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> Android device over other companies that deliberately slow down hardware to force people to upgrade hardware. I think there is a good faith way to interpret

> Android device over other companies that deliberately slow down hardware to force people to upgrade hardware. I think there is a good faith way to interpret Apple's aging battery policy, of course, it would be a lot easier to interpret it that way if they handled repairs in a way that wasn't hostile to users. BTW if you like your tablet a lot, that's cool; if you're just holding on to it because you don't want to get a new one, and you live in a big city, there's a good chance somebody is literally throwing away higher spec tablets within a couple km of you.

shajznnckfke 6y ago
I think Apple was shady with the silent slowdown for old batteries, but these days they will replace an old iPhone battery for $50, which seems reasonable to me.
- selectodude 6y ago
  I think it was poorly handled but I’m not sure I’d call it shady. I used to have an iPhone 5 that would shut off when I stepped outside in the winter because the battery was shot. Knowing the battery was the reason would have been nice.
  - alisonkisk 6y ago
    The reason apple lost a lawsuit is that they didn't tell people they had a bad battery. They quietly slowed the battery and then when people asked for help they said it was a bad phone that needed replacement. words in italics were the shady parts.
    - azinman2 6y ago
      I think you’re making a lot of assumptions about malice intent versus trying to keep phones running.
      - oblio 6y ago
        They lost a lawsuit (settled for half a billion, same thing as losing). At what point do we agree it was malice?
        azinman2 6y ago
        According to the Reuters article: “Apple denied wrongdoing and settled the nationwide case to avoid the burdens and costs of litigation, court papers show.” [1] It’s entirely possible the lack of clarity of what was happening violated consumer protection laws (I’m guessing, I don’t know what specifically the lawsuit was based on) without malice intended. The Apple way is to try and have design be silent and in the background. In this case it was a way to solve degrading batteries that would cause a phone to reboot, so slowing down to compensate is a slick way of preventing random reboots without involving the user. Since it doesn’t seem to be the case that this happened without battery degradation, I don’t think you can point to evidence that this was done to cause new phone sales. Am I mistaken? [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphones-settlement/apple-to-pay-up-to-500-million-to-settle-u-s-lawsuit-over-slow-iphones-idUSKBN20P2E7 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphones-settlement/...
        oblio 6y ago
        > “Apple denied wrongdoing and settled the nationwide case to avoid the burdens and costs of litigation, court papers show.” That's literally the text used by everyone that settles. Apple employs enough lawyers to populate a small country. Nobody with that kind of legal firepower gives up a lawsuit by settling for a million of $300 million and up to $500 million for no good reason. They settled for the same reasons everyone settles: 1. Because they can afford to pay. 2. Because they know they're going to lose (and they would probably have to pay more and may even be punished in some other ways, on top of that). It's obvious I can't prove this myself, but they didn't disclose it and only did so when their hand was forced by third parties investigating and after this settlement. I mean, what would they have to do to be assumed malicious, in this case? If basically losing a class action lawsuit is not enough, what is? Tim Cook coming up on stage and admitting it? It's not even their first example of thinly veiled for-profit malicious moves, such as the removal of the headphone jack (presented at the time as due to space reasons, reason immediately debunked by many people disassembling phones).
    - shajznnckfke 6y ago
      Yeah, I think the slowdown was the right engineering choice, but not telling the user was a UX failure. You could imagine this happening because some engineering team was tasked with fixing crashes from reduced battery capacity, and some product people who would have been responsible with informing the user weren’t in the loop or dropped the ball. Alternatively, you could suspect those product people saw a good opportunity for planned obsolescence with plausible deniability and took it. Either way, the eventual outcome (an outcry from customers and bad PR, followed by a more transparent software solution from Apple plus a subsidized repair program) seems fair.
    - GeekyBear 6y ago
      As opposed to Google losing their lawsuit with Nexus owners because they refused to fix the issue of the Nexus 6P shutting down unexpectedly in the same way? >In the months and years following the launch, many Nexus 6P owners noticed their phones would bootloop or simply shut down without warning. The law firm Chimicles & Tikellis filed a class action lawsuit in 2017, and it looks like a resolution is on the horizon. Nexus 6P owners may be eligible for as much as $400 in restitution from Google and Huawei. https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/06/07/google-and-huawei-agree-to-nexus-6p-class-action-settlement-will-pay-up-to-400-to-buyers/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/06/07/google-and-huawei-a...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

shajznnckfke 6y ago

I think Apple was shady with the silent slowdown for old batteries, but these days they will replace an old iPhone battery for $50, which seems reasonable to me.

selectodude 6y ago
I think it was poorly handled but I’m not sure I’d call it shady. I used to have an iPhone 5 that would shut off when I stepped outside in the winter because the battery was shot. Knowing the battery was the reason would have been nice.
- alisonkisk 6y ago
  The reason apple lost a lawsuit is that they didn't tell people they had a bad battery. They quietly slowed the battery and then when people asked for help they said it was a bad phone that needed replacement. words in italics were the shady parts.
  - azinman2 6y ago
    I think you’re making a lot of assumptions about malice intent versus trying to keep phones running.
    - oblio 6y ago
      They lost a lawsuit (settled for half a billion, same thing as losing). At what point do we agree it was malice?
      - azinman2 6y ago
        According to the Reuters article: “Apple denied wrongdoing and settled the nationwide case to avoid the burdens and costs of litigation, court papers show.” [1] It’s entirely possible the lack of clarity of what was happening violated consumer protection laws (I’m guessing, I don’t know what specifically the lawsuit was based on) without malice intended. The Apple way is to try and have design be silent and in the background. In this case it was a way to solve degrading batteries that would cause a phone to reboot, so slowing down to compensate is a slick way of preventing random reboots without involving the user. Since it doesn’t seem to be the case that this happened without battery degradation, I don’t think you can point to evidence that this was done to cause new phone sales. Am I mistaken? [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphones-settlement/apple-to-pay-up-to-500-million-to-settle-u-s-lawsuit-over-slow-iphones-idUSKBN20P2E7 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-iphones-settlement/...
        oblio 6y ago
        > “Apple denied wrongdoing and settled the nationwide case to avoid the burdens and costs of litigation, court papers show.” That's literally the text used by everyone that settles. Apple employs enough lawyers to populate a small country. Nobody with that kind of legal firepower gives up a lawsuit by settling for a million of $300 million and up to $500 million for no good reason. They settled for the same reasons everyone settles: 1. Because they can afford to pay. 2. Because they know they're going to lose (and they would probably have to pay more and may even be punished in some other ways, on top of that). It's obvious I can't prove this myself, but they didn't disclose it and only did so when their hand was forced by third parties investigating and after this settlement. I mean, what would they have to do to be assumed malicious, in this case? If basically losing a class action lawsuit is not enough, what is? Tim Cook coming up on stage and admitting it? It's not even their first example of thinly veiled for-profit malicious moves, such as the removal of the headphone jack (presented at the time as due to space reasons, reason immediately debunked by many people disassembling phones).
  - shajznnckfke 6y ago
    Yeah, I think the slowdown was the right engineering choice, but not telling the user was a UX failure. You could imagine this happening because some engineering team was tasked with fixing crashes from reduced battery capacity, and some product people who would have been responsible with informing the user weren’t in the loop or dropped the ball. Alternatively, you could suspect those product people saw a good opportunity for planned obsolescence with plausible deniability and took it. Either way, the eventual outcome (an outcry from customers and bad PR, followed by a more transparent software solution from Apple plus a subsidized repair program) seems fair.
  - GeekyBear 6y ago
    As opposed to Google losing their lawsuit with Nexus owners because they refused to fix the issue of the Nexus 6P shutting down unexpectedly in the same way? >In the months and years following the launch, many Nexus 6P owners noticed their phones would bootloop or simply shut down without warning. The law firm Chimicles & Tikellis filed a class action lawsuit in 2017, and it looks like a resolution is on the horizon. Nexus 6P owners may be eligible for as much as $400 in restitution from Google and Huawei. https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/06/07/google-and-huawei-agree-to-nexus-6p-class-action-settlement-will-pay-up-to-400-to-buyers/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/06/07/google-and-huawei-a...
deleted 6y ago
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