cannot test the latest version of IOS on your device and downgrade if you do not like the result. Further, Apple's updates are delivered in compressed (IPSW) form so you have no idea how much space will be left for user data after the upgrade.

    If this law suit in some way helps users control their devices that they've paid a premium for it will be a good thing. Apple already was ordered by a court to allow users to delete updates that the user did not want to apply. The best outcome of this case would be the ability to downgrade to any IOS version if an upgrade caused problems for the device user.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Leebert on Friday January 02 2015, @11:31AM

    by Leebert (3511) on Friday January 02 2015, @11:31AM (#130990)

    You know what I would like? Apple to stop using IEEE gigabytes in the product name, but real gigabytes in the operating system.

    Pick one, dammit.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @12:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @12:31PM (#130997)

    For people to stop buying anything Apple.
    That way the company can die.
    Like it should.
    For continuing to being so deceptive.

  • (Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Friday January 02 2015, @02:29PM

    by cmn32480 (443) <reversethis-{moc.liamg} {ta} {08423nmc}> on Friday January 02 2015, @02:29PM (#131006) Journal

    Oh... wait... never mind...

    --
    "It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 02 2015, @04:54PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Friday January 02 2015, @04:54PM (#131037)

      You're just not using a large enough hammer for the installation. I guarantee you can eliminate any "out of space" errors you have encountered...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @04:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @04:14PM (#131024)

    Apple's customer base is mostly non-technical people and they are paying a lot more money for an imaginary sense of superiority. When the reality distortion field breaks down they aren't going to take any responsibility for having bought into it. They'll just sue.

    • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday January 02 2015, @09:15PM

      by isostatic (365) on Friday January 02 2015, @09:15PM (#131079) Journal

      Where as SN's customer base

      SWMBO has just got rid of her POS junk of an android phone and replaced it with a 5C. She's far happier, and it intergrates well with all other other stuff she's bought over the years because it just works.

      For those of us that couldn't give a stuff about style or money, and just want an easy life, the apple ecosystem is great, especially now you can share purchases and stuff across the family.

      Perhaps Microsoft can do something similar, but there too much shit you can buy that's got windows on the logo - I bought a laptop for a single-use program a couple of months ago, $400, came with a mindblowingly dumb keyboard, and took 2 hours ($180 of effort) to get clean enough to use, and far less rugged than a macbook air. I'm sure a nice windows 7 vanilla high end laptop works well, but the cheap crap leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

      Same goes with Android. Perhaps a Samsung S5 is fine, but the Ace wasn't. The top of the range samsungs are the same ballpark as a top of the range iphone anyway, and it doesn't tie in to existing things like appletvs, imacs, ipads and printers. Time will tell if the 5C is any good, or is a symbol of apple's demise.

      However I will say that there is merit in this class action suit, although the icloud business throws it off somewhat. An 8GB iphone with IOS8 has about 6GB of free space on it to start with, that's a fair old chunk of advertised space that's vanished.

      We run apple stuff at home because I like an easy life with quality hardware.

      • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday January 03 2015, @08:04AM

        by LoRdTAW (3755) on Saturday January 03 2015, @08:04AM (#131252) Journal

        ... but the cheap crap leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

        Of course a $400 laptop is a piece of junk loaded with crapware. What else did you expect? You get what you pay for. I have owned a few high end HP/Compaq laptops and they were plenty rugged. Even after the batteries died and they were too outdated for day-to-day use, they made great HTPC's or spare PC's. I gave them away and their new owners use them as desktops. Now I use a pretty decent Lenovo T410i with a 2.4GHz core i3 that has seen a lot of use and just keeps ticking. I spent $1500 on it when new, similar price and specs when compared to a Macbook air and it's about 4 years old. It was preloaded with Windows 7 pro and had very little by means of crapware, just a trial for some AV suite and a bunch of Lenovo apps that were all uninstalled in 15 minutes. I recently maxed out the RAM to 8GB, installed a 240GB SSD and Installed Ubuntu Mate. Runs everything I throw at it and is plenty fast. The Win 7 license was recycled into a VM that I now run on it for hose moments when you absolutely need Windows. My only gripe is the battery life which is only about 2 hours but it stays plugged in 99% of the time.

        They key is you need to spend a lot of money on a good laptop, regardless of who makes it. Though I will give apple credit for two things: Better all aluminum case design and stupid long battery life. Other than that there really isn't anything special hardware wise. It's mostly about their software ecosystem as you mentioned.

        And if you really needed Windows and didn't have any funky hardware requirements, why not just use a virtual machine? An OEM copy of Win 7 pro is about $139. VirtualBox is free and does the job nicely. You would have a full windows system running on your Mac with no bloat, crapware or annoying dual-booting if you used bootcamp. Plus you can use shared folders to make moving files between the host and guest as easy as drag and drop.

        • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday January 04 2015, @05:33AM

          by isostatic (365) on Sunday January 04 2015, @05:33AM (#131490) Journal

          You're right of course, however the usual call from the anti-apple brigade is it's overpriced.

          My own T410s came with 8GB ram and a 160GB SSD, and cost a small fortune. It's great, however the battery hasn't survived the ravages of the years, and my first one died of a physical hardware failure (screen detached at the hinge -- I fixed it with a bolt, but that failed too).

          When I'm on a 6 hour trans-US flight, like I am right now, in a plane which inexplicably doesn't have on board power, I want a battery that lasts.

          In this case I needed a single device to run a single program that had to be permanently installed in a studio. Cheap was fine, certainly wasn't going to mess around trying to get a VM running on expensive hardware, and have two operating systems to go wrong. I have an MSDN subscription for my sins, so I do have a windows 7 VM on the mac, and on my linux laptop. I find I'm using the linux laptop less and less, and the infighting over systemd, coupled with Thinkpad destroying their unique selling point by introducing a terrible keyboard on the T430, means it's not top of my list to replace.

      • (Score: 1) by PlasticCogLiquid on Saturday January 03 2015, @12:01PM

        by PlasticCogLiquid (3669) on Saturday January 03 2015, @12:01PM (#131297)

        "Just works!" I love that saying about Apple products. I make a living off fixing the ones that just "didn't work!"

        Let me repeat! I make a living off of it! :P

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @03:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @03:14PM (#131336)

    I've seen this same lawsuit headlined as "Rediculous lawsuit over iPhone space" and I think I saw one that had the word stupid in it as well.
    On the surface I agree but the more I think about it, the more I think maybe this won't get thrown out and we'll end up with things like:
    12GB* iPhone
    *4GB reserved for system.

    Or
    16GB* Nexus 6
    *32GB actual capacity. 16GB guaranteed for media storage, including user installed apps.
    1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes

    Would be sad if the court forced the lower number to be the one advertised though. Just my opinion.