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They are correct in a sense that it was doing it "without notice". But they had a good reason to do the slowdowns, no malice needed, their one and only big mist
by filoleg 6y ago
They are correct in a sense that it was doing it "without notice". But they had a good reason to do the slowdowns, no malice needed, their one and only big mistake here was doing it without a notice.
The reason they did it was to prevent battery degradation and bad battery life by throttling the CPU. Except back then, iPhone CPUs weren't overperforming monsters they are today, so the slowdown was fairly noticeable. And when done without a notice or reason, you get a perfect publicity shitstorm.
In fact, this feature actually still exists for iPhones, except it now officially exists in settings and can be disabled. It throws a notification on yours screen and auto-activates if your battery degrades below certain level, but it can be disabled (so you can choose whether to prioritize performance or preventing battery from further degradation) by a simple click in a settings menu. And it also explains exactly and in very simple language what this feature does. It isn't hidden behind a million menus either, it is right there in settings => battery => battery health.
EDIT: to clarify, Apple throttling was not only done to prevent it from holding less charge due to battery degradation. Battery degradation to a certain level also led to iPhones rebooting randomly. And apparently it was not that rare of an issue, because the reason I posted this edit in the first place was due to seeing more than a few comments in this thread mentioning that it had happened to them.
- bgirard 6y agoKarunamon made a very specific claim in this thread that I quoted. Your response doesn't discuss this claim. I'm interested in what data we have backing that claim.
- johnmaguire2013 6y agoYour quote mentioned "without notice", which was responded to. I would also like to see a response to this part of the quote: > and having internal tooling that would deny a replacement (even at full retail price) if the battery was above an arbitrary health threshold (but still low enough to cause throttling).
- djmobley 6y agoI’ve described my experience of this elsewhere in the comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25144761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25144761
- Karunamon 6y agoNothing you'll be interested in, only very many stories of people taking their phones in once the throttling news dropped (IIRC, with accompanying geekbench scores showing the effect quantifiably), and being told to pound sand. A couple are downthread. Besides, it's not as if this is a strange policy. Apple never has arbitrarily replaced phone parts by user request, even with cash in hand, unless the techs could point to a specific problem. Try walking into an Apple store today and ask for a new screen without an obvious problem.. you will not get one.