The upshot of that is that, yes, your phone got slower as it aged due to a software update. The battery life certainly didn’t suffer (if anything it would have improved it slightly). But it’s a little bit more nuanced than “planned obselescence”.
The upshot of that is that, yes, your phone got slower as it aged due to a software update. The battery life certainly didn’t suffer (if anything it would have improved it slightly). But it’s a little bit more nuanced than “planned obselescence”.
The mental gymnastics you people use is nuts. I guess this is part of Apples PR, is it? Deny history?
My wife and I both had iPhones when batterygate happened. Turns out her battery was degraded and mine was fine. She never did get her battery replaced, she was quite happy with the (reduced) performance she had. If it had been randomly rebooting it would have forced her to buy a new model. Instead she just waited until her next upgrade cycle and didn’t care, despite me telling her to get it replaced.
The battery is a consumable part. For my (second hand) iPhone 11 Pro Max it’s a £69 charge to get a new battery. After multiple years of use and two owners this isn’t unreasonable, not that it needs it of course (yet). I’ll still get years more of use out of this phone, and multiple more OS upgrades, all while other manufacturers pump and dump the next version of their handsets. We should be forcing every manufacturer to support handsets for 5 years minimum to save on e-waste.
Phone manufacturers should be forced to unlock their phones, release drivers and provide user replaceable batteries. Then you can say Apple isn't trying to force you to upgrade.
There’s a reason this whole thing was dubbed “batterygate” - it was to do with one thing - the battery.
This goes to everyone: Give up. All of these companies suck, the only thing their money buys them is better marketing. It's not worth your time being their PR lackey for them.
In fact this morning I was reading a news article in Hacker News, which is a community where we have been working hard to make sure that Azure is growing in popularity and I was pleasantly surprised to see that we have made a lot of progress. In some sense that at least basically said that we’re neck to neck with Amazon when it comes to even elite developers as represented in that community.
The comment that started this chain has a tone that implies otherwise, which is why I asked. Seems like a nothing-burger to me.
Edit: "ton" -> "tone"
If they made the batteries easily user replaceable, then you'd have a point. But they don't, and you couldn't disable that function so it falls under planned obsolescence.
That’s not a trait specific to iPhones though — the same thing will happen on most battery-powered devices these days. It’s just that someone decided to pick a fight with Apple about it, hence a lawsuit was born. There’s nothing remarkable about this case otherwise — it could have just as easily been any other phone manufacturer.
In this example, the mitigation Apple chose (and admittedly very badly communicated at the time) was to reduce the frequency with which these shutdowns happen by dropping peak performance a bit and reducing the peak power draw as a result. That action actually prolonged the device’s “usefulness” for its intended purpose as a phone and emergency device, even if it negatively affected auxiliary functions.
In any case, if the phone slows down a bit, you might think “okay, it may be time to replace the phone soon” and you like to use this as your excuse for it being planned obsolescence. What you’re conveniently ignoring is that if the phone shuts down at random, you are probably going to think “well, damn, I need to replace the phone _now_” because a non-technical person will not likely to draw the conclusion that the battery was at fault, they’re much more likely to believe there’s a much deeper and unfixable fault.
Finally, while the batteries indeed are not user-replaceable, they are still replaceable. Any Apple Store will do it for you (many even on a walk-in basis) and it’s not even expensive to have done. Many other third-party shops and service centres also have the capability to do the same.
Epic.
If they had the users' interests in heart at all, they could have thrown a modal that explained that the batteries were dying, and asked if the user wanted the phone to be throttled to avoid incidents of sudden power loss. If Apple had done this, they would have immediately lost sales and had complaints about expensive and inconvenient battery replacement, so they chose not to. This was the result of nothing but greed.
There's quite a bit of it, isn't there? If your battery doesn't die, the software will cripple your phone. If you choose not to let it, you'll exepreince random reboots.
Its all a big elaborate plan to make you upgrade.
They're smart folks at Apple. They'll try something even more sneaky next time.
To me this is no different than when I pay for new parts for my car. Could I do it myself? Maybe, but I’ll happily pay someone who knows what they’re doing to do it properly. If a bush wears down is that planned obsolescence? Should I be outraged after 60,000 miles that I have to replace it?
I’m actually old enough to have owned phones with removable batteries. Guess how many times I changed a battery? 0. All the way from the 3210, t68i, P900, Note II and a bunch I’ve forgotten and I’ve never needed to change a battery. I’ve had maybe 4 Apple phones with non removable batteries and never needed to either.
https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/apples-iphone-battery-repl...
“In the US, for example, the battery replacement price went from $80 to $30.”
https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service/battery-powe...
Price now in the US: $69
I think I’ve come to the conclusion that you use the term “planned obsolescence” incorrectly.
But if we’re going to be correct about things, it was phone speed that took a hit, not battery life.