Apple Broke FaceTime Intentionally On iOS 6, Claims Lawsuit

Apple's FaceTime, introduced in 2010 is a video calling software developed for Apple's iOS and Mac devices. The company has been targeted and is facing lawsuit over its FaceTime app. The lawsuit alleges that the company forced users to upgrade to iOS 7 by essentially breaking its FaceTime app in iOS 6

The FaceTime app was disabled, broke or intentionally turned off by Apple, reports the lawsuit which was filed with a U.S. District Court in San Jose, California. The iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s owners appear to have been affected as a result. Apple decided to turn off the app for these users so that it could save money on charges related to calls made through the service by forcing the users to upgrade to iOS 7, as reported by Fortune.

The basis for this lawsuit was made public in Apple's patent battle with VirnetX. When the FaceTime was originally launched in 2010, there were two technologies used for connecting iOS devices together. The first technology used peer to peer standard to directly transfer audio and video between the users and the second technology used a "relay method" which relied on third party servers by Akamai to transfer audio and video data. This method was used for nearly 5-10% FaceTime calls, reports Yahoo.

In 2012, Apple was found guilty of violating the patents which were owned by VirnetX. Thus the company had to use only the relay technology for all FaceTime calls. As a result of this, Apple had to incur millions of dollars in monthly data fee to Akamai. Since the company was incurring losses, the executives started investigating ways to reduce the cost of operating the app.

Apple decided to move away from Akamai's technology and use a peer-to-peer connection which did not violate on VirnetX's patents. Apple made that change in iOS 7. The FaceTime users on iOS6 kept receiving certificate errors and the company rendered old devices like the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S useless.