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It seems Apple just can’t get a break from the legal battle scene as it is now facing a class action lawsuit courtesy of a judge green-lighting the request in a case involving bricked FaceTime. The case basically revolves around accusations that Apple intentionally disabled some options on the video chat feature on older phones to force users to upgrade to a more recent iOS version.
The lawsuit began early in the year when iPhone owners accused the company of breaking FaceTime, Engadget reports. This specifically affects iPhone 4 and 4S users since the units were the ones with the outdated iOS version most affected.
By being classified as a class action lawsuit, Apple is now facing the prospect of a much bigger payout to affected customers, which is why it tried so hard to get it dismissed. Unfortunately for the company, District Judge Lucy Koh decided in favor of the customers.
As to why Apple even bothered to force the hands of the users who didn’t want to upgrade in the first place, it had something to do with expenses related to third-party companies. In the old version of the iOS on the iPhone 4, users could make use of significantly more features of FaceTime than the current version. However, this meant that Apple had to pay for the servers, which cost millions of dollars.
When iOS 7 came around, it included the patch that basically removed this particular headache on the part of the company. This did not sit well with the users at all.
As Ars Technica notes, the only options that users affected by the change had were to accept it and move on or buy a new iPhone. Upgrading to the iOS 7 at the time would have been a problem because the iPhone 4 could not run it as well as new units.
