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Apple sued for promising more available storage space than it actually delivers

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33 Comments
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I don't get why wasting a huge quantity of money on this expensive phones. Seriously, I have a Samsung Smartphone, it's way cheaper and good.

2 ( +11 / -9 )

I agree, Alex80. never owned an over-priced iPhone, never will.

2 ( +10 / -8 )

Should be a good case, there has always been a gap between the advertised storage versus the real amount of storage. I think what they will get to is a clearer advertising tolerance for storage.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

I'm not an Apple fanboy or anything, but this lawsuit is silly. Apple doesn't advertise "available" storage, they advertise total storage, some of which is taken up by the OS. This would be like suing Dell for advertising computers with 2TB hard drives that have only 1.9 TB available because Windows is installed.

2 ( +6 / -4 )

If this goes well, it will set a precedent for further suits. Apple is not the only one...

5 ( +6 / -1 )

I don't get why wasting a huge quantity of money on this expensive phones. Seriously, I have a Samsung Smartphone, it's way cheaper and good.

Not everyone is into Android. Samsung may be cheaper, but I would never own anything that Samsung would chuck out. I'll stick with my reliable iPhone. But I do agree with Isoducky, it should be a very good and interesting case to watch unfold.

1 ( +7 / -6 )

This is a problem that I think is going to increase, as more and more technology enter our lives, people simply don't understand the most basic concepts.

Are we getting more stupid as a species?

Storage, Hard drive space and so on has always been measured pre-formatting, and before any operating system is installed, this suit is ridiculous and totally out of line with the industry.

Consumers and the public at large need to take responsibility for being better informed, and if you go out and buy a $1000 phone, without doing any research then you have to take some degree of responsibility for what that gets you.

2 ( +5 / -3 )

OMG - How STUPID can these 2 Bozos from Florida be?

Number 1 - Apple never advertises "available storage" (as previously mentioned by reader John Becker) but they do advertise the "Storage Size". Not to be confused or dreamed up in someone's head that they will have a full 16GB of storage to put their silly pictures on (try purchasing a digital camera) - This is a "Smartphone" in particular an iPhone (intelligent phone).

Number 2 - The storage in ALL smartphone technology is Solid State i.e. SD drives and not spinning RPM Hard Drives that can, when commanded; defragment the disk in order to build the boot sectors and open up unused sectors for more storage and performance. Solid State does not work that way. Solid State must be partitioned in order to use a percentage (in Apple's Case) hidden Security Protections e.g. AV Protection - Ever wonder why Apple iPhones never get Bloat Ware? Plus SD stores all of your key strokes, searches, APP Data, 4G & LTE Configurations etc. This is known as "Other" when viewing your storage in either iTunes or "About This Mac" if you are using a new MacBook Pro with SD Drive. Theres's a lot going on behind the sccences that the common smartphone user is unaware of, and not to be intrusive, but to protect your privacy - all requires a certain percentage of storage on SD that is built into Apple's iPhones.

Number 3 & Finally, There are people out there who just want their 15 minutes of fame. It's obvious that these 2 Clowns are simply looking for notariery and to be ones who took on "The Big Apple" (or at least attempted too). What will become a reality is when the judge dismisses the suit due to the plaintiff's information was not properly researched nor properly understood and the plaintiff's being uneducated in the criteria for which they are suing. In other words, go to College and get a degree in Computer Science or Telecommunication Science and understand the engineering of the technology before throwing around a silly and frivolous lawsuit at a company who's technology you know nothing about.

And I womder if these 2 guys are on, or going to be on, the payroll of one of Apple's competitors? Just curious.

-1 ( +4 / -5 )

I'm inclined to agree that this is a bit of a silly lawsuit, not to mention a fairly obvious money grab, particularly since devices that run on Android face precisely the same issues, yet are inexplicably spared a similar "class action" onslaught.

Best case (or worst, depending on where you sit in the lawsuit), Apple losing this lawsuit should reasonably result in no more than Apple offering its customers free cloud storage equivalent to whatever the iOS takes up on the device. And that's it.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Number 1 - Apple never advertises "available storage" (as previously mentioned by reader John Becker) but they do advertise the "Storage Size". Not to be confused or dreamed up in someone's head that they will have a full 16GB of storage to put their silly pictures on (try purchasing a digital camera) - This is a "Smartphone" in particular an iPhone (intelligent phone).

Better Explanation: Base 2 vs Base 10

Herein lies the root of the issue. The “brilliant” marketing gurus at data storage companies decided early on that all their products should be marketed in the decimal system, since that’s what consumers understand.

Therefore, one megabyte on their products is equal to 1,000,000 bytes, and one gigabyte is equal to 1,000,000,000 bytes. To a computer, however, a megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes and a gigabyte is 1,073,741,824 bytes.

Thus, for each gigabyte advertised in base 10, you’re actually receiving about 70 megabytes less than a gigabyte in base 2.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

comon Apple will never offer any decent descent storage as ittll eat into there profits, why would you want to offer a phone that can match the competitions specs when there are plenty of sheeple that would still buy it even if it was turd in a pretty cover.

-3 ( +3 / -6 )

Who could possibly have such an incredibly pathetic life that they would bother to launch a law suit over the memory capacity of their mobile phone. This is about money, or a set-up by competitors.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

wtfjapan,

there are plenty of sheeple that would still buy it even if it was turd in a pretty cover.

This is a childish comment. Regardless of how you feel about Apple users, Apple products (iPhone, iPad, et al.) are sophisticated pieces of hardware that have received praise from tech reviewers the world over, tech reviewers, I might add, who are vastly more qualified than you or I to make such assessments.

1 ( +4 / -3 )

I agree that this is a frivolous lawsuit, as much as I dislike Apele and the products.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

I'll put a vote in the other direction. The fact of life is that Smartphones and similar are increasingly becoming commodity items, rather than novelties for the nerd / technician / poweruser. Which means you can't expect people to not expect 16G of space for THEIR STUFF when you write it out as such.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

Another two morons wanting free money. I own iPhones with the lower GB capacity and I have never used it to the limit. And Apple offers iPhoto for free, one can just synch iPhone to a computer and have all the photos and videos transferred in minutes. Actually everything that's in the device can be transferred to computers and its storage capacity can be kept at its maximum available. No need to buy iCloud storage, it's an option to iPhoto.

0 ( +3 / -3 )

The problem of android devices (specially in Japan) is that they are crippled with spamware, junkware and all type of forced installed applications from your carrier that you cannot even remove, I can understand why sometime you want to go with iOS instead and I agree that all devices should be advertised with their available storage and not with the total storage which means nothing since by definition with you cannot store anything then why call it "storage" ?

2 ( +2 / -0 )

This case was filed in America, which is home to more than half of the world's lawyers. There are so many lawyers around, that even in America there isn't enough misery and bloodshed to keep them all busy, so they will file lawsuits even for the most ludicrous of reasons, like there not being enough raisons in a box of Raisn Bran cereal.

Apple has their own lawyers whom are paid hundreds of dollars per hour, the plaintiffs know that if they can get this case to play out in the courts for a year or two, Apple might rather decide to give them a few million to shut up and go away.

America really needs tort reform, but since many, or most politicians are former lawyers, it never occurs. A lot of people say that if a company loses millions in a lawsuit, "so what"? But the millions which the company pays in losing a suit ends up being paid tor by the customers of a company, or the employees of that company. The cost of litigation adds to the cost of all goods and services we buy, compaines and people have to buy insurance to protect themselves from lawsuits, or the cost of their defense. In places like Germany, if a lawsuit is reversed, the plaintiff must not only return any award to the other party, but pay the legal costs as well. Needless to say, frivolous suits are less common there. Personally, I hope Apple sticks it out, and the plaintiffs ebd up with squat. But the money spent to defend the suit will of course add the Apple's operating expenses, and further drive up the cost of their products.

-4 ( +1 / -5 )

Android fans: not everyone is into cheap-looking, low quality crap with a confusing operating system. There are still people who praise quality and design... both of which aren't cheap when done right.

The storage space matter is probably a big deal when buying one of the low storage versions. I'd rather like so sue them for that the battery goes down the drain almost exactly two years after purchase when the next gen is introduced.

-6 ( +0 / -6 )

I'm always a bit puzzled as to why any SD card or microdSD card says it can hold such and such an amount of GB, but you actually get access to far less than that in reality.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Alex80, You are definitely correct about your Samsung smartphone. Apple phones are a little bit more expensive and great. In the long run you get what you pay for.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Everybody knows some of the storage will be taken up by the OS et. al. What did they expect?

Hahaha, what's more of the issue is the growing size of the "Other" on the iPhones/iPads/iPods hard drive. (Check your iTunes next time ya plug in your iDevices.) We're not sure what exactly is in that "Other" but it keeps growing and growing and occupying more and more of what free space is left available. The only way to get rid (most) of it is to backup then restore. Otherwise, can't do much to shrink it. And it's not like ya could just put in more microSD cards to give yourself more space.

Also, even though iDevices hard drives gets larger, the free iCloud storage is paltry and hasn't increased in years, while other businesses' free cloud services keeps getting bigger and bigger as hard drive space becomes cheaper and cheaper. We don't even backup ours on the paltry iCloud anymore (our photos alone could fill that up quick) - we just full backup on other free services, from 1TB to unlimited, and everything accessible from everywhere.

I'm always a bit puzzled as to why any SD card or microdSD card says it can hold such and such an amount of GB, but you actually get access to far less than that in reality.

Because the marketers use a numbers trick on people. For example, when something has 1000 MB - the packaging marketers call it 1 GB. But in computer terms, 1 GB is actually 1024 MB (digital means using the power of 2, y'see, 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024). Now do the same from KB to TB and so on and so on. Nifty trick, huh

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Because the marketers use a numbers trick on people. For example, when something has 1000 MB - the packaging marketers call it 1 GB. But in computer terms, 1 GB is actually 1024 MB (digital means using the power of 2, y'see, 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024). Now do the same from KB to TB and so on and so on. Nifty trick, huh

1GB = 1000MB, whereas the more technically correct 1GiB = 1024MB (the while gibibyte thing is a recent invention to avoid this issue)

This lawsuit against Apple is peanuts compared to dealing with large enterprise storage vendors.

Modern SAN systems do all sorts of useful things that further blur the lines beyond a simple issue of format overhead and OS installation. You have RAID levels in multi-drive configurations, parity groups, thin provisioning (essentially getting the system to promise more storage than it may not actually have), and then filesystem snapshots and virtual copies that use the thin provisioning.

The large vendors have teams trying to explain how this all works to enterprise customers - and have it try and make business sense the next time they need to plunk down huge wads of cash to buy 20+ TB of disk space, while only able to use 10TB of it

1 ( +1 / -0 )

It's about time that some company gets sued for this practice. True, as several writers mentioned, it is general industry practice and not at all limited to Apple. That doesn't make it any better. The minimum requirement from my point of view is that companies inform the typical size of the OS, pre-installed applications and other space which may be reserved for system purposes. This gives users the possibility to make an informed decision about how much memory they should buy in their device. It is even more important for devices which do not allow any hardware upgrade of the memory in the form of memory cards - which leads us back to Apple... Cloud storage is not a solution for everybody.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

This happened to me from the DAY after I got my new iphone - constant messages telling me it can`t back up because of insufficient storage space and asking me to pay for extra storage - the DAY after I bought it! So I just download everything important to my PC and store it there. Screw you Apple.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Good, it's about time someone had the guts to do this, and I applaud them.

-7 ( +0 / -7 )

One of the many benefits of Android phones is that the owner is not restricted by the built-in storage limitations as in apple products. Android phones have user-accessible uSD slots so the owner can expand or change the memory card at will.

0 ( +3 / -3 )

May as well sue every maker of personal computers and other devices who put an operating system and/or utilities on their product. They all take up anything from 4~10GB of space, but are never mentioned in their specifications. Unless those systems are in a separate section of storage that is not counted in the overall total, such as RAM.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Delete the OS then you'll get all your disk space

2 ( +3 / -1 )

gogogo just nailed it! There is your answer.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

If you delete iOS from an iPhone, then it becomes an Android phone: erratic. And finally, useless.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

My iPhone 6 (64GB) works like a charm and since I've owned it from October to present, I have packed in 180 photos, 4 Time laps Videos, 6 Panorama's and 4 Slow Motions of my cats and only used up 4GB's. I also photo streamed all of my pics from my MacBook Pro and used 39MB of photo streaming with my iCloud account.

And besides if these 2 bozos are so concerned about running up their 16GB of dreamed up available storage that they are forced to iCloud - then what's the issue with that?

They can afford to spend $5,000 in attorney fees for the class action suit, but they cannot afford .99 Cents a month for 20GB's of Cloud storage that EXCEEDS their 16GB!!!

"Who's more foolish? The fool? Or the fool that follows him?" - Obi-wan Kenobi

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

John Galt

One of the many benefits of Android phones is that the owner is not restricted by the built-in storage limitations as in apple products. Android phones have user-accessible uSD slots so the owner can expand or change the memory card at will.

From Android 4.4 KitKat, this isn't actually true. You can use the extra storage like a external disk drive, but it can't make up core memory where photos and apps reside.

But the fact of the matter is, the iOS phones actually give the user most memory to use, with Samsung giving you the least.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-much-free-storage-space-does-your-smartphone-really-have/

1 ( +1 / -0 )

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