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I know a lot of folks on HN don't like what Apple does to confirm genuine product (ie, battery notification if a third party is swapped in etc). I feel like a

I know a lot of folks on HN don't like what Apple does to confirm genuine product (ie, battery notification if a third party is swapped in etc). I feel like a lot of folks on HN don't buy used / second hand products - especially in non US / EU settings. If you did, you would IMMEDIATELY understand that if a cheapo battery can be dropped in that shows 100% battery life - IT WILL BE. And then your phone will die in a month or two. This extends to everything. Conversely, some telecom services overseas are insanely cheap by western standards. Anyone know why / how this is? For india it's $4-5/month for 3GB/day of data.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
I can't speak for all of HN, but I don't have a problem with Apple showing that a battery isn't genuine in settings. I don't even have a problem with them throwing up a notification—as long as it's only done once, to inform rather than annoy (or frighten). Where I get upset is when Apple purposefully makes these parts difficult or impossible to replace, or removes functionality when they are detected.
- titanomachy 6y ago
  Maybe more than once, to make it harder for scammers to dismiss notifications and pretend they've installed a genuine battery. But yeah, a finite number of warnings, and don't brick the thing.
  - Someone 6y ago
    I don’t see that work. If “finite” is low and delays between them short, scammers will make the effort to go through all warnings. If delays between warnings are long, the scammer will wait until one is shown and then sell the fake, and the buyer will only be warned when it’s too late. If it’s high, the difference with “forever” is small, and you’ll still be annoyed. Having a separate screen that shows the warning on demand or showing the warning only after a new sim is inserted might be the best option, but I fear too few customers would know about it.
    - m45t3r 6y ago
      Once a boot is sufficient, there is no need to complicate too much.
    - danlugo92 6y ago
      If you get scammed by buying an used phone and you didn't go into settings and/or a diagnostics menu well I'm not saying you deserved it but... People learnt to check iCloud lock status before buying an used/stolen iPhone. Grandma don't know how to access diagnostics? She can and should ask her techie grandson for help when buying an used phone. There is absolutely no excuse for this purely anti-competitive behavior. FWIW I'm not an Apple hater, I think their laptops and phones are the best out there. But I have an android instead of an iPhone because I can't stand not being able to install what I want in iOS, that's a deal breaker for me. And if they go the same route with MacOS I'll switch to Dell+Ubuntu.
- temp667 6y ago
  You and others fail to understand that if a scam can be run it will be run. Apple is trading on its reputation. "It's only OK to show non-genuine once". Scammers love this. They install the bogus battery, click through the warning, then when they show you you are screwed. Why can't apple disable features, like battery life indication, for batteries they haven't profiled for the service? This is what makes users trust apple, if your phone says battery life is 80%, you can be pretty sure it is 80%.
  - m45t3r 6y ago
    > Apple is trading on its reputation. "It's only OK to show non-genuine once". Scammers love this. They install the bogus battery, click through the warning, then when they show you you are screwed. Like I said above, once every boot is fine, this is what my Dell Laptop does when I plug a non standard charger for example. > Why can't apple disable features, like battery life indication, for batteries they haven't profiled for the service? This is what makes users trust apple, if your phone says battery life is 80%, you can be pretty sure it is 80%. No, this is not for "trust", this is only for greed since without competition Apple can ask basically any price for changing your smartphone battery. Take an example of iPods, it was also an immensely popular Apple product and it didn't have anything like this and still was fine. I don't remember anyone saying that "buying an used iPod is untrustworthy". Actually, the only issue Apple even had with batteries as far as I remember was caused by them, thanks to the feature that slowed iPhones when the battery was not running at sufficient capacity.
    - temp667 6y ago
      This really illustrates how ignorant a lot of HN comments are outside of the high wealth / tech bubble. Swollen batteries, bad batteries that were third party batteries were a pretty major iphone repair issue. Trying to cut down this obvious type of brand damaging behaviour is obviously good business to preserve reputation. I've been in line listening to a store employee try to explain that this wasn't their battery (before the whole crackdown). People literally still think Apple should repair these swollen phones (I bought it from XXX who told me that battery was good - it showed 100%, now its swollen / broken - fix it!). Apple doesn't know the battery life of a made in china battery. They charge an insane premium (including in used form) because of the flat out trust folks have in these devices. The tech inside does not generate this premium - their margins are mind blowing for what could be a commodity. The slow down issue was because apple was trying to extend useful life of their devices, at least that is one, not unreasonable view. Note - they support their devices far far LONGER than their "open" competitors - which often ship with old software (adware laden) and then never update. I keep my phone about 3 years and it's never been able to get latest iOS. My elderly parents kept their phones for 6 years and theirs was getting point releases still of an older iOS (not sure how that works but it did). for my parents especially - the trust issue is absolutely huge. They just don't trust that HTC or whomever won't ship with impossible to uninstall crap on the phone. same with carriers - again, apple has locked down much harder and so carriers are not "free" to install their stuff - lots of complaints, but for many users (not all) this is a positive not a negative. They don't have time to research which carrier installed app is crap, they don't know how to uninstall them etc. I'm going to let this one lie because any defense of Apple just get's voted into oblivion.
ByteJockey 6y ago
Presumably, that's the difference in the price of labor (and potentially regulations around setting it up). Marginal cost for data transfer is pretty cheap (I remember seeing something like $.03 per GB). Most of the cost of a telecom is in getting the rights required to set it up (fcc rights/land rights/ etc), and start-up labor (building poles/burying cable/building towers/etc). Running it is (by comparison) fairly cheap day to day. Also, a reduction in start-up costs means more players can be in the game -> more competition -> lower prices.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

I can't speak for all of HN, but I don't have a problem with Apple showing that a battery isn't genuine in settings. I don't even have a problem with them throwing up a notification—as long as it's only done once, to inform rather than annoy (or frighten). Where I get upset is when Apple purposefully makes these parts difficult or impossible to replace, or removes functionality when they are detected.

titanomachy 6y ago
Maybe more than once, to make it harder for scammers to dismiss notifications and pretend they've installed a genuine battery. But yeah, a finite number of warnings, and don't brick the thing.
- Someone 6y ago
  I don’t see that work. If “finite” is low and delays between them short, scammers will make the effort to go through all warnings. If delays between warnings are long, the scammer will wait until one is shown and then sell the fake, and the buyer will only be warned when it’s too late. If it’s high, the difference with “forever” is small, and you’ll still be annoyed. Having a separate screen that shows the warning on demand or showing the warning only after a new sim is inserted might be the best option, but I fear too few customers would know about it.
  - m45t3r 6y ago
    Once a boot is sufficient, there is no need to complicate too much.
  - danlugo92 6y ago
    If you get scammed by buying an used phone and you didn't go into settings and/or a diagnostics menu well I'm not saying you deserved it but... People learnt to check iCloud lock status before buying an used/stolen iPhone. Grandma don't know how to access diagnostics? She can and should ask her techie grandson for help when buying an used phone. There is absolutely no excuse for this purely anti-competitive behavior. FWIW I'm not an Apple hater, I think their laptops and phones are the best out there. But I have an android instead of an iPhone because I can't stand not being able to install what I want in iOS, that's a deal breaker for me. And if they go the same route with MacOS I'll switch to Dell+Ubuntu.
temp667 6y ago
You and others fail to understand that if a scam can be run it will be run. Apple is trading on its reputation. "It's only OK to show non-genuine once". Scammers love this. They install the bogus battery, click through the warning, then when they show you you are screwed. Why can't apple disable features, like battery life indication, for batteries they haven't profiled for the service? This is what makes users trust apple, if your phone says battery life is 80%, you can be pretty sure it is 80%.
- m45t3r 6y ago
  > Apple is trading on its reputation. "It's only OK to show non-genuine once". Scammers love this. They install the bogus battery, click through the warning, then when they show you you are screwed. Like I said above, once every boot is fine, this is what my Dell Laptop does when I plug a non standard charger for example. > Why can't apple disable features, like battery life indication, for batteries they haven't profiled for the service? This is what makes users trust apple, if your phone says battery life is 80%, you can be pretty sure it is 80%. No, this is not for "trust", this is only for greed since without competition Apple can ask basically any price for changing your smartphone battery. Take an example of iPods, it was also an immensely popular Apple product and it didn't have anything like this and still was fine. I don't remember anyone saying that "buying an used iPod is untrustworthy". Actually, the only issue Apple even had with batteries as far as I remember was caused by them, thanks to the feature that slowed iPhones when the battery was not running at sufficient capacity.
  - temp667 6y ago
    This really illustrates how ignorant a lot of HN comments are outside of the high wealth / tech bubble. Swollen batteries, bad batteries that were third party batteries were a pretty major iphone repair issue. Trying to cut down this obvious type of brand damaging behaviour is obviously good business to preserve reputation. I've been in line listening to a store employee try to explain that this wasn't their battery (before the whole crackdown). People literally still think Apple should repair these swollen phones (I bought it from XXX who told me that battery was good - it showed 100%, now its swollen / broken - fix it!). Apple doesn't know the battery life of a made in china battery. They charge an insane premium (including in used form) because of the flat out trust folks have in these devices. The tech inside does not generate this premium - their margins are mind blowing for what could be a commodity. The slow down issue was because apple was trying to extend useful life of their devices, at least that is one, not unreasonable view. Note - they support their devices far far LONGER than their "open" competitors - which often ship with old software (adware laden) and then never update. I keep my phone about 3 years and it's never been able to get latest iOS. My elderly parents kept their phones for 6 years and theirs was getting point releases still of an older iOS (not sure how that works but it did). for my parents especially - the trust issue is absolutely huge. They just don't trust that HTC or whomever won't ship with impossible to uninstall crap on the phone. same with carriers - again, apple has locked down much harder and so carriers are not "free" to install their stuff - lots of complaints, but for many users (not all) this is a positive not a negative. They don't have time to research which carrier installed app is crap, they don't know how to uninstall them etc. I'm going to let this one lie because any defense of Apple just get's voted into oblivion.

ByteJockey 6y ago

Presumably, that's the difference in the price of labor (and potentially regulations around setting it up). Marginal cost for data transfer is pretty cheap (I remember seeing something like $.03 per GB). Most of the cost of a telecom is in getting the rights required to set it up (fcc rights/land rights/ etc), and start-up labor (building poles/burying cable/building towers/etc). Running it is (by comparison) fairly cheap day to day. Also, a reduction in start-up costs means more players can be in the game -> more competition -> lower prices.