18 ms·

France fines Apple €25M for iOS software that slowed down older iPhones

193 points by kilotaras 7y ago

aerovistae 7y ago
Such a small fine as to not be worth reporting. "Man in California fined 15cents over parking dispute"
- speedgoose 7y ago
  It's not about the amount, it's about sending a message. It's in the news, it's a lot more expensive for Apple.
  - rasz 7y ago
    and the message was "pay 15 cents"
osrec 7y ago
I don't think Apple would even notice a fine of such a small amount. If you want to reprimand a corporate, you must make it hurt a little, otherwise it has little impact on their future behaviour.
- lowercased 7y ago
  perhaps it's just relative to their operations/sales in France? they might have 1 billion euros in revenue, but if profits are, say, 300 million euros for France, a 25 million euro fine isn't... trivial. But... this is just supposition.
jey 7y ago
Background context: This is because Apple throttled down the maximum CPU speed of phones whose batteries were old/weak. The (claimed) intent was to prevent old phones from suddenly shutting off while running CPU-intensive apps like games.
- fox8091 7y ago
  Having used older Android phones with dying batteries, that's something that will happen. If I was under 30% battery, opening the camera immediately shut off the phone. Same for playing a video or running an intensive app.
- LorenPechtel 7y ago
  Why is everyone objecting to the one correct answer? Apple throttled the CPU to prevent undervoltage shutdowns. Throttled is better than an abrupt unexpected shutdown. Now, it's possible Apple throttled more than they needed to but the basic issue is very real.
privateSFacct 7y ago
Apple implemented this to help users extend life of older devices. Apple should just have phones in France run full clock at all times to comply with this regulation. These types of things don't recognize that phone design is a CONSTANT power management / speed tradeoff. If you demand things run 100% speed at all times - poof - your batter life is gone.
- dangus 7y ago
  It’s definitely a multifaceted issue, especially because Apple’s communication was so poor. Though it’s not like companies are in the habit of communicating their CPU scheduling strategy to their customers. The customers don’t care nor can the comprehend that information. It still boggles my mind how many people I know refuse to get batteries replaced. The price is totally reasonable from all manufacturers, way more so than plunking down another $700 on a phone. They just want a new phone at that point because who doesn’t like new things? In a lot of ways Apple was responding to customer behavior - customers allow their phones to limp along with cracked screens and dead batteries and Apple was essentially helping them do so for as long as possible without disruptions, but it also looks like planned obsolescence. A lot of the people who essentially say that a random shutdown due to lack of supplied voltage is preferable to throttling are flat out wrong.
  - supergarfield 7y ago
    > Though it’s not like companies are in the habit of communicating their CPU scheduling strategy to their customers. The customers don’t care nor can the comprehend that information. I think nobody’s talking about publishing their actual scheduling or CPU throttling algorithm, just about saying "we're slowing the phone down to save battery life, which it seems nearly everybody would understand.
    - stouset 7y ago
      “Slowing down the phone to save battery life” is happening during 90%+ of your phone’s life, even from day one. There’s no conspiracy here. This was almost certainly just a well-intentioned part of their power management design that affected the performance of older phones more than anyone in a position of leadership intended or realized. Bug report comes in: phone shuts down unpredictably when the battery is aged. Engineer see the issue, tweaks some values to make sure the peak power draw is kept in check when voltage drops, closes bug. How anyone who’s ever worked as an engineer in a large organization thinks this was some intentional decision to sell a handful more phones at the cost of upsetting customers is a mystery to me. Nobody is perfect. Apple is far better than most.
pg_is_a_butt 7y ago
Cheaper than not slowing down phones with unstable batteries and corroded circuits that explode in users' pockets.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
behnamoh 7y ago
I think the more important issue is when Apple doesn't provide some features of newer iOS versions to older iPhones, even though they can perfectly run the features. A classic example is the Airdrop which wasn't available for iPhone 4s, but people got it running on their gadgets anyway. I know that new iOS features are supposed to drive the customers to switch to newer iPhones, but to exclude other users from such features is not right IMO.
- zepto 7y ago
  Why is it not right?
  - Qahlel 7y ago
    Because Apple sets the borders of the "garden". Once you buy something it is yours. If I buy an apple from grocery store, the store shouldn't dictate how I should use that apple.
    - zepto 7y ago
      This has nothing to do with the question.
- rgovostes 7y ago
  You're holding a grudge over a product that came out 9 years ago, never mind that it got 5 years of updates. The vast majority of new iOS features are supported on older products. The few features that aren't supported by old devices are probably disabled for good reasons that came up while engineering. For instance, I publish a kext that patches the macOS kernel to enable you to use certain Thunderbolt devices that are blacklisted. They are probably blacklisted because they do not follow the Thunderbolt spec properly, and could destabilize your system. Just because I can hack it to work, doesn't mean it's a good idea.
hurricanetc 7y ago
They’ll need a forensic accountant to find this fine in their balance sheet. What is even the point of a fine of this amount? I’m not arguing for or against Apple being fined. It’s just such a pointlessly trivial amount for Apple as to be totally meaningless.
martin-adams 7y ago
If my recollection of the events is correct, I do think this fine is fair as the slowing down of people's iPhones when a new iOS was released, combined with newer iPhone models being launched made people think that it was due them perceiving the phone was old tech and unable to power the latest iOS features, not the software doing it for the lifespan of the battery. Apple were silent about this for many years and were pressured to put the option to disable this in. This is what is important. They were happy to be silent and let users feel like the only option was to upgrade to have a fast phone. And since it's not feasible to replace batteries on older phone, everything was stacked in Apple's favour.
- rgovostes 7y ago
  > I do think this fine is fair as ... made people think that it was due them perceiving the phone ... > users feel like the only option ... A fine is fair because people jumped to conclusions because of the proximity in time of an OS release and a new product release? No, that's called a conspiracy theory. If people had convinced themselves this was a ploy to sell more phones, then why on earth would they go back to Apple for another round? I think it's in everyone's best interest for Apple to have been more transparent, but there was not a shred of proof of intention of harming users, and they ran a battery replacement program likely at a loss for a year.
  - martin-adams 7y ago
    >> If people had convinced themselves this was a ploy to sell more phones, then why on earth would they go back to Apple for another round They believed their phones were obsolete, which it turns out they weren’t as it was in fact Apple who had slowed down the CPU to save power and made a decision not to inform users this was happening. I believe the consequence of this was those users feeling they needed to upgrade sooner that what would have been. That is my subjective take on it. Google Trends has shown that there is a spike in people searching for ‘iphone slow’ at the same time there is an iOS release. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/agkgha/oc_google_trends_data_for_iphone_slow_vs_new_ios/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/agkgha/oc_... While not causation, it is certainly correlated that people are perceiving a slow iphone when Apple release new software. Turns out the cause may have been Apple slowing down the phone in those updates.
maitredusoi 7y ago
25 M ? is it this just 1 second in Apple's time ?
ebg13 7y ago
What about every other phone that also does this? My Moto G5+ from 2017 still gets the same battery life that it did when I bought it, which is basically impossible, but the performance is a fraction of what it was. If you're going to focus on this issue, make it a law and go after everyone.
- txdv 7y ago
  i bought a cheap nokia 6.1 and the performance improved once upgraded to android 10
  - ebg13 7y ago
    The G5+ is stuck on 8.1.
- alwayseasy 7y ago
  You're welcome to sue Motorola. However Apple did provide the ultimate proof by admitting to it.
alibert 7y ago
It has been lost in translation but France fined for the lack of communication, not for slowing down the phone.
Qahlel 7y ago
Anytime, I read a comment defending Apple about this issue, my mind goes to the victims who defend their rapist.
- dang 7y ago
  "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
agumonkey 7y ago
Apple used to be a rare exception of making old hardware run with the latest OS. Old iMac would still operate fine with the newest OS X years later.
- choward 7y ago
  Rare exception? Linux is the most installed OS in the world and they support way more than just some old proprietary hardware.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    In commercial OSes I meant. Otherwise yes, linux has always been more oxygen for your old machine.
blinotz 7y ago
There’s absolutely no valid reason why my iPad should have been a perfectly usable - even fast - web browsing device 5 years ago and is now so slow as to be basically useless.
- draw_down 7y ago
  There is a reason, the battery.
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  I suppose that's true if you never update the OS. If you do, I don't think it's fair to say there's no reason.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
blakesterz 7y ago
> The French watchdog said iPhone owners "were not informed that installing iOS updates (10.2.1 and 11.2) could slow down their devices". I think that's reasonable. I doubt many people would've cared if Apple had TOLD us that's what they were doing, and also made it an switch. "Hey you can slow down your phone so the battery lasts longer now that you've upgraded" or something like that. It still feels like they made a deliberate choice to not let us know what they were doing so we'd buy new phones.
- hrktb 7y ago
  > I doubt many people would've cared if Apple had TOLD us that's what they were doing, and also made it an switch. It’s just a few dozen of bucks to change a battery, and people did it in droves when Apple told what they were doing.
wolfpwner 7y ago
I thought they did this before because of the degraded battery over time.
- dhimes 7y ago
  I have an iphone 6 (not even 6s), with the original battery. The battery health says capacity is 96%. Maybe that's a poor estimate? There are some things that run down the battery at a fascinating pace, but that's a very recent event. For instance, I can lose 20% charge in airplane mode. I now have to turn the phone completely off when I want to store it somewhere like in a locker when I work out (yeah, I'm a boomer I know- I'm one of the few people in the gym who don't have headphones on).
  - 1123581321 7y ago
    Definitely a bad estimate if that is an original battery. 500 charges should bring the health down to about 80%. Presumably yours has been charged 1000-1500 times since it was purchased new from Apple. My 11 Pro is at 96% and it is only a few months old. Lithium battery degradation is a chemical fact; it happens as reliably as, say, car brakes do with use.
- PunchTornado 7y ago
  without telling the consumers. They now have to tell them when performance management is on.
wmeredith 7y ago
This is so dumb. Apple has a lot of flaws but old hardware support certainly isn’t one of them. Firstly, they only slowed down older phones to prevent them from crashing as they had less and less reliable battery draw. Secondly, Apple’s support for legacy phone hardware is the best in the market. It’s absurd that they’re being punished for this.
- jonplackett 7y ago
  The problem is they didn't tell anyone they were doing it. So people thought their phone was just old and slow and bought a new one, when they could have just replaced the battery and made it fast again.
  - flatiron 7y ago
    Faster I’ve toggled the switch before on an iPhone. It’s not a night and day type difference. Feature creep kills it way more than battery throttling.
    - jonplackett 7y ago
      I had an iPhone 6S Plus. The most affected phone. I was genuinely considering replacing it because it got so slow. Then this happened, I replaced the battery and kept it another 2 years. I replaced the battery again and now my wife has it. Definitely was on the verge of replacing it. Yes feature creep plays its part but this was a big deal.
  - punnerud 7y ago
    And the solution was to replace the battery to get your old iPhone fast again, not to buy a new one. Not intuitive for most people.
    - jonplackett 7y ago
      Exactly. I'd always considered a battery replacement a waste of money up til that point. Now I replace batteries in everything! Good lesson to learn. My 6S has had 2 replacements so far and is still powering on!
jonplackett 7y ago
Fined $27 million. Made $64 billion in the last 3 months. So that's about 1 hour of profit. I'm sure they've been taught a lesson they'll never forget. EDIT: as pointed out below, that was revenue not profit. But apple make so much damn profit it's not as crazy different as it would be for most companies. So it's more like 2.5 hours.
- 88840-8855 7y ago
  Hey! This is one lunch!
- jedberg 7y ago
  And the regulatory office that fined them just made their budget for the year...
- pastor_elm 7y ago
  Well only the French have the stones to lay out a fine like this.
  - yoz-y 7y ago
    How about the 30k fine for Google because of a missing line in Google+ privacy policy (after it was discontinued)? https://www.quechoisir.org/action-ufc-que-choisir-donnees-personnelles-l-ufc-que-choisir-obtient-la-condamnation-de-google-n63567/ https://www.quechoisir.org/action-ufc-que-choisir-donnees-pe...
- ShinTakuya 7y ago
  Classic mistake of conflating revenue with profit. They made closer to $25 billion. Ignoring that, it's a mistake to think that these "small" amounts don't matter to companies. They just lost the yearly salaries of 150 or more engineers. It's worth it for them to assign 5 guys to add and maintain a feature that notifies customers of the performance drop.
  - jonplackett 7y ago
    Yeah you're right. Just did a quick google for profit and can see it's actually revenue I got back. OK, so it's 2 and a half hours.
stuart78 7y ago
This feels like a reasonable outcome. I think Apple could have done a much better job of communicating what was happening, and I imagine having to agree to having committed a "deceptive commercial practice" probably stings much more than the fine itself. Apple has already made the settings for all of this much more apparent, which seems like the outcome that actually helps customers here.
tboyd47 7y ago
Explains why my iPhone 5 still runs quick as a whip.
hannibalhorn 7y ago
They implemented a software feature to make an older, degraded battery last longer - while it should be optional and obvious, a government fine seems a bit over the top. We've all now got houses full of IoT devices (Smart TVs, Webcams, etc.) that have serious security problems and don't get proper updates because the vendors lack incentive. This is a disincentive, and totally the wrong way to go.
- caconym_ 7y ago
  Yeah. A choice between telling customers you'll slow down their phones because <technical explanation nobody gives a shit about> and silently making their phones work better in a way that's likely to generate clickbait outrage if it gets out is one between a rock and a hard place. Companies do so much shit behind consumers' backs, and so many hardware vendors drop software support on ridiculously short timelines, that this feels wrong. Very legal and very cool, sure, but just barking up the wrong tree in terms of focus on good outcomes for consumers.
  - AlisdairO 7y ago
    The solution seems straightfoward to me. Slow down the phone, and output a message saying 'this iPhone is being slowed down due to an old battery. Replace the battery to restore performance'. Then have a warning sign on the battery screen with a similar explanation. My wife's iPhone got throttled, and it felt really bad to use. This wasn't some small hit to performance that you can just do without informing the customer.
    - colejohnson66 7y ago
      They literally do just that. When it first happens, they’ll notify you with a notification. Go to the battery screen in the settings and tap “Battery Health.”
      - AlisdairO 7y ago
        Yes, they do now. They didn't then.
Someone1234 7y ago
Apple was actually fined for failure to INFORM consumers that the update would slow down their phone. To quote the regulator: > were not informed that installing iOS updates (10.2.1 and 11.2) could slow down their devices [...] committed the crime of deceptive commercial practice by omission" and had agreed to pay the fine. This is kinda clickbait reporting from the BBC. Which depressingly has become more the norm in the last few years.
- asimovfan 7y ago
  Yes :) apple did not swindle people, they just did not INFORM them how they were swindling them.
  - iDemonix 7y ago
    I'm not sure swindling involves negating a battery peak performance issue for users on old hardware. I still use an iPhone 6 and had noticed less crashes with upgrades (loading big apps would often crash it), less now with iOS upgrades. I can disable it if I want, but I prefer not to. On the flip side, I have friends with Android phones that are 4 years old, and barely usable.
    - takeda 7y ago
      Why don't they do what every other industry is doing? Have you wondered why in your phone battery degrades significantly after a year, in the mean time the battery in a hybrid such as Prius lasts about 10 years? They are overvolting them and don't implement mechanisms to keep battery change using optimal levels. Apple also pioneered the move to make batteries non-removeable (and other companies followed) most people are then forced to get new phone when battery gets bad.
      - judge2020 7y ago
        They're constantly working on making their processors better in this regard, every processor has more efficient cores compared to the high-performance cores. Most Androids have comparable battery degregation and performance rates because competitive performance requires pulling more power.
davidw 7y ago
Apple probably made that much money in the time it took to read the article.
awinter-py 7y ago
> As part of the agreement, Apple must display a notice on its French-language website for a month. It says Apple "committed the crime of deceptive commercial practice by omission" and had agreed to pay the fine. I'm not seeing the crime notice on https://www.apple.com/fr/ https://www.apple.com/fr/. Where do I go to see this thing?
- wyxuan 7y ago
  There might be some lag time, and your browser location probably has to be in France
- Aaronn 7y ago
  It's at the top of https://www.apple.com/fr/iphone/ https://www.apple.com/fr/iphone/
- 131hn 7y ago
  See screenshot here https://imgur.com/1kH0t67 https://imgur.com/1kH0t67 The disclaimer states : Au cours du mois de décembre 2017, le procureur de la République du tribunal de grande instance de Paris a été destinataire d’une plainte émanant d’une association de consommateurs. Cette plainte vise le groupe Apple, pour des faits qui auraient notamment consisté en la diffusion de mises à jour du système d’exploitation iOS entraînant un ralentissement de certains iPhones, sans en avoir préalablement averti les clients et utilisateurs. Au terme de son enquête, le Service National des Enquêtes de la DGCCRF estime que le groupe Apple a commis le délit de pratique commerciale trompeuse par omission (article L. 121-3 du code de la consommation) en ne révélant pas aux consommateurs et utilisateurs, la présence d’un système de gestion dynamique de l’alimentation inclus dans les mises à jour d’iOS à partir de la version 10.2.1 et pouvant, sous certaines conditions, ralentir le fonctionnement des iPhones des catégories 6, 7 et SE, en particulier ceux équipés de batteries âgées. Un procès-verbal de délit a été adressé au procureur de la République. Avec l’accord du procureur de la République, une amende transactionnelle significative a été proposée à la société Apple Inc. qui l’a acceptée.
djmobley 7y ago
I was glad when Apple “slowed down” my old iPhone. It fixed the sudden shut down issue for me that was driving me insane. The shut downs were unpredictable and rendered my phone unusable until it was plugged in to charge. It would have been better if Apple acknowledged the sudden shut down issue in the first place, rather than rolling out this secret fix. They denied all knowledge when I took my iPhone 6 in for service, and refused to replace the battery as it was still showing more than 80% of its original capacity.
- jonplackett 7y ago
  They didn't want to acknowledge the shut down issue because people might then have asked - Hey! why is my 2 year old phone randomly shutting itself down? That doesn't seem like it should be happening to a 2 year old phone - maybe you guys should fix that, by, say, replacing the battery.
ColonelSanders 7y ago
These electronics are marketed to perform better than the one before. They shows big numbers flaunting how the thing zips, has more cores, whatever. Therefore, it makes sense that patches curving or throttle performance are made transparent to the consumer. If anything, these patches should ask for permission from the user and toggle-able via settings. Performance was promised. If the "wear and tear" argument of batteries aging is true, they should be made replaceable. If an item is subject to wear and tear - it should be serviceable, not soldered. It would be pretty ridiculous to have a firmware update for a car that makes it use more gas, in hopes they'll buy a new one. Especially if it was snuck in. Maybe we need a regulatory bureaucracy to audit software patches and wire refunds when performance advertised degrades. Perhaps the cost of the electronic should be held in escrow by the regulatory authority, made into a security for the model of the unit, and only vest to Apple/Lenovo/etc based on a timespan. That escrow can subsidize the cost of a $1000 soldered logic board replacement on their own balance/tab. Or they could just make the units serviceable from the outset. The path of least resistance. That way, it incentivizes honesty and success for businesses like Apple by tying their products to sustainability. Them being all about the environment: https://www.apple.com/environment/ https://www.apple.com/environment/.
- thedance 7y ago
  The battery is replaceable. It takes fifteen minutes at any Apple store.
  - fsh 7y ago
    They have to remove the glued-in screen to get at the battery. Much more difficult than it should be and with the risk of compromising the waterproofing. I don't buy the argument that this is somehow required for engineering reasons. Wristwatches have easily replaceable batteries while being a lot smaller than an iPhone and having much better ingress protection.
tamaharbor 7y ago
At least the change didn't require an adapter.
gdulli 7y ago
I've only ever had one iPhone and the reason I decided I'd never get another is that it slowed down unacceptably when a new OS version came out. Every phone I've had since then I've switched from on my own schedule, never forced to by slowness like my one iPhone.
overgard 7y ago
Here's a thing to consider: your current phone, in your pocket, would it not be perfectly sufficient for the next 10 years if software wasn't making it obsolete? Is there any new app that really needs twice the processing power. Is the bajillion DPI screen hard on your eyes? Like, other than wear and tear, do you really have any reason to buy a new phone? I have an iphone 7, but to be honest I'd still be using my 5c if the battery hadn't kicked the bucket. This is no doubt a real problem for apple/samsung/etc.
- geuis 7y ago
  I’m still happily using my 6s. What I’m unhappy about is that iOS 13 broke a few things in Safari that have affected its stability. Double-tap to zoom is incredibly unreliable now and it worked perfectly for years. There’s some weird caching going on and some rendering issues, so sometimes a site will get stuck in a weird broken state that re-navigating or refreshing won’t fix. Have to exit Safari and reload it to fix. The email client now has a huge amount of white space at the bottom with all of the features like Mark as Read bundled under the reply arrow. And text selection is complete crap now. Selecting text in the url bar just defaults to highlighting the entire url and it takes 5-10 taps just to get a cursor. And in regular text, it’s impossible to see where the cursor is BECAUSE ITS UNDER MY THUMB. The old magnifying glass was a way better UI.
  - overgard 7y ago
    Right so, basically the software updates just made things worse. As an industry we're funneling people into these forced updates because most people dont want to update. And their reason for not updating is totally rational, it will almost always make things worse! I get the security aspect, but otherwise this is horrible.
blazespin 7y ago
This is a real issue. My wife uses her Mac for netflix and maybe light photo cataloging/editing, and yet after 10 years it's now slower than molasses. Why should we upgrade? We're not doing anything that requires a new computer.
- mceachen 7y ago
  If you can downgrade back to El Capitan (just take care that there haven't been security updates for 4 years now), you'll probably find it completely useable. Sierra and later made my MBP from 2010 go from my primary workstation to being a pretty aluminum doorstop.
mindfulhack 7y ago
The important issue is to let customers know. I just turned off the throttling setting on my iPhone SE, and I couldn't believe how immediately faster and more snappy my entire iPhone was. I'll see if it starts shutting down while on battery power, I want that power and control over something so basic about my device. This HN thread has done what Apple should have in the first place: disclose.
zenexer 7y ago
According to the BBC[1]: > As part of the agreement, Apple must display a notice on its French-language website for a month. > It says Apple "committed the crime of deceptive commercial practice by omission" and had agreed to pay the fine. I am unable to find this notice on Apple's French-language website.[2] [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724 [2]: https://www.apple.com/fr/ https://www.apple.com/fr/, https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.apple.com%2Ffr%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... Edit/Disclaimer: I'm not saying such a demand is reasonable or agreeing with the decision; however, I'm curious as to whether Apple will comply.
sys_64738 7y ago
That's less that Tim Cook's yearly stock bonus. How about fining them 25 billion euros?
solarkraft 7y ago
This is a "Good job, please continue". I'm a bit disappointed by France"s regulators here.
zakember 7y ago
Everyone keeps talking about how Apple is only being sued for €25M which is a small amount for them, but no one is talking about the fact that France cannot have different fine amounts for different companies based on the company's profitability. They are expected to fine a standard amount based on a certain case and this amount should be big enough for all companies to avoid the thing in future, but at the same time not bankrupt the company either.
mister_hn 7y ago
I don't know, but 25M€ for Apple are nothing. They should have charged even more, since it affected millions of devices

193 points by kilotaras 7y ago

aerovistae 7y ago

Such a small fine as to not be worth reporting. "Man in California fined 15cents over parking dispute"

speedgoose 7y ago
It's not about the amount, it's about sending a message. It's in the news, it's a lot more expensive for Apple.
- rasz 7y ago
  and the message was "pay 15 cents"

osrec 7y ago

I don't think Apple would even notice a fine of such a small amount. If you want to reprimand a corporate, you must make it hurt a little, otherwise it has little impact on their future behaviour.

lowercased 7y ago
perhaps it's just relative to their operations/sales in France? they might have 1 billion euros in revenue, but if profits are, say, 300 million euros for France, a 25 million euro fine isn't... trivial. But... this is just supposition.

jey 7y ago

Background context: This is because Apple throttled down the maximum CPU speed of phones whose batteries were old/weak. The (claimed) intent was to prevent old phones from suddenly shutting off while running CPU-intensive apps like games.

fox8091 7y ago
Having used older Android phones with dying batteries, that's something that will happen. If I was under 30% battery, opening the camera immediately shut off the phone. Same for playing a video or running an intensive app.
LorenPechtel 7y ago
Why is everyone objecting to the one correct answer? Apple throttled the CPU to prevent undervoltage shutdowns. Throttled is better than an abrupt unexpected shutdown. Now, it's possible Apple throttled more than they needed to but the basic issue is very real.

privateSFacct 7y ago

Apple implemented this to help users extend life of older devices. Apple should just have phones in France run full clock at all times to comply with this regulation. These types of things don't recognize that phone design is a CONSTANT power management / speed tradeoff. If you demand things run 100% speed at all times - poof - your batter life is gone.

dangus 7y ago
It’s definitely a multifaceted issue, especially because Apple’s communication was so poor. Though it’s not like companies are in the habit of communicating their CPU scheduling strategy to their customers. The customers don’t care nor can the comprehend that information. It still boggles my mind how many people I know refuse to get batteries replaced. The price is totally reasonable from all manufacturers, way more so than plunking down another $700 on a phone. They just want a new phone at that point because who doesn’t like new things? In a lot of ways Apple was responding to customer behavior - customers allow their phones to limp along with cracked screens and dead batteries and Apple was essentially helping them do so for as long as possible without disruptions, but it also looks like planned obsolescence. A lot of the people who essentially say that a random shutdown due to lack of supplied voltage is preferable to throttling are flat out wrong.
- supergarfield 7y ago
  > Though it’s not like companies are in the habit of communicating their CPU scheduling strategy to their customers. The customers don’t care nor can the comprehend that information. I think nobody’s talking about publishing their actual scheduling or CPU throttling algorithm, just about saying "we're slowing the phone down to save battery life, which it seems nearly everybody would understand.
  - stouset 7y ago
    “Slowing down the phone to save battery life” is happening during 90%+ of your phone’s life, even from day one. There’s no conspiracy here. This was almost certainly just a well-intentioned part of their power management design that affected the performance of older phones more than anyone in a position of leadership intended or realized. Bug report comes in: phone shuts down unpredictably when the battery is aged. Engineer see the issue, tweaks some values to make sure the peak power draw is kept in check when voltage drops, closes bug. How anyone who’s ever worked as an engineer in a large organization thinks this was some intentional decision to sell a handful more phones at the cost of upsetting customers is a mystery to me. Nobody is perfect. Apple is far better than most.

pg_is_a_butt 7y ago

Cheaper than not slowing down phones with unstable batteries and corroded circuits that explode in users' pockets.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

behnamoh 7y ago

I think the more important issue is when Apple doesn't provide some features of newer iOS versions to older iPhones, even though they can perfectly run the features. A classic example is the Airdrop which wasn't available for iPhone 4s, but people got it running on their gadgets anyway. I know that new iOS features are supposed to drive the customers to switch to newer iPhones, but to exclude other users from such features is not right IMO.

zepto 7y ago
Why is it not right?
- Qahlel 7y ago
  Because Apple sets the borders of the "garden". Once you buy something it is yours. If I buy an apple from grocery store, the store shouldn't dictate how I should use that apple.
  - zepto 7y ago
    This has nothing to do with the question.
rgovostes 7y ago
You're holding a grudge over a product that came out 9 years ago, never mind that it got 5 years of updates. The vast majority of new iOS features are supported on older products. The few features that aren't supported by old devices are probably disabled for good reasons that came up while engineering. For instance, I publish a kext that patches the macOS kernel to enable you to use certain Thunderbolt devices that are blacklisted. They are probably blacklisted because they do not follow the Thunderbolt spec properly, and could destabilize your system. Just because I can hack it to work, doesn't mean it's a good idea.

hurricanetc 7y ago

They’ll need a forensic accountant to find this fine in their balance sheet. What is even the point of a fine of this amount? I’m not arguing for or against Apple being fined. It’s just such a pointlessly trivial amount for Apple as to be totally meaningless.

martin-adams 7y ago

If my recollection of the events is correct, I do think this fine is fair as the slowing down of people's iPhones when a new iOS was released, combined with newer iPhone models being launched made people think that it was due them perceiving the phone was old tech and unable to power the latest iOS features, not the software doing it for the lifespan of the battery. Apple were silent about this for many years and were pressured to put the option to disable this in. This is what is important. They were happy to be silent and let users feel like the only option was to upgrade to have a fast phone. And since it's not feasible to replace batteries on older phone, everything was stacked in Apple's favour.

rgovostes 7y ago
> I do think this fine is fair as ... made people think that it was due them perceiving the phone ... > users feel like the only option ... A fine is fair because people jumped to conclusions because of the proximity in time of an OS release and a new product release? No, that's called a conspiracy theory. If people had convinced themselves this was a ploy to sell more phones, then why on earth would they go back to Apple for another round? I think it's in everyone's best interest for Apple to have been more transparent, but there was not a shred of proof of intention of harming users, and they ran a battery replacement program likely at a loss for a year.
- martin-adams 7y ago
  >> If people had convinced themselves this was a ploy to sell more phones, then why on earth would they go back to Apple for another round They believed their phones were obsolete, which it turns out they weren’t as it was in fact Apple who had slowed down the CPU to save power and made a decision not to inform users this was happening. I believe the consequence of this was those users feeling they needed to upgrade sooner that what would have been. That is my subjective take on it. Google Trends has shown that there is a spike in people searching for ‘iphone slow’ at the same time there is an iOS release. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/agkgha/oc_google_trends_data_for_iphone_slow_vs_new_ios/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/agkgha/oc_... While not causation, it is certainly correlated that people are perceiving a slow iphone when Apple release new software. Turns out the cause may have been Apple slowing down the phone in those updates.

maitredusoi 7y ago

25 M ? is it this just 1 second in Apple's time ?

ebg13 7y ago

What about every other phone that also does this? My Moto G5+ from 2017 still gets the same battery life that it did when I bought it, which is basically impossible, but the performance is a fraction of what it was. If you're going to focus on this issue, make it a law and go after everyone.

txdv 7y ago
i bought a cheap nokia 6.1 and the performance improved once upgraded to android 10
- ebg13 7y ago
  The G5+ is stuck on 8.1.
alwayseasy 7y ago
You're welcome to sue Motorola. However Apple did provide the ultimate proof by admitting to it.

alibert 7y ago

It has been lost in translation but France fined for the lack of communication, not for slowing down the phone.

Qahlel 7y ago

Anytime, I read a comment defending Apple about this issue, my mind goes to the victims who defend their rapist.

dang 7y ago
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

agumonkey 7y ago

Apple used to be a rare exception of making old hardware run with the latest OS. Old iMac would still operate fine with the newest OS X years later.

choward 7y ago
Rare exception? Linux is the most installed OS in the world and they support way more than just some old proprietary hardware.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  In commercial OSes I meant. Otherwise yes, linux has always been more oxygen for your old machine.

blinotz 7y ago

There’s absolutely no valid reason why my iPad should have been a perfectly usable - even fast - web browsing device 5 years ago and is now so slow as to be basically useless.

draw_down 7y ago
There is a reason, the battery.
xwowsersx 7y ago
I suppose that's true if you never update the OS. If you do, I don't think it's fair to say there's no reason.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

blakesterz 7y ago

> The French watchdog said iPhone owners "were not informed that installing iOS updates (10.2.1 and 11.2) could slow down their devices". I think that's reasonable. I doubt many people would've cared if Apple had TOLD us that's what they were doing, and also made it an switch. "Hey you can slow down your phone so the battery lasts longer now that you've upgraded" or something like that. It still feels like they made a deliberate choice to not let us know what they were doing so we'd buy new phones.

hrktb 7y ago
> I doubt many people would've cared if Apple had TOLD us that's what they were doing, and also made it an switch. It’s just a few dozen of bucks to change a battery, and people did it in droves when Apple told what they were doing.

wolfpwner 7y ago

I thought they did this before because of the degraded battery over time.

dhimes 7y ago
I have an iphone 6 (not even 6s), with the original battery. The battery health says capacity is 96%. Maybe that's a poor estimate? There are some things that run down the battery at a fascinating pace, but that's a very recent event. For instance, I can lose 20% charge in airplane mode. I now have to turn the phone completely off when I want to store it somewhere like in a locker when I work out (yeah, I'm a boomer I know- I'm one of the few people in the gym who don't have headphones on).
- 1123581321 7y ago
  Definitely a bad estimate if that is an original battery. 500 charges should bring the health down to about 80%. Presumably yours has been charged 1000-1500 times since it was purchased new from Apple. My 11 Pro is at 96% and it is only a few months old. Lithium battery degradation is a chemical fact; it happens as reliably as, say, car brakes do with use.
PunchTornado 7y ago
without telling the consumers. They now have to tell them when performance management is on.

wmeredith 7y ago

This is so dumb. Apple has a lot of flaws but old hardware support certainly isn’t one of them. Firstly, they only slowed down older phones to prevent them from crashing as they had less and less reliable battery draw. Secondly, Apple’s support for legacy phone hardware is the best in the market. It’s absurd that they’re being punished for this.

jonplackett 7y ago
The problem is they didn't tell anyone they were doing it. So people thought their phone was just old and slow and bought a new one, when they could have just replaced the battery and made it fast again.
- flatiron 7y ago
  Faster I’ve toggled the switch before on an iPhone. It’s not a night and day type difference. Feature creep kills it way more than battery throttling.
  - jonplackett 7y ago
    I had an iPhone 6S Plus. The most affected phone. I was genuinely considering replacing it because it got so slow. Then this happened, I replaced the battery and kept it another 2 years. I replaced the battery again and now my wife has it. Definitely was on the verge of replacing it. Yes feature creep plays its part but this was a big deal.
- punnerud 7y ago
  And the solution was to replace the battery to get your old iPhone fast again, not to buy a new one. Not intuitive for most people.
  - jonplackett 7y ago
    Exactly. I'd always considered a battery replacement a waste of money up til that point. Now I replace batteries in everything! Good lesson to learn. My 6S has had 2 replacements so far and is still powering on!

jonplackett 7y ago

Fined $27 million. Made $64 billion in the last 3 months. So that's about 1 hour of profit. I'm sure they've been taught a lesson they'll never forget. EDIT: as pointed out below, that was revenue not profit. But apple make so much damn profit it's not as crazy different as it would be for most companies. So it's more like 2.5 hours.

88840-8855 7y ago
Hey! This is one lunch!
jedberg 7y ago
And the regulatory office that fined them just made their budget for the year...
pastor_elm 7y ago
Well only the French have the stones to lay out a fine like this.
- yoz-y 7y ago
  How about the 30k fine for Google because of a missing line in Google+ privacy policy (after it was discontinued)? https://www.quechoisir.org/action-ufc-que-choisir-donnees-personnelles-l-ufc-que-choisir-obtient-la-condamnation-de-google-n63567/ https://www.quechoisir.org/action-ufc-que-choisir-donnees-pe...
ShinTakuya 7y ago
Classic mistake of conflating revenue with profit. They made closer to $25 billion. Ignoring that, it's a mistake to think that these "small" amounts don't matter to companies. They just lost the yearly salaries of 150 or more engineers. It's worth it for them to assign 5 guys to add and maintain a feature that notifies customers of the performance drop.
- jonplackett 7y ago
  Yeah you're right. Just did a quick google for profit and can see it's actually revenue I got back. OK, so it's 2 and a half hours.

stuart78 7y ago

This feels like a reasonable outcome. I think Apple could have done a much better job of communicating what was happening, and I imagine having to agree to having committed a "deceptive commercial practice" probably stings much more than the fine itself. Apple has already made the settings for all of this much more apparent, which seems like the outcome that actually helps customers here.

tboyd47 7y ago

Explains why my iPhone 5 still runs quick as a whip.

hannibalhorn 7y ago

They implemented a software feature to make an older, degraded battery last longer - while it should be optional and obvious, a government fine seems a bit over the top. We've all now got houses full of IoT devices (Smart TVs, Webcams, etc.) that have serious security problems and don't get proper updates because the vendors lack incentive. This is a disincentive, and totally the wrong way to go.

caconym_ 7y ago
Yeah. A choice between telling customers you'll slow down their phones because <technical explanation nobody gives a shit about> and silently making their phones work better in a way that's likely to generate clickbait outrage if it gets out is one between a rock and a hard place. Companies do so much shit behind consumers' backs, and so many hardware vendors drop software support on ridiculously short timelines, that this feels wrong. Very legal and very cool, sure, but just barking up the wrong tree in terms of focus on good outcomes for consumers.
- AlisdairO 7y ago
  The solution seems straightfoward to me. Slow down the phone, and output a message saying 'this iPhone is being slowed down due to an old battery. Replace the battery to restore performance'. Then have a warning sign on the battery screen with a similar explanation. My wife's iPhone got throttled, and it felt really bad to use. This wasn't some small hit to performance that you can just do without informing the customer.
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    They literally do just that. When it first happens, they’ll notify you with a notification. Go to the battery screen in the settings and tap “Battery Health.”
    - AlisdairO 7y ago
      Yes, they do now. They didn't then.

Someone1234 7y ago

Apple was actually fined for failure to INFORM consumers that the update would slow down their phone. To quote the regulator: > were not informed that installing iOS updates (10.2.1 and 11.2) could slow down their devices [...] committed the crime of deceptive commercial practice by omission" and had agreed to pay the fine. This is kinda clickbait reporting from the BBC. Which depressingly has become more the norm in the last few years.

asimovfan 7y ago
Yes :) apple did not swindle people, they just did not INFORM them how they were swindling them.
- iDemonix 7y ago
  I'm not sure swindling involves negating a battery peak performance issue for users on old hardware. I still use an iPhone 6 and had noticed less crashes with upgrades (loading big apps would often crash it), less now with iOS upgrades. I can disable it if I want, but I prefer not to. On the flip side, I have friends with Android phones that are 4 years old, and barely usable.
  - takeda 7y ago
    Why don't they do what every other industry is doing? Have you wondered why in your phone battery degrades significantly after a year, in the mean time the battery in a hybrid such as Prius lasts about 10 years? They are overvolting them and don't implement mechanisms to keep battery change using optimal levels. Apple also pioneered the move to make batteries non-removeable (and other companies followed) most people are then forced to get new phone when battery gets bad.
    - judge2020 7y ago
      They're constantly working on making their processors better in this regard, every processor has more efficient cores compared to the high-performance cores. Most Androids have comparable battery degregation and performance rates because competitive performance requires pulling more power.

davidw 7y ago

Apple probably made that much money in the time it took to read the article.

awinter-py 7y ago

> As part of the agreement, Apple must display a notice on its French-language website for a month. It says Apple "committed the crime of deceptive commercial practice by omission" and had agreed to pay the fine. I'm not seeing the crime notice on https://www.apple.com/fr/ https://www.apple.com/fr/. Where do I go to see this thing?

wyxuan 7y ago
There might be some lag time, and your browser location probably has to be in France
Aaronn 7y ago
It's at the top of https://www.apple.com/fr/iphone/ https://www.apple.com/fr/iphone/
131hn 7y ago
See screenshot here https://imgur.com/1kH0t67 https://imgur.com/1kH0t67 The disclaimer states : Au cours du mois de décembre 2017, le procureur de la République du tribunal de grande instance de Paris a été destinataire d’une plainte émanant d’une association de consommateurs. Cette plainte vise le groupe Apple, pour des faits qui auraient notamment consisté en la diffusion de mises à jour du système d’exploitation iOS entraînant un ralentissement de certains iPhones, sans en avoir préalablement averti les clients et utilisateurs. Au terme de son enquête, le Service National des Enquêtes de la DGCCRF estime que le groupe Apple a commis le délit de pratique commerciale trompeuse par omission (article L. 121-3 du code de la consommation) en ne révélant pas aux consommateurs et utilisateurs, la présence d’un système de gestion dynamique de l’alimentation inclus dans les mises à jour d’iOS à partir de la version 10.2.1 et pouvant, sous certaines conditions, ralentir le fonctionnement des iPhones des catégories 6, 7 et SE, en particulier ceux équipés de batteries âgées. Un procès-verbal de délit a été adressé au procureur de la République. Avec l’accord du procureur de la République, une amende transactionnelle significative a été proposée à la société Apple Inc. qui l’a acceptée.

djmobley 7y ago

I was glad when Apple “slowed down” my old iPhone. It fixed the sudden shut down issue for me that was driving me insane. The shut downs were unpredictable and rendered my phone unusable until it was plugged in to charge. It would have been better if Apple acknowledged the sudden shut down issue in the first place, rather than rolling out this secret fix. They denied all knowledge when I took my iPhone 6 in for service, and refused to replace the battery as it was still showing more than 80% of its original capacity.

jonplackett 7y ago
They didn't want to acknowledge the shut down issue because people might then have asked - Hey! why is my 2 year old phone randomly shutting itself down? That doesn't seem like it should be happening to a 2 year old phone - maybe you guys should fix that, by, say, replacing the battery.

ColonelSanders 7y ago

These electronics are marketed to perform better than the one before. They shows big numbers flaunting how the thing zips, has more cores, whatever. Therefore, it makes sense that patches curving or throttle performance are made transparent to the consumer. If anything, these patches should ask for permission from the user and toggle-able via settings. Performance was promised. If the "wear and tear" argument of batteries aging is true, they should be made replaceable. If an item is subject to wear and tear - it should be serviceable, not soldered. It would be pretty ridiculous to have a firmware update for a car that makes it use more gas, in hopes they'll buy a new one. Especially if it was snuck in. Maybe we need a regulatory bureaucracy to audit software patches and wire refunds when performance advertised degrades. Perhaps the cost of the electronic should be held in escrow by the regulatory authority, made into a security for the model of the unit, and only vest to Apple/Lenovo/etc based on a timespan. That escrow can subsidize the cost of a $1000 soldered logic board replacement on their own balance/tab. Or they could just make the units serviceable from the outset. The path of least resistance. That way, it incentivizes honesty and success for businesses like Apple by tying their products to sustainability. Them being all about the environment: https://www.apple.com/environment/ https://www.apple.com/environment/.

thedance 7y ago
The battery is replaceable. It takes fifteen minutes at any Apple store.
- fsh 7y ago
  They have to remove the glued-in screen to get at the battery. Much more difficult than it should be and with the risk of compromising the waterproofing. I don't buy the argument that this is somehow required for engineering reasons. Wristwatches have easily replaceable batteries while being a lot smaller than an iPhone and having much better ingress protection.

tamaharbor 7y ago

At least the change didn't require an adapter.

gdulli 7y ago

I've only ever had one iPhone and the reason I decided I'd never get another is that it slowed down unacceptably when a new OS version came out. Every phone I've had since then I've switched from on my own schedule, never forced to by slowness like my one iPhone.

overgard 7y ago

Here's a thing to consider: your current phone, in your pocket, would it not be perfectly sufficient for the next 10 years if software wasn't making it obsolete? Is there any new app that really needs twice the processing power. Is the bajillion DPI screen hard on your eyes? Like, other than wear and tear, do you really have any reason to buy a new phone? I have an iphone 7, but to be honest I'd still be using my 5c if the battery hadn't kicked the bucket. This is no doubt a real problem for apple/samsung/etc.

geuis 7y ago
I’m still happily using my 6s. What I’m unhappy about is that iOS 13 broke a few things in Safari that have affected its stability. Double-tap to zoom is incredibly unreliable now and it worked perfectly for years. There’s some weird caching going on and some rendering issues, so sometimes a site will get stuck in a weird broken state that re-navigating or refreshing won’t fix. Have to exit Safari and reload it to fix. The email client now has a huge amount of white space at the bottom with all of the features like Mark as Read bundled under the reply arrow. And text selection is complete crap now. Selecting text in the url bar just defaults to highlighting the entire url and it takes 5-10 taps just to get a cursor. And in regular text, it’s impossible to see where the cursor is BECAUSE ITS UNDER MY THUMB. The old magnifying glass was a way better UI.
- overgard 7y ago
  Right so, basically the software updates just made things worse. As an industry we're funneling people into these forced updates because most people dont want to update. And their reason for not updating is totally rational, it will almost always make things worse! I get the security aspect, but otherwise this is horrible.

blazespin 7y ago

This is a real issue. My wife uses her Mac for netflix and maybe light photo cataloging/editing, and yet after 10 years it's now slower than molasses. Why should we upgrade? We're not doing anything that requires a new computer.

mceachen 7y ago
If you can downgrade back to El Capitan (just take care that there haven't been security updates for 4 years now), you'll probably find it completely useable. Sierra and later made my MBP from 2010 go from my primary workstation to being a pretty aluminum doorstop.

mindfulhack 7y ago

The important issue is to let customers know. I just turned off the throttling setting on my iPhone SE, and I couldn't believe how immediately faster and more snappy my entire iPhone was. I'll see if it starts shutting down while on battery power, I want that power and control over something so basic about my device. This HN thread has done what Apple should have in the first place: disclose.

zenexer 7y ago

According to the BBC[1]: > As part of the agreement, Apple must display a notice on its French-language website for a month. > It says Apple "committed the crime of deceptive commercial practice by omission" and had agreed to pay the fine. I am unable to find this notice on Apple's French-language website.[2] [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724 [2]: https://www.apple.com/fr/ https://www.apple.com/fr/, https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.apple.com%2Ffr%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... Edit/Disclaimer: I'm not saying such a demand is reasonable or agreeing with the decision; however, I'm curious as to whether Apple will comply.

sys_64738 7y ago

That's less that Tim Cook's yearly stock bonus. How about fining them 25 billion euros?

solarkraft 7y ago

This is a "Good job, please continue". I'm a bit disappointed by France"s regulators here.

zakember 7y ago

Everyone keeps talking about how Apple is only being sued for €25M which is a small amount for them, but no one is talking about the fact that France cannot have different fine amounts for different companies based on the company's profitability. They are expected to fine a standard amount based on a certain case and this amount should be big enough for all companies to avoid the thing in future, but at the same time not bankrupt the company either.

mister_hn 7y ago

I don't know, but 25M€ for Apple are nothing. They should have charged even more, since it affected millions of devices