Did Apple purposefully violate iOS 6 , render old iPhones unusable before their time ? That ’s the question at the philia of a new stratum - action lawsuit against the Cupertino company , which claim that Apple killed FaceTime in Io 6 to nullify paying hefty licensing fee .
The basis of the lawsuit , firstreported by AppleInsider , hail from details that emerged last year inVirnetX ’s patent misdemeanor suitagainst the companionship . VirnetX licenses patents to technology companies , and one of those patents covers peer - to - compeer audio recording and video transfer ; Apple used peer - to - equal transference to power FaceTime . When VirnetX , which has been described as a “ patent troll , ” came after Apple , the company switched to another electrical relay method acting for FaceTime , using the third - political party server Akami . That ’s where thing get tricksy . Apple had to make up Akamai for that host usance to the tune of millions and millions of dollar bill . front with VirnetX ’s patent infringement homage win and rise Akamai bills , Apple created a new peer - to - compeer protocol for FaceTime in iOS 7 .
comfortable , proper ? Everyone update to iOS 7 , Apple no longer impinge on VirnetX ’s patents and does n’t have to pay Akamai . The job : Many people decided not to upgrade to iOS 7 . According to email and documents filed in the VirnetX lawsuit , Apple allow a gimmick credential expire in iOS 6 on April 16 , 2014 , resulting in a FaceTime bug that could only be fixed by upgrading to iOS 7 , fundamentally forcing user to update if they wanted to utilize FaceTime .
The class - action at law lawsuit filed this workweek in California claim that because Apple knowingly made FaceTime inoperable on iOS 6 , that it was interfering in exploiter ’ machine . The suit claims that Old devices , like the iPhone 4 and 4s , were ineffective to lean iOS 7 properly and experienced bug and crashes . The case cites sensitive composition of “ widespread functionality problem ” at the meter .
The suit includes email between Apple technologist :
“ Hey , guys . I ’m looking at the Akamai contract for next yr . I understand we did something in April around iOS 6 to reduce relay race use , ” one Apple engineer publish .
Another applied scientist react : “ It was a bighearted user of relay bandwidth . We break iOS 6 , and the only way to get FaceTime working again is to elevate to iOS 7 . ”
The causa claims that Apple violated California ’s unjust challenger law . It ’s unclear what will come up of the lawsuit , considering that iOS 6 user had other video - call options to choose from and that Apple did n’t actually weaken the operating system and mandate user of older devices to kick upstairs .
