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Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

> This will not affect the average performance of your device and it is emphatically not throttling, it’s capping the peak demands and not allowing them to be as high...

I'd be interested to know what this writer thinks throttling is.

Part of the problem is that Apple wants to market their devices as quality, long-lasting, and also sleek objects, but can't really do so as effectively if they admit that one of the internal components wears out and needs to be replaced periodically.

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Writer is all over the place, he goes on to say this:

Some users who have had older batteries replaced also said they’ve seen improved benchmarks after replacing their batteries. Well, yeah. Of course. As batteries age, they stop working as well. Period.

So is there a direct link between the age of the battery and CPU performance or not?

I'm not sure high quality, long-lasting and sleek objects are incompatible with periodic maintenance and replacement of parts. Lots of people drive high-end cars (BMW, Mercedes, etc.) and consider the cost and effort of replacing parts for maintenance part of ownership. We are all used to this. We have been convinced with consumer electronics that we just need to replace the item but really they would be longer lasting if they simply facilitated battery replacement easily and not try to hide the fact. Just report that after N recharge cycles you need to replace, just like my timing belt after 100k miles.

Battery replacement is pretty easy. Walk into your Apple store, ask for a battery replacement, and fork over $79. Or find a third party who will do it cheaper, or buy the part and tools and do it yourself.

It could be a $10 operation you could do while walking, as on many older phones. But marketing studies indicate people initially like the look and feel of glued-up phones, and shortsighted capitalism is winning out in part because consumers have little choice and they are uninformed about the long-term consequences, like iOS throttling based on battery health.

I doubt it could be that cheap. The naked replacement battery costs more than that when purchased from a third party.

I don't see why this is shortsighted. It doesn't make sense to me to optimize for something you might do once every two years.

Let's be realistic: even if iPhones had batteries like you describe, 99% of owners still would not replace them this quickly, and still would suffer from mysterious performance degradation as the electronics throttled to avoid overstressing the old batteries. The long term consequences are the same either way. The only difference is that it costs a bit more and takes a bit longer to replace the battery.

Why do they even market those new chips? It's the average performance that matters and you can wait 10 seconds to open an app, as, in the end it didn't change the average performance from the case that you would open it in a second and stare at it 9 seconds being stunned by its speed.

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