Apple was served with a new class action lawsuit on Friday alleging that the iPhone maker failed to properly inform users about a new feature built into iOS 9 (the latest mobile operating system), reports AppleInsider.
One of the much-talked-about features of iOS 9 was this controversial Wi-Fi assist – the subject of the lawsuit – which automatically connects your iPhone to a cellular network and uses mobile data when Wi-Fi connectivity is poor.
In the lawsuit filed in a US District Court in San Jose on Friday, plaintiffs William Scott Philips and Suzanne Schmidt Philips claim that because of costs related to the aforementioned feature, the “overall amount in controversy exceeds” $5 million.
Furthermore, they allege Apple failed to properly inform users about Wi-Fi Assist until the Internet was flooded with articles explaining it. Ultimately, Apple issued a fix, but it was too little, too late, the plaintiffs say and point to the incurred mobile data overuse charges on both their iPhone 5s devices following their upgrade to iOS 9.
As you may already know, Wi-Fi Assist can be turned off, so you’d better do that right now if you want to avoid high cellphone bills due to data overuse. For more information about Wi-Fi assist and our how-to article, follow this link.
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Honestly they should not have enabled it automatically.
Exactly my thoughts. That feature should’ve been disabled by default.
Still, I think it is a really nice feature if you have any decent data plan.
I do agree with what you’re saying. I think this is just an excuse for people to try and grab some of Apple’s wealth.
It’s like sueing Honda because the AC in your car causes your car to burn a little extra gas.
Yeah but your A/C doesn’t come turned ON by default when you buy your car, with the OFF button located somewhere at the bottom of your dash in an unlikely spot where yah might not look for it……so yeah the lawsuit does have merit.
because of this i had to bump my plan from 10 gigs to 20
so even with tonnes of data you still get the shaft
It’s a $5M lawsuit … Hardly “slammed” furthermore assuming they are awarded the five mil, after lawyer fees how much will people get?
Where can I join the lawsuit?
This is just a bunch of crap. In realistic scenarios Wifi assist would have a very low impact on your overall data usage. It’s like in the past with each iPhone hardware and software iteration people saying the battery life is worse. That may be true, but I guarantee that in most circumstances it’s actually because people weren’t realizing how much more they were using their shiny new devices (or OSes). I had a recent data overage situation with a new iPhone device. But that was simply because I was restoring from backup on data instead of WIFI because I ignored Apple’s warnings. Apple can fix their device usability, but they can’t fix stupid.