Josh Ong
On Oct. 29, lawyers from Cohelan Khoury & Singer, a self-described "class action law firm," filed the suit in a San Diego County state court on behalf of lead plaintiff Bianca Wofford. The suit claims that Apple made "false statements" representing the iOS 4 upgrade as a "significant advance and triumph" in software for her iPhone 3G, but instead turned the handset into a "virtually useless 'iBrick.'"
The plaintiff alleges that the software update "rendered the iPhone 3G devices virtually unusable, constantly slowed, crashed or frozen." Apple's engineers are accused of waiting for "nearly 3 months" to fix the problem, despite being "acutely aware of the thousands of complaints lodged."
Wofford contends that Apple disallowed the downgrading of the iPhone 3G from iOS 4 back to iOS 3.x in an attempt to willfully manipulated consumers into purchasing the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4. According to the suit, the plaintiff's iPhone has gone from 99 percent reliability to "about 20 percent functionality" because of the iOS 4 upgrade.
According to Wired, the suit (PDF) requires judge approval to gain class action status.
In July, an Apple spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal that the Cupertino, Calif., company was aware of the reports of degraded performance on the iPhone 3G with iOS 4 installed and was looking into the matter.
During Apple's Sept. 1 media event, Apple CEO Steve Jobs specifically mentioned the iPhone 3G "bug" as an issue that would be resolved in iOS 4.1. After the update was released, informal speed tests conducted on an iPhone running iOS 4.1 seemed to resolve some of the sluggishness that users were reporting. The iPhone 3G running iOS 4.1 "didn't get stuck nearly as much," the test noted.
Amber Neely
Andrew Orr
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
176 Comments
at least, a way to go back to iOS3 shall be provided by Apple if allowing iPhone3G to go iOS4 knowing it'll "iBrick" it.
Good!
This lawsuit just doesn't make any sense.
It would probably hold more water if apple DID NOT support iPhone 3G cause then users would totally have to upgrade to get a taste of iOS 4. Dunno if this is just a case of spoilt consumers or greedy lawyers, but either way apple bears the brunt.
The goofy thing is how does it hit or miss certain phones. iOS 4 did not adversely effect the iPhone 3G in this household.
iPhone 3G is two years ago...they can't expect apple to contiunue supporting it like the 3Gs and 4
No, not really, as Apple was still selling the 3G up until the 4 was released, which was only a couple of months before iOS 4 was released. So this was not an ancient phone in that regard.
I agree that iOS 4 was too slow for the iPhone 3G (I own one). I was actually quite disappointed with that since on the Mac, each OS release seems to get faster. But I guess there's a little more urgency in the mobile space and they have to roll out before they are optimized.
But 4.1 was a big improvement. And class action lawsuits are just BS so these guys should go jump.