Apple might be the biggest and most profitable smartphone maker of them all, but with great success comes a great variety of trouble. If you take a look at the news, the company’s name appears multiple times each week in the press, either because of an innovation or a rumor roundup about its upcoming products, or because of their involvement in some kind of a scandal. The latest Apple-related scandal is uglier than most: according to Gizmodo, the Cupertino-based company deleted tracks downloaded by users on their iPods from its competitor music services without them knowing between 2007 and 2009.
In a class action antitrust suit against Apple, the attorneys for the consumers have revealed the company’s practice on Wednesday. When users downloaded music from a service other than iTunes and tried to sync their music library using Apple’s software, it would display an error message prompting the user to do a factory reset on the device. When the user performed the required reset of the settings, the music from Apple’s competitors would be deleted without the user being informed. According to attorney Patrick Coughlin, Apple knew of this issue but decided not to tell its users about it. Augustin Farrugia, Apple’s security director had only one thing to say in the company’s defense: “We don’t need to give users too much information, we don’t want to confuse users.” Farrugia told the court about hackers that made Apple paranoid about protecting iTunes, protecting users from system break-ins by deleting the music not downloaded through their service.
The antitrust class action lawsuit is based on the accusation that Apple has restricted the growth of its competitors on the music player and music download service market. The plaintiffs seek damages worth $350 million, claiming that Apple made them pay more for iPods, and the damages could be tripled under antitrust laws.