4 ms·

No need for checkboxes. Or offloading decisions on the customer. It's simple. Don't hide what you're doing. Either a notice in the UI, or even a press release

No need for checkboxes. Or offloading decisions on the customer. It's simple. Don't hide what you're doing. Either a notice in the UI, or even a press release at minimum. Something.

xmprt 7y ago
There are probably thousands of design decisions that go into making a phone like this. Who is supposed to decide which ones get a notice and which ones don't? Apple probably already has some sort of organization that deals with these communication issues. Is this fine a reasonable punishment for getting one thing wrong?
- kbenson 7y ago
  > Who is supposed to decide which ones get a notice and which ones don't? The ones that change a feature after the phone is sold when that feature was prominently marketed to consumers is a safe minimum threshold for what you need to notify your customers of. If they changed it after 6 months because of a battery design flaw, there would be a class action lawsuit for false advertising. Natural processes that all batteries exhibit that cause them to degrade are fine, and nothing to get up in arms about, but a third party "fixing" the problem for you without letting you know they did so (or giving you the option to opt out) is both not expected, and for many people, not wanted. It's like buying some high-end car with a supercharger, and a few years later you take it in for a service and the service technicians "helpfully" disable your supercharger because it can sometimes cause problems in some circumstances now that the engine is more worn and the tolerances aren't as tight, but decide it's not worth telling you. That might be something you want, but ultimately you should get that choice.
  - xmprt 7y ago
    Upgrading a phone is changing a feature. For example, an update that added features to the control center but sacrificed some accessibility. Would you want Apple and other phone manufacturers to stop shipping updates? Because if what you propose goes into legislature there's a non-zero chance that will happen.
    - kbenson 7y ago
      Changing is not the problem, unless that change removes functionality that was marketed as a feature. > Because if what you propose goes into legislature there's a non-zero chance that will happen. It's already covered. Apple was hit with a class-action[1] about this very thing, and France is fining them, as this submission notes. That's it working as expected, and it hasn't stopped updates from rolling out (but it might have stopped some specific portions of updates that people wouldn't have liked, who knows). Either companies are to be held accountable for what they say when they are selling you something, or they aren't. I prefer a world where they are. 1: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/16/apple-hit-with-new-iphone-throttling-class-action-in-california https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/16/apple-hit-with-ne...
      - xmprt 7y ago
        Let's say 6 hour battery life was advertised as a feature. Now your phone after 2 years of use only gets 4 hours of battery life. They changed the phone in an update that brought it back to 6 hours of battery life by sacrificing speed. You can't have the best of both worlds.
        kbenson 7y ago
        Nobody is asking for the best of both worlds, but when upstream makes a decision as to how they want to prioritize one feature over another that changes how it currently functions, then some notification at a minimum is needed. Batteries degrade over time. That's expected. Processors don't process fewer instructions over time though, that's someone making a decision, rather than letting the natural laws of physics play out. Is that really such a foreign concept? You've been sold something with promises, and those promises are subject to natural occurrences and common conceptions, which are that some things will physically degrade without any outside action. Outside action to change that but at the expense of something that would not normally degrade, when it's about something that was marketed for sale, should not happen without notification and in most cases the ability to opt out. Don't change how sold features are handled after sale if it flies in the face of assumptions without taking care about letting people know and opt out. It's not really that complex. All it requires is actually respecting your customers.

No need for checkboxes. Or offloading decisions on the customer. It's simple. Don't hide what you're doing. Either a notice in the UI, or even a press release at minimum. Something.

xmprt 7y ago

There are probably thousands of design decisions that go into making a phone like this. Who is supposed to decide which ones get a notice and which ones don't? Apple probably already has some sort of organization that deals with these communication issues. Is this fine a reasonable punishment for getting one thing wrong?

kbenson 7y ago
> Who is supposed to decide which ones get a notice and which ones don't? The ones that change a feature after the phone is sold when that feature was prominently marketed to consumers is a safe minimum threshold for what you need to notify your customers of. If they changed it after 6 months because of a battery design flaw, there would be a class action lawsuit for false advertising. Natural processes that all batteries exhibit that cause them to degrade are fine, and nothing to get up in arms about, but a third party "fixing" the problem for you without letting you know they did so (or giving you the option to opt out) is both not expected, and for many people, not wanted. It's like buying some high-end car with a supercharger, and a few years later you take it in for a service and the service technicians "helpfully" disable your supercharger because it can sometimes cause problems in some circumstances now that the engine is more worn and the tolerances aren't as tight, but decide it's not worth telling you. That might be something you want, but ultimately you should get that choice.
- xmprt 7y ago
  Upgrading a phone is changing a feature. For example, an update that added features to the control center but sacrificed some accessibility. Would you want Apple and other phone manufacturers to stop shipping updates? Because if what you propose goes into legislature there's a non-zero chance that will happen.
  - kbenson 7y ago
    Changing is not the problem, unless that change removes functionality that was marketed as a feature. > Because if what you propose goes into legislature there's a non-zero chance that will happen. It's already covered. Apple was hit with a class-action[1] about this very thing, and France is fining them, as this submission notes. That's it working as expected, and it hasn't stopped updates from rolling out (but it might have stopped some specific portions of updates that people wouldn't have liked, who knows). Either companies are to be held accountable for what they say when they are selling you something, or they aren't. I prefer a world where they are. 1: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/16/apple-hit-with-new-iphone-throttling-class-action-in-california https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/16/apple-hit-with-ne...
    - xmprt 7y ago
      Let's say 6 hour battery life was advertised as a feature. Now your phone after 2 years of use only gets 4 hours of battery life. They changed the phone in an update that brought it back to 6 hours of battery life by sacrificing speed. You can't have the best of both worlds.
      - kbenson 7y ago
        Nobody is asking for the best of both worlds, but when upstream makes a decision as to how they want to prioritize one feature over another that changes how it currently functions, then some notification at a minimum is needed. Batteries degrade over time. That's expected. Processors don't process fewer instructions over time though, that's someone making a decision, rather than letting the natural laws of physics play out. Is that really such a foreign concept? You've been sold something with promises, and those promises are subject to natural occurrences and common conceptions, which are that some things will physically degrade without any outside action. Outside action to change that but at the expense of something that would not normally degrade, when it's about something that was marketed for sale, should not happen without notification and in most cases the ability to opt out. Don't change how sold features are handled after sale if it flies in the face of assumptions without taking care about letting people know and opt out. It's not really that complex. All it requires is actually respecting your customers.