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This has never happened. You may be thinking of batterygate in which handsets with degraded batteries throttled themselves to prevent brownouts. Replacing the

This has never happened. You may be thinking of batterygate in which handsets with degraded batteries throttled themselves to prevent brownouts. Replacing the battery returned the handset to full speed. The feature still exists today, except now (in reaction to the controversy) you can turn it off if you prefer random reboots when your battery is old. It was only ever about batteries. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate

pydry 6y ago
If it was only ever about batteries they would have A) been open about it B) consequently not fined for deceptive commercial practices. I find it astounding how many people believed that the cover story was the unvarnished truth given the lack of transparency exhibited by Apple over the matter, the obvious incentive and the natural proclivity so many similar industries have towards planned obsolescence (lightbulb conspiracy?). It's a hell of a reality distortion field. >Replacing the battery returned the handset to full speed. Ah yes, the battery they sealed into the phone.
- thebruce87m 6y ago
  Talking about distortion fields, let’s try and penetrate one. You are asserting that Apple slowed down phones in order to sell new ones. - Why only target specific handsets (with degraded batteries)? Why not entire model lines? - Why allow users to get their speed back by replacing the battery? Why not keep it slow to encourage the new sale? - If they got “caught”, why is the exact same feature available on a brand new iPhone 12? The only thing they changed was to allow you to turn throttling off if you prefer reboots. Surely they would remove the feature if it’s only purpose was to slow phones down? - Android phones suffer the same problems when their batteries degrade. Apple updated phones, some of which were out of warranty at the time. Is preventing reboots of older hardware planned obsolescence? Or the opposite? The only thing they did wrong was to not alert the users to the fact that the throttling was happening and how to remedy it. Now they do. I’m all about punishing companies when they do something wrong, but the environmentalist in me hates the fact that so many manufacturers drop support for phones after only a few years and the phones end up in landfill. Apple extended the life of older phones by doing this. People would be more likely to buy a new phone if it randomly rebooted vs ran slower. Anecdotally, my wife’s phone was throttling at the time and she didn’t even notice because she just used it for calls and texts. If she had encountered reboots she probably would have bought a new phone. Even once she knew it was throttled, she didn’t get the battery replaced because it still did the job until she upgraded last year.
  - pydry 6y ago
    The answer to a lot of these questions is "because they wanted deniability" or to maintain the pretence that they did nothing wrong. It's true that they could have been a lot less covert about it in which case they'd be in even deeper shit legally and reputationally. One thing that I never really understood is why they degraded performance when the battery was at 30-100% if the random reboots didn't kick in until the battery was at 30%. Perhaps you know. Or why I can easily replace the battery on my phone but the iPhone battery is sealed in and has to be replaced by apple. Hmmm...
    - thebruce87m 6y ago
      The degraded performance is latching. After a brownout occurs, it will stay on until you get the battery changed or turn it back on. I.e. it’s not based on any fixed percentages. The fact that people can put third-party batteries in and also that different batches of batteries will age differently means that this is probably the best solution. More info here: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208387 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208387 “This iPhone has experienced an unexpected shutdown because the battery was unable to deliver the necessary peak power. Performance management has been applied to help prevent this from happening again. Disable…” As for not (easily) allowing third party replacements, as someone who designs products: why should I (or Apple) have to support third party items? Why should I use engineering resources debugging why a third party touchscreen doesn’t work with my new firmware (this happened to Apple)? Also, as someone who buys second-hand electronics I don’t want a third-party battery in the phone, or at least I want to be able to tell if there is one in order to reject the phone. I like my house in a non-burned-down state thank you very much. And you just know that the average punter with a third-party battery is still going to blame Apple when their phone bursts in to flames from an eBay battery. Now, I believe there should be laws to dictate reasonable repair costs and, more importantly, number of years of support to ensure electronics live a long life.

pydry 6y ago

If it was only ever about batteries they would have A) been open about it B) consequently not fined for deceptive commercial practices. I find it astounding how many people believed that the cover story was the unvarnished truth given the lack of transparency exhibited by Apple over the matter, the obvious incentive and the natural proclivity so many similar industries have towards planned obsolescence (lightbulb conspiracy?). It's a hell of a reality distortion field. >Replacing the battery returned the handset to full speed. Ah yes, the battery they sealed into the phone.

thebruce87m 6y ago
Talking about distortion fields, let’s try and penetrate one. You are asserting that Apple slowed down phones in order to sell new ones. - Why only target specific handsets (with degraded batteries)? Why not entire model lines? - Why allow users to get their speed back by replacing the battery? Why not keep it slow to encourage the new sale? - If they got “caught”, why is the exact same feature available on a brand new iPhone 12? The only thing they changed was to allow you to turn throttling off if you prefer reboots. Surely they would remove the feature if it’s only purpose was to slow phones down? - Android phones suffer the same problems when their batteries degrade. Apple updated phones, some of which were out of warranty at the time. Is preventing reboots of older hardware planned obsolescence? Or the opposite? The only thing they did wrong was to not alert the users to the fact that the throttling was happening and how to remedy it. Now they do. I’m all about punishing companies when they do something wrong, but the environmentalist in me hates the fact that so many manufacturers drop support for phones after only a few years and the phones end up in landfill. Apple extended the life of older phones by doing this. People would be more likely to buy a new phone if it randomly rebooted vs ran slower. Anecdotally, my wife’s phone was throttling at the time and she didn’t even notice because she just used it for calls and texts. If she had encountered reboots she probably would have bought a new phone. Even once she knew it was throttled, she didn’t get the battery replaced because it still did the job until she upgraded last year.
- pydry 6y ago
  The answer to a lot of these questions is "because they wanted deniability" or to maintain the pretence that they did nothing wrong. It's true that they could have been a lot less covert about it in which case they'd be in even deeper shit legally and reputationally. One thing that I never really understood is why they degraded performance when the battery was at 30-100% if the random reboots didn't kick in until the battery was at 30%. Perhaps you know. Or why I can easily replace the battery on my phone but the iPhone battery is sealed in and has to be replaced by apple. Hmmm...
  - thebruce87m 6y ago
    The degraded performance is latching. After a brownout occurs, it will stay on until you get the battery changed or turn it back on. I.e. it’s not based on any fixed percentages. The fact that people can put third-party batteries in and also that different batches of batteries will age differently means that this is probably the best solution. More info here: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208387 https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208387 “This iPhone has experienced an unexpected shutdown because the battery was unable to deliver the necessary peak power. Performance management has been applied to help prevent this from happening again. Disable…” As for not (easily) allowing third party replacements, as someone who designs products: why should I (or Apple) have to support third party items? Why should I use engineering resources debugging why a third party touchscreen doesn’t work with my new firmware (this happened to Apple)? Also, as someone who buys second-hand electronics I don’t want a third-party battery in the phone, or at least I want to be able to tell if there is one in order to reject the phone. I like my house in a non-burned-down state thank you very much. And you just know that the average punter with a third-party battery is still going to blame Apple when their phone bursts in to flames from an eBay battery. Now, I believe there should be laws to dictate reasonable repair costs and, more importantly, number of years of support to ensure electronics live a long life.