LegalNews

Judge dismisses proposed ‘defrauding customers’ class-action lawsuit against Apple

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California has dismissed a proposed class-action lawsuit accusing Apple of defrauding customers by selling iPhones and iPads whose processors proved vulnerable to two cybersecurity flaws first disclosed in 2018, reports Reuters.

He said customers failed to prove that they overpaid for their devices because Apple knowingly concealed defects, and provided security patches that made its devices significantly slower. 

The proposed class action alleged that fixes for the security bugs known as Spectre and Meltdown slowed down the processing speed of Apple devices. In January 2018, a class action lawsuit was filed against Apple, saying, “Apple knew about the Spectre and Meltdown security defects as early as June of last year, and, as such, did not inform its customer base in a meaningful timeframe.”

The lawsuit also claimed that the tech giant couldn’t implement a fix for Spectre and/or Meltdown without impacting the performance of those processors. Apple ID patch the issues for both macOS and iOS devices, but the lawsuit proceeded.

First thought to be limited to Intel silicon, Meltdown and Spectre were found to affect all modern processors, including ARM-based chips like Apple’s A-series SoCs.

Dennis Sellers
the authorDennis Sellers
Dennis Sellers is the editor/publisher of Apple World Today. He’s been an “Apple journalist” since 1995 (starting with the first big Apple news site, MacCentral). He loves to read, run, play sports, and watch movies.