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Does anyone have a cite that Apple knowingly created the issue they were dealing with here? 1. iPhones have the ability to burst-use a lot of energy 2. O

Does anyone have a cite that Apple knowingly created the issue they were dealing with here? 1. iPhones have the ability to burst-use a lot of energy 2. Older batteries aren't able to produce the same voltage as fresh batteries 3. Apple throttles performance on older iPhones to prevent them shutting down completely by demanding more power than the battery is able to deliver. 4. Apple doesn't explain to anyone what they're doing. 2 is just physics/chemistry 3 and 4 are a mild misstep. So my question is: did Apple know ahead of time that they were designing phones that would age out of functionality and require this workaround? Or did they design phones that operated at peak functionality when new, and then a few years later realize the consequences of that design decision as the phones got older, and then take a perfectly reasonable course to handle the situation as well as possible, and only screw up in not telling people what they were doing?

judge2020 3y ago
IMO it was all perfectly reasonable, but yes, the settlement was mostly because the performance dropped without informing the user whatsoever, which lead to a non-zero amount of sales of new iPhones, even if Apple's motivation wasn't to push users to buy a new phone. But I think it's fair to say that laypeople shouldn't need to read every article about a potential Apple "gate" to know if/when their phone is performing normally, just old, or is defective and thus they need a new one.
- fauigerzigerk 3y ago
  If they had told users (which they should have done) it might have lead to even more sales of new iPhones. Yes, some users would have replaced just the battery. But many others would have replaced the phone entirely, among them people who would never have noticed any slowdown from throttling.
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  My wife didn’t upgrade despite knowing her phone was throttled. She definitely would have if it was rebooting due to brownouts. So there was a sale “saved” by apple. No idea if the numbers cancelled out. Coincidentally, we found out today her iPhone 8 has a degraded battery. Once again she has no plans to change the battery.
ajross 3y ago
> Does anyone have a cite that Apple knowingly created the issue they were dealing with here? No, because if someone did the case likely would have gone to trial and Apple would have lost more than they settled for. The general assumption in situations like this is that they settled because they knew evidence would show up in discovery that would lose the case. I mean, I agree in principle: this is just an engineering decision to deal with pretty routine hardware failures. As a matter of software, this is an eminently reasonable workaround. But as a matter of business ethics, you gotta tell people what you're doing with their devices. Basically, if this was an open source project that did exactly the same thing nothing would have happened. Apple got burned because they tried to hide it.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > Basically, if this was an open source project that did exactly the same thing nothing would have happened. Because users would have been able to control their software's behavior in the first place? Or because Open Source projects don't hide their behavior, and would have informed their users of the change?
- fjni 3y ago
  > But as a matter of business ethics, you gotta tell people what you're doing with their devices. I'm curious about this from a legal perspective. Apple has and (probably is still) extending unpublished entitlements to developers that allow for behavior that is not publicly documented.
  - ajross 3y ago
    > Apple has and (probably is still) extending unpublished entitlements to developers that allow for behavior that is not publicly documented. Sure, but that's fine. You bought a product that the manufacturer claims does "X", but someone else with the same device has access to feature "Y" because they paid more or whatever. Totally legal market segmentation, no different for a phone than a dishwasher or car or whatever. Apple got in trouble here because they secretly modified phones (that it turned out couldn't do "X" without crashing) to do "Z" instead, which was slightly inferior, and didn't tell the owners (presumably to avoid having to compensate them). Can't do that with a dishwasher or car either.
baz00 3y ago
I think this was done with good intent but could have been handled better. But you can't satisfy anyone these days. All that happens is a YT celebrity does a hit job on Apple and everyone dogpiles on. Just yesterday I was speaking to someone who was getting fed up of her iPhone 14. She said she'd had it less than a year and it'd been terrible, charged really slowly andw ent slow and she was "going to buy a fucking samsung next time". She let me have a look at it. It was in low power mode and she was using a poundland 5W charger on a chewed up piece of shit cable. Charged it up of my PD powerbank and got her to order an Anker PD charger and a good cable on Amazon and explained what power save mode is. That's the average user. And when they go looking for solutions they find idiots on YouTube with whole channels devoted to shitting on particular vendors because it's divisive, they get clicks and make money. On top of this, the woman spends a fortune servicing her Mercedes but will only spend £1 each on a replacement charger and cable. What do you think will happen when her battery craps out? If Apple tell people that their battery needs replacing some fucker will fire up a video with APPLE GOUGING PEOPLE FOR NEW BATTERIES. Fuck, it's disposable, it's maintenance no different to your car. Take it to the garage and get it swapped out.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  But you can't satisfy anyone these days. You can satisfy me very easily. Tell me what's going on with my phone and its battery, and (ideally) ask me what I want to do about it.
  - baz00 3y ago
    That’s literally what they have done. My iPhone 15 tells me the battery install date, the cycle count, the remaining life estimate and what performance profile it is using which can be overridden.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      Well, yeah, now. Would they have done this if they hadn't been sued?
blackoil 3y ago
4 is not a mild misstep. There was enough confusion/noise that phones are getting slow after updates, which could have been cleared by communication. Apple was benefitting from this as people instead of getting battery replaced were getting new phone.
screamingninja 3y ago
> then a few years later realize the consequences of that design decision Making it extra difficult to replace batteries in older phones is a very deliberate design decision. https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-diff...
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  > Making it extra difficult to replace batteries This seems counter to reality. > Apple has completely redesigned the internals of the iPhone 14 to make it easier to repair. It is not at all visible from the outside, but this is a big deal. It’s the most significant design change to the iPhone in a long time. https://www.ifixit.com/News/64865/iphone-14-teardown https://www.ifixit.com/News/64865/iphone-14-teardown
sokoloff 3y ago
3, assuming properly implemented, is good engineering and not a mis-step at all, IMO.
dtgriscom 3y ago
> 2. Older batteries aren't able to produce the same voltage as fresh batteries Nit-pick: older batteries aren't able to produce the same maximum power as fresh batteries.
- gcanyon 3y ago
  Thanks -- so, watts?
CamperBob2 3y ago
They created the problem by hiding it from their users and disempowering them, leaving them no way to control or monitor the compromise between performance and battery life. All they needed to do was engage with the user. But nooooo, because Apple.
- avalys 3y ago
  Ask the user what? “Do you want your phone to crash because your battery is old - yes or no?” The issue here was not that the battery life was shorter. It was that the batteries could not deliver enough current to run the processor at full speed. There’s no choice to “empower” the users with.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    No, that was not the issue, and "crashing" was never on the table. The issue was that they artificially (and for obvious reasons) made the phone look like it needed to be replaced, when all it needed was a new battery. Key point: this effect kicked in long before the battery became simply unable to run the phone at full speed at all. Asking the user, "Your phone's battery is no longer meeting its specifications. Do you want to reduce your phone's power usage to provide additional operating time?" would not have been an unreasonable thing to do. Basically the same question the phone already asks when the charge drops below 10%! This would empower the user to make the same decision with their phone that they would make with any other battery-operated device that is showing its age, from dimming their flashlight to turning down their radio to driving slower. But noooooo, because Apple.
    - thebruce87m 3y ago
      Eh? The feature only kicks in after the first brownout.
      - CamperBob2 3y ago
        So? What difference does that make? The battery ages to a certain point, eventually the phone shuts down prematurely. The phone then slows itself down to try to hide the battery loss from the user. The user is aware of NONE of this. The user thinks, "Darn, time for a new phone already." Except it's not time for a new phone, it's time for a new battery. The real question is, why is this OK with you? Why do you, as a user, want less insight and control over your devices? Why carry water for a trillion-dollar company without being paid to?

judge2020 3y ago

IMO it was all perfectly reasonable, but yes, the settlement was mostly because the performance dropped without informing the user whatsoever, which lead to a non-zero amount of sales of new iPhones, even if Apple's motivation wasn't to push users to buy a new phone. But I think it's fair to say that laypeople shouldn't need to read every article about a potential Apple "gate" to know if/when their phone is performing normally, just old, or is defective and thus they need a new one.

fauigerzigerk 3y ago
If they had told users (which they should have done) it might have lead to even more sales of new iPhones. Yes, some users would have replaced just the battery. But many others would have replaced the phone entirely, among them people who would never have noticed any slowdown from throttling.
thebruce87m 3y ago
My wife didn’t upgrade despite knowing her phone was throttled. She definitely would have if it was rebooting due to brownouts. So there was a sale “saved” by apple. No idea if the numbers cancelled out. Coincidentally, we found out today her iPhone 8 has a degraded battery. Once again she has no plans to change the battery.

ajross 3y ago

> Does anyone have a cite that Apple knowingly created the issue they were dealing with here? No, because if someone did the case likely would have gone to trial and Apple would have lost more than they settled for. The general assumption in situations like this is that they settled because they knew evidence would show up in discovery that would lose the case. I mean, I agree in principle: this is just an engineering decision to deal with pretty routine hardware failures. As a matter of software, this is an eminently reasonable workaround. But as a matter of business ethics, you gotta tell people what you're doing with their devices. Basically, if this was an open source project that did exactly the same thing nothing would have happened. Apple got burned because they tried to hide it.

smoldesu 3y ago
> Basically, if this was an open source project that did exactly the same thing nothing would have happened. Because users would have been able to control their software's behavior in the first place? Or because Open Source projects don't hide their behavior, and would have informed their users of the change?
fjni 3y ago
> But as a matter of business ethics, you gotta tell people what you're doing with their devices. I'm curious about this from a legal perspective. Apple has and (probably is still) extending unpublished entitlements to developers that allow for behavior that is not publicly documented.
- ajross 3y ago
  > Apple has and (probably is still) extending unpublished entitlements to developers that allow for behavior that is not publicly documented. Sure, but that's fine. You bought a product that the manufacturer claims does "X", but someone else with the same device has access to feature "Y" because they paid more or whatever. Totally legal market segmentation, no different for a phone than a dishwasher or car or whatever. Apple got in trouble here because they secretly modified phones (that it turned out couldn't do "X" without crashing) to do "Z" instead, which was slightly inferior, and didn't tell the owners (presumably to avoid having to compensate them). Can't do that with a dishwasher or car either.

baz00 3y ago

I think this was done with good intent but could have been handled better. But you can't satisfy anyone these days. All that happens is a YT celebrity does a hit job on Apple and everyone dogpiles on. Just yesterday I was speaking to someone who was getting fed up of her iPhone 14. She said she'd had it less than a year and it'd been terrible, charged really slowly andw ent slow and she was "going to buy a fucking samsung next time". She let me have a look at it. It was in low power mode and she was using a poundland 5W charger on a chewed up piece of shit cable. Charged it up of my PD powerbank and got her to order an Anker PD charger and a good cable on Amazon and explained what power save mode is. That's the average user. And when they go looking for solutions they find idiots on YouTube with whole channels devoted to shitting on particular vendors because it's divisive, they get clicks and make money. On top of this, the woman spends a fortune servicing her Mercedes but will only spend £1 each on a replacement charger and cable. What do you think will happen when her battery craps out? If Apple tell people that their battery needs replacing some fucker will fire up a video with APPLE GOUGING PEOPLE FOR NEW BATTERIES. Fuck, it's disposable, it's maintenance no different to your car. Take it to the garage and get it swapped out.

CamperBob2 3y ago
But you can't satisfy anyone these days. You can satisfy me very easily. Tell me what's going on with my phone and its battery, and (ideally) ask me what I want to do about it.
- baz00 3y ago
  That’s literally what they have done. My iPhone 15 tells me the battery install date, the cycle count, the remaining life estimate and what performance profile it is using which can be overridden.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    Well, yeah, now. Would they have done this if they hadn't been sued?

blackoil 3y ago

4 is not a mild misstep. There was enough confusion/noise that phones are getting slow after updates, which could have been cleared by communication. Apple was benefitting from this as people instead of getting battery replaced were getting new phone.

screamingninja 3y ago

> then a few years later realize the consequences of that design decision Making it extra difficult to replace batteries in older phones is a very deliberate design decision. https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-diff...

GeekyBear 3y ago
> Making it extra difficult to replace batteries This seems counter to reality. > Apple has completely redesigned the internals of the iPhone 14 to make it easier to repair. It is not at all visible from the outside, but this is a big deal. It’s the most significant design change to the iPhone in a long time. https://www.ifixit.com/News/64865/iphone-14-teardown https://www.ifixit.com/News/64865/iphone-14-teardown

sokoloff 3y ago

3, assuming properly implemented, is good engineering and not a mis-step at all, IMO.

dtgriscom 3y ago

> 2. Older batteries aren't able to produce the same voltage as fresh batteries Nit-pick: older batteries aren't able to produce the same maximum power as fresh batteries.

gcanyon 3y ago
Thanks -- so, watts?

CamperBob2 3y ago

They created the problem by hiding it from their users and disempowering them, leaving them no way to control or monitor the compromise between performance and battery life. All they needed to do was engage with the user. But nooooo, because Apple.

avalys 3y ago
Ask the user what? “Do you want your phone to crash because your battery is old - yes or no?” The issue here was not that the battery life was shorter. It was that the batteries could not deliver enough current to run the processor at full speed. There’s no choice to “empower” the users with.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  No, that was not the issue, and "crashing" was never on the table. The issue was that they artificially (and for obvious reasons) made the phone look like it needed to be replaced, when all it needed was a new battery. Key point: this effect kicked in long before the battery became simply unable to run the phone at full speed at all. Asking the user, "Your phone's battery is no longer meeting its specifications. Do you want to reduce your phone's power usage to provide additional operating time?" would not have been an unreasonable thing to do. Basically the same question the phone already asks when the charge drops below 10%! This would empower the user to make the same decision with their phone that they would make with any other battery-operated device that is showing its age, from dimming their flashlight to turning down their radio to driving slower. But noooooo, because Apple.
  - thebruce87m 3y ago
    Eh? The feature only kicks in after the first brownout.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      So? What difference does that make? The battery ages to a certain point, eventually the phone shuts down prematurely. The phone then slows itself down to try to hide the battery loss from the user. The user is aware of NONE of this. The user thinks, "Darn, time for a new phone already." Except it's not time for a new phone, it's time for a new battery. The real question is, why is this OK with you? Why do you, as a user, want less insight and control over your devices? Why carry water for a trillion-dollar company without being paid to?