We regularly witness numerous scandals and litigations in the IT industry, and such conflicts often involve not only 'patent wars', but also claims of ordinary users against huge companies that produce low-quality products.
Unfortunately, most of these cases do not bring any results, and even more often it is easier for users to come to terms with injustice and 'pumping' money out of them. Когда слышишь о чем-то подобном, напрашиваются мысли типа 'у них же лучшие специалисты и многомиллиардные капиталы на R&D, почему же сразу не сделать хорошо?'.
Ditching the headphone jack
Since the release of the ill-fated iPhone 7, the level of hate addressed to the company Apple has reached its maximum value. Naturally, the reason for this was the absence of the usual mini-jack in the new devices. But this is not the worst thing, users of apple technology are already accustomed to such tricks of the Cupertinians.
The most 'interesting' thing started when many Android manufacturers once again followed suit Apple and began to gradually remove the 3.5mm jack. Many audiophiles, accustomed to lossless music, now have to use not the most convenient adapters or completely abandon their expensive headphones and purchase no less expensive wireless devices.
Massively breakable keyboards in MacBook
Since 2016, the company Apple has been equipping its laptops with butterfly keyboards. At first everything was fine, but then information about a large number of breakdowns of those keyboards began to appear. According to major service centers, in 2014, of all requests for MacBook repairs, only 5.6% were due to a complete or partial keyboard malfunction. After the release of MBP with a new type of keyboard, this figure increased to 11.8%, that is, more than doubled.
Artificial slowdown of smartphones
I understand that it is not comme il faut on the site about Android to remember the main competitor of Google for the third time, but not to mention such a high-profile (and relatively recent) case in the context of this article would be an omission. The size of this scam is staggering, hundreds of millions of users have become its victims, and a large proportion of them still do not suspect anything. In a nutshell, towards the end of last year, rumors spread that Tim Cook and the company were deliberately reducing the performance of old iPhone software in a programmatic way, prompting owners of outdated models to go to the store for a new device.
All doubts were dispelled when almost a few days before the New Year Apple she made a 'gift' to her fans and admitted to the above actions. In his statement, the top manager of the company tried to justify the manipulation of new versions of the OS by the desire to extend the life of batteries in phones, get rid of unexpected shutdowns in the cold, etc. But it was too late: the rebellious crowd with torches and pitchforks was eager for reprisals in the form of a multitude of lawsuits that rained down on Apple as if from a cornucopia. Until today, the problem has not been completely solved (in the settings, the option to choose between optimizing battery operation and maximum performance has not appeared), and the company's reputation has not been restored.
Surveillance in social networks
Not only hardware manufacturers, but also popular Internet companies managed to annoy their customers. In particular, the world's largest social network Facebook has been spotted so many times in scandals about wiretapping, espionage and leaking user data to third parties over the past two years that many experts are amazed at how Mark Zuckerberg still manages to contain most of the your audience.
The company uses the information received for a variety of purposes: from creating targeted advertising to influencing the political situation in its country. But in our country, unfortunately, monitoring user actions in social networks is no longer a secret for anyone. Moreover, both the services themselves and the ubiquitous government agencies are involved in such surveillance.
Lack of updates Android
Absolutely all owners of OS-based devices Android (with the exception of the Nexus and Pixel lines) are familiar with the policy of mobile manufacturers in terms of releasing software updates for old models: literally in a year or two, all non-flagship devices stop receiving large numbered updates, and then they completely cease to be supported.
It is for this reason that many people leave from Android to iOS, and not because of 'brakes even on new smartphones', archaic design and other heresy – in this regard Android caught up a long time ago (and even overtook a little) iOS. Yes, we understand that Google's platform is highly fragmented, but in the end, you have thousands of the best developers with an almost unlimited budget, make your system more convenient for optimizing and porting fresh versions to devices of previous generations.
Or oblige smartphone manufacturers to regularly release updates within 5-6 years from the moment the device appeared on the market – let the new models become a little more expensive, but at least we will know what we are paying for. An elementary example: the once top-end Samsung Galaxy S6, which was sold at the start for a fairly considerable amount, in April 2018, after only 3 years from the moment of release, it stopped receiving even security patches, not to mention new versions Android .
Conclusion: the IT industry is a big business, a huge machine for making money, in the success of which very influential people are interested. For this banal reason, various antics of large corporations often go unpunished.
And in order to achieve justice and get their money back, ordinary users need to unite in groups, sign petitions, create class actions – as they say, this is the only effective way to resist the system, but it's good that it exists.