The suit, filed in a San Francisco federal court on Tuesday, claims Apple’s latest mobile operating system takes up as much as 23 percent of the advertised storage capacity on the Cupertino company’s iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices.
Commenting on the case, William Anderson, a lawyer at Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca, a Washington, DC law firm, said, “We feel that there are a substantial number of Apple consumers that have been shortchanged, and we’ll be pursuing the claims vigorously.”
The lawsuit, brought by Florida residents Paul Orshan and Christopher Endara, seeks damages of more than $5 million and has been filed on behalf of anyone who bought an Apple device containing 16GB or less of storage space with iOS 8 pre-installed, or who upgraded to the latest version of Apple’s mobile OS.
As reported by SiliconBeat, lawyers for the plaintiffs have seized on an Apple boast about its revamped iOS, claiming that users who upgraded had little idea the software would take up so much space, leaving less storage for their own needs.
“Rather ironically, Apple touts iOS 8 as ‘The biggest iOS release ever,'” the complaint says, adding, “Of course, Apple is not referring to the literal size of iOS 8, which appears to be entirely undisclosed in its voluminous marketing materials extolling the purported virtues of iOS 8.”
The claim is also made that Apple exploits the storage-space issue by pushing consumers toward paying out for extra space on iCloud.
The plaintiffs say that by way of these “sharp” business tactics, Apple “gives less storage capacity than advertised, only to offer to sell that capacity in a desperate moment, e.g., when a consumer is trying to record or take photos at a child or grandchild’s recital, basketball game or wedding.” Of course, there are plenty of options besides iCloud for the remote storage of images and videos, a fact lawyers for the Cupertino company will no doubt raise.
Apple, which has so far declined to comment on the case, has faced similar claims in the past. Back in 2007, for example, a Canadian man accused the tech company of misleading customers over the amount of available storage in its iPod Nano device. Microsoft, too, faced court action a couple of years ago over useable storage space with its Surface tablets.
However, with the case against Apple dismissed and the one against Microsoft unresolved, this latest action will do well to succeed.
iOS 8 launched in September 2014, with Apple reporting a 64-percent take-up of the mobile OS to date.
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