MyWay have been flooded with complaints from customers using their latest applelet for the iPhone after a sizable portion of them have suffered a catastrophic failure of their phones.
"I think MyWay have shot themselves in the foot with this particular app," said App World! editor Mac Buck. "On the face of it, it should be a super applelet, but they've gone about it in the wrong way."
The applelet, iBath, is at the centre of the controversy.
"If you read the instructions," said Buck, "the applelet sounds straightforward. Using the conductance of the screen, the app can tell you when the bath is at the perfect temperature."
Using some clever software, MyWay had allowed the amoled screen to sense the temperature of whatever was touching it, in the case of iBath it was water.
"The options they provided were great," said Buck. "You could have it select the optimum temperature for bath water by giving the age of the person the bath was for. So baby baths were lukewarm, whilst adult baths could boil cabbage. Additionally, it could be used off-label as it were, to choose the optimum temperature for boiling food or checking that hand wash only items were at the correct temperature. On the surface, this sounds great."
MyWay are apologetic.
"We overlooked a simple parameter," said MyWay CEO May Wye. "The iPhone is not waterproof."
MyWay's lawyers have found a loophole to prevent them from paying out massively to their customers.
"According to our lawyers, there is a warning in the seven thousand page on-line document that indemnifies Apple," said Wye. "It reads simply 'Do not immerse the phone in water'."
However, MyWay apps will issue a free upgrade to version two of their applelet.
"We hope that people will be mollified by this free upgrade," said Wye. "This one works out the temperature of the water by being held near the water, so does not require the phone to be immersed."
