Apple will face a federal court lawsuit over its iMessage issues and vanishing iPhone messages, according to U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh’s ruling last night. Even if the tech behemoth launched a new tool to help users switch swiftly from their iPhones to other non – IOS devices, the problems generated by the iMessage system didn’t pass without an echo. Plaintiff Adrienne Moore made everything in her power to see that a federal court lawsuit against Apple is going to become a reality and the judge was on her side.
Adrienne Moore filed the lawsuit after the iMessage problems interfered with her Verizon service when switching from iPhone to an Android-powered smartphone. Backed up by a large number of displeased Apple customers who faced the same problems, she started a class action suit.
The suit revolves around Apple’s failure to disclose the fact that switching from IOS 5 to another operating system, be it Android, Windows or something else, would prevent the user from receiving messages from other IOS users. This lack of transparency is what caused future federal court lawsuit against Apple and, given the current situation, the law is on the plaintiffs’ side. The unfair competition laws of California are the ones that support Judge Koh’s decision to have Apple face a federal court class action suit.
On the other hand, Apple states that they never promised their customers that the iMessage system would be able to recognize the transition from IOS to another operating system and that
“the law does not provide a remedy when, as here, technology simply does not function as plaintiff subjectively believes it should.”
The judge expressed the opinion that all customers, in this case the plaintiff, have the right to receive all phone calls and messages sent via any given operating system and phone, no matter their decision of switching from one OS to another. Even if Apple considers that everything is about a small technological hiccup and the plaintiff’s beliefs that tech should work in a certain manner, the ruling still stands: the federal court lawsuit against Apple is a reality and the company will have to face it soon enough.
This is not the first time iMessage throws Apple in a world of trouble and a large pool of unhappy customers. The company dealt with past issues by implementing support pages and releasing new helping tools, but all these measures only led to mixed results.
So far,one thing is certain: the Cupertino company lawyers will have to prepare to face the federal court lawsuit against Apple. There are no insights on the claimed damages yet, but we are sure further details will surface in the next days.