6 ms·

Apple pays out over claims it deliberately slowed down iPhones

37 points by louthy 3y ago

Y-bar 3y ago
I had an iPhone SE affected by this. It would have been _a lot_ easier to accept what Apple did had they also done these things: 1. Been upfront about it at the time of purchase that there was a hidden function that could make the advertised performance "over 2x the speed of iPhone 5" to become 0.8x the speed of the 5 due to technical limitations. 2. Not refused me a battery replacement due to a small dent in the screen. I spent dozens of hours with some third-party app developers wasting their (and mine) time trying to debug and understand why their apps were running slower on my nine month old SE compared to my much older 5. Apple caused us to waste our time and energy which could have been better spent elsewhere. The lower price of the battery replacement ironically also meant that I could not go to our equivalent of small claims court because it then was under the minimum limit of what the court would help dispute that the screen was unrelated to the battery issue.
rabbits_2002 3y ago
Yet my iPhone is 7 years old, I use it for hours a day, and works as well as the day I bought it. I feel like this whole ordeal is misrepresented or just exaggerated.
- HenryBemis 3y ago
  Perhaps your usage doesn't challenge the throttling, i.e. you use it for calls, imessage, and apps you haven't updated (thus not as much CPU-demanding) for a few years. I have a Philips stereo on which I can plug/dock older iphones (3-4-5), and for that I got a very old 5, with Spotify. The phone is docked (and charging) on the stereo 24/7/365. So no complaint for that. But if I were to use it for other purposes, it would be super painful to have super slow performance or battery dying on me.
- acdha 3y ago
  There was a legitimate issue - they needed a visible battery health indicator – but you’re right that it’s been substantially exaggerated. There’s a certain amount which is probably explained by “iOS versus Android” but I think most of it comes back to the tech press being funded by ad impressions: mention a top brand in a story like that and you’ll get a lot of clicks with very little effort.
- alphabettsy 3y ago
  It’s both. They absolutely should’ve been clear about what was happening and should’ve given people the option to turn it off and had more obvious battery health notifications. It’s not a conspiracy to sell more phones imo. If you want someone to blame, the mostly popular apps on the App Stores get more and more bloated every year.
- izacus 3y ago
  The courts outright have proven that Apple lied and forced them to pay out damages, how can that be "misrepresented and exaggerated"?!
  - thebruce87m 3y ago
    That is an incredible claim. Please link to this court judgement.
    - izacus 3y ago
      After appeals were rejected, Apple is making payments to affected customers: https://www.smartphoneperformancesettlement.com/ https://www.smartphoneperformancesettlement.com/ You can find links to litigation there.
      - thebruce87m 3y ago
        I had a quick scan but I can’t see it. Can you quote the bit where the court said Apple lied? Edit: Document is here: https://angeion-public.s3.amazonaws.com/www.SmartphonePerformanceSettlement.com/docs/Class+Notice.pdf https://angeion-public.s3.amazonaws.com/www.SmartphonePerfor... > The Court did not decide the case in favor of Plaintiffs or Apple. This does not support your assertion that the court decided that Apple lied.
        izacus 3y ago
        Perhaps finish reading the said sentence - the court didn't decide the case because Apple decided to pay out money for their actions. Your assumption that Apple's settlement to avoid guilty verdict somehow means that they didn't do the action (which they agreed to pay damages for) is the wildest instance of corporate boot licking I've seen this week :D If the court decided that plaintiffs didn't have a case, Apple wouldn't settle.
        thebruce87m 3y ago
        I’m not sure how you failing to provide proof of lying makes me a corporate boot licker? Deciding to settle is a business decision which may or may not be related to what they did. This is the difference between a legal system and a justice system.
whynotminot 3y ago
Technically Apple absolutely did the right thing. Slowing down phones to prevent them from shutting off randomly is objectively the right move, especially since Apple’s SoCs are so performant they typically have enough headroom to offer reasonable performance even at lower clock speeds. Where they failed was in not communicating this and trying to Apple Magic “it just works pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” when they should have been straightforward. That’s basically this controversy in a nut shell. The tin foil hatting over planned obsolescence that always comes out has never made sense for a company that supports its smartphones with software updates longer than anyone else in the industry. Even this throttling was really about prolonging the usable life of your phone—you are more likely to think you need to buy a new phone if it’s randomly turning itself off all the time, rather than just feeling a little slower than it used to.
- HenryBemis 3y ago
  It's the lie that counts. From Sam Harris' book "Lying" (I've read it 4-5 years ago so I won't try to quote it), the most important thing that I kept is "not telling the whole truth is also lying". This is what Apple did. And when the lie helps to boost sales then the presumption of innocence goes bye-bye. This is what did it for me with Apple. I'm in the EU so most like won't get a penny from them, but it's ok, they will never get a penny from me ever again (AFAIK)
  - whynotminot 3y ago
    How does this boost sales. Wasn’t defending their PR handling—in fact that’s what I specially called out as the problem, so I don’t know why you’re replying to me.
    - HenryBemis 3y ago
      Phone slows down, meanwhile you continue updating apps which are more demanding, and this 'forces' you to upgrade to the newer/faster phone. I rarely update apps, as I 'freeze' the updates once I get a good-enough version (i.e. Spotify keeps messing things up imho). So with a stable iOS and the same apps, the CPU/RAM should feel the same. If you slow down my CPU, then the experience becomes worse, thus buying the newer phone.
giorgioz 3y ago
Does anyone have any idea how the slowdown was implemented? What was the literal if conditions to cause the slowdowns? Was it if battery cycles > x then slowdown y% OR if currente date > 2020 then slowdown y% OR something else?
- acdha 3y ago
  It only kicked in under certain conditions so I’d bet it was based on monitoring current battery output. I had a phone affected by it and first noticed the problem in the winter when cold temperatures meant it was relatively easy to trigger outdoors but it still never happened indoors.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  It's based on battery performance. So technically correct, they just didn't inform users about it which in the end had the exact same effect as if Apple deliberately slowed down phones in order to raise sales. Effectively it was planned obsolescence with (more or less) plausible deniability.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  if battery voltage < 80% then slowdown y%
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  As I understand it, it kicked in after the first brownout.

37 points by louthy 3y ago

I had an iPhone SE affected by this. It would have been _a lot_ easier to accept what Apple did had they also done these things: 1. Been upfront about it at the time of purchase that there was a hidden function that could make the advertised performance "over 2x the speed of iPhone 5" to become 0.8x the speed of the 5 due to technical limitations. 2. Not refused me a battery replacement due to a small dent in the screen. I spent dozens of hours with some third-party app developers wasting their (and mine) time trying to debug and understand why their apps were running slower on my nine month old SE compared to my much older 5. Apple caused us to waste our time and energy which could have been better spent elsewhere. The lower price of the battery replacement ironically also meant that I could not go to our equivalent of small claims court because it then was under the minimum limit of what the court would help dispute that the screen was unrelated to the battery issue.

rabbits_2002 3y ago

Yet my iPhone is 7 years old, I use it for hours a day, and works as well as the day I bought it. I feel like this whole ordeal is misrepresented or just exaggerated.

HenryBemis 3y ago
Perhaps your usage doesn't challenge the throttling, i.e. you use it for calls, imessage, and apps you haven't updated (thus not as much CPU-demanding) for a few years. I have a Philips stereo on which I can plug/dock older iphones (3-4-5), and for that I got a very old 5, with Spotify. The phone is docked (and charging) on the stereo 24/7/365. So no complaint for that. But if I were to use it for other purposes, it would be super painful to have super slow performance or battery dying on me.
acdha 3y ago
There was a legitimate issue - they needed a visible battery health indicator – but you’re right that it’s been substantially exaggerated. There’s a certain amount which is probably explained by “iOS versus Android” but I think most of it comes back to the tech press being funded by ad impressions: mention a top brand in a story like that and you’ll get a lot of clicks with very little effort.
alphabettsy 3y ago
It’s both. They absolutely should’ve been clear about what was happening and should’ve given people the option to turn it off and had more obvious battery health notifications. It’s not a conspiracy to sell more phones imo. If you want someone to blame, the mostly popular apps on the App Stores get more and more bloated every year.
izacus 3y ago
The courts outright have proven that Apple lied and forced them to pay out damages, how can that be "misrepresented and exaggerated"?!
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  That is an incredible claim. Please link to this court judgement.
  - izacus 3y ago
    After appeals were rejected, Apple is making payments to affected customers: https://www.smartphoneperformancesettlement.com/ https://www.smartphoneperformancesettlement.com/ You can find links to litigation there.
    - thebruce87m 3y ago
      I had a quick scan but I can’t see it. Can you quote the bit where the court said Apple lied? Edit: Document is here: https://angeion-public.s3.amazonaws.com/www.SmartphonePerformanceSettlement.com/docs/Class+Notice.pdf https://angeion-public.s3.amazonaws.com/www.SmartphonePerfor... > The Court did not decide the case in favor of Plaintiffs or Apple. This does not support your assertion that the court decided that Apple lied.
      - izacus 3y ago
        Perhaps finish reading the said sentence - the court didn't decide the case because Apple decided to pay out money for their actions. Your assumption that Apple's settlement to avoid guilty verdict somehow means that they didn't do the action (which they agreed to pay damages for) is the wildest instance of corporate boot licking I've seen this week :D If the court decided that plaintiffs didn't have a case, Apple wouldn't settle.
        thebruce87m 3y ago
        I’m not sure how you failing to provide proof of lying makes me a corporate boot licker? Deciding to settle is a business decision which may or may not be related to what they did. This is the difference between a legal system and a justice system.

whynotminot 3y ago

Technically Apple absolutely did the right thing. Slowing down phones to prevent them from shutting off randomly is objectively the right move, especially since Apple’s SoCs are so performant they typically have enough headroom to offer reasonable performance even at lower clock speeds. Where they failed was in not communicating this and trying to Apple Magic “it just works pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” when they should have been straightforward. That’s basically this controversy in a nut shell. The tin foil hatting over planned obsolescence that always comes out has never made sense for a company that supports its smartphones with software updates longer than anyone else in the industry. Even this throttling was really about prolonging the usable life of your phone—you are more likely to think you need to buy a new phone if it’s randomly turning itself off all the time, rather than just feeling a little slower than it used to.

HenryBemis 3y ago
It's the lie that counts. From Sam Harris' book "Lying" (I've read it 4-5 years ago so I won't try to quote it), the most important thing that I kept is "not telling the whole truth is also lying". This is what Apple did. And when the lie helps to boost sales then the presumption of innocence goes bye-bye. This is what did it for me with Apple. I'm in the EU so most like won't get a penny from them, but it's ok, they will never get a penny from me ever again (AFAIK)
- whynotminot 3y ago
  How does this boost sales. Wasn’t defending their PR handling—in fact that’s what I specially called out as the problem, so I don’t know why you’re replying to me.
  - HenryBemis 3y ago
    Phone slows down, meanwhile you continue updating apps which are more demanding, and this 'forces' you to upgrade to the newer/faster phone. I rarely update apps, as I 'freeze' the updates once I get a good-enough version (i.e. Spotify keeps messing things up imho). So with a stable iOS and the same apps, the CPU/RAM should feel the same. If you slow down my CPU, then the experience becomes worse, thus buying the newer phone.

giorgioz 3y ago

Does anyone have any idea how the slowdown was implemented? What was the literal if conditions to cause the slowdowns? Was it if battery cycles > x then slowdown y% OR if currente date > 2020 then slowdown y% OR something else?

acdha 3y ago
It only kicked in under certain conditions so I’d bet it was based on monitoring current battery output. I had a phone affected by it and first noticed the problem in the winter when cold temperatures meant it was relatively easy to trigger outdoors but it still never happened indoors.
alpaca128 3y ago
It's based on battery performance. So technically correct, they just didn't inform users about it which in the end had the exact same effect as if Apple deliberately slowed down phones in order to raise sales. Effectively it was planned obsolescence with (more or less) plausible deniability.
madeofpalk 3y ago
if battery voltage < 80% then slowdown y%
thebruce87m 3y ago
As I understand it, it kicked in after the first brownout.