Apple has agreed to pay $18 million to settle a case accusing the company of intentionally breaking FaceTime on iOS 6. The class action lawsuit, which was filed in 2017, argued that the tech giant disabled the video-calling applicationn on the iPhone 4 and 4S as a cost-saving measure.
See, Apple uses peer-to-peer direct connection and another method that relies on third-party servers for FaceTime calls. However, due to a patent dispute involving the peer-to-peer method with VirnetX, the tech giant had to rely more on third-party servers, costing it millions of dollars. Apple eventually released a new peer-to-peer tech with iOS 7, and the plaintiffs claimed that the company broke the app on purpose to force users to upgrade their platforms based on an evidence submitted as part of the VirnetX case.
