Apple apologizes for slowing iPhones

[bobson (Bob)]

Whats your take on this?

A few years back there were other suspicions about killing wifi on iPhone 4s with update. A lot of people world wide experienced this, including myself and my daughters phone as well

cheers

bob

[luka]

Apple caught red-handed... again.

Let me summarise what happened:
1. Slow down the old model
2. Get suckers to upgrade to a new model because the old phone is too slow
3. Profit

Apple can give whatever excuses they want but the facts are that they were hiding the slowdown of the phones to make money. If they were upfront lots of people would have opted to get a much cheaper new battery instead of a new model phone. The lawsuits probably will not even make a dent in the extra profits they had.

A simple message like this would have been enough:
"Your battery is worn and your phone performance is unreliable. You should replace the battery."
or/and
"Do you want to slow down your phone until you replace the battery".

And while they may argue that with the release of iOS 10.2.1 they published information about the phone slowdowns (as power management), not a single person in the whole world understood what was going on until the recent events unfolded.

The real question now is what the real cost of the "discounted" US$29 battery replacement is. Even at this price they are probably making profit out of the rest of the suckers that refused to upgrade their slowed-down phone in the first place.

And the worst thing is that they will get away with it... again...

And no, the other manufacturers are probably not any better.

[leon]

Just pure greed, as long as they make huge profits, they couldn't give a stuff about the general public that actually give them that profit.

Leon

[AndrewJ]

I see they actually said sorry overnight,
so all the fanboys will be back on the koolaid pretty quickly.

Andrew

[multiweb (Marc)]

With our increasing dependence on technology in almost every aspect of our life now these practices will become the norm. I was attending a matlab seminar in the city last month about machine learning, deep learning and big data. Everything we do is monitored and profiled. It 's just simple maths. You give information willingly or unwillingly and they know you better than you know yourself.

[Atmos (Colin)]

I don’t believe that there is a big plot out there by Apple, don’t think it is a profit making exercise as much as it is a consequence of complaints. As a very simple way of looking at it:

Apple starts getting more complaints about battery failure and random shutdowns. The complaints department sends out a memo to software and engineering “We’re having battery issues, we need a fix.”

Hardware says “The battery is just getting old and needs replacement but we will change some components in the next model for better power management.”

Software says “We can start tweaking settings in the older models, slow them down in a way that hopefully won’t be noticed and this will give more life out of the battery if the phone isn’t drawing as much power.”

And forever more the software department tweaks some settings to keep the older models working reasonably as their batteries slowly die. If Apple years ago had just told people that when they started having phone issues that their only option was to pay $X and get a new battery, there would be a lot of unhappy people. You take the software route and everybody calls conspiracy. I do agree that Apple should have been more up front about it a long time ago but also considerer, no one else has admitted to doing it either.

Who will be the next domino?

[doppler (Rick)]

They could have just designed the phones so that it's easy to take the back of for a DIY battery replacement, like the old phones used to have as standard.

[GrahamL]

I'm thinking an $800 million fine and a long corporate lunch to celebrate the leniency of the decision.

[luka]

Originally Posted by Atmos

Who will be the next domino?

So far HTC, Motorola, Samsung and LG confirmed that they are not slowing down their phones. Considering that the issue is in the spotlight and that their phones will be tested, it would be a corporate suicide to lie about it openly.

[luka]

Originally Posted by doppler

They could have just designed the phones so that it's easy to take the back of for a DIY battery replacement, like the old phones used to have as standard.

Two reasons I can see:
1. We have a race to make the phone thinner and thinner. Replaceable battery will make the phone fatter.
2. It cuts the profits. Why sell the battery for $20 if you can replace the battery for $100 (arbitrary figures).

[luka]

Ah I forgot the 3rd reason:

3. Slow down the older phones in software to make people buy new models and blame it all on the bad batteries.

[Ric]

All they are apologising for is getting caught.

Now they go into damage control and offer cheap batteries to recoup their losses. There is nothing in their agenda about being nice to the consumer.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by Atmos

I don’t believe that there is a big plot out there by Apple, don’t think it is a profit making exercise as much as it is a consequence of complaints. As a very simple way of looking at it:

Apple starts getting more complaints about battery failure and random shutdowns. The complaints department sends out a memo to software and engineering “We’re having battery issues, we need a fix.”

Hardware says “The battery is just getting old and needs replacement but we will change some components in the next model for better power management.”

Software says “We can start tweaking settings in the older models, slow them down in a way that hopefully won’t be noticed and this will give more life out of the battery if the phone isn’t drawing as much power.”

And forever more the software department tweaks some settings to keep the older models working reasonably as their batteries slowly die. If Apple years ago had just told people that when they started having phone issues that their only option was to pay $X and get a new battery, there would be a lot of unhappy people. You take the software route and everybody calls conspiracy. I do agree that Apple should have been more up front about it a long time ago but also considerer, no one else has admitted to doing it either.

Who will be the next domino?

There is logic in your argument Colin from a technical point of view to make your old phone last longer with an ageing battery but I'm afraid it doesn't makes business sense when the aim is to sell newer models. It would be awfully nice from Apple to support old users this way.

[bobson (Bob)]

iPhone6 is considered old phone

Every time update is released, not just from Apple but from android or Microsoft, something doesn't work.

That's why I have iPhone4 because they don't release updates for it anymore. Everything works perfectly

[luka]

Good or bad intentions, Apple hid what they did and profited from it. Let's try a car analogy...

You take your car back to the dealer because it can only do half of distance it used to do. The dealer checks the car and sees that it has a large dent in the petrol tank which can only hold half the petrol it used to do. What does the dealer do?

1. Tells you that the petrol tank is damaged and that you need a new one. Until you get a new one your car will only do half-the-distance.

2. Disables two cylinders in the engine so your car goes further again. They does not tell you what they did.
Of course, your car runs like a dog now and eventually you go and get a new car.

[xelasnave]

Well we should not expect that anything will be done and we know that a company like vw can do deciptful things and after only a little while recover and continue as if nothing happened.
Even if Apple are taken to court and fined this time next year no one will remember.
However I shall not buy any of their products and will make a point to tell others why.

And remember if you are a share trader all this is good as the market moves one way or the other and traders profit.
However I feel that the decisions good or bad are made by individuals who presumably are paid big money but sadly do not seem to be responsible when the public asks why.
I suspect if a private individual did such trickery they would be prosectuted for something...the ceo should lose his head.
Capital punishement for dishonesty and something worse for a second offense.
Alex

[Steffen]

Originally Posted by luka

Two reasons I can see:
1. We have a race to make the phone thinner and thinner. Replaceable battery will make the phone fatter.
2. It cuts the profits. Why sell the battery for $20 if you can replace the battery for $100 (arbitrary figures).
3. Slow down the older phones in software to make people buy new models and blame it all on the bad batteries.

1. Yes, the industry is way past the point of offering user-replaceable Li-ion batteries. To make them safe would mean making them comparatively huge. The batteries are still replaceable, though, as a standard service.

2. The battery replacement service used to cost US$79, it is now US$29. Holding my breath for the AU prices, since my sons both have iPhones 6. Not that they've run into any issues yet, but at that price I'll just do it as a matter of course.

3. This is essentially the accusation levelled in the various class action suits. I wonder how it will hold up, given the reputation of Apple devices for being long-lasting, as evidenced (among other things) by their way above average resale value, and their ongoing software support for old models – the 2013 iPhone 5S still runs the latest version of iOS.

Yes, something better than Li-ion would be nice and can't come soon enough. As for Apple, this won't arrive until 2019, from what I hear.

[leon]

Having an old tradie phone that dose nothing more than answer or make a call, and send a text sometimes is maybe a good thing after all.
I don't have any issues with mine, if i can find it sometimes that is.

Leon

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

I see Coles are selling the new Nokia phone at $39, no doubt looks appealing, but from what I hear Telstra and Optus will both be shutting down the data frequency that it uses...

[luka]

This is essentially the accusation levelled in the various class action suits. I wonder how it will hold up, given the reputation of Apple devices for being long-lasting, as evidenced (among other things) by their way above average resale value, and their ongoing software support for old models – the 2013 iPhone 5S still runs the latest version of iOS.

Actually one may conclude exactly the opposite from your point that their hardware lasts long. This impacts the sales of new phones. So they crippled the older phones in software. Similarly their software "running" on the older models gives them control to cripple the older phones in software. Just look how many people refuse to install updates as it will slow down their phone/tablet.

And the bad thing is that they "crippled" the phones behind people's backs. And that is the problem. While there are reasons for doing what they did, a simple sentence warning the user would have been enough and they did not do it. Even worse, they profited from this "omission".

I doubt this was an oversight... if one person was in charge to implement the change then yes. However, Apple is not a 2-man-band. Every software change is well documented and goes through MANY hands during the development and testing and has to be approved by the management. It is extremely unlikely that from all those people not a single person thought of a simple warning to the user, especially considering the potential impact. This was most likely a calculated decision... how far up nobody knows.

I am not a fan of conspiracy theories but if it walks like a duck...