Apple was not able to narrow the scope of a UK lawsuit accusing it of locking 40 million UK consumers into iCloud, to the detriment of third-party cloud storage providers. British consumer group Which? first filed the lawsuit in late 2024, and is asking for £3 billion for UK Apple customers. Apple wanted to exclude non-paying iCloud users from the lawsuit, but the tribunal denied Apple's request in a 2 to 1 majority.
  • djdarren@piefed.socialEnglish
    2 hours

    My wife and I were talking about this a few weeks ago. I had iPhones from 2009 until early last year, so had a shit load of photos in iCloud. She got her first iPhone in 2012, and still has one, so also has a shit load of photos in iCloud.

    Now that I don’t use an iPhone, I’ve been able to save all my photos to bung over on my Immich server, largely because my Pixel doesn’t give a shit what camera app I use, or where I save the photos.

    My wife, however, is in a situation where she kinda has to keep using the stock camera, and the photos from that have to go into iCloud because there’s 80gb of photos and she sure as shit doesn’t have 80gb spare on her 128gb phone to even begin the process of saving them all. So she is, in effect, trapped into paying for iCloud storage every month.

    And sure, in theory it’s reasonably easy to shift across to another app - now. But for a long, long time the default was basically the only game in town. Being able to map another one to the shortcut on the lock screen is relatively recent. Is the new camera shutter button on iPhones able to open and control a third party app? I don’t know.

    Long story short, they made it super easy to get to a place where iCloud lock-in was the default, and it was only a few quid a month so fine, whatever. But as soon as you try to change, you’ve got to jump through a bunch of hoops.

    Added to that is their fucky storage levels. You get 50gb for 99p, 200gb for £2.99, or 2tb for £8.99. We ended up hovering around 500gb of usage between us and my kid, so a 1tb plan would have been perfect. But nope, we had to pay £9 a month because there genuinely wasn’t another way to do it at that time.

  • MurrayL@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6 hours

    Which? argues that a customer who would have theoretically paid £1.99 for the service but was not able to do so because the actual £2.99 price was unaffordable suffered a £1 loss, even though the customer paid nothing.

    Maybe you have to be a lawyer to understand this, because to me it sounds like complete nonsense.

  • Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    8 hours

    3 billion is just 0,8% of Apple’s revenue in 2025. And the number is based on 43 million people being owed 70 pounds by Apple.

    • Squizzy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5 hours

      This narrative has to come with more sense. I am sick of seeing it trotted out whenever there are fines handed down.

      1. Revenue is not theirs, it is the high water mark and a nice headline but it does not account for anything so its relationship to a fine is irrelevant.

      2. The intent of comments like this is to highlight that the fines are just a cost of business but then fail to consider how that cost is managed against its particular infringing product. For example if you heard google got a 3 billion euro fine you might suggest it being nothing to them, but what if the product it related to was google keep the post it app. Does that product seem likely to generate 3 billion for them? No, so the fine would encourage change.

      3. Fines should be hard hitting, not destroying. They need to be handed out for everything not huge ones that encompass the general mood.

      iClous makes a lot of money but a 3 billion increase operating costs is significant. The acknowledgement from both the government and apple will create an interest in further regulations and actions. If the fine is given, they will also have to change, it isnt that they can pay it and keep doing it unless the regulators lose their teeth.

      • tomatolung@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        3 hours

        To your point it’s one of the levers regulators and governments have against corporate entities.

        It’s a difficult venue, but it does work even if it seems like it has a minor effect. It creates disincentives and incentives which business are influenced by.

        It would be better if regulators had more teeth, but capitalist defang whenever they can. Be it laws, regulators, or even just public influence.

      • Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        5 hours

        All that would be true IF they actually have to pay the money. A lot of the time it just gets stalled, thrown out or pardoned.