Apple Sued For “Breaking” FaceTime On Old Units

A lawsuit filed in federal district court in San Jose alleges that Apple engineers intentionally disabled FaceTime on millions of iPhones that ran on the iOS6 or earlier operating system, forcing the users of those phones to either give up FaceTime, update to iOS7 on their old phone, or buy a new phone. The rationale, according to the lawsuit, was that the old system required Apple to use a third party’s servers, at substantial cost, to make FaceTime function, while the iOS7 system worked without those servers. Even those who just upgraded to iOS7 instead of buying a new phone would find they had major problems along the lines of system crashes and “erratic behavior,” according to the suit.