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I agree that it's possible they weren't being malicious. The part that gets me is that they didn't decide to instead allow folks to set a max battery charge to

I agree that it's possible they weren't being malicious. The part that gets me is that they didn't decide to instead allow folks to set a max battery charge to extend their battery life. It's pretty widely accepted that charging a battery to 100% over-and-over will cause battery degradation. It seems fair to me that decisions that are hidden from consumers and obviously degrade the consumer's experience should negatively affect a company (and more than just the loss of goodwill).

gruez 6y ago
>The part that gets me is that they didn't decide to instead allow folks to set a max battery charge to extend their battery life. That's a fairly unusual feature to have for a consumer device. Support for it is spotty on laptops, and on androids the only way of doing it (I'm aware of) involves rooting your phone.
- spullara 6y ago
  My AirPod Pros have notified me that based on usage they would only charge to 80%, but that is modifiable.
  - gruez 6y ago
    iPhones also have that feature, but they're both introduced fairly recently. Furthermore, it's not a general "max charge %" limiter, it's a system that's supposed to automagically guess when you're not going to use your phone (eg. at night), and won't charge to full during that time, but will otherwise charge to 100% (eg. in the morning).
jolux 6y ago
The alternative is that the phone shuts off spontaneously and reboots if power draw gets too high, which also degrades the consumer’s experience and looks a lot scarier and more obviously broken to most people.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Are these really the two options? What about displaying a plainly worded message that explains the situation to the owner, then gives them the choice? Or would that be too confusing and scary for Apple customers?
  - jolux 6y ago
    Crashing has implications for data integrity which laypeople do not fully understand to this day, despite it having been a problem for the entire history of computing. I don’t think giving users a choice between potentially catastrophic failure and inconvenience is wise. Notifying them of the slowdown is a good idea, and these days you can go into the settings to turn off the slowdown manually, but I think making people look for it is a good idea.
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      Even if you think customers shouldn't be given a choice, there is still no excuse for not informing the users of the situation. Apple is not a victim here.
      - jolux 6y ago
        Did I say Apple was a victim? No. They should have notified people. But the conspiracy theories are silly, as are people who act like there isn’t a clearly correct default behavior in this case.
        bigbubba 6y ago
        Okay, then we agree the comment I responded to presented a false dichotomy.
        jolux 6y ago
        You said that their decision obviously degrades the user experience. They were dealing with an engineering trade off and picked the side that didn’t risk data loss. I contend that that’s better than the alternative, irrespective of whether or not they tell people what’s going on.
mlindner 6y ago
It actually makes most sense that they weren't being malicious. Half the posts on this thread don't even understand what the problem is. Namely throttling to prevent the device from shutting off as if it was some kind of anti-consumer feature when it was actually pro-consumer.
- djmobley 6y ago
  Exactly this. As someone who experienced the unexpected shutdowns (described my experience elsewhere in these comments), the throttling fixed my issue until I ended up getting my battery replaced by a third party. I think what a lot of people miss is that it was not just a restart, but a shutdown that would then require a charger be connected before the phone could be turned on again, even though it would then report similar charge to before the shutdown. If you were out of the house and did not have a charger readily accessible, it was equivalent to the phone randomly turning into a brick for several hours at a time.
- invisible 6y ago
  I can’t speak for everyone on this thread, but the combination of “hiding” and “degrading” are what make this anti-consumer. If your car wouldn’t go over 30mph and the manufacturer wouldn’t disclose why, how would you feel? From the article: >Apple, the most valuable company in the world, acted deceptively by hiding the shutdown and slowdown issues, according to the court filing. >"Many consumers decided that the only way to get improved performance was to purchase a newer-model iPhone from Apple," Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich wrote...

gruez 6y ago

>The part that gets me is that they didn't decide to instead allow folks to set a max battery charge to extend their battery life. That's a fairly unusual feature to have for a consumer device. Support for it is spotty on laptops, and on androids the only way of doing it (I'm aware of) involves rooting your phone.

spullara 6y ago
My AirPod Pros have notified me that based on usage they would only charge to 80%, but that is modifiable.
- gruez 6y ago
  iPhones also have that feature, but they're both introduced fairly recently. Furthermore, it's not a general "max charge %" limiter, it's a system that's supposed to automagically guess when you're not going to use your phone (eg. at night), and won't charge to full during that time, but will otherwise charge to 100% (eg. in the morning).

jolux 6y ago

The alternative is that the phone shuts off spontaneously and reboots if power draw gets too high, which also degrades the consumer’s experience and looks a lot scarier and more obviously broken to most people.

bigbubba 6y ago
Are these really the two options? What about displaying a plainly worded message that explains the situation to the owner, then gives them the choice? Or would that be too confusing and scary for Apple customers?
- jolux 6y ago
  Crashing has implications for data integrity which laypeople do not fully understand to this day, despite it having been a problem for the entire history of computing. I don’t think giving users a choice between potentially catastrophic failure and inconvenience is wise. Notifying them of the slowdown is a good idea, and these days you can go into the settings to turn off the slowdown manually, but I think making people look for it is a good idea.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    Even if you think customers shouldn't be given a choice, there is still no excuse for not informing the users of the situation. Apple is not a victim here.
    - jolux 6y ago
      Did I say Apple was a victim? No. They should have notified people. But the conspiracy theories are silly, as are people who act like there isn’t a clearly correct default behavior in this case.
      - bigbubba 6y ago
        Okay, then we agree the comment I responded to presented a false dichotomy.
        jolux 6y ago
        You said that their decision obviously degrades the user experience. They were dealing with an engineering trade off and picked the side that didn’t risk data loss. I contend that that’s better than the alternative, irrespective of whether or not they tell people what’s going on.

mlindner 6y ago

It actually makes most sense that they weren't being malicious. Half the posts on this thread don't even understand what the problem is. Namely throttling to prevent the device from shutting off as if it was some kind of anti-consumer feature when it was actually pro-consumer.

djmobley 6y ago
Exactly this. As someone who experienced the unexpected shutdowns (described my experience elsewhere in these comments), the throttling fixed my issue until I ended up getting my battery replaced by a third party. I think what a lot of people miss is that it was not just a restart, but a shutdown that would then require a charger be connected before the phone could be turned on again, even though it would then report similar charge to before the shutdown. If you were out of the house and did not have a charger readily accessible, it was equivalent to the phone randomly turning into a brick for several hours at a time.
invisible 6y ago
I can’t speak for everyone on this thread, but the combination of “hiding” and “degrading” are what make this anti-consumer. If your car wouldn’t go over 30mph and the manufacturer wouldn’t disclose why, how would you feel? From the article: >Apple, the most valuable company in the world, acted deceptively by hiding the shutdown and slowdown issues, according to the court filing. >"Many consumers decided that the only way to get improved performance was to purchase a newer-model iPhone from Apple," Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich wrote...