Reply to post: Re: I'm with Apple (and I hate iphones)

Remember when Apple's FaceTime stopped working years ago? Yeah, that was deliberate

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Re: I'm with Apple (and I hate iphones)

That's not quite what happened here. Apple stopped using the infringing tech, and updated Facetime to work via an intermediary server. At the time it worked on iOS 6. Everyone was reasonably happy (except Apple, who had to pay for the server farm.)

Later, Apple came up with a non-infringing version of the peer-to-peer tech that didn't require a server, and updated Facetime to use it. iOS 6 was now out of support, so it didn't get the update.

Now Apple was in a situation where they were running a chat server ONLY for iOS 6 users. The courts didn't force them to shut that down; they decided to themselves, in order to save money. In hindsight they probably should have fessed up to this instead of trying to make excuses, but this is a frequent Apple problem. (Their update that slowed down devices with crap batteries to stop them from spontaneously rebooting was similarly well-meaning, but poorly communicated.)

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'm generally anti-planned-obsolescence, but I don't think it's realistic to expect a company to keep running a service in perpetuity just because they sold a device that used it. If this is upheld I expect future suits against IoT companies who end-of-life products, and game developers that shut down multiplayer servers for old games.

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