I'm not an Apple hater or a fanboy. I've owned a number of Apple devices in the past. However, they have their issues just like any other tech company, but their devoted following does seem to be more cultish than that of, say, Microsoft or Google.
So they didn’t slow down all old phones, only ones that had the problem. They actually attempted to fix older models. To me this is the opposite of planned obsolescence and appeals to my environmental view that all manufacturers should be supporting their hardware as least as long as Apple currently does.
Now they didn’t communicate, and were fined. I think that is fair enough, but I feel the size of the fine was quite excessive given they were trying to extend the life of their customers hardware.
Note that the other phone manufacturers that have exactly the same problems did nothing and are actually better off because of it.
I had an iPhone 5S that ran ok until I upgraded to iOS 13, IIRC. After that, the frames started skipping and it became frustrating to use.
Whether or not the whole thing was intentionally nefarious I'm not convinced. But the episode looks way worse than your comment suggests.
Yes, they definitely should have communicated better. 100%. It was non obvious to any users that the phone had been throttled and that it needed a new battery. I think the fine they got will remind them to be more explicit in the future.
The feature still exists today, just explained better.
As such, it could even be counted as one of the touches Apple is known for that other OEMs don't bother with. It just needed better communication.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/ipad-airs-a7-chip-is...
Seriously - can you tell me how long you received updates on your android phone?
Apple is the absolute leader in getting longer life out of their phones, they have much higher resale as a result as well.
Apple not only allows older devices to installer newer software (with bug fixes / security fixes / and supportable features) but they have been backporting stuff to a one step earlier iOS as well in terms of basic fixes. It's actually crazy especially in comparison to their competitors (that get no flak on HN) who literally ship with an old version of android AND DO NOT UPDATE IT!
>Seriously - can you tell me how long you received updates on your android phone?
I've used Apple computers exclusively since about 2005 and phones since around 2009. So no, I've never owned an Android phone. In fact, my small apartment has no less than 8 Apple devices in use between my partner and I.
Why do you assume I'm not an Apple user? Because I said something mildly critical of them?
They have an article about hardware microphone disconnects, prolonging battery life, etc. yet they neglected to write an article about hardware throttling.
It's almost as if they had a hardware problem and instead of issuing a recall, they quietly pushed a software fix. No, that can't be it.
False. The retail and support staff were not informed of the throttling. See my other comment.
It's possible that some staff deduced that replacing the battery would help, based on personal observations, but they were never advised by corporate to do this as policy. As such, the vast majority of them were not recommending battery replacements.
You must have got lucky.
It's been established (and admitted to by Apple themselves) that the throttling was not properly explained to consumers.
I'm asserting as fact that Apple retail and support employees were kept in the dark about throttling. So, even if you had Applecare, your "genius" would tell you that your phone wasn't slowing down (you were imagining it) or that the slow down was an inevitable result of ever more complex OS upgrades. The end result is that you were told nothing could be done.
So no one was told the simple truth. That poor performance was related to poor battery health and could be rectified by a simple battery replacement.
We're specifically talking about lower CPU clocking. Now, are you claiming to have known that Apple was throttling Phones with aging batteries before the rest of the world? Because well, that's a pretty amazing feat.
The accusation is that Apple downclocked the phone in order to degrade the phone's performance and make people buy new phones.
In fact, Apple downclocked the phones so that already degraded phones could continue to function without becoming unusable.
That's all it was.
>Are you suggesting it wasn’t known that battery replacements were available for iPhones? I know I personally replaced several batteries over the years in iPhones, I don’t think that was a big secret.
>I thought it was pretty much common knowledge that your battery going bad would degrade performance and it was time to get a new battery
You're now walking that claim back it seems.
>The accusation is that Apple downclocked the phone in order to degrade the phone's performance and make people buy new phones.
No it isn't. Re-read my comments. The accusation is that Apple purposefully hid the throttling from its customers denying them of the choice to replace the battery and bring the phone back to 100%. As I said - whether this act was nefarious is not clear.
Look, you're just not being intellectually honest, nor do you seem to be carefully reading the thread so I've no more interest in debating you.
The exact nature of that bad performance isn't even really important. You're arguing trivialities, that people might have known exactly why their phone went bad. To most people, a phone is a black box, it works or doesn't. Apple allowed the phone to keep working even when the battery had degraded to the point where the phone would randomly crash if they did not address that problem. Apple made the choice to degrade performance in order to keep the phone in service -- that's against their bottom line (they'd have likely sold another phone if they didn't do that), and it gives the customer the ability to keep using a phone without replacing the battery even when it needs a battery replacement.
Wait, what? I'm precisely on topic. The topic of this particular comments chain being throttling of iPhones without notifying the user [0]. It's also the topic of a several hundred million dollar class action suit to which Apple settled[1], after admitting it was a failure to not properly inform consumers[2].
You keep trying to derail it from the topic. No-one is arguing whether the throttling is a valid technological solution to a problem beyond Apple's control. It's a great solution, and it works well to this day — What's being debated is wether or not it was ethical to hide the throttling.
And no, throttling of computer devices based on battery capacity certainly was not, in any way, something to be expected. No manufacturer had ever done it before in a portable computing device (laptop, PDA, smartphone). At least to my knowledge.
Sure, it makes sense now that we understand it. But to somehow imply that it should have been anticipated or just blindly accepted is being grossly dishonest.
I've used Apple computers exclusively since 2005 and phones since around 2009. I'm a very satisfied customer. But I'm not so fanatical that I can't look at them objectively. I certainly couldn't imagine defending something that courts around the world, the vast majority of their customers, the technical press, and Apple themselves have admitted was wrong. I just can't understand the logic.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22769621 [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21161271/apple-settlement-... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/28/16827248/apple-iphone-ba...
Actually I bought my iPhone 6S in Australia and had the battery replaced for free in Vienna under their battery replacement program. It was done in 45 minutes.
I don't think it was intentionally nefarious -- this is a real problem with this kind of battery and I've experienced it, and it's not unique to Apple devices. In theory, their solution is actually pretty good! The problem was the way they communicated this to end users, namely, that they didn't. They just did it. And didn't even have iOS tell you it had enabled this "battery management" mode when it was turned on.
This wasn't an engineering fiasco, it was a PR fiasco. Apple has always been guilty of what we could diplomatically call "under-communicating," but this is the sort of change someone -- many someones, arguably -- internally should have flagged and said, "No, look, this isn't something we should just do silently, in part because it's going to create a suboptimal user experience and in part because if we don't communicate what we're doing and why we're doing it, it's going to come across as us just slowing old phones down to make you buy new ones."
I considered this omitted because it's obvious given the technical details surrounding the throttling to begin with.
It's a lie of omission, which you could reasonably interpret as a trick to get people to upgrade.
In general, the mobile phone industry has done a pretty good job encouraging their userbase to forget that their batteries are replaceable, so I don't think that most users would consider that as a remediation step off the top of their head.
I think it's plain that the best solution would be informing the user of the problem and letting them choose between behaviors (or, you know, replace the battery), but between slow usage and random shutdowns, I would personally choose the former.
I wonder if there have been any studies on how many users, once the toggle had been added, switched it from the (default) throttling behavior to the shutdown behavior? I'd be curious to see if I'm in the minority there.
No I actually think then the average person would assume it's a battery issue, or at least be able to google it. I'm not saying that this is actually better behavior (I would also choose slow mode over random shutoff mode), but it doesn't obfuscate the fact that the phone has a faulty battery.
The reason I suspect that Apple did this maliciously is that "service battery" notifications are pretty standard behavior (including on their own laptops). It just seems like an intentional omission.
I got an email well before the throttling "scandal" broke out telling me my battery could be replaced for free. It was, 16,000KMs away from home, for free.
What was it Apple lied about?
I don't know about that. I seem to see a lot of irrational Apple hate, but not that much irrational Apple love.
I think they are far from perfect in many, many ways. But so much criticism of them appears overblown, short-sighted, irrelevant to me, or just plain wrong.
I look at it like this: all things considered, balancing various concerns, what's the best option for me for my given needs? Following that philosophy I've ended up with a lot of Apple gear. Am I a fanboy because a better alternative doesn't exist?