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I still think Apple should sue some publications for defamation for the manifestly bad reporting about this story [1]. Here's John Siracusa about it [2]. [1] h

• joselreyes 9y ago
  This would be a bad PR move. A giant insanely-rich company suing news publications? Apple has dealt with overblown controversies before (Antennagate, etc.) and the best way to deal with them is to do what they're doing: communicate better, improve their software, make repairs or returns more affordable.
  • on_and_off 9y ago
    don't they already snub publications that they don't like anyway ?
    • joselreyes 9y ago
      Yes, if they want to be petty about bad publicity, there's other effective strategies like denying access to the publication as they did to Gizmodo back in 2010.
  • IBM 9y ago
    I don't think it's an either/or. They should do what they announced today and sue for defamation. When they announce the suit they could state that they intend to donate any awarded damages/settlement to charity to counter the "Big Company sues blogger" stories. But I think the reputation damage is very real and it would give Apple the opportunity to testify under oath (if it went to trial).
    • joselreyes 9y ago
      Even if they took publications to court, the public opinion would not change for the better because people stop paying attention to any story within two weeks of when it's revealed. The damage has already been done. The only potential reasonable argument to do something like this is for Apple to scare off other publications from publishing damaging headlines in the future. But the benefit of this strategy would be little when balanced by the negative PR hit it would take by every other news publication writing articles and OpEds on Rich Big Corp vs small, struggling, important-for-democracy news organizations. There's no faster way to torpedo your public approval than to go after news publications.
    • wils1245 9y ago
      I think you’re both overstating how widely known this controversy is and understating how bad suing a tech blogger would look (see: Streisand Effect). I’m a techie and have barely heard about this. People who went and bought new phones will be pissed, but the majority of users won’t care. This response owns the responsibility of countering misconceptions. The huge majority of Apple users won’t remember this in a month.
• JeremyBanks 9y ago
  I had to turn off that episode after Casey opened the segment by condescendingly dismissing any concerns about the behaviour. Quite rude and annoying. Marco doesn't see the value in tracking podcast listeners, but I'd think he'd benefit to know what causes people to stop when listening to their show.
  • MBCook 9y ago
    > opened the segment by condescendingly dismissing any concerns about the behaviour. Really? I thought that was perfectly fair. Apple made it so people’s phones don’t randomly shut off all the time if the battery is old and people are complaining about it because it fits into a different false narrative. I honestly do think this whole thing is very overblown. I’m glad they’re fixing iOS to inform users it’s going on (that was certainly an issue) and dropping the price of battery replacements is a great move. But I don’t think this is the giant scandal that the tech press is trying to make it. I thought Casey’s assessment was quite fair.
    • asendra 9y ago
      Apple hid the cause (an ageing battery), and purposely slowed down peoples phones without warning. If your phone randomly shuts downs, or it last less time between charges, you know it must be a battery issue. You go to Apple or whatever, and fix it paying no more than 79$ (maybe even free if it still has warranty!) If you hide it and degrade performance, people don't know its a battery issue, leaving them to suffer a slow phone, or spending 700+$ on a new phone. No matter the good intentions, and the "good solution" they implemented, they fucked up.
  • greedo 9y ago
    I'm sure ATP knows what is and isn't popular on their show. All three hosts don't need to be in alignment on an issue; having three parrots reciting the party line would be horrible. The fact that Casey is the less technical, touchy feely (hell he's on a podcast named analog for chrissake) is part of ATP. As is making fun of his white cars.
  • asendra 9y ago
• eddieh 9y ago
  Unfortunately, this is just how Apple is treated by much of the industry. People love to hate Apple, so there will always be: "Fingerprint Scanner: how Apple is stealing your identity and eroding your privacy", "Thin phones: how your phone will break in half", "WiFi On/Off: Apple & NSA tracking you even when you think your WiFi is off" articles, etc. This battery thing is just the latest Apple FUD and panic with a perfectly reasonable explanation. I work with a guy that doesn't use Apple products at all, yet _always_ forwards this stuff to me. I don't even argue about it or defend Apple—it isn't worth my time and it isn't worth Apple's time either. Maybe they have a defamation case, but really who cares? (edit grammar)
  • pishpash 9y ago
    Corporations don't have feelings, no need to be so personally attached. Who cares if Apple gets hate?
    • metasaval 9y ago
      I don't think anybody really cares that much, except for I guess the biggest of Apple fanboys. There are fanboys for everything: Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. There's also the inverse, haters for everything. It is interesting, however, how MUCH hate Apple gets proportionally to other companies. Especially around this story, there was a lot of misinformation around what was really going on. There just seem to be a lot more people willing to bash Apple for everything, moreso than there are people doing the same to other companies. And especially more than there are Apple fanboys. I do use Apple products, but every company and product should be scrutinized equally. Not that it matters if Apple gets hate, they're still a billion dollar company, but I do find it interesting on why they get that hate at times when it's not really worth it.
    • macintux 9y ago
      I dislike animosity based on falsehoods because it diminishes society as a whole. Look at the loss of trust in the media as a consequence of last year's election as a giant red flag in that regard.
    • deleted 9y ago
• Joeri 9y ago
  John sort of skated by the point that these phones were designed to have this problem. Spontaneous shutdowns with aging batteries are not a standard feature of all smartphones. Apple made a trade-off in the phone design that caused this hardware problem and then used software to try to workaround it but didn’t tell people that this would slow down their phones. My wife has an iphone 6 with this problem and was considering a new iphone to fix her performance problem. Whether apple meant to or not, their lack of full disclosure caused people to needlessly replace their phones. To say apple did nothing wrong is fanboyism. Was the reporting bad? Sure. Was apple in the right? Definitely not.
  • MBCook 9y ago
    Apple is right that this is a fundamental battery issue. Other phones must have SOME way of dealing with it. Does anyone know how Samsung phones (for example) deal with low battery voltage issues? Do they simply adjust the battery meter so that it reports zero percent by the time you might start having these issues? Does it slow the phone down The way Apple did? Does it issue some sort of warning that your battery is getting bad? Or does it just shut down if you overtax things? It must be possible to figure out how other vendors solved this issue.
    • emn13 9y ago
      If by "fundamental battery issue" you mean that all phones have this issue or some comparably severe tradeoff, then no, this is not a fundamental issue. Batteries don't all degrade at the same rate, and even given a specific battery tech, the way it's implemented in the device can have a dramatic impact on the longevity. Temperature, rate of charging, the degree (i.e. voltage) up to which it is charged, the degree (i.e. voltage) at which it is considered empty are all factors that are primarily in the device manufacturers hands. Even a few percent overprovisioning can extend life expectency by a lot; and aggressive temperature-related charging (and discharging) throttling can trade peak (benchmark) performance and predictable charging speeds for longevity. I bet apple could make a phone with at least double the battery longevity with 1% price, mass, and size increases, and perf and battery life decreases -- if they wanted to. Of course, those factors are easily quantifiable, and battery longevity less so... So sure: battery degradation is a fundamental issue in the sense that all batteries degrade - but how they do and what tradeoffs the device makes to minimize that are largely up to the manufacturer, and unfortunately also poorly documented, poorly benchmarkable, and I'm not sure how clearly a warranty would apply - so yeah, the it's a factor that manufacturers are bound to skimp on. (I wouldn't particularly expect apple to be any worse than the rest of the pack, though).
• Marazan 9y ago
  Reportage: Apple secretly slows down your phone. Reality: Apple secretly slowed down people's phones.
• Someone 9y ago
  Why would they, if other people throw mud on their brand, respond by throwing more mud? The proper response is to clean their brand. That’s what they do now. I think it is better late than never, but it also is somewhat (depending on how picky they will be on replacing those batteries, and on whether they will pay back people who replaced their battery recently because of this problem) classy. I also think this is intended to, and will, stop the class action suits being filed before they have even started.