4 ms·

It wasn't the right thing. People thew out their phones because they were slow not knowing they could have been fixed cheaply with a new battery.

kohtatsu 7y ago
Hopefully nobody actually throws phones out. That bundle of molecules does not belong in a landfill. My library has a dropbox to refurbish old ones for blind people, for example, but I'm sure dozens of places will be happy to take them off your hands.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  They certainly do, I have seen it often. I'm not even sure what to do with old phones. I don't know of any recycling places. I usually just let them sit in a stack in a draw. I once had a phone come with a bag to mail for recycling but I haven't seen something like that for a while.
  - radmarshallb 7y ago
    The Apple Store will take any phone in any condition and recycle it for you.
askafriend 7y ago
Apple has offered battery replacements for years before they rolled out that patch. Replacing the battery would have fixed the issue at any time. It's not like they were holding it back.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  What they failed to do was show the user a message saying "Your phone has been slowed down due to an old battery, get a battery replacement at an apple store to restore the original speed" Absolutely no one is going to assume their phone is slow due to an old battery.
- mthoms 7y ago
  They were holding it back. That's what the several hundred million dollar lawsuit they settled was about. And their public apology. And the hundreds of articles in the tech press. Apple's own front-line staff (ie genius's) were not informed of the throttling. So if you complained of a slow phone you were told you were imagining it, or it was an inevitable part of the newer more complex OS upgrades. At any rate, you were told there was nothing you could do.
  - askafriend 7y ago
    I think people apply a double standard when talking about Apple since they are the de-facto industry leader. The battery degradation issue is something that affects nearly all Li-Ion battery powered devices. This includes all Android phones, PC laptops, etc. People have such low expectations of the other products by default that no standards are applied and no quality is expected. This is the issue. We apply (rightfully so) a far higher standard when assessing the industry leader (Apple) but we apply no standard at all to the competition which frequently gets away with the same kinds of issues (and also issues that are much much worse).
    - mthoms 7y ago
      I think what you're saying overall is true to a small extent due to how Apple have positioned themselves. But this ... > we apply no standard at all to the competition which frequently gets away with the same kinds of issues (and also issues that are much much worse) ... is total BS. Google and Samsung are never, ever, given a free ride when they mess up. Come on. Let's not be hyperbolic. > The battery degradation issue is something that affects nearly all Li-Ion battery powered devices. This includes all Android phones, PC laptops, etc. Irrelevant. It's not a question of whether the throttling is a valid solution to a technical limitation (it is). The problem is that (a) there were no major manufacturers throttling CPU speed due to battery health in phones, tablets or laptops before this. It was not a known practice. And (b) since Apple actively hid the throttling from everyone, including it's own employees, very few people were aware that a simple battery replacement would bring the phone back to like-new performance. You seem to have gone from outright falsehoods - "They even mentioned the change in the original release notes for the iOS update" to mischaracterisation "Replacing the battery would have fixed the issue... It's not like they were holding it back." and now you've moved on to "what about the other guys!?" deflection. It puzzles me how some people will so blindly defend Apple without critically looking at the facts. Just admit it was a mistake and looked really, really bad. Apple has. Why not you? And for the record, I'm a very happy Apple customer. I've used their computers exclusively since 2005 and their phones exclusively since 2010. I rely on their products and ecosystem to earn a living. But I'm not blind and I'm not stupid.

kohtatsu 7y ago

Hopefully nobody actually throws phones out. That bundle of molecules does not belong in a landfill. My library has a dropbox to refurbish old ones for blind people, for example, but I'm sure dozens of places will be happy to take them off your hands.

Polylactic_acid 7y ago
They certainly do, I have seen it often. I'm not even sure what to do with old phones. I don't know of any recycling places. I usually just let them sit in a stack in a draw. I once had a phone come with a bag to mail for recycling but I haven't seen something like that for a while.
- radmarshallb 7y ago
  The Apple Store will take any phone in any condition and recycle it for you.

askafriend 7y ago

Apple has offered battery replacements for years before they rolled out that patch. Replacing the battery would have fixed the issue at any time. It's not like they were holding it back.

Polylactic_acid 7y ago
What they failed to do was show the user a message saying "Your phone has been slowed down due to an old battery, get a battery replacement at an apple store to restore the original speed" Absolutely no one is going to assume their phone is slow due to an old battery.
mthoms 7y ago
They were holding it back. That's what the several hundred million dollar lawsuit they settled was about. And their public apology. And the hundreds of articles in the tech press. Apple's own front-line staff (ie genius's) were not informed of the throttling. So if you complained of a slow phone you were told you were imagining it, or it was an inevitable part of the newer more complex OS upgrades. At any rate, you were told there was nothing you could do.
- askafriend 7y ago
  I think people apply a double standard when talking about Apple since they are the de-facto industry leader. The battery degradation issue is something that affects nearly all Li-Ion battery powered devices. This includes all Android phones, PC laptops, etc. People have such low expectations of the other products by default that no standards are applied and no quality is expected. This is the issue. We apply (rightfully so) a far higher standard when assessing the industry leader (Apple) but we apply no standard at all to the competition which frequently gets away with the same kinds of issues (and also issues that are much much worse).
  - mthoms 7y ago
    I think what you're saying overall is true to a small extent due to how Apple have positioned themselves. But this ... > we apply no standard at all to the competition which frequently gets away with the same kinds of issues (and also issues that are much much worse) ... is total BS. Google and Samsung are never, ever, given a free ride when they mess up. Come on. Let's not be hyperbolic. > The battery degradation issue is something that affects nearly all Li-Ion battery powered devices. This includes all Android phones, PC laptops, etc. Irrelevant. It's not a question of whether the throttling is a valid solution to a technical limitation (it is). The problem is that (a) there were no major manufacturers throttling CPU speed due to battery health in phones, tablets or laptops before this. It was not a known practice. And (b) since Apple actively hid the throttling from everyone, including it's own employees, very few people were aware that a simple battery replacement would bring the phone back to like-new performance. You seem to have gone from outright falsehoods - "They even mentioned the change in the original release notes for the iOS update" to mischaracterisation "Replacing the battery would have fixed the issue... It's not like they were holding it back." and now you've moved on to "what about the other guys!?" deflection. It puzzles me how some people will so blindly defend Apple without critically looking at the facts. Just admit it was a mistake and looked really, really bad. Apple has. Why not you? And for the record, I'm a very happy Apple customer. I've used their computers exclusively since 2005 and their phones exclusively since 2010. I rely on their products and ecosystem to earn a living. But I'm not blind and I'm not stupid.