Lawsuit: Apple broke iPhone 3Gs to boost iPhone 4 sales

In a new class-action lawsuit, angry iPhone owner Biana Wofford is accusing Apple of using the iOS 4 upgrade to maliciously cripple the iPhone 3G to boost sales of the iPhone 4, according to Ars Technica. Earlier this year, when Apple released the iPhone 4, it also offered an OS update to customers with older iPhone models.

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Alot of manufacturers would be guilty of making goods that only last 5 years so people have to go out and buy another one. Computers are guilty of it to we have to buy a new computer every 2 years to keep up with the latest games and technology. Only problem is how do you prove thats what there trying to do there not gona tell you and give you the information to sue them. btw first post

their first mistake was buying an apple product

Companies that purposely design their products to be obsolete in order to generate sales is wrong yes, but people choosing various upgrades (peripherals, RAM, video/sound cards, etc) are doing so because they want to. I see a lot of computers that could be considered obsolete, but people still happily use them because they do what the user wants them to do.

thumbs up

I think you have this a bit confused.

One is not forced into upgrading their system every two to five years. One makes the choice to upgrade in this timeline. What the iOS 4 upgrade debacle is all about, is the forcing of users into version 4 without the ability to move back to a version that they had previously. If one upgrades their computer to Vista or 7 from XP, they still have the option to downgrade back to XP if they did not like.

Even if you jailbreak your device after updating, you still can not downgrade. You would have either had to have your device jailbroken prior to the update, and let cydia "make your life easier" by managing your SHSH blobs for you, or manually updated your SHSH blobs on cydia and/or stored them locally by using a program such as tinyumbrella. Once apple rolls out an update, if you don't have your SHSH blobs saved, there is no way to downgrade

To quote TechSpot, it is unlikely that Apple is evil in this case. But it would be really interesting if it were true.

To quote TechSpot, it is unlikely that Apple is evil in this case. But it would be really interesting if it were true.

Apple isn't good at updates like microsoft is. This is similar to my macbook pro which I bought and took back about a year ago (no restocking fee at Fry's). The snow leopard update produced about 10 issues like this. Oh well, back to my old reliable Toshiba!

bump for justice...lol!

Wow Apple has really failed in testing lately, first the antenna & proximity issues with the iPhone, the iPad issues (cant remember what they were) and now we have a lawsuit about iOS4 on the 3G and 3GS phones.

Yep, that's the same story for me. I got a 3G about a year before the iPhone 4 came out, and since I "upgraded", I've had nothing but issues. It's slow and buggy has heck! I hope this will at the least force them to let us roll back versions.

Unless this gets the publicity that the Antenna issue got, your probably better of upgrading to the iPhone 4 or finding an alternative.

You can Shift + Click on the Restore button to manually point to an OS install-file on your HDD..you can't do this and point to an older OS version..?

The issue here is not whether or not the performance of the phone is better or worse than it was before, the issue here is that owners of the phone have no legitimate way to roll the phone back to the way it was before. And since you can do it when the phone is jailbroken, then clearly its just a choice by Apple, not the limitation of any software. I'm not sure what their justification for not allowing people to roll back the OS without jailbreaking it, but the assumption that they do so to force people to buy a new phone is not that far fetched.

Maybe its just the naivete of the iPhone buyers who don't understand that once you go Apple you never go back. You're just forced into a two year upgrade cycle whether you want it or not.

As an iPhone 3G and 3GS owner I must say that it really feels like at least a bit of a truth...but on the other hand, apple provides OS updates for phones that are few years old for free...anyway, the iOS 4.0 made the iphone 3G almost unusable, but I´d say it´s because of the processor and ram, 3GS is much stronger and has no problem with speed at all, plus the user has always the choice whether to update the iOS or not

Biana Wofford... I want to leave a bag of poop on your doorstep.

Who wants to make a bet that she will 'accidentally' spill coffee on her lap in the near future?

I have an iPhone 3GS and it has no problems at all on the new 4.1 iOS, my friend on the other hand who only has a 3G bugs out most the time an app has been started for over 5 minutes, battery is completely shot and its soo laggy round the menu's its almost impossible to browse the we for example.

I think there is some truth here when it comes to the 3G model at least and also to note, we both got our iPhones the same month (He just couldn't afford the 3GS at the time, man he wishes he had done it now!).

You don't have to go out and buy a new computer, the thing is you see new computers that run faster and you feel the "need" to go buy one. An old pentium 4 computer with lynux is more than capable of satisfying the needs of an average computer user (word processing, spreadsheets, instant messaging , music, social networking) I don't see why one is actually forced to go upgrade...