Apple sued over shrinking storage with iOS8 updates

[Zaap]

In addition to the storage of the iPhone that 1gig of RAM is really really outdated for flagship phones.

Yes, but come on. We wouldn't want to add $200 to the cost of the phone or anything.

And what does that extra RAM do for you when your phone isn't turned on?

 

[TreVader]

It's about as convenient as that chart.

I'll give you that the s5 should've had a base storage of 32gb. However, it had an SD slot with the capability of using a 128gb micoSDcard.

also 16 gb to 64gb to 128gb just doesn't make as much sense as if Apple had 32GB, 64GB and 128GB for storage options.

I wouldn't be posting in this thread if the base 6 and 6+ that had a microSDcard slot.

However, I am biased toward the having that option because imo flagship phones from any brand shouldn't have just 16GB of storage these days... definitely not if there is no way to expand storage without buying a new phone.

In addition to the storage of the iPhone that 1gig of RAM is really really outdated for flagship phones.


.....

The 1gig of ram is why I am keeping my 5S until the 6S comes out. It's a concern but I think given that the iphone 4S is today running iOS 8 with 512MB and a fraction of the processing power I think iOS users will be OK. They may reload some safari tabs often. I also have an ipad Air 2 and the 2GB ram does remove the page loading issues.


So I will concede that apple should have done better there. However, it is hardly a deal breaker given the great performance A8 devices give in iOS8.


Where I will stand my ground in this argument is on the 16GB issue because I really do think there are many people who just don't need the space. That's why Apple leaves that option. If apple removed the 16GB option you would have throng of people come in and say "But I didn't want 32GB! Why can't you charge $550 instead of $650 and give us a 16GB option?"

That would be the chant and it would never end on macrumors. My mom has no use for the space. My aunt has no use for the space. Many people just don't need more than 16GB, they aren't like us. Given that some people may want a 16GB option why should Apple be sued for giving customers what they want?

And I would be fine with a MicroSD slot if they made a model that did not have the slot. Apple would never ever bifrucate it's lineup like that but hypothetically I would be fine with that. I am not against choice, just against MicroSD.

 

[dawheat]

Can you "choose" to not have a microSD slot in your Galaxy S5? That's not choice, that's forcing people to accept a glaringly flawed storage medium as replacement for a lack of internal storage.


It also adds $100 to the phone, making android phones like the Note 4 cost over $900. Hardly the "deal" android claims to be.

First, the lawsuit is stupid and hopefully it'll get thrown out.

Secondly, Android has to stop with the 16GB base storage as higher storage options are rarely offered in the US. Thankfully 2014 had a shift there as most Android flagships came with 32GB standard - the M8, Z3, G3, and Note 4 come to mind. Hopefully the S6 continues that trend.

I'm not a fan of Apple's pricing either - it was the best thing for Apple, not for consumers. The most consumer friendly choice would have been to make 32GB the base storage and I think most consumers would have been fine at that level. Doing the 16GB to 64GB jump was brilliant to pad their profit margins.

And seriously - don't get into a value argument if you're trying to defend non-expandable storage. When a 6 Plus 128GB is $950 and a Note 4 32GB with a 128GB card is $840, that's a decent difference. Doubly so as the mSD only has to be purchased once and you don't have to re-purchase it with every phone upgrade. My older 64GB card went from a S3 -> Note 2 -> Note 3 -> Note 4.

 

[razel]

This is a borderline frivolous lawsuit. I doubt it'll hold up in court since you are getting 16GB (base 10) on the NAND. It's just sad that so much is reserved by the OS.

Android is not immune to this. Available space on my 16GB Nexus 5 with a Google factory image of Lollipop is 12.55GB, but they're not getting sued... well not YET.

 

[Zaap]

The 1gig of ram is why I am keeping my 5S

Your 128GB 5S of course...

 

[Rakehellion]

The complaint, which seeks class action status for others who purchased 16GB devices, further accuses Apple pushing users to its paid iCloud storage plans to store things like photos when they run out of room on the device. It also accuses Apple of not working with third-party storage vendors and desktop file transfer utilities for customers to be able to offload their files.

iCloud allows you to store unlimited photos for free, so clearly they're grasping at straws here.
Also, iCloud is a backup service. You don't stream your apps from there.

This is a major failure.

 

[TreVader]

Your 128GB 5S of course...

No my 64GB 5s, which was twice as much storage as you could get on the competing Galaxy S4 when it came out.


Maybe you guys are like these contestants? They have no idea what an iphone costs either...

http://www.cnet.com/news/price-is-right-contestant-think-an-iphone-6-costs-7000/

 

[foghorn67]

Why do you think there are zero android handsets available with 128GB and 64GB is so rare? Hell, in 2013 I was the only person I met who even had a 32GB Galaxy S4, they were ALL 16GB.


Android manufacturers use MicroSD as an excuse to skimp on storage on EVEN THE HIGH END MODELS! They will charge you extra for extra storage but refuse to give you anything close to apple because "there's a micro SD slot".


Also, MicroSD is incredibly ugly and impractical. It's not as fast as the internal NAND and it requires royalties to be payed to sony for use of the format. It is garbage and I would stop buying iPhones if they added a MicroSD hole to the side of it.

My phone came with 32GB standard, with an microSD slot.

 

[WelshBloke]

iCloud allows you to store unlimited photos for free, so clearly they're grasping at straws here.
Also, iCloud is a backup service. You don't stream your apps from there.

This is a major failure.

Networks love cloud storage as they get to charge you for the bandwidth.

OS guys love it because it gives a lock in to their services. (It'll take quite a bit for me to transfer the hundreds of gigs (probably) of data that's stored in Google's vaults).

 

[blankslate]

It's a concern but I think given that the iphone 4S is today running iOS 8 with 512MB and a fraction of the processing powe

If I remember right that 4S running iOS 8 has some iOS 8 features turned off. At this point I think the processor available to the 6 and 6+ will handle iOS updates for years to come... I'm not so sure about the 1 gig if you want any sort of multitasking.


Maybe Apple should've had 16, 32, 64, and 128GB storage options?


.....

 

[TreVader]

I think we can all agree that the lawsuit is BS.


I kinda wonder if lawyers just sit around all day thinking of possible ways to sue apple and bilk more money out of disgruntled google fanboys.

 

[blankslate]

If they only included a note about storage capacity being not quite the same because of the way computing devices measure memory.... 1024 megs to a GB, in the manual.

You know similar to the way that SSD and HDD retail boxes do. Then there would have been no lawsuit at all....

Now I wonder if that note found on all of the SSD and HDD retail boxes actually came from such a lawsuit....

But yeah lawsuits like these make it easier to dismiss lawsuits where the plaintiff has a legitimate beef.


.....

 

[WelshBloke]

I think we can all agree that the lawsuit is BS.

I don't think that anyone has argued anything else.

I kinda wonder if lawyers just sit around all day thinking of possible ways to sue apple and bilk more money out of disgruntled google fanboys.

What's this got to do with Google?

 

[WelshBloke]

If they only included a note about storage capacity being not quite the same because of the way computing devices measure memory.... 1024 megs to a GB, in the manual.

You know similar to the way that SSD and HDD retail boxes do. Then there would have been no lawsuit at all....

Now I wonder if that note found on all of the SSD and HDD retail boxes actually came from such a lawsuit....

But yeah lawsuits like these make it easier to dismiss lawsuits where the plaintiff has a legitimate beef.


.....

All devices should only be allowed to advertise the free space that they come with.

 

[TreVader]

If I remember right that 4S running iOS 8 has some iOS 8 features turned off. At this point I think the processor available to the 6 and 6+ will handle iOS updates for years to come... I'm not so sure about the 1 gig if you want any sort of multitasking.


Maybe Apple should've had 16, 32, 64, and 128GB storage options?


.....

The whole situation is basically lose-lose for Apple. If they offer 32GB as a base and drop 16GB, people will be angry they dropped the 16GB option. If they offered 16,32,64,128 people would want the 16GB to cost less than the 32GB (which is now the base $650).

Apple isn't going to lower the base iphone price, for the top of the line 6S, to $550 off contract. That would be stupid from a business sense and they would lose billions. So they would be stuck either offering the 32GB at the same price as the 16GB (which makes zero sense) or raising the 32GB to the 64GB price point (which also makes zero sense).



The one and only way I could see them making people happy is by offering the 32GB at $50 more than the 16. So you can at least get a 32GB phone for less than the 64GB. But again that is forcing apple to build a whole new sku which
raises costs.


The MicroSD card thing will never ever ever happen. Apple likes having proprietary control over it's formats and they certainly don't like Sony having proprietary control over it, so you can stop bringing that up. You might as well ask Apple to build an iPhone that runs android.

 

[WelshBloke]

The whole situation is basically lose-lose for Apple. If they offer 32GB as a base and drop 16GB, people will be angry they dropped the 16GB option.

Not if they drop the 16gd version and charge the same for the 32gb one.

Edit: What's this got to do with Sony?

 

[TreVader]

Not if they drop the 16gd version and charge the same for the 32gb one.

The margins are already very low on the $650 price point.


No business is going to drop their current gross margin from ~38% to ~10% by dropping the price. Everybody would buy the 16GB and as I stated apple would lose billions.


Currently, the people who pay for the 64GB and 128GB option subsidize the cost of the 16GB option. As odd as it sounds, the 16GB is the best value by far on a commodity basis because it costs $100-200 less in the store but maybe $10 less to make. So Apple would have to further raise their prices on the higher storage models to make up for the loss in gross margin.

 

[Zaap]

No my 64GB 5s, which was twice as much storage as you could get on the competing Galaxy S4 when it came out.

You were just blathering on about 128GB iPhones and yet you're not even willing to buy one yourself. Meanwhile, I've had 96GB of storage in my phone (unlimited really, since 64GB is easily swappable) for several years now.

I just love how your iArgument wavers. Whatever Apple charges for onboard storage= soooo worth it, even though you haven't paid for the max amount and are forever waiting for that 'next' one that actually isn't a ripoff.
Whatever everyone else charges for onboard storage PLUS the option of adding however much more one wants= too expensive!

Maybe you guys are like these contestants? They have no idea what an iphone costs either...

http://www.cnet.com/news/price-is-right-contestant-think-an-iphone-6-costs-7000/

Says the guy who thinks a microSD slot really costs $100, or that say a Note 4 would be going for $100 less without one.

 

[WelshBloke]

The margins are already very low on the $650 price point.

No they aren't.

No business is going to drop their current gross margin from ~38% to ~10% by dropping the price. Everybody would buy the 16GB and as I stated apple would lose billions.

What 16gd option? I said to get rid of that one.

Currently, the people who pay for the 64GB and 128GB option subsidize the cost of the 16GB option. As odd as it sounds, the 16GB is the best value by far on a commodity basis because it costs $100-200 less in the store but maybe $10 less to make. So Apple would have to further raise their prices on the higher storage models to make up for the loss in gross margin.

You want to back any of that up with some sources? There's no way that Apple are losing money on the 16gb iPhones.

 

[TreVader]

No they aren't.



What 16gd option? I said to get rid of that one.




You want to back any of that up with some sources? There's no way that Apple are losing money on the 16gb iPhones.

They aren't losing money, they are just making a lot less. If you can earn $950 for a 6 plus that costs only 13$ more to make than a $650 iphone 6 you increase your profit margin by a huge amount.



I will look around and find the data. Feel free to check it out.

Here is an article if you are too lazy to google yourself, keep in mind that the ifixit "cost" is just for materials, not marketing, sales, repair, etc etc etc.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/teardo...costs-200-to-make-iphone-6-plus-just-15-more/

 

[foghorn67]

My phone came with 32GB standard, with an microSD slot.

I am going to quote myself and add that a lot of flagship phones marketed in the US come with 32GB standard, HTC, Sony, LG, etc. Samsung Note 4 has 32GB. The exceptions are the Galaxy S5 and the Moto X. The Moto X is priced slightly lower than flagship phones off contract.

 

[DeathReborn]

Secondly, Android has to stop with the 16GB base storage as higher storage options are rarely offered in the US. Thankfully 2014 had a shift there as most Android flagships came with 32GB standard - the M8, Z3, G3, and Note 4 come to mind. Hopefully the S6 continues that trend.

At least in the US you got the 32GB M8, G3 & Z3 as in the UK we got the 2GB RAM 16GB storage versions. 2013 should have been the year 16GB disappeared yet it survives into 2015 (new phones still gonna be 16GB base).

 

[Crono]

I'm glad you don't feel bad for us, I wouldn't want anybody to feel bad for a group of people who use a different mobile OS.


We certainly are hurting for storage with a mere 128GB available on our devices.


In all seriousness, have you ever even owned an iOS device? Because I've owned a couple android devices and with the exception to the Nexus 7 they were all garbage. Especially the Galaxy S4

Yes, I have. It's really iOS I don't like, and not Apple hardware, though they should be offering 32GB as the standard option. I'm not an Apple hater - I give them plenty of credit where credit is due (I like the design and a lot of elements of the iPads, MacBook Air, Apple TV, Mac Pro, and their displays, for instance) and shelled out ~$700 for the iPad 1 nearly on day 1 when people we still laughing at it as "a giant iPhone". If you've used Android or Windows Phone on flagship hardware, though, they have much better interfaces and are (in the case of Android) feature-rich, and the Windows Phone models that take microSD also let you install apps to microSD without any hitch. Adding a fast 64GB microSD card - and there are plenty of fast cards that make apps installed to microSD run without a difference in speed - is still significantly cheaper than getting a higher capacity iPhone.

I have never been a fan of the Galaxy S series or Samsung's phones in general (except for the Notes, which notably are less TouchWiz heavy and have the very handy S-Pen). HTC One M7 and M8 are better phones, in my humble opinion, than their iPhone counterparts, and don't lag like the Galaxy S series.

It's not about iOS vs Android or Windows Phone, though, I was simply stating that Apple could make this a non-issue by giving people 32GB minimum. If 128GB iPhone is such a boon to Apple and its users (nevermind that it's nearly $1,000 for a 128GB iPhone 6 Plus) as you make it out to be, why can't they give consumers 32GB, given the starting price of the iPhone? I don't buy the argument that 16GB is enough for most people. I know it's only anecdotal, but I hear from plenty of iPhone users that they keep running out of space on their phones, and not with heavy media storage, either.

I'm not anti-Apple, I just hold them to a higher standard, and am/will be the first to sing their praises when/if they get 90% of their specifications and design right with any product or service. Low storage is an issue for the other OS', too, and it would help if at least all the flagships jumped to 32GB first. Then hopefully next year most mid-range phones will be at that mark. I can dream, at least.

And if anyone from any camp says, "but the cloud!", you need to shut the heck up. Seriously. I'm all for cloud storage and use OneDrive, DropBox, Google Drive and cloud computing solutions, but local storage is still the best option because networks aren't perfect, especially given that true unlimited plans are nearly extinct, or if you travel a lot. Cloud storage is better as a backup, for syncing files, or for low priority or infrequently accessed media.

 

[QueBert]

The 1gig of ram is why I am keeping my 5S until the 6S comes out. It's a concern but I think given that the iphone 4S is today running iOS 8 with 512MB and a fraction of the processing power I think iOS users will be OK. They may reload some safari tabs often. I also have an ipad Air 2 and the 2GB ram does remove the page loading issues.


So I will concede that apple should have done better there. However, it is hardly a deal breaker given the great performance A8 devices give in iOS8.


Where I will stand my ground in this argument is on the 16GB issue because I really do think there are many people who just don't need the space. That's why Apple leaves that option. If apple removed the 16GB option you would have throng of people come in and say "But I didn't want 32GB! Why can't you charge $550 instead of $650 and give us a 16GB option?"

That would be the chant and it would never end on macrumors. My mom has no use for the space. My aunt has no use for the space. Many people just don't need more than 16GB, they aren't like us. Given that some people may want a 16GB option why should Apple be sued for giving customers what they want?

And I would be fine with a MicroSD slot if they made a model that did not have the slot. Apple would never ever bifrucate it's lineup like that but hypothetically I would be fine with that. I am not against choice, just against MicroSD.

The 1 gig on the 6 is a mostly non issue point for people to have something to bitch about. I have my 6+ JB'ed with about 20 different tweaks running. With 10 apps open my phone absolutely flies. It out performs my M7 everywhere, and that had twice the ran and I have about every performance mod I ever saw on XDA on it. Not saying the iPhone couldn't have benefited from another gig of memory, sure it would have. But my phone's faster than my roomies Samsung that has 3 gigs of memory. A Windows XP box with 512 megs of memory will almost always perform better than a 7 box with 1 gig.

Unless iOS 9 has a lot higher memory requirements, I don't see me needing a 2 gig iPhone anytime before 2 or 3 generations forward. The only way I'd consider the next gen one is if they have a 256gb version. Which I think they might. Can't stand MicroSD cards so all the internal storage you can give me is good.

And for everyone bitching about $$$ my 6+ 64gb was $275 from sprint, they wanted $325 for the 128. That's not a OMGWTFBBQSAUCE price hike.

 

[styrafoam]

Had the circus of updating to IOS8 never occurred the lawsuit probably wouldn't have ever happened. The whole process boldly underlined the fact that a 16gig phone is actually an 12gig phone to people who would have otherwise had no need or reason to care about how their phone's memory was actually divided up.

It will probably get tossed, I'm pretty sure this was tried with computers in the not to distant past. When it comes down to it the lawsuit may seem frivolous to people who understand the ins and outs of digital storage, but to the general public who is used to dealing with consumables that are strictly managed and regulated the whole thing seems a little off base. You don't pay for 10 gallons of gas and get 8, so where is the line drawn? At what point are vendors not allowed to put an * next to an aspect of the product you are buying?