Apple sued for false advertising by plaintiffs that don't understand iPhone digital storage

January 2, 2015

A pair of iPhone owners from Miami are suing Apple and seeking class action status in doing so, alleging that Apple has falsely advertised how much storage is actually available on the phone. They're not alleging that the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus actually have less physical storage than Apple claims, no, they're perturbed to the point of legal action that when Apple advertises a 16GB iPhone it only comes with around 13GB of free space out of the box because that pesky iOS 8 needs to take up space.

Said the plaintiff's attorney, according to the Wall Street Journal:

"In reality, nothing close to the advertised capacity of the Devices is available to end users. Indeed, the discrepancy between advertised and available capacity is substantial and beyond any possible reasonable expectation."

It has been common practice for years, nay, for all of consumer computing device sales history to advertise the complete storage volume of a device, not the space available out of the box. It's simply impractical to advertise the available space (except for some fine print to say that available storage capacity will vary) because that available space is going to vary. The size of iOS fluctuates with each update, as customers of filled-up iPhones and iPads found out when they tried to update to iOS 8 and didn't have enough storage space.

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is either a ill-conceived plan to get money out of Apple for following a standard industry practice, or a pair of plaintiffs that don't understand how computers work and decided the best way to find out was to sue. The plaintiffs also allege that Apple does not allow microSD expansion of the storage space on iPhones, which is of course entirely true. But also in no way a surprise or worth the filing of a lawsuit — you can buy any number of Android, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone smartphones that offer that feature. Although it's worth noting that all of these manufacturers also advertise a nice whole number storage capacity as well.

In the meantime, if you're looking at buying a new iPhone, we suggest you consider buying at least the 58.21GB version, though you should be warned that there are some other apps on there taking up space, but at least you can delete those if you really need that space.

Source: Wall Street Journal