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A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

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Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#121

Post by decebalus1 »

> First and foremost, we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.

Yeah, intentionally or not, it does happen. In light of the latest Apple 'innovations' I would also look at Grey's law (just look at what a piece of shit ITunes is). There have been numerous class action lawsuits in the past years, which I agree, don't prove anything except for the fact that consumers do notice that their older devices often degrade to not being usable.

Anecdotally this is how I lost my 2012 MacBook Pro. The hardware was excellent but software upgrades made it almost unusable. Browsing was ok-ish but I ended up using it mainly in 'terminal mode'. I couldn't find a Linux distribution that ran properly on it so one day I decided to go with El Capitan because of it's focus on 'performance' and that it's hardware requirements were compatible - MacBook Pro Mid/Late 2007 or newer. It worked fine but two days later I fried my video card while reading a PDF in Preview. I'm not saying the upgrade fried my computer but I was really frustrated I only got 3 years of use out of a superb (and expensive) piece of hardware.

And yes, after using an Asus for a few (awful) years, I bought another Macbook on which I'm writing this now.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#122

Post by Joeri »

IBM wrote: post #16

I still think Apple should sue some publications for defamation for the manifestly bad reporting about this story [1]. Here's John Siracusa about it [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15995018 [2] https://overcast.fm/+CdQP59ws/56:00

John sort of skated by the point that these phones were designed to have this problem. Spontaneous shutdowns with aging batteries are not a standard feature of all smartphones. Apple made a trade-off in the phone design that caused this hardware problem and then used software to try to workaround it but didn’t tell people that this would slow down their phones. My wife has an iphone 6 with this problem and was considering a new iphone to fix her performance problem. Whether apple meant to or not, their lack of full disclosure caused people to needlessly replace their phones. To say apple did nothing wrong is fanboyism.

Was the reporting bad? Sure. Was apple in the right? Definitely not.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#123

Post by emn13 »

reaperducer wrote: post #89
netsharc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this comment referring to someone else's (Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips) opinion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16013565 How is it "completely manufactured"? Apple programmed (and hid) the slowdown because it knows the batteries it is shipping with its phones won't last more than a year. Linus compared it to a car performing worse after 1 year of usage..

> because it knows the batteries it is shipping with its phones won't last more than a year Actually, it's an 8% decrease starting after the first year. But go ahead and keep on spreading the FUD. Your HTC stock should catch up soon.

It depends on lots of factors; but the degradation can be a lot more than that if you really abuse your battery. And unfortunately most devices don't make it easy to avoid being hard on your battery - you just kind of need to know what not to do, and play a guessing game. Apple specifically isn't one to burden the user with unnecessary mental load - so battery-health management is unsurprisingly something I've never seen on any apple device (but it's pretty rare anyhow).

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#124

Post by MBCook »

mtgx wrote: post #28
leadingthenet wrote: post #11

Reducing the battery replacement by $50 is a great move. While I think this is a completely manufactured scandal, this will definitely take away the last argument people have against them. I'm sure some people will still hate them for something, though.

If this is an issue that affects every iPhone say past 2 years (although I think I've heard reports of the issue affecting much newer iPhones), then wouldn't a much better solution (for the future) be to make iPhones with user-replaceable batteries? Why do people have to come in to the Apple Store to replace their batteries? Is Apple just counting on the fact that not too many will take them up on it?

> Why do people have to come in to the Apple Store to replace their batteries?

That’s how Apple tends to handle almost all warranty issues. Either that or you can mail it in.

iPhones are not exactly designed to be easily opened and messed with by normal people. It’s part of how they get them so thin (insert various other theories that may or may not apply here).

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#125

Post by legulere »

jsnk wrote: post #96
leadingthenet wrote: post #11

Reducing the battery replacement by $50 is a great move. While I think this is a completely manufactured scandal, this will definitely take away the last argument people have against them. I'm sure some people will still hate them for something, though.

How is this a "completely manufactured scandal"? Tens of millions of old iPhone users were left in the dark why all of a sudden the phone was slowing down to the point where it was becoming unusable. Millions of people probably spent hundreds of dollars otherwise they wouldn't need to spend if they know this was something they can fix with a new battery. I personally have been using iPhone 6 for 3 years until this CP…

>the phone was slowing down to the point where it was becoming unusable.

Were the phones really slowed down by that much?

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#126

Post by phonon »

tschwimmer wrote: post #111

I think this is a good response, and I think a lot of the outrage over this issue is overblown. At the end of the day there's a fundamental tradeoff that Apple needs to make on behalf of their customers: performance or stability. They chose stability, and I think they have a convincing argument as to why: "It should go without saying that we think sudden, unexpected shutdowns are unacceptable. We don’t want any of ou…

> My old 5S would shut down randomly under 20% without warning. Sometimes it would make it all the way to 1-2%, but most of the time it was between 5-15%.

"avoid unexpected shutdowns on iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and iPhone SE[...]we recently extended the same support for iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus"

They did not apply the change to the 5S.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#127

Post by yodsanklai »

chx wrote: post #67

The elephant in the room is, of course, Apple's obsession with thinness which makes it near impossible these days to get a usable laptop because PC makers totally copied Apple alas. It also gave us nonreplaceable batteries and any successful lawsuit that comes out of it is totally justified. No one asked for this. Lighter, somewhat, yes but thin to the point where batteries are barely functional? Samsung's colossal N…

I totally agree with you. I'd rather have a slightly bigger laptop with the ability to replace the battery easily.

I slightly disagree with this though:

> but thin to the point where batteries are barely functional?

My previous MBP (mid-2014) was still very usable after 3 years of intensive use. Overall, I can't say I suffered from not being able to change the battery easily. (I passed the problem to the next owner...).

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#128

Post by blhack »

reaperducer wrote: post #107
marklyon wrote: post #73

My wife’s 6+ was incredibly slow after the iOS upgrade. My 6+ drained the battery incredibly quickly. I was told that upgrading the iOS would fix that problem [0]; it didn’t. Instead it slowed my phone to the point of being unusable. If I’d have known replacing the battery would have fixed both of them, I’d have done that. Instead, I stupidly bought two new, very expensive phones. Since we were already locked into th…

> This does nothing to compensate or win back the trust of customers like me. What is it that you want Apple to do to make you personally feel better?

Questions like this always perplex me. People aren't asking for apple to do something. They're asking for them to not do something.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#129

Post by joselreyes »

IBM wrote: post #92
joselreyes wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a bad PR move. A giant insanely-rich company suing news publications? Apple has dealt with overblown controversies before (Antennagate, etc.) and the best way to deal with them is to do what they're doing: communicate better, improve their software, make repairs or returns more affordable.

I don't think it's an either/or. They should do what they announced today and sue for defamation. When they announce the suit they could state that they intend to donate any awarded damages/settlement to charity to counter the "Big Company sues blogger" stories. But I think the reputation damage is very real and it would give Apple the opportunity to testify under oath (if it went to trial).

Even if they took publications to court, the public opinion would not change for the better because people stop paying attention to any story within two weeks of when it's revealed. The damage has already been done. The only potential reasonable argument to do something like this is for Apple to scare off other publications from publishing damaging headlines in the future. But the benefit of this strategy would be little when balanced by the negative PR hit it would take by every other news publication writing articles and OpEds on Rich Big Corp vs small, struggling, important-for-democracy news organizations. There's no faster way to torpedo your public approval than to go after news publications.

Re: A Message to Our Customers about iPhone Batteries and Performance

#130

Post by reacharavindh »

marklyon wrote: post #73

My wife’s 6+ was incredibly slow after the iOS upgrade. My 6+ drained the battery incredibly quickly. I was told that upgrading the iOS would fix that problem [0]; it didn’t. Instead it slowed my phone to the point of being unusable. If I’d have known replacing the battery would have fixed both of them, I’d have done that. Instead, I stupidly bought two new, very expensive phones. Since we were already locked into th…

Well, can you return the two new phones?
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