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"...customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements" Very interesting that Apple included this as someone who took

"...customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements" Very interesting that Apple included this as someone who took advantage of a $29 battery replacement for my 6S just last month. The chain of decisions that took place for this to happen should be a lesson for more companies. I imagine it went something like this: - Feedback that iPhones were shutting down unexpectedly due to degraded and/or defective batteries. - Instead of shouldering the battery replacement immediately, the product team decides to change the performance envelope of the phone. - The root issue is not addressed. - Betterygate™ inevitably happens. - Apple heavily subsidizes battery replacements for everyone - Some people decide that they'll stick with their phone a bit longer than they otherwise would have, reducing iPhone sales. - Apple misses their earnings target, likely costing them more in value than it would have cost them to address the root issue in the first place. Of course there are other factors addressed in the letter, but this issue was notable enough to be included.

debt 8y ago
I think they meant as people “redeemed” but they used the poorly-chosen phrase “took advantage”. Because Apple shouldn’t offer something they don’t want people to use that phrase being very poorly chosen.
- deleted 8y ago
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deleted 8y ago
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threeseed 8y ago
> The root issue is not addressed No manufacturer gives free battery replacements to 3 year old, out of warranty phones. And even if they did the issue would still be wide spread because most people wouldn't necessarily come in to have it replaced.
- Puer 8y ago
  Anecdotal, but I am not a heavy phone user at all. Within a year of purchasing my brand new iPhone SE, the battery capacity dropped from 100% to 82%, causing it to begin to lag considerably doing even basic tasks and shut down randomly two or three times a week. This should not happen to a product that's only a year old.
  - eridius 8y ago
    That sounds like you have defective hardware. You're right in that you shouldn't experience significant battery degradation within a year. But beyond that, 82% battery capacity should not result in significant lag and really should not result in randomly shutting down two or three times a week. If you had brought your phone in to an Apple Store during that first year I'm sure they would have replaced it for you under warranty.
    - bschwindHN 8y ago
      Agreed, I have 2 year old SE that's at 88% with everyday use.
      - brandon272 8y ago
        My SE is slightly over a year old and I'm already at 90%. Not happy. Though unless Apple comes out with something similar, I will replace the battery at full cost before I replace the device.
- voltagex_ 8y ago
  Other manufacturers don't go after repair shops aggressively, either.
  - threeseed 8y ago
    They wouldn't exist if Apple was actually aggressive. Repair shops have simply been victims of Apple's aggressive approach to security.
bearcobra 8y ago
Apple heavily subsidizes battery replacements for everyone I think the lesson should be to have your battery replacement prices be reasonable to start with and avoid inflating the market for your devices artificially.
- jdminhbg 8y ago
  $69 is pretty reasonable to me. The problem isn't that the battery replacement cost was too high, it's that Apple didn't clearly communicate that the problem was a battery issue in the first place. The phones just slowed down without telling you why. The cost subsidies were just a PR move to atone for that.
  - heyjudy 8y ago
    If I could buy the official or know quality battery part for $25, I'd do it myself.
    - bickfordb 8y ago
      I believe they're ~$20 on Aliexpress?
      - general8bitso 8y ago
        They said ‘quality’.
      - macspoofing 8y ago
        Would you really stick a $20 AliExpress lithium battery in your phone?
    - shaklee3 8y ago
      $40 isn't bad: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/iPhone/iPhone-X-Replacement-Battery/IF377-001-1 https://www.ifixit.com/Store/iPhone/iPhone-X-Replacement-Bat...
- gehwartzen 8y ago
notable_user 8y ago
I’m not sure what you mean by “address the root issue”. The root issue is that batteries degrade over time, for everyone, not just apple. iPhone’s did a good job hiding that away by degrading performance along with it. The same thing still happens with new phones, but now apple just tells you when it happens. My X crashed in the cold and it said something like “your battery couldn’t provide peak power and your phone is now in degraded performance mode. Disable this setting in the settings app.”
- skellera 8y ago
  I essentially was doing this on my own when I had a Galaxy. Battery started dying faster so I would leave the battery saver mode on. Apple is good about doing things so the user doesn’t have to think about it. The media just ran with that shit and made it out to be way worse than it was.
  - pxeboot 8y ago
    The issue wasn't that the battery only lasted 3 hours instead of 5. A degraded battery literally couldn't provide a high enough voltage to keep the CPU running, so the phone crashed. Apple covered this up by always throttling the CPU.
    - Spivak 8y ago
      What do you want them to do, make the device unusable? Look they could have been more transparent about it and gave the user a heads up but I see it as a super reasonable response. I think people would rather have a phone that's slower than one that crashes at 29% battery.
      - pxeboot 8y ago
        No, I expect Apple to provide a large enough battery to ensure the device is still usable after a year. This was a design flaw. Before the throttling update, there were ~1 year old iPhones that would reboot anytime you took a photo or opened a large app if the battery was below 90% charged. Now I get why Apple did it, a recall would have been far more expensive, but nobody should be surprised by the media shitstorm and lawsuits that followed.
aczerepinski 8y ago
I bought the $30 battery replacement because they stopped making small phones. My preferred plan would have been to spend ~$700 on an updated SE. Similar story on the Mac side.
- tass 8y ago
  I would also spend a similar amount on an upgraded SE. Current phone lineup (not just Apple) sucks IMO. An untouched SE with latest radio and faster CPU would be worth the upgrade for me.
  - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
    Just adding my voice to the crowd of people willing to seriously shell out for an updated SE. I have a tablet and a laptop, what I want out of my phone is portability and phone, in a one-handed form factor. For now I just replaced the SE battery and I’m waiting for trends to shift again.
    - general8bitso 8y ago
      I recently purchased a nearly new condition 128GB SE and it feels performant with iOS 12.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
      I still CANNOT believe the amount of people that want these gigantic ass phones. How are we in the minority for wanting a phone that fits in one hand??
      - int_19h 8y ago
        All my phones fit in one hand - and yet I haven't used a phone smaller than 5" in many years now. Maybe 4" is just too small for most, even for one-handed use?
        PakG1 8y ago
abalone 8y ago
> I imagine it went something like this.... >- Apple heavily subsidizes battery replacements for everyone > - Some people decide that they'll stick with their phone a bit longer than they otherwise would have, reducing iPhone sales. > - Apple misses their earnings target This is a gross misrepresentation of the report which clearly states "Greater China and other emerging markets accounted for the vast majority of the year-over-year iPhone revenue decline." Battery replacements may have been notable, but it is incorrect to imply that they were the dominant factor.
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  > Of course there are other factors addressed in the letter, but this issue was notable enough to be included.
  - abalone 8y ago
    Despite noting that the comment still implies that battery replacements were the dominant factor why “Apple misses their earnings target.” This is an invalid logical leap in its step by step reasoning.
    - deleted 8y ago
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    - tomnipotent 8y ago
      > implies that battery replacements were the dominant factor why No it doesn't, only that it was "notable enough".
      - abalone 8y ago
        Clearly that is not "only" what it says. It jumps directly from "stick with their phone a bit longer... reducing iPhone sales" to "Apple misses their earnings target, likely costing them more in value than it would have cost them to address the root issue." That is very clearly drawing a casual relationship between the two things, and underscores it by stating it "should be a lesson for more companies" on how to avoid such outcomes. The last line is a dodge because, obviously, China's economy is actually the main culprit stated in the report. But I guess some people are going to hear what they want to hear.
rubyfan 8y ago
I was one of the people with. 6S that replaced the battery at $29 recently. I can honestly say I did it because the battery life was getting worse but would have paid the normal price instead of get an XS. It’s just not that compelling over the 6S. Also, they keep making the phones bigger. No thanks.
- NaOH 8y ago
  Same here in every regard, except I did upgrade to the XS solely for the ability to have two phone lines. I still use the 6S as an at-work iPod. After a month as a light phone user, here are the changes I particularly notice: —more attractive screen —faster —much better camera, which is not a big thing for me, but always nice to have —size in pocket is fine, but the size is annoying for on-screen reachability —FaceID is better than TouchID in two particular ways: in-app authentications and unlocking the phone with wet fingers (which is common because of my work) —the swipe down for Control Center is far less convenient on the XS because there's a much smaller target area for beginning the gesture —the XS can't by default show the battery percentage, and for long-term device life I preserve my battery (I always run in low-power mode, even), so this is information I like visible at a glance There's no doubt the XS is a more capable device than the 6S, but for how I use a smartphone the gains are not particularly beneficial. Maybe after I add the second phone line to increase the telecommunications divide between myself and my business I'll appreciate the XS more, but for now I am regularly reminded how much I enjoy the 6S when I pick it up to use it as an iPod.
heyjudy 8y ago
Such a weak, bullshit smokescreen from Tim. If they made more usable and reliable products at more reasonable prices, they would have more customers.
marcoperaza 8y ago
I don’t follow your logic. If Apple had handled the battery behavior as it does now, their iPhone sales would have been that much lower for many more years going back, as people would have opted for battery replacements over new phones.
mlindner 8y ago
There isn't a "root issue". People have gone over this ad infinitum. The "root issue" is iPhone batteries like most cell phone batteries do not last more than several hundred recharge cycles and especially when under high load the power will be insufficient to maintain full phone performance without the phone suddenly shutting off. On Android your phone simply shuts off on high load on old batteries. Apple gracefully fails rather than hard crashes. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. Apple gave out free upgrades because people perceived it as if Apple had done something wrong so out of good will they gave free upgrades. Current phones will do the exact same thing given time.
- shaklee3 8y ago
  You'll need to cite cite evidence for the Android claim.
- jlmorton 8y ago
  > On Android your phone simply shuts off on high load on old batteries Except, no, it doesn't.
  - detaro 8y ago
    Yes, it can happen. Had phones that did that reliably.
  - culot 8y ago
    Usually a sudden reboot rather than a shutdown. It happens.
  - Spivak 8y ago
    Anecdata: Happened to me with my last two phones, Nexus 6P and Pixel XL. Unethical LPT: Always buy the extended 'protection plan' since this problem happens so reliably around the two year mark. Call complaining that your phone crashes when it's low on battery and get a new phone for like $100. Cheapest way to get 4-5 years out of a single phone purchase. And since it's been two years since you bought the device they'll almost always give you a better phone as a replacement.
hyperpape 8y ago
There’s at least a little bit of ambiguity about what that line means: https://twitter.com/macjournals/status/1080615532930289665?s=21 https://twitter.com/macjournals/status/1080615532930289665?s.... I don’t know which way to read it, now.
- andromeduck 8y ago
  I think it's unambiguously about revenue as the paragraph it's in is all about the factors affecting revenue and the containing sentence specifically says it's enumerating factors affecting the divisions performance which would never be measured in units in the context of a post on revenue.
JansjoFromIkea 8y ago
I decided to take advantage of the offer for my SE at the end of the year, instead of replacing the battery they gave me a brand new SE for free. Apparently it shut down unexpectedly at some point in the past, there was literally nothing else wrong with it so I can only imagine they were so overworked replacing batteries that it was easier to just give me one of the discontinued phones? So this means that 12 months ago I bought a 32GB SE for 100 pounds, sold my 16GB model for 95 pounds (SE prices seem to bottom out around there) and got a brand new model a year later for free. At an overall cost of five pounds I've gotten a phone (well, two phones) that's hopefully gonna last me a total of 3 years. Beyond the inconvenience of catering for a 320px wide phone in the app store, it's not hard to see why Apple felt the need to kill it.
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
Exactly like my story. My battery life sucked and I had put off replacing it until two months ago, knowing that I would do that instead of buying a new phone. I'd rather use an external battery pack than change from my 6S.
samstave 8y ago
So this is not the first battergarte-like issue for apple. I've had my battery replaced when it was below spec twice. Once when it failed their diagnosis test, and another time when I had the "swollen" battery causing the screen to separate from the case. However, when my MBP literally caught fire in my bed while I was asleep and melted the keyboard, apple refused to fix it as the warranty was two weeks out and they claimed that the "liquid sensors had been triggered at some point in the past - and while apple recognizes that the machine catching fire was a safety issue - they didnt find reason to justify fixing the machine. You can purchase a new MBP for $1,299 - or we can replace all the guts of your machine for $1,500" Bullshit.
anoncoward111 8y ago
For me it went: iPhone 5c was a cheap and performant phone with a good ecosystem. Apple made everything worse through updates, bloat, and price increases. My phone became so impossibly slow that I bought the cheapest but also nicest walmart phone I could on a whim (LG Zone4). It's been so amazingly performant for just $100 that I would never, ever consider buying an expensive phone again, ESPECIALLY not one from Apple!!
- thirdsun 8y ago
  iPhone 5C is more than 5 years old at this point. Let's hear about your LG Zone4 experience in 5 years.
  - anoncoward111 8y ago
    I mean, I totally agree. The iphone 5c on day one in my hand in 2014 was better than it was in 2018. And that's not because of the battery, that's just because of the software updates. Like, the CPU didn't lose any MHz along the way. If Android doesn't follow the same path then I will be good-- if they do, then onto the next idea!
    - thirdsun 8y ago
      > And that's not because of the battery, that's just because of the software updates. Like, the CPU didn't lose any MHz along the way. The software changed its requirements. Within reasonable limits that's just the nature of technological advancement and availability of faster hardware. I don't know if the performance degradation of iOS 11 and 10 were reasonable, but judging by user feedback Apple seems to have increased performance with iOS 12, particularly for older devices. Of course that comes too late for the iPhone 5C, which isn't supported anymore.
      - anoncoward111 8y ago
        Thank you for your response!! I actually didn't know that 5c didn't receive iOS 12. If iOS 11 was the last OS I was using before I left Apple, then it was definitely a problem. Even after switching out the battery, the camera took 15 seconds to open and web pages would freeze upon loading. I tested them side by side on my gigabit wifi even! I don't want to hate on Apple. I have no allegiances to anyone in particular. I just am a cheapo user that values basic functionality, some speed, some longevity. I don't put a premium on privacy or animojis or nice cameras or huge amounts of storage :)
ksec 8y ago
Is subsidizes the correct word? Let along "Heavily" ? You could get the exact same Apple Battery from China for about $7 including shipping. I would bet Apple have them for less than $5. Even at a reduced cost of $29, there is still $25 margin for Apple. Even if you subtract the operational cost involves, I doubt Apple ever subsidizes.
- npunt 8y ago
  My understanding is the $29 is very much at- or below-cost. The all in cost is just not that cheap for anything involving a service that has labor, a warranty, etc. Not only is labor expensive, there's a chance that the customer's phone will be damaged in some way which they'd be on the hook to replace it, and it still costs money to ship to/from depot, operate the store where customers can drop it off, etc. Part cost /= total cost. Also, a $7 battery from China is a gamble especially for something heavily used and physically next to your body a lot of the time. I'm sure you'd get a battery that had the same physical size and stated spec, but I'd be skeptical it'd have gone through the same QC. You could get one from a bum batch, or a relabeled one operating out of spec. You just don't know.
  - ksec 8y ago
    The Apple Store, Repairing Technician are all part of Apple ( As I stated Operational Cost ) whether they were doing the battery replacement programme or not. They just have more works to do. And it is a ~10 mins job following Apple standard procedure, less than 5 min if you don't. Not to mention Apple outsource a lot of these Battery replacement programme to Registered Third Parties. A better Spec battery cost less than $7 from LG Chem. BOM cost on battery are not expensive at all, and it is not a secret.
    - sascha_sl 8y ago
      >The Apple Store, Repairing Technician are all part of Apple >Apple outsource a lot of these Battery replacement programme to Registered Third Parties Congratulations, you played yourself.
chvid 8y ago
I think the big question is is this an issue for Apple alone? They explicitly write about a sharp turndown in China. The guidances drops from 89-93 to 84 (about 8%). From what they are writing that all can be accounted for by the drop of revenue in China. Since China accounts for around 1/5 of Apple's revenue - the drop must have been around 40%-50%. Which is a lot for a single quarter. Also notice the reaction in the forex market. That certainly indicates that this is a broader issue.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  It's a broader issue but Apple is more exposed to it, because [large percentage] of recent growth has been in China. In the bigger picture Trump has decided that a trade war with China is a good idea, so of course there are going to be unpleasant consequences. Cook's reign has been rather miserly - pay more for less. It's been an effective short-term strategy for investor returns, but it hasn't created a solid foundation for future expansion, and has also given users very little to be proud of. Where does Apple want to be five years from now? iPhone XIIIS? MacBook Hydrogen? Mac Pro Gold Professional Edition? There's only so far you can push that boat before the lustre fades.
  - chvid 8y ago
    I think there is still room for expansion ... in principle at least. Apple market share can still grow in established markets (what percentage of laptops are macs, what percentage of phones are ios). Emerging markets; China, India, Africa can still grow for Apple. And then of course they can innovate; find new product categories, services ...
    - sumedh 8y ago
      > Emerging markets; China, India, Africa can still grow for Apple. Indian market for Apple has been shrinking because of the ridiculous prices for Apple charges in India. Samsung, One Plus and others now dominate there.
  - mike10010100 8y ago
setquk 8y ago
Just a point on this, in the two UK apple stores I went into recently, they were literally crammed with people getting replacement batteries. At least three people’s battery change didn’t work (including the screen repair I was getting done due to a white spot on the display) and they handed over brand new iPhones to those people. This has a significant cost to it which multiplies the original problem somewhat! It’s extremely obvious they weren’t ready for this quantity of repairs.
jrs95 8y ago
If they hadn't been chasing thinness so aggressively they could have avoided some of the negative side effects of battery degradation by just increasing capacity.
pietrovismara 8y ago
We're all better off if less phones were produced and consumed. The investors may complain, but our planet will certainly be happier.
tokyodude 8y ago
or worse, battery replacement were unavailable in Japan. Even though it's on the Japanese site, at the start of November I tried to schudule an appointment for replacement. It would tell me no appointments available within the next week. same for various stores around Tokyo. I set an alarm to check every night just after midnight. Same thing every night. It's easy to believe either it was impossible to make the appointment or the number of actual appointments available was very small basically letting them claim to giving cheap replacements but in reality offer very few
- culturestate 8y ago
  This seems to be a worldwide problem with the Genius Bar reservation systems; happens to me all the time, even for "I just need someone to run a hardware test on this" appointments.
- amake 8y ago
  I got mine replaced under the replacement program with no problems, at the Omotesandō store.
bluescrn 8y ago
Or people simply aren’t buying new iPhones because the price has pretty much doubled in the last 2 years (while functionality/performance improvements are less noticeable than ever to the average user)

debt 8y ago

I think they meant as people “redeemed” but they used the poorly-chosen phrase “took advantage”. Because Apple shouldn’t offer something they don’t want people to use that phrase being very poorly chosen.

deleted 8y ago
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deleted 8y ago

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threeseed 8y ago

> The root issue is not addressed No manufacturer gives free battery replacements to 3 year old, out of warranty phones. And even if they did the issue would still be wide spread because most people wouldn't necessarily come in to have it replaced.

Puer 8y ago
Anecdotal, but I am not a heavy phone user at all. Within a year of purchasing my brand new iPhone SE, the battery capacity dropped from 100% to 82%, causing it to begin to lag considerably doing even basic tasks and shut down randomly two or three times a week. This should not happen to a product that's only a year old.
- eridius 8y ago
  That sounds like you have defective hardware. You're right in that you shouldn't experience significant battery degradation within a year. But beyond that, 82% battery capacity should not result in significant lag and really should not result in randomly shutting down two or three times a week. If you had brought your phone in to an Apple Store during that first year I'm sure they would have replaced it for you under warranty.
  - bschwindHN 8y ago
    Agreed, I have 2 year old SE that's at 88% with everyday use.
    - brandon272 8y ago
      My SE is slightly over a year old and I'm already at 90%. Not happy. Though unless Apple comes out with something similar, I will replace the battery at full cost before I replace the device.
voltagex_ 8y ago
Other manufacturers don't go after repair shops aggressively, either.
- threeseed 8y ago
  They wouldn't exist if Apple was actually aggressive. Repair shops have simply been victims of Apple's aggressive approach to security.

bearcobra 8y ago

Apple heavily subsidizes battery replacements for everyone I think the lesson should be to have your battery replacement prices be reasonable to start with and avoid inflating the market for your devices artificially.

jdminhbg 8y ago
$69 is pretty reasonable to me. The problem isn't that the battery replacement cost was too high, it's that Apple didn't clearly communicate that the problem was a battery issue in the first place. The phones just slowed down without telling you why. The cost subsidies were just a PR move to atone for that.
- heyjudy 8y ago
  If I could buy the official or know quality battery part for $25, I'd do it myself.
  - bickfordb 8y ago
    I believe they're ~$20 on Aliexpress?
    - general8bitso 8y ago
      They said ‘quality’.
    - macspoofing 8y ago
      Would you really stick a $20 AliExpress lithium battery in your phone?
  - shaklee3 8y ago
    $40 isn't bad: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/iPhone/iPhone-X-Replacement-Battery/IF377-001-1 https://www.ifixit.com/Store/iPhone/iPhone-X-Replacement-Bat...
gehwartzen 8y ago

notable_user 8y ago

I’m not sure what you mean by “address the root issue”. The root issue is that batteries degrade over time, for everyone, not just apple. iPhone’s did a good job hiding that away by degrading performance along with it. The same thing still happens with new phones, but now apple just tells you when it happens. My X crashed in the cold and it said something like “your battery couldn’t provide peak power and your phone is now in degraded performance mode. Disable this setting in the settings app.”

skellera 8y ago
I essentially was doing this on my own when I had a Galaxy. Battery started dying faster so I would leave the battery saver mode on. Apple is good about doing things so the user doesn’t have to think about it. The media just ran with that shit and made it out to be way worse than it was.
- pxeboot 8y ago
  The issue wasn't that the battery only lasted 3 hours instead of 5. A degraded battery literally couldn't provide a high enough voltage to keep the CPU running, so the phone crashed. Apple covered this up by always throttling the CPU.
  - Spivak 8y ago
    What do you want them to do, make the device unusable? Look they could have been more transparent about it and gave the user a heads up but I see it as a super reasonable response. I think people would rather have a phone that's slower than one that crashes at 29% battery.
    - pxeboot 8y ago
      No, I expect Apple to provide a large enough battery to ensure the device is still usable after a year. This was a design flaw. Before the throttling update, there were ~1 year old iPhones that would reboot anytime you took a photo or opened a large app if the battery was below 90% charged. Now I get why Apple did it, a recall would have been far more expensive, but nobody should be surprised by the media shitstorm and lawsuits that followed.

aczerepinski 8y ago

I bought the $30 battery replacement because they stopped making small phones. My preferred plan would have been to spend ~$700 on an updated SE. Similar story on the Mac side.

tass 8y ago
I would also spend a similar amount on an upgraded SE. Current phone lineup (not just Apple) sucks IMO. An untouched SE with latest radio and faster CPU would be worth the upgrade for me.
- toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
  Just adding my voice to the crowd of people willing to seriously shell out for an updated SE. I have a tablet and a laptop, what I want out of my phone is portability and phone, in a one-handed form factor. For now I just replaced the SE battery and I’m waiting for trends to shift again.
  - general8bitso 8y ago
    I recently purchased a nearly new condition 128GB SE and it feels performant with iOS 12.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
    I still CANNOT believe the amount of people that want these gigantic ass phones. How are we in the minority for wanting a phone that fits in one hand??
    - int_19h 8y ago
      All my phones fit in one hand - and yet I haven't used a phone smaller than 5" in many years now. Maybe 4" is just too small for most, even for one-handed use?
      - PakG1 8y ago

abalone 8y ago

> I imagine it went something like this.... >- Apple heavily subsidizes battery replacements for everyone > - Some people decide that they'll stick with their phone a bit longer than they otherwise would have, reducing iPhone sales. > - Apple misses their earnings target This is a gross misrepresentation of the report which clearly states "Greater China and other emerging markets accounted for the vast majority of the year-over-year iPhone revenue decline." Battery replacements may have been notable, but it is incorrect to imply that they were the dominant factor.

madeofpalk 8y ago
> Of course there are other factors addressed in the letter, but this issue was notable enough to be included.
- abalone 8y ago
  Despite noting that the comment still implies that battery replacements were the dominant factor why “Apple misses their earnings target.” This is an invalid logical leap in its step by step reasoning.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - tomnipotent 8y ago
    > implies that battery replacements were the dominant factor why No it doesn't, only that it was "notable enough".
    - abalone 8y ago
      Clearly that is not "only" what it says. It jumps directly from "stick with their phone a bit longer... reducing iPhone sales" to "Apple misses their earnings target, likely costing them more in value than it would have cost them to address the root issue." That is very clearly drawing a casual relationship between the two things, and underscores it by stating it "should be a lesson for more companies" on how to avoid such outcomes. The last line is a dodge because, obviously, China's economy is actually the main culprit stated in the report. But I guess some people are going to hear what they want to hear.

rubyfan 8y ago

I was one of the people with. 6S that replaced the battery at $29 recently. I can honestly say I did it because the battery life was getting worse but would have paid the normal price instead of get an XS. It’s just not that compelling over the 6S. Also, they keep making the phones bigger. No thanks.

NaOH 8y ago
Same here in every regard, except I did upgrade to the XS solely for the ability to have two phone lines. I still use the 6S as an at-work iPod. After a month as a light phone user, here are the changes I particularly notice: —more attractive screen —faster —much better camera, which is not a big thing for me, but always nice to have —size in pocket is fine, but the size is annoying for on-screen reachability —FaceID is better than TouchID in two particular ways: in-app authentications and unlocking the phone with wet fingers (which is common because of my work) —the swipe down for Control Center is far less convenient on the XS because there's a much smaller target area for beginning the gesture —the XS can't by default show the battery percentage, and for long-term device life I preserve my battery (I always run in low-power mode, even), so this is information I like visible at a glance There's no doubt the XS is a more capable device than the 6S, but for how I use a smartphone the gains are not particularly beneficial. Maybe after I add the second phone line to increase the telecommunications divide between myself and my business I'll appreciate the XS more, but for now I am regularly reminded how much I enjoy the 6S when I pick it up to use it as an iPod.

heyjudy 8y ago

Such a weak, bullshit smokescreen from Tim. If they made more usable and reliable products at more reasonable prices, they would have more customers.

marcoperaza 8y ago

I don’t follow your logic. If Apple had handled the battery behavior as it does now, their iPhone sales would have been that much lower for many more years going back, as people would have opted for battery replacements over new phones.

mlindner 8y ago

There isn't a "root issue". People have gone over this ad infinitum. The "root issue" is iPhone batteries like most cell phone batteries do not last more than several hundred recharge cycles and especially when under high load the power will be insufficient to maintain full phone performance without the phone suddenly shutting off. On Android your phone simply shuts off on high load on old batteries. Apple gracefully fails rather than hard crashes. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. Apple gave out free upgrades because people perceived it as if Apple had done something wrong so out of good will they gave free upgrades. Current phones will do the exact same thing given time.

shaklee3 8y ago
You'll need to cite cite evidence for the Android claim.
jlmorton 8y ago
> On Android your phone simply shuts off on high load on old batteries Except, no, it doesn't.
- detaro 8y ago
  Yes, it can happen. Had phones that did that reliably.
- culot 8y ago
  Usually a sudden reboot rather than a shutdown. It happens.
- Spivak 8y ago
  Anecdata: Happened to me with my last two phones, Nexus 6P and Pixel XL. Unethical LPT: Always buy the extended 'protection plan' since this problem happens so reliably around the two year mark. Call complaining that your phone crashes when it's low on battery and get a new phone for like $100. Cheapest way to get 4-5 years out of a single phone purchase. And since it's been two years since you bought the device they'll almost always give you a better phone as a replacement.

hyperpape 8y ago

There’s at least a little bit of ambiguity about what that line means: https://twitter.com/macjournals/status/1080615532930289665?s=21 https://twitter.com/macjournals/status/1080615532930289665?s.... I don’t know which way to read it, now.

andromeduck 8y ago
I think it's unambiguously about revenue as the paragraph it's in is all about the factors affecting revenue and the containing sentence specifically says it's enumerating factors affecting the divisions performance which would never be measured in units in the context of a post on revenue.

JansjoFromIkea 8y ago

I decided to take advantage of the offer for my SE at the end of the year, instead of replacing the battery they gave me a brand new SE for free. Apparently it shut down unexpectedly at some point in the past, there was literally nothing else wrong with it so I can only imagine they were so overworked replacing batteries that it was easier to just give me one of the discontinued phones? So this means that 12 months ago I bought a 32GB SE for 100 pounds, sold my 16GB model for 95 pounds (SE prices seem to bottom out around there) and got a brand new model a year later for free. At an overall cost of five pounds I've gotten a phone (well, two phones) that's hopefully gonna last me a total of 3 years. Beyond the inconvenience of catering for a 320px wide phone in the app store, it's not hard to see why Apple felt the need to kill it.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

Exactly like my story. My battery life sucked and I had put off replacing it until two months ago, knowing that I would do that instead of buying a new phone. I'd rather use an external battery pack than change from my 6S.

samstave 8y ago

So this is not the first battergarte-like issue for apple. I've had my battery replaced when it was below spec twice. Once when it failed their diagnosis test, and another time when I had the "swollen" battery causing the screen to separate from the case. However, when my MBP literally caught fire in my bed while I was asleep and melted the keyboard, apple refused to fix it as the warranty was two weeks out and they claimed that the "liquid sensors had been triggered at some point in the past - and while apple recognizes that the machine catching fire was a safety issue - they didnt find reason to justify fixing the machine. You can purchase a new MBP for $1,299 - or we can replace all the guts of your machine for $1,500" Bullshit.

anoncoward111 8y ago

For me it went: iPhone 5c was a cheap and performant phone with a good ecosystem. Apple made everything worse through updates, bloat, and price increases. My phone became so impossibly slow that I bought the cheapest but also nicest walmart phone I could on a whim (LG Zone4). It's been so amazingly performant for just $100 that I would never, ever consider buying an expensive phone again, ESPECIALLY not one from Apple!!

thirdsun 8y ago
iPhone 5C is more than 5 years old at this point. Let's hear about your LG Zone4 experience in 5 years.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  I mean, I totally agree. The iphone 5c on day one in my hand in 2014 was better than it was in 2018. And that's not because of the battery, that's just because of the software updates. Like, the CPU didn't lose any MHz along the way. If Android doesn't follow the same path then I will be good-- if they do, then onto the next idea!
  - thirdsun 8y ago
    > And that's not because of the battery, that's just because of the software updates. Like, the CPU didn't lose any MHz along the way. The software changed its requirements. Within reasonable limits that's just the nature of technological advancement and availability of faster hardware. I don't know if the performance degradation of iOS 11 and 10 were reasonable, but judging by user feedback Apple seems to have increased performance with iOS 12, particularly for older devices. Of course that comes too late for the iPhone 5C, which isn't supported anymore.
    - anoncoward111 8y ago
      Thank you for your response!! I actually didn't know that 5c didn't receive iOS 12. If iOS 11 was the last OS I was using before I left Apple, then it was definitely a problem. Even after switching out the battery, the camera took 15 seconds to open and web pages would freeze upon loading. I tested them side by side on my gigabit wifi even! I don't want to hate on Apple. I have no allegiances to anyone in particular. I just am a cheapo user that values basic functionality, some speed, some longevity. I don't put a premium on privacy or animojis or nice cameras or huge amounts of storage :)

ksec 8y ago

Is subsidizes the correct word? Let along "Heavily" ? You could get the exact same Apple Battery from China for about $7 including shipping. I would bet Apple have them for less than $5. Even at a reduced cost of $29, there is still $25 margin for Apple. Even if you subtract the operational cost involves, I doubt Apple ever subsidizes.

npunt 8y ago
My understanding is the $29 is very much at- or below-cost. The all in cost is just not that cheap for anything involving a service that has labor, a warranty, etc. Not only is labor expensive, there's a chance that the customer's phone will be damaged in some way which they'd be on the hook to replace it, and it still costs money to ship to/from depot, operate the store where customers can drop it off, etc. Part cost /= total cost. Also, a $7 battery from China is a gamble especially for something heavily used and physically next to your body a lot of the time. I'm sure you'd get a battery that had the same physical size and stated spec, but I'd be skeptical it'd have gone through the same QC. You could get one from a bum batch, or a relabeled one operating out of spec. You just don't know.
- ksec 8y ago
  The Apple Store, Repairing Technician are all part of Apple ( As I stated Operational Cost ) whether they were doing the battery replacement programme or not. They just have more works to do. And it is a ~10 mins job following Apple standard procedure, less than 5 min if you don't. Not to mention Apple outsource a lot of these Battery replacement programme to Registered Third Parties. A better Spec battery cost less than $7 from LG Chem. BOM cost on battery are not expensive at all, and it is not a secret.
  - sascha_sl 8y ago
    >The Apple Store, Repairing Technician are all part of Apple >Apple outsource a lot of these Battery replacement programme to Registered Third Parties Congratulations, you played yourself.

chvid 8y ago

I think the big question is is this an issue for Apple alone? They explicitly write about a sharp turndown in China. The guidances drops from 89-93 to 84 (about 8%). From what they are writing that all can be accounted for by the drop of revenue in China. Since China accounts for around 1/5 of Apple's revenue - the drop must have been around 40%-50%. Which is a lot for a single quarter. Also notice the reaction in the forex market. That certainly indicates that this is a broader issue.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
It's a broader issue but Apple is more exposed to it, because [large percentage] of recent growth has been in China. In the bigger picture Trump has decided that a trade war with China is a good idea, so of course there are going to be unpleasant consequences. Cook's reign has been rather miserly - pay more for less. It's been an effective short-term strategy for investor returns, but it hasn't created a solid foundation for future expansion, and has also given users very little to be proud of. Where does Apple want to be five years from now? iPhone XIIIS? MacBook Hydrogen? Mac Pro Gold Professional Edition? There's only so far you can push that boat before the lustre fades.
- chvid 8y ago
  I think there is still room for expansion ... in principle at least. Apple market share can still grow in established markets (what percentage of laptops are macs, what percentage of phones are ios). Emerging markets; China, India, Africa can still grow for Apple. And then of course they can innovate; find new product categories, services ...
  - sumedh 8y ago
    > Emerging markets; China, India, Africa can still grow for Apple. Indian market for Apple has been shrinking because of the ridiculous prices for Apple charges in India. Samsung, One Plus and others now dominate there.
- mike10010100 8y ago

setquk 8y ago

Just a point on this, in the two UK apple stores I went into recently, they were literally crammed with people getting replacement batteries. At least three people’s battery change didn’t work (including the screen repair I was getting done due to a white spot on the display) and they handed over brand new iPhones to those people. This has a significant cost to it which multiplies the original problem somewhat! It’s extremely obvious they weren’t ready for this quantity of repairs.

jrs95 8y ago

If they hadn't been chasing thinness so aggressively they could have avoided some of the negative side effects of battery degradation by just increasing capacity.

pietrovismara 8y ago

We're all better off if less phones were produced and consumed. The investors may complain, but our planet will certainly be happier.

tokyodude 8y ago

or worse, battery replacement were unavailable in Japan. Even though it's on the Japanese site, at the start of November I tried to schudule an appointment for replacement. It would tell me no appointments available within the next week. same for various stores around Tokyo. I set an alarm to check every night just after midnight. Same thing every night. It's easy to believe either it was impossible to make the appointment or the number of actual appointments available was very small basically letting them claim to giving cheap replacements but in reality offer very few

culturestate 8y ago
This seems to be a worldwide problem with the Genius Bar reservation systems; happens to me all the time, even for "I just need someone to run a hardware test on this" appointments.
amake 8y ago
I got mine replaced under the replacement program with no problems, at the Omotesandō store.

bluescrn 8y ago

Or people simply aren’t buying new iPhones because the price has pretty much doubled in the last 2 years (while functionality/performance improvements are less noticeable than ever to the average user)