The iOS 8 upgrade incident is not over yet, Apple has become the defendant

[[125523]]

The complaints about the iOS 8 upgrade are still ringing in our ears. Because the upgrade requires a very large amount of space, some iPhone users with 16 GB or even smaller capacity have to delete some storage to upgrade from iOS 7 to iOS 8. Among the iOS devices that need to be upgraded, the largest capacity space required for the upgrade is even 7 GB. Although this is not the actual space occupied by iOS 8, objectively speaking, iOS 8 is still larger than iOS 7.

Therefore, Apple’s advertising slogan for iOS 8, “The biggest iOS release ever”, can not only be translated as “the most significant iOS version ever”, but can also be seen as “the largest iOS version ever”. In addition to the complaints at the time, the unpleasantness of the iOS 8 upgrade also led to Apple being sued.

Siliconbeat, a technology media owned by the San Jose Mercury News, published an article on the last day of 2014 stating that a class action lawsuit has been filed in a federal court in the San Francisco Bay Area. The plaintiffs claimed that Apple did not clearly notify how much storage space iOS 8 would take up on iOS devices. To be precise, iOS 8 may take up up to 23.1% of the advertised storage capacity of iOS devices, but users are unaware of this information.

The plaintiff accused Apple of more than just this. While Apple did not inform users of this information, Apple also encouraged users to purchase a larger iCloud service. So the focus of this lawsuit is that the iOS 8 upgrade needs to free up space, and after the upgrade, it takes up more space and induces users to purchase a larger iCloud service. From the plaintiff's point of view, this is a chain reaction.

As for why such a large storage capacity is needed for iOS 8 upgrades, Bussiness Insider explained that when upgrading to iOS 8, the phone needs to compress and save the internal storage content. When iOS 8 is downloaded, it can be decompressed and restored, which requires more storage capacity.

The plaintiffs stated:

"Apple uses these savvy business tactics to provide customers with less storage than advertised, only to sell customers cloud storage space at critical moments, such as when they are about to take photos and videos of important events such as ball games or weddings."

Currently, according to Apple's official data, 64% of iOS devices are running iOS 8, 32% of users still choose the earlier iOS 7, and only 4% of users have earlier versions.

Many people may think that these plaintiffs are making a fuss, but there are lawyers willing to fight for the plaintiffs. William Anderson of Cuneo Gilbert & Laduca, a law firm in the Washington area, said:

"We feel that many Apple customers have been defrauded and we will vigorously support them in recovering their losses."

Apple is often the defendant. For example, it was recently sued for DRM encryption of iTunes and iPod that excluded other music stores from Apple's own closed loop. This lawsuit lasted for 10 years and forced Steve Jobs to attend the lawsuit. However, in the recent judgment, Apple finally won the case and avoided a fine of up to $1 billion.