[cguess]

Really really obvious reason they did this.

People are dumb.

Someone, probably very soon, and probably more than one or even ten people, would overload the weight and crack their screen. At which point they would show up at the Apple Store DEMANDING a brand new phone.

When they didn't get the repair because they're too stupid to understand how glass works they would contact CNN or HuffPo or whatever and there'd be a flurry about "glassgate" or something. Same way that putting a thin phone in your back pocket, SITTING on it and then complaining it bent set off a huge issue and tons of news coverage.

There is a walled garden, this is not an example of Apple overreaching though.

[vinbreau]

I did Apple support from 2000-2010 and I find this is a ridiculous argument. Apple constantly gives out free phones. I've given a free iPhone (5th replacement) for a guy who dropped his phone at a construction site and it was run over by an industrial vehicle. I've given a free phone to a famous tennis start because she threw it across the room in a fit of rage. I denied tons of free iPhones to people affected by Aentennagate. I've given a third free iPhone to a loudmouthed lawyer who dropped it at a bar and then ran over it. People come into the Apple store every damn day demanding free iPhones and the truth is, if you are savvy enough, loud enough and endless enough you will get it. Whether or not people will show up demanding replacements is not a factor in their decision. Internally our policy was if it affects less than 10% of the user base, it's a non-issue to be dealt with on a case by case basis. If the person making the demands has any cultural, media or social weight, they get a free phone. If the person is being loud enough and you are seeing a no-win situation ahead, just give them a free phone. I can't see how this app would have caused either situation to occur.

[r00fus]

Giving out free phones is not a sustainable way of doing business. The just sold ~50m phones on a historically low volume quarter.

Statistically speaking any meaningful way to reduce phone handouts is probably worth the negative publicity.

Banning this app is one such way.

[unethical_ban]

>Same way that putting a thin phone in your back pocket, SITTING on it and then complaining it bent set off a huge issue and tons of news coverage.

To be fair, earlier phones didn't have the problem. My Motos and iPhone 5s took back pocket tension like a champ. iPhone 6 had to be replaced within 10 days.

[2bitencryption]

I think the real problem is that they are absolutely not calibrated for any weight. I don't know what the programming interface exposes, but I'd imagine it's something like a percentage out of 100, or something like that.

So people are going to think "My iPhone isn't weighing this accurately! It must be defective!" because Apple never intended for the technology to be translated into a scale.

[robotresearcher]

The Fine Article explains the calibration process they use very nicely. Good UI too.

[CyberDildonics]

Way to read the article

[CyberDildonics]

And 16 year olds take pictures and effectively create child porn, but how far are you going to go to protect someone from being ridiculous?

[fpgeek]

Image recognition is improving all the time. Don't give them any ideas...

[TeMPOraL]

Haven't we learned from that Lego MMO that penis police doesn't work?

[HaloZero]

They allow the apps which the point of the game is to throw it up as high as you can. I imagine that's not it.

[oxide]

the only thing I can imagine cracking the screen is trying to weigh a person.

is that really something Apple would have to pay for? seems like something like that would fall well in "your fault" territory from my perspective.

my first thought was drugs, might be handy to have a scale in my pocket sometimes.

[CaptSpify]

Just because it's the user's fault, doesn't mean the user won't waste apple's time trying to fight for a new phone.

[oxide]

I don't know about you, but if that's the only reason, it sounds an awful lot like a clear cut case of overreach.

[mchahn]

> might be handy to have a scale in my pocket sometimes.

I would kill for that. I diet in a geeky way, weighing everything. I have often thought that some kind of foldable scale that fit in my shirt pocket would be nice.

[threeseed]

But only Apple would know how much weight the force touch sensors can sustain before they are damaged.

[fpgeek]

If weight on the screen often breaks the force touch sensors without breaking the screen, that's an ugly UI problem. Even with a low "force touch / no screen" accident rate (< 1%), there could easily be tens or hundreds of thousands of users walking around with broken force touch sensors that have no idea their phone has a problem - because there's no visible signal that anything's wrong. They'll just think force touch is broken and/or unreliable. That's no way to promote the adoption of a new feature.