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>Their actions are much preferred to the alternative. Fitting a sufficiently large battery in the first place? Apple have developed a chronic problem in recen

>Their actions are much preferred to the alternative. Fitting a sufficiently large battery in the first place? Apple have developed a chronic problem in recent years - stripping out engineering margins in the interests of aesthetics. Fraying MagSafe cables due to inadequate strain relief. "You're holding it wrong". Touch disease and bendgate. Stuck keys because of wafer-thin tolerances on the butterfly keyboard. Macbook CPU throttling due to a marginal thermal solution. Pitifully poor battery durability on EarPods. Display flex cable failures on the MBP. The minimalist aesthetic has long been a key part of Apple's brand, but they are crossing the line from "minimalist" to "inadequate" with increasing frequency. It's working, for now, but it's eroding their reputation for quality. I've been recommending Macbooks to non-technical users since 2006; I can no longer do so in good conscience, because of the very high price of an entry-level machine and the high probability of a major failure.

AnthonBerg 8y ago
The battery was sufficiently large to start with. Then normal wear and tear caused the battery to be weaker. That’s fine. Throttling on a weak battery is sensible imo. The inexcusable part was that the throttling was silent. If there had been any sort of notification then it had been good design.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- jdietrich 8y ago
  >The battery was sufficiently large to start with. Then normal wear and tear caused the battery to be weaker. Your second sentence contradicts your first. Apple know that battery performance degrades over time. They knew that the batteries they were fitting to iPhones would be unable to supply sufficient current within the normal working life of the phone. They either didn't care about longevity, or chose to prioritise aesthetics. For a company that likes to brag about their environmental credentials and the quality of their devices, that's not a good look.
  - AnthonBerg 8y ago
    No, there is no contradiction. We just don’t agree on what level of battery wear and tear we find acceptable. I had a phone that was affected. Batteries are a wear item, and they are replaceable. It was after a long service life and I was fine with the whole thing, including the throttling, except the unforgivable part, which was that they didn’t tell me they were throttling.
    - nitrogen 8y ago
      Right, it's the lack of user messaging that was the problem.
  - jplayer01 8y ago
    The problem isn't capacity. It's voltage. Old batteries are sometimes no longer able to provide adequate voltage at peak loads, leading to phones turning off when running on low battery (but before it's actually empty enough for it to turn off in normal circumstances). Until now I've assumed that this generally affects all li-ion batteries over time, but I'm honestly not sure why this issue hasn't cropped up in the Android camp in the same way. Maybe the only reason it became such a big deal was how Apple decided to fix the problem (silently throttling performance).
    - jdietrich 8y ago
      >The problem isn't capacity. It's voltage. It's not voltage, it's discharge rate, which is directly proportional to capacity. All else being equal, bigger batteries can supply more current. It hasn't cropped up in the Android camp because Android phones use bigger batteries. https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/what_is_the_c_rate https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/what_is_the_c_ra...
      - Scoundreller 8y ago
        What about physics? A colder battery will have a slower chemical reaction and may not be able to supply enough current to avoid a crash without throttling.

AnthonBerg 8y ago

The battery was sufficiently large to start with. Then normal wear and tear caused the battery to be weaker. That’s fine. Throttling on a weak battery is sensible imo. The inexcusable part was that the throttling was silent. If there had been any sort of notification then it had been good design.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jdietrich 8y ago
>The battery was sufficiently large to start with. Then normal wear and tear caused the battery to be weaker. Your second sentence contradicts your first. Apple know that battery performance degrades over time. They knew that the batteries they were fitting to iPhones would be unable to supply sufficient current within the normal working life of the phone. They either didn't care about longevity, or chose to prioritise aesthetics. For a company that likes to brag about their environmental credentials and the quality of their devices, that's not a good look.
- AnthonBerg 8y ago
  No, there is no contradiction. We just don’t agree on what level of battery wear and tear we find acceptable. I had a phone that was affected. Batteries are a wear item, and they are replaceable. It was after a long service life and I was fine with the whole thing, including the throttling, except the unforgivable part, which was that they didn’t tell me they were throttling.
  - nitrogen 8y ago
    Right, it's the lack of user messaging that was the problem.
- jplayer01 8y ago
  The problem isn't capacity. It's voltage. Old batteries are sometimes no longer able to provide adequate voltage at peak loads, leading to phones turning off when running on low battery (but before it's actually empty enough for it to turn off in normal circumstances). Until now I've assumed that this generally affects all li-ion batteries over time, but I'm honestly not sure why this issue hasn't cropped up in the Android camp in the same way. Maybe the only reason it became such a big deal was how Apple decided to fix the problem (silently throttling performance).
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    >The problem isn't capacity. It's voltage. It's not voltage, it's discharge rate, which is directly proportional to capacity. All else being equal, bigger batteries can supply more current. It hasn't cropped up in the Android camp because Android phones use bigger batteries. https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/what_is_the_c_rate https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/what_is_the_c_ra...
    - Scoundreller 8y ago
      What about physics? A colder battery will have a slower chemical reaction and may not be able to supply enough current to avoid a crash without throttling.