I had an iPhone SE affected by this. It would have been _a lot_ easier to accept what Apple did had they also done these things:
1. Been upfront about it at the time of purchase that there was a hidden function that could make the advertised performance "over 2x the speed of iPhone 5" to become 0.8x the speed of the 5 due to technical limitations.
2. Not refused me a battery replacement due to a small dent in the screen.
I spent dozens of hours with some third-party app developers wasting their (and mine) time trying to debug and understand why their apps were running slower on my nine month old SE compared to my much older 5. Apple caused us to waste our time and energy which could have been better spent elsewhere.
The lower price of the battery replacement ironically also meant that I could not go to our equivalent of small claims court because it then was under the minimum limit of what the court would help dispute that the screen was unrelated to the battery issue.
Technically Apple absolutely did the right thing. Slowing down phones to prevent them from shutting off randomly is objectively the right move, especially since Apple’s SoCs are so performant they typically have enough headroom to offer reasonable performance even at lower clock speeds.
Where they failed was in not communicating this and trying to Apple Magic “it just works pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” when they should have been straightforward.
That’s basically this controversy in a nut shell. The tin foil hatting over planned obsolescence that always comes out has never made sense for a company that supports its smartphones with software updates longer than anyone else in the industry. Even this throttling was really about prolonging the usable life of your phone—you are more likely to think you need to buy a new phone if it’s randomly turning itself off all the time, rather than just feeling a little slower than it used to.
> Technically Apple absolutely did the right thing.
> Where they failed was in not communicating this and trying to Apple Magic “it just works pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” when they should have been straightforward.
So they technically did the wrong thing.
> Even this throttling was really about prolonging the usable life of your phone.
Not really. It was the cheapest way to protect their reputation without acknowledging anything was wrong. If it was really about prolonging the usable life of your phone, they would have notified the user the throttling was happening and how they can regain the performance.
Is this a website for software engineers or lawyers?
> Not really. It was the cheapest way to protect their reputation without acknowledging anything was wrong.
Worked out great for reputation management!
But this isn’t a fact, it’s just your opinion. Mine is that they wanted your phone to keep working without much fuss. The fact that this is still how iPhones operate even now bolsters this point. They just now disclose that your battery has degraded to a point that impacts performance.
Well for the average Joe this did work absolutely wonders. My mom finally replaced her 6s days ago because it started turning off randomly. The slowdown was not an issue for SMS and WhatsApp and the occasional Google Maps.
> they would have notified the user the throttling was happening and how they can regain the performance.
And they would have a controversy on their butt about battery planned obsolescence.
It's the lie that counts. From Sam Harris' book "Lying" (I've read it 4-5 years ago so I won't try to quote it), the most important thing that I kept is "not telling the whole truth is also lying". This is what Apple did.
And when the lie helps to boost sales then the presumption of innocence goes bye-bye.
This is what did it for me with Apple. I'm in the EU so most like won't get a penny from them, but it's ok, they will never get a penny from me ever again (AFAIK)
I'm always fascinated how posts like yours are downvoted - it's kind of incredible how many people outright defend liars (and lying corporations!) and attack people calling out lies.
It seems like in modern US, lying it so normal and accepted that anger is always directed at people calling it out.
There are multiple definitions of lying. Some people would use the stricter form of 'making a knowingly false statement', and those people are likely to confidently denied they lied when they were accused lying, when they think they only not telling the whole truth.
John Mearsheimer's book "Why Leaders Lie" has a great definition on three forms of deception [1]:
* Lying - Making a knowingly false statement to deceive
* Spinning - Emphasis / de-emphasis certain parts of fact to tell a favorable story
* Concealment - Hiding certain facts to deceive
If I detect someone is "lying" (in your broader definition) I would now use the word 'dishonest' instead.
Phone slows down, meanwhile you continue updating apps which are more demanding, and this 'forces' you to upgrade to the newer/faster phone.
I rarely update apps, as I 'freeze' the updates once I get a good-enough version (i.e. Spotify keeps messing things up imho). So with a stable iOS and the same apps, the CPU/RAM should feel the same. If you slow down my CPU, then the experience becomes worse, thus buying the newer phone.
> Phone slows down, meanwhile you continue updating apps which are more demanding, and this 'forces' you to upgrade to the newer/faster phone.
I already addressed this in my first post. What’s more likely to make you think you need to upgrade—your phone shutting off all the time randomly, or just moving a little slower?
These were the technical choices given the degraded batteries in these phones. In my view, Apple made the choice that would be less noticeable to most people.
With that said, if you’re firmly in “planned obsolescence mode” I understand there’s not much I can say here to persuade you otherwise.
> The random shutdowns would make you think the battery needs replacing, meaning you wouldn't need to replace the whole phone.
What would make you leap to that conclusion? That doesn’t follow at all, especially for the average non-technical user.
The shutdowns weren’t situations where the battery was draining to zero faster than it should have. They appeared to the user as random occurrences even with battery left in the tank. This was due to the battery no longer being capable of providing the right power when SoC power draw would peak. That’s why throttling the chip to run slower mitigates the issue.
Apple's choice was not between slowdowns and random shutdowns, but between informing users or keeping them unaware that a battery swap could keep the phone fast.
Also the slowdowns weren't "less noticeable" in some cases, I've seen iPhones that reached a point where processing a single touch input could take up to 5 seconds.
Customers were generally not aware what the fix for the slowdown was. No non-technical person would ever think of swapping the battery because of slower performance, in my experience most people assume that the storage is full or the system is bloated. For a random user the only known guaranteed fix is buying a new phone. So Apple had an incentive to not inform users because of that and they clearly didn't mind.
Repeating myself in new ways isn’t my favorite thing, so here’s what I already said at the start of this conversation:
> Where they failed was in not communicating this and trying to Apple Magic “it just works pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” when they should have been straightforward.
Right. The same company that said "You're holding it wrong" when there was a design defect causing calls to drop out. The same company that shipped a broken keyboard and refused to repair units until losing the ensuing court battle.
But sure, they just only have the users best interest at heart. It is confusing that you write it, when you understand full well that no rational person will believe it, I'm not even convinced you believe it.
How is it the right thing? Batteries are cheap and could be replaced. Less e waste also. Its still psychopathic selfish profit driven behavior and people are defending it. Incredible.
Apple literally refused my request to pay for a battery replacement and claimed my battery and performance issues was due to a dent (flake of glass missing) in the screen.
Maybe you misunderstood them - for me they just flat out refused to replace the battery due to a minor dent - primarily because they alleged their machine can’t operate on the damage iPhone anymore. Which while a dick move is at least plausible.
Maybe. But the way I remember it is that it was clear from their side that replacing the battery would not resolve my performance issues even though I wanted to replace it to fix the random shutdowns and quickly worsening battery life.
In any case, it looks like an even greater flaw in Apple's design process if they are unable to properly service a phone with a dent in the screen. It should not be unheard of, especially since they seem to keep on highlighting better and more resistant glass every year or so.
It is quite strange that you give this reply as they are having to pay out exactly because they wanted their customers to think their phone wasn't up to the task anymore instead of their battery dying.
It only kicked in under certain conditions so I’d bet it was based on monitoring current battery output. I had a phone affected by it and first noticed the problem in the winter when cold temperatures meant it was relatively easy to trigger outdoors but it still never happened indoors.
It's based on battery performance. So technically correct, they just didn't inform users about it which in the end had the exact same effect as if Apple deliberately slowed down phones in order to raise sales. Effectively it was planned obsolescence with (more or less) plausible deniability.
Yet my iPhone is 7 years old, I use it for hours a day, and works as well as the day I bought it. I feel like this whole ordeal is misrepresented or just exaggerated.
Perhaps finish reading the said sentence - the court didn't decide the case because Apple decided to pay out money for their actions.
Your assumption that Apple's settlement to avoid guilty verdict somehow means that they didn't do the action (which they agreed to pay damages for) is the wildest instance of corporate boot licking I've seen this week :D
If the court decided that plaintiffs didn't have a case, Apple wouldn't settle.
I’m not sure how you failing to provide proof of lying makes me a corporate boot licker? Deciding to settle is a business decision which may or may not be related to what they did. This is the difference between a legal system and a justice system.
Please explain what kind of trouble are you threatening me with by claiming that corporation paying damages for their actions is kind of a good proof that those actions actually happened?
I am not threatening you. I’m saying if you assert that an entity is lying and you fail to provide proof then it can have consequences. It may make you the liar, since you are making false statements.
There was a legitimate issue - they needed a visible battery health indicator – but you’re right that it’s been substantially exaggerated. There’s a certain amount which is probably explained by “iOS versus Android” but I think most of it comes back to the tech press being funded by ad impressions: mention a top brand in a story like that and you’ll get a lot of clicks with very little effort.
Perhaps your usage doesn't challenge the throttling, i.e. you use it for calls, imessage, and apps you haven't updated (thus not as much CPU-demanding) for a few years. I have a Philips stereo on which I can plug/dock older iphones (3-4-5), and for that I got a very old 5, with Spotify. The phone is docked (and charging) on the stereo 24/7/365. So no complaint for that. But if I were to use it for other purposes, it would be super painful to have super slow performance or battery dying on me.
It’s both. They absolutely should’ve been clear about what was happening and should’ve given people the option to turn it off and had more obvious battery health notifications. It’s not a conspiracy to sell more phones imo.
If you want someone to blame, the mostly popular apps on the App Stores get more and more bloated every year.
1. Been upfront about it at the time of purchase that there was a hidden function that could make the advertised performance "over 2x the speed of iPhone 5" to become 0.8x the speed of the 5 due to technical limitations.
2. Not refused me a battery replacement due to a small dent in the screen.
I spent dozens of hours with some third-party app developers wasting their (and mine) time trying to debug and understand why their apps were running slower on my nine month old SE compared to my much older 5. Apple caused us to waste our time and energy which could have been better spent elsewhere.
The lower price of the battery replacement ironically also meant that I could not go to our equivalent of small claims court because it then was under the minimum limit of what the court would help dispute that the screen was unrelated to the battery issue.