Source: Chesnot / Getty
Apple has decided that it will not continue to fight a class-action lawsuit levied against the company.
The company that Jobs built has agreed to pay $18 million to settle a case that accused the company of purposely “breaking” its popular video calling feature FaceTime on iOS6. The class-action lawsuit argued that the tech giant disabled the feature on the iPhone 4 and 4S to save money.
According to Engadget, Apple utilizes a direct peer-to-peer connection and another method that depends on third-party servers for FaceTime calls. A patent dispute with Virtnex forced Apple to rely on third-party servers that cost the company millions.
Per Engadget:
“However, due to a patent dispute involving the peer-to-peer method with VirnetX, the tech giant had to rely more on third-party servers, costing it millions of dollars. Apple eventually released new peer-to-peer tech with iOS 7, and the plaintiffs claimed that the company broke the app on purpose, forcing users to upgrade their platforms.”
AppleInsider obtained an email that seemed to confirmed the plaintiff’s suspicions of Apple “breaking” its own software:
“Hey, guys. I’m looking at the Akamai contract for next year. I understand we did something in April around iOS 6 to reduce relay utilization. It was a big user of relay bandwidth. We broke iOS 6, and the only way to get FaceTime working again is to upgrade to iOS 7.”
Subsequently, Apple decided to dish out $18 million to make the lawsuit go away, but none of the plaintiffs will see large payouts from it. Some might not see any money at all. Each member of the class action lawsuit will only receive a very lackluster $3 per affected device. That amount will only go up if people don’t claim their checks.
Photo: Chesnot / Getty
