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The newest James Bond film, “Spectre”, arrives in theaters this fall, but if you’re looking for spy action, right now this texting lawsuit against Apple is a good place to start. This whole sorted tale began when two former Apple users sued Apple saying that Apple purposely prevented text from Apple iMessage to Android Phones from being sent. The plaintiffs also claim that by doing so these held text messages broke both the Storied Communications Act as well as the Federal Wiretap Act.
Apple recently fixed the problem allowing the text to reach Android phones with no delay this year, but also said that’s this lawsuit should be thrown out because a company can not wiretap itself. Apple’s point is that people who use Apple products such as iMessages give their consent to Apple to access their information. Apple stated that by stopping the text messages, Apple was acting in good faith without the (and here is the key word) necessary intent to spy on text sent from Android users.
All of this cloak and dagger talk took place before both AT&T and Google walked into a federal court and filed to join this lawsuit. It seems that while acting in good faith Apple has been costing other companies a lot of businesses. While speaking to Business Insider, some AT&T employees have complained about people returning Android phones because they could not reach friends, family and co-workers who were using Apple phones. So once this lawsuit has been broken down into its simplest form, without any lawyer speak or tech jargon, it’s easy to see its merit. This was a dangerous game Apple was playing, and it seems they have been caught.
On the business side of things AT&T and Google both most likely joined this suite because of two things; lost wages and access to insider Apple communication. Both companies contend they have lost significant money over the years because of people returning Andriod phones due to missed text messages, which seems fair. Second, Apple asked and was granted that most of this case and its paperwork be hidden from the public, so there are some things we will never know about these proceedings. That being said, there is still some information that can be found and used if it gets into the right hands. The reason for that is a host of Apple employees from software engineer down to managers of wireless diagnostics had been asked to write affidavits about what they knew and when they knew it. This information should prove to be very enlightening to those at Google headquarters.