iOS8 Storage Class Action Hokum

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More silly lawyer-wealth-building coming up, in a new class action against Apple:

Apple has touted iOS 8 as the “biggest iOS 8 release ever,” a tagline plaintiffs lawyers tried to spin to their advantage in the complaint, arguing that few users understood just how much space the software would take up. They claim Apple exploits the space constraints by peddling iCloud subscriptions when users run out of storage.

Although this particular case will likely get dismissed early on due to it being completely misguided (as well as confused by iCloud distractions) the overall practice of misleading storage indications is one that should be stamped out. Everyone does it, but that doesn’t make it right. And I’d love to see a company like Apple take the lead in only advertising usable storage (eg in the case of iOS8 it would mean taking 4-5GB off every storage specification). The goodwill they’d gain (from being ‘honest’) would more than cover any unfair storage ‘comparisons’ competitors might try to make.

And frankly Apple has always been stingy with their storage provisions. I agree entirely with John Gruber’s comments here:

But I don’t understand why the entry level storage tier remained at a meager 16 GB. That seems downright punitive given how big panoramic photos and slo-mo HD videos are, and it sticks out like a sore thumb when you look at the three storage tiers together: 32/64/128 looks natural; 16/64/128 looks like a mistake. The original iPhone, seven years and eight product generations ago, had an 8 GB storage tier. The entry-level iPhones 6 are 50 times faster than that original iPhone, but have only twice the storage capacity. That’s just wrong. This is the single-most disappointing aspect of the new phones.

and here:

iOS itself takes up about 4 GB, so these 16 GB devices only have about 12 GB free right out of the box. If there is any way that Apple could have brought the base model storage up to 32 GB with the new iPhones, they should have. And it’s inexcusable that they’re still selling new devices with only 8 GB of storage.

Inexcusable indeed.

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By Craig Bailey

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