On Monday, a California federal judge ruled that Apple must face a proposed class action lawsuit alleging the company illegally monopolized the digital storage market, leading to overcharges for its iCloud service.
U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee in San Jose, California, said the plaintiffs in the case had sufficiently alleged Apple violated antitrust law by requiring iPhone customers to use its iCloud data storage service to back up core data and device setting files.
Lee’s new order revived the plaintiffs’ lawsuit after she dismissed an earlier version of it. She said the consumers added substantial new allegations about the importance of data storage for all iPhone files, including restricted ones like settings data.
A Los Angeles resident who said she was paying $2.99 monthly for an iCloud storage plan filed the lawsuit last year.
Apple allows third-party storage for photos and videos but not for some users’ data files that are needed to “restore” an Apple device.
MacDailyNews Take: Yet another settlement looms.
MacDailyNews Note: The case is Felix Gamboa v. Apple Inc, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 5:24-cv-01270.
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Apple needs to run things like Apple Music, Apple TV+, etc as separate entities so they don’t directly compete with third parties. Or at least level the playing field. In every area Apple competes with third parties they need to drop ALL FEES on those competitors businesses. Just like their’s.
P.S. if Apple dropped the general app fee to say 5, 8 , or even 10% this would never have become an issue. But they INSISTED on maintaining the 30% BS and here you go.
This is all APPLE’S own doing.
Otherwise we should just break Apple up. The companies products are overpriced crap now anyway. A lot of Android based products have superior HW, it’s the lack of privacy, etc that holds back the Android OS.
PS. I am an all Apple person, never owned any Android devices, etc. but I’m just not an ADS (Apple derangement syndrome) sufferer.
SHOCKING… another class action out of California. The attorneys will make millions, the class action payouts will be $3.50 each. Everybody wins!