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I absolutely disagree. These phones were unusable with the throttling. I switched to Android because my iPhone 6 was unusable less than 3 years after getting i

I absolutely disagree. These phones were unusable with the throttling. I switched to Android because my iPhone 6 was unusable less than 3 years after getting it. This is like saying that an appropriate fix for a car manufacture is to limit the maximum speed of a car to 25 miles per hour. It breaks so many use cases that the car becomes worthless.

puszczyk 7y ago
Idk, anecdotally my iPhone 6s (ok, it’s 6a not 6) is perfectly usable 4 years after the purchase. I have the throttling on.
- Infernal 7y ago
  My iPhone 6 that I bought at launch was useable for all five years it was supported by iOS, on the original battery. Only upgraded for iOS 13. I still switch it on as a Netflix terminal sometimes, no issues. Crucially, I never once left it plugged in all night - I believe not constantly fully charging the battery massively extends the useful life.
ninkendo 7y ago
> This is like saying that an appropriate fix for a car manufacture is to limit the maximum speed of a car to 25 miles per hour. It breaks so many use cases that the car becomes worthless. Would you prefer the car simply turn off entirely while driving at highway speeds? Because phones with this issue would turn off entirely below certain charge levels, when the batteries had this issue. A more appropriate analogy would be that your car's fuel pump could randomly fail at highway speeds when below 1/2 tank, so the manufacturer just started arbitrarily limiting the car to drive 25mph to avoid the pump shutting off, when it detected this issue. Point being, the real problem is not the mitigation they employed, but the fact that they didn't tell users in any way, users just saw a slower phone (equivalent to a slower car.) If my car detected a fuel pump issue for me and said "Fuel pump needs replacing, car is limited to 25mph when below half-tank to avoid catastrophic failure, please take to service center", it would be acceptable. Arbitrarily limiting to 25mph without any indication why, not so much.
- jerkstate 7y ago
  as a matter of fact, modern cars (including French manufacturers like Renault) implement a "limp home" mode that limits the speed when problems are detected in the engine or transmission. It's hard to believe that Apple's action could be so poorly understood.
  - achamayou 7y ago
    A substantial difference as others pointed out is that Apple did this quietly, whereas limp mode is typically notified to the driver about loudly as anything can be.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - kazinator 7y ago
    That limp home mode is not offered as the real fix, is it? This Apple situations has a good analogy in car industry history: the Ford Pinto. Speaking of car industry, Apple might have gone through a cost-benefit analysis reminiscent of the Pinto Memo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost%E2%80%93benefit_analysis,_the_Pinto_Memo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost%E2%80%93benefi... Ford converted the likely injuries and deaths that would be caused by an unfixed issue into a dollar amount, and the compared that dollar amount to the cost of fixing the flaw in every vehicle. Apple might have done the same sort of cost-benefit analysis: as in, just let the throttling cover up the flaw so the phone doesn't abruptly shut off, and then we only have to deal with the lower cost that comes from any complaints about performance, from those who notice.
- kazinator 7y ago
  > Would you prefer the car simply turn off entirely while driving at highway speeds? If the vehicle's age is only the equivalent of a phone being two or three years old, I would prefer a real fix, free of charge, in addition to any safety mitigation. I wouldn't want the mitigation to be regarded as the fix. People have decade-old phones that aren't throttled and still have usable battery life at the same time.
mh8h 7y ago
Another issue with iPhone 6 was the amount of RAM it had. With the newer iOS and updated apps, the memory consumption went up and the device would run out of memory, slowing down everything.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
That's probably not the throttling. That's new iOS being too heavy for your old hardware. Which is the bigger problem here. iOS devices are completely impossible to downgrade, so if an update slows down your phone, you're stuck. It's hugely wasteful. iOS isn't substantially more capable than it was five years ago—why is it so much heavier?
- nerdponx 7y ago
  Forget impossible to downgrade. Stop pushing updates on devices that can't run them.
Already__Taken 7y ago
If the car detects damage then this is exactly what happens in limp mode. https://mechanicbase.com/engine/limp-mode/ https://mechanicbase.com/engine/limp-mode/ Can't us computer people just agree to stop using car analogies?
scarface74 7y ago
So does Android use some type of magical battery technology that doesn’t degrade over time? And good luck getting operating system updates after only two years on Android.
thatfrenchguy 7y ago
That actually happened to my car once, due to some defect it got stuck to 30km/h.

puszczyk 7y ago

Idk, anecdotally my iPhone 6s (ok, it’s 6a not 6) is perfectly usable 4 years after the purchase. I have the throttling on.

Infernal 7y ago
My iPhone 6 that I bought at launch was useable for all five years it was supported by iOS, on the original battery. Only upgraded for iOS 13. I still switch it on as a Netflix terminal sometimes, no issues. Crucially, I never once left it plugged in all night - I believe not constantly fully charging the battery massively extends the useful life.

ninkendo 7y ago

> This is like saying that an appropriate fix for a car manufacture is to limit the maximum speed of a car to 25 miles per hour. It breaks so many use cases that the car becomes worthless. Would you prefer the car simply turn off entirely while driving at highway speeds? Because phones with this issue would turn off entirely below certain charge levels, when the batteries had this issue. A more appropriate analogy would be that your car's fuel pump could randomly fail at highway speeds when below 1/2 tank, so the manufacturer just started arbitrarily limiting the car to drive 25mph to avoid the pump shutting off, when it detected this issue. Point being, the real problem is not the mitigation they employed, but the fact that they didn't tell users in any way, users just saw a slower phone (equivalent to a slower car.) If my car detected a fuel pump issue for me and said "Fuel pump needs replacing, car is limited to 25mph when below half-tank to avoid catastrophic failure, please take to service center", it would be acceptable. Arbitrarily limiting to 25mph without any indication why, not so much.

jerkstate 7y ago
as a matter of fact, modern cars (including French manufacturers like Renault) implement a "limp home" mode that limits the speed when problems are detected in the engine or transmission. It's hard to believe that Apple's action could be so poorly understood.
- achamayou 7y ago
  A substantial difference as others pointed out is that Apple did this quietly, whereas limp mode is typically notified to the driver about loudly as anything can be.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- kazinator 7y ago
  That limp home mode is not offered as the real fix, is it? This Apple situations has a good analogy in car industry history: the Ford Pinto. Speaking of car industry, Apple might have gone through a cost-benefit analysis reminiscent of the Pinto Memo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost%E2%80%93benefit_analysis,_the_Pinto_Memo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost%E2%80%93benefi... Ford converted the likely injuries and deaths that would be caused by an unfixed issue into a dollar amount, and the compared that dollar amount to the cost of fixing the flaw in every vehicle. Apple might have done the same sort of cost-benefit analysis: as in, just let the throttling cover up the flaw so the phone doesn't abruptly shut off, and then we only have to deal with the lower cost that comes from any complaints about performance, from those who notice.
kazinator 7y ago
> Would you prefer the car simply turn off entirely while driving at highway speeds? If the vehicle's age is only the equivalent of a phone being two or three years old, I would prefer a real fix, free of charge, in addition to any safety mitigation. I wouldn't want the mitigation to be regarded as the fix. People have decade-old phones that aren't throttled and still have usable battery life at the same time.

mh8h 7y ago

Another issue with iPhone 6 was the amount of RAM it had. With the newer iOS and updated apps, the memory consumption went up and the device would run out of memory, slowing down everything.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

That's probably not the throttling. That's new iOS being too heavy for your old hardware. Which is the bigger problem here. iOS devices are completely impossible to downgrade, so if an update slows down your phone, you're stuck. It's hugely wasteful. iOS isn't substantially more capable than it was five years ago—why is it so much heavier?

nerdponx 7y ago
Forget impossible to downgrade. Stop pushing updates on devices that can't run them.

Already__Taken 7y ago

If the car detects damage then this is exactly what happens in limp mode. https://mechanicbase.com/engine/limp-mode/ https://mechanicbase.com/engine/limp-mode/ Can't us computer people just agree to stop using car analogies?

scarface74 7y ago

So does Android use some type of magical battery technology that doesn’t degrade over time? And good luck getting operating system updates after only two years on Android.

thatfrenchguy 7y ago

That actually happened to my car once, due to some defect it got stuck to 30km/h.