Apple, AT&T Sued for iBricking, Monopolistic Behavior

Well it finally happened. Apple is being sued for ibricking. I knew it was going to come to this.

Apple and ATT Sued for ibricking

More info on Apple/ATT class action lawsuit.

Apple, AT&T sued; iPhone

Ayup, and there's all those who still think Apple is a light in the darkness. I first knew that Apple wasn't shooting straight when I heard about their attitude towards third-party hardware manufacturers.

I sit here writing this on my beloved macbook, I'm a self confessed Apple lover!

BUT...

This behaviour is not acceptable. They smash the competition for ease of use and out-of this-world design.

Steve Jobs is a genius, although this time he's gone a little off the rails. Time to put that right. I completely understand why many people view Apple users as elitest, toffee noses pillocks.

Right now that's exactly how Apple are acting!~!

MonKey

I agree that Apple's behavior seems 'unacceptable' here, and they do try to run a tight ship over their proprietary products, but I as a long time user of Apple products I can attest to one thing. Apple has always tried to give the user what they want, and often change the 'firmware' of their products to make them 'copyright' friendly.

The first versions of iTunes had no online webstore (Which is a whole different bag of worms), and instead of 'streaming' files it acted almost like a peer to peer where you could drag your songs from the 'network' to your desktop. With at least 100base ethernet installed in every jellybean iMac and up, a college campus became a very easy place for music files to be shared with the group (The Ability to share other files was just as easy, but the lobby behind Software was not as great as Music) With the college dorm intranets being tied to the global interweb, the phenomena spread fairly quickly. This movement also coincided with the launch of the original iPods, which were actually portable firewaire harddrives that could play music. (I am being fairly general, and didn't partake of any of these acts, so I am sorry if I am a bit off, its mostly hearsay)

Anyway, this free loving of music files caught the attention of the music industry. They filed some actions against Apple, somehow Apple turned that into their own propietary sound format, and the iTunes music store. They also 'firewared' the iPods so that you could not 'see' your mp3s, although you can still use it as a hard drive, but not to the degree where you could walk into an apple store and copy their programs like some have done. Also, the firewire connection changed to a more PC friendly usb2.0. Thing is, you can Rip a wav file and load a wav file, and it is whatever quality you set it on the ipod, it just takes up the 40+ megs... Now ipod is a 'label' and video is the new audio. Honestly, I use Apple for the interface, not for their politics. I user their systems for their durability, not their upgrade ability.

Say whatever you want about the iPhone, and bash Apple because it makes you feel good, if you are that kind. Personally, to each his own. I still haven't taken Vista for a drive, but from what I see, it looks pretty nice. I can't imagine owning an iPhone and using Vista, I don't think it would 'function' correctly. Actually, I can;t even imagine an iPhone. But from what I understand, when the iPhone came out/ was in the works, Apple was very keen about the community developing apps for it. They also designed it to 'work' on all the 'networks', but because they are a tech company, not a phon company, they had to partner with a network, the same way as the Motorola Razor when it came out.

I am sure it is a case of ATT telling Apple that they had to do it. Apple getting used to getting 'residuals' proably plays into it as well. They have gotten fat off the iPod, and people to lazy to buy songs from a web browser or rip from a cd bought at the store instead of the iTunes store. iPods play mp3s. But most of all, it is the killer design of the product that is causing the fervor. The fact that people want it, but can't have it because of exclusivity of carriers. I am not sure Apple is wrong for fulfilling the request of ATT.

I am upset that they even entered into a contract to begin with. But that stems to their focus on the American Market with their product launch, when American cellphone carriers are the most fascist and strict with their policies. Depending on where in the world the iPhone were to be used, some carriers use 'disposable' sims and others you can just swap sims like nintendo cartridges when you cange carriers. But here, you are locked into inflated rated to subsidise the sale prices of expensive electronic phones. If Every Family had to actually shell out the dough for the actually retail prices, many parents probably would opt for some sort of pager gps service instead.

But they have us addicted... Addicted to the nighttime minutes, addicted to a thousand channels. Its almost moot these days, except for the cramming of advertisements on web video revolution, but there was a time that cable TV was paying for the priviledge of no commercials, and then the commercials came, and now you have people paying for the priviledge of cable/satellite tv to advertise directly to you.

Sorry...
So maybe Apple is at fault for not leaving their product as open as it was, and as open as we would like, but there is a reason people want them unlocked. They want to use them!

Personally, not my thing, I can;t stand cell phones, but to each their own.
DocMoreau

It's all a matter of control. Use my device and my software at my price and we are cool. Use your brain and "hack" my device and suffer the consequences. What a greedy bastard that Steve Jobs is.

Rather than open a new thread, I think I'll just add to this thread. It seems that the iBrick lawsuit isn't the only trouble Apple is getting from California. This just in:

Group's suit alleges toxin in iPhones


So the iPhone causes cancer?

I work in the telcom industry (I won't mention with who or in what capacity). However; from my understanding (from a semi "insider" position) being that Apple is very "picky" about their products and their reputation they went looking for a specific provider to release the iPhone exclusively. They wanted to deal, at least in the beginning, with ONE provider and ONE network. I don't know exactly what criteria they used, but alot of it had to do with network reliability, reputation, customer service,and coverage. This pretty much lead to either Verizon, or the "new" AT&T (which on the wireless side was Cingular/the "old" AT&T Wireless). I beleive (but can't recall directly) that Verizon was offered it first, but initially turned down the iPhone. AT&T jumped right in when offered. However; it's AT&T playing by Apple's rules in this gig, and not the other way around.

All of this was in the open if you dig and was not a big secret or anything.

Apple wanted to be in control of the consumer relationship plus receive royalties for usage fees. The only company willing to meet their demands was AT&T.

Whether that's illegal or not will be decided by the courts I guess.

Wow, if apple loses, that means the next time I buy a car(as an example), I can sue said car company for not allowing me the option to replace the engine with that of another companys due to the engine mounts not being universal for all car engines. Or I could sue Nintendo for not allowing me to use thier game sytem to play games from Xbox or playstation.

The lawsuit is stupid because the iPhone is just that, a phone, not a computer(whos use is open ended, unlike a phone which has specific closed purpose). iPhones are made to work with at&t, if you don't like that then buy another phone.

Originally posted by LordBaskettIV
Wow, if apple loses, that means the next time I buy a car(as an example), I can sue said car company for not allowing me the option to replace the engine with that of another companys due to the engine mounts not being universal for all car engines. Or I could sue Nintendo for not allowing me to use thier game sytem to play games from Xbox or playstation.

Not a very good argument there. In the car analogy, the engine would be akin to the phone's CPU. Software in the phone would be akin to engine spare parts.

In the video game console analogy, the whole thing just breaks down because they're using different programming languages. Third party developers DO make games for the video games consoles, so this analogy doesn't work either.