Why Apple Sucks…

Just yesterday, plaintiff Jai Sen filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York. The lawsuit cites well-known consumer issues related to the iPhone 3G including AT&T network reliability issues and hairline cracks in the plastic case, both of which have been blog fodder since the iPhone 3G was launched. The lawsuit also notes the power draw of the iPhone 3G is more than AT&T’s 3G network can handle. Additionally, the plaintiff is hoping that the filing will reach class-action status.

This one will be interesting to watch. There have been so many complaints, starting from the initial release of the iPhone 3G, and those complaints are alive and well, despite multiple firmware updates.

That said, this one will be a hard one to prove. The burden is on Jai Sen to prove that Apple and/or AT&T deliberately misled customers. Hopefully the media coverage of the complaints in this lawsuit will at the very least force Apple to address the issues through new customer service policies.

Its also worth noting that the lawsuit also says that the plaintiff “has suffered injury in fact due to Apple’s defective housing used for the iphones resulting in the formation of hairline cracks in the Plantiff’s iPhone.”

What the plaintiff could have been doing with the iPhone to cause injury is a bit curious, and we prefer not to speculate; however, this hurts the validity of the whole complaint, so unless some legal magic happens, this lawsuit might not get very far.

Okay, to be fair, this one’s not totally to blame on Apple — AT&T can take part ownership of this suckage: The iPhone can’t be tethered to act as a high-speed modem for my laptop, and that would be more than half my reason to buy an iPhone in the first place. If I were to be one of those people who has a laptop simply to check email and browse the web, that’s one thing; I could use the iPhone just for that, and leave the laptop at home.

But that’s not me.

For the high cost of ownership (consider the cost of the voice and data plans, plus the phone itself), it’s amazing to me that Apple has the nerve to market the iPhone as a complete business solution without the tethering capability. Even my cheapo cell phone from Verizon lets me do it! For companies that supposedly are all about “the future,” Apple and AT&T both missed the boat on this one.

Could I hack the phone? Sure. But I shouldn’t need to. And heaven forbid I try to modify the phone … that would break my user agreement, so, if when one day something goes wrong with the phone, the folks at AT&T can refuse to help me out? (Actually, I can get into AT&T’s customer service record here, but that’s another topic for another post, perhaps.)

The current iteration of the iPhone is like a laptop that can’t be hooked up to an external hard drive: totally hobbled by its lack of a major feature.

I don’t get it!

Hello? Steve Jobs? Folks at AT&T? Are you listening?