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.
Whether or not the whole thing was intentionally nefarious I'm not convinced. But the episode looks way worse than your comment suggests.
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!
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."
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.
I considered this omitted because it's obvious given the technical details surrounding the throttling to begin with.
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.
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.
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?
