Apple Lawsuit Express: Man Sues Apple & AT&T for Lack of MMS This Summer

Kyle Irving is hopping mad, and he's suing Apple and AT&T for the lack of MMS support on his iPhone when he bought it this Summer. Though Apple VP Scott Forstall told everyone else that AT&T would roll out MMS support in the U.S. "later this Summer," Mr. Irving said in his lawsuit that he was told it would be available when he bought his phone.

As it was not, he is suing, and his attorney is attempting to have his suit given class action status for those others who were lied to when they bought their iPhones, according to The Pioneer Press.

iPhone 3.0 and iPhone 3GS were introduced by Apple at this year's World Wide Developer Conference on June 8th, 2009. Scott Forstall handled the iPhone 3.0 introduction, an iPhone OS update that included support for MMS messaging. MMS allows users to include images and videos in their text messages that can be viewed from within the message itself.

At that time, Mr. Forstall announced a list of countries where MMS would be rolled out almost immediately. The U.S. was not among those countries, and Mr. Forstall eventually said it would come, "later this Summer."

In point of fact, we'll quote our live coverage of that event, with this reporter writing, "Also, we get MMS (i.e. welcome to 2001). Most of Apple's carriers around the world will support MMS at launch. AT&T will be ready 'later this summer.' This caused laughter and grumbling both from the developers. Nice work, AT&T."

The lack of initial MMS support in the U.S. was much written about throughout the Mac, iPhone, and non-Apple-specific bogs and Web sites around the Internet, usually with a tone of grousing and complaint.

As it is, AT&T missed the "Summer" mark by a few days, launching MMS support on September 25th, while Summer officially ended September 22nd. Mr. Irving's suit, however, said he was told when he purchased his new iPhone in June that it would support MMS immediately.