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Comment by Karunamon | Hacker News Reader

>pulled off and remotely deleted from her iPad

When Apple yanks apps from the store, they are not remotely deleted from customer's iDevices or PC's. There are a small handful of cases where remote deletion was used, and IIRC, it was all various forms of malware.

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If Apple has the ability to do this, what prevents a court from ordering them to do so?

As far as I'm aware, patent cases usually end in injunctions and fines. I'm not aware of any case where the infringing party had to go out into the world and round up all the products they sold. While the internet may make that easier for Apple, I still think it would be an extraordinary thing for a court to order. The court does not have the authority to give such commands.

In a word, "property rights".

But we're in a 'brave new world' now where you don't buy things anymore (i.e. own them), you just purchase a license to use it! ;-)

As far as I know Apple has yet to use its ability to pull apps from devices. Apple said it only will do it when malware appears and that has not yet happened.

Huh, okay. I might be thinking Google/Android instead.

There was a reasonably high profile case of Amazon remote-deleting Kindle books a while back, ironically George Orwell's 1984 (amongst others).

Just to confirm, I still have the original iDOS on my iPad, removed from the store a very long time ago.

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