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France fines Apple €25M for iOS software that slowed down older iPhones

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Re: France fines Apple €25M for iOS software that slowed down older iPhones

#21

Post by hrktb »

privateSFacct wrote: post #5

Apple implemented this to help users extend life of older devices. Apple should just have phones in France run full clock at all times to comply with this regulation. These types of things don't recognize that phone design is a CONSTANT power management / speed tradeoff. If you demand things run 100% speed at all times - poof - your batter life is gone.

Apple is punished for trying to push the issue under the rug, perpetuating a situation that was beneficial to their revenue.

It would be the same if an ISP silently slowed a user's internet when detecting their ISP provided router is getting flacky. That's not the right way of handling this, users should be warned of the issue so they can act accordingly, and not stay in the dark until someone discovers the hack.

Re: France fines Apple €25M for iOS software that slowed down older iPhones

#22

Post by ch4s3 »

eitland wrote: post #14
privateSFacct wrote: post #5

Apple implemented this to help users extend life of older devices. Apple should just have phones in France run full clock at all times to comply with this regulation. These types of things don't recognize that phone design is a CONSTANT power management / speed tradeoff. If you demand things run 100% speed at all times - poof - your batter life is gone.

I think the message is that Apple (and everyone else) should deliver quality that lasts more than two years.

They absolutely do, but batteries have physical limitations that result in lower power output over time. Under those conditions, the phone can either intermittently crash as older Android phones do, or adjust CPU power draw which will slow down the device. The only other options are to replace the battery or the device. There’s no free lunch to be had here.

IMHO, Apple’s “crime” here is bad communication.

Re: France fines Apple €25M for iOS software that slowed down older iPhones

#23

Post by lwkl »

privateSFacct wrote: post #5

Apple implemented this to help users extend life of older devices. Apple should just have phones in France run full clock at all times to comply with this regulation. These types of things don't recognize that phone design is a CONSTANT power management / speed tradeoff. If you demand things run 100% speed at all times - poof - your batter life is gone.

They should have communicated better. I wanted a feature like this on my Android phone for years and this ended up being one of the reason that made me switch to an iPhone.

But I still think they should have implemented this how it is now (being able to turn it off). And inform the users that their phone is being slowed down. I can‘t tell if this was an oversight or deliberately done so users would switch to a new phone. To me a slower phone is better than s crashing or no phone but if I don‘t know why it‘s getting slower I‘m probably more tempted to buy a new phone instead of replacing the battery.

Re: France fines Apple €25M for iOS software that slowed down older iPhones

#24

Post by NobodyNada »

eitland wrote: post #14
privateSFacct wrote: post #5

Apple implemented this to help users extend life of older devices. Apple should just have phones in France run full clock at all times to comply with this regulation. These types of things don't recognize that phone design is a CONSTANT power management / speed tradeoff. If you demand things run 100% speed at all times - poof - your batter life is gone.

I think the message is that Apple (and everyone else) should deliver quality that lasts more than two years.

This is a physical limitation of battery technology and cannot be fixed just by magically increasing “quality.” A lithium-ion battery will degrade after a few hundred charge cycles. In order to fix this, Apple would either need to make some serious tradeoffs (like drastically increasing phone cost and size) or make some world-changing breakthroughs in battery technology.

Re: France fines Apple €25M for iOS software that slowed down older iPhones

#25

Post by cma »

xuki wrote: post #17
cma wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not prompt the user that the battery is weak, opt in or out to slowness, and mention that they can get the battery changed by a third party for $30 instead of buying a new phone (at the expense of waterproofness rating).

Exactly what they ended up doing (minus the 3rd party part).

Only after legal pressure though right? Are they suing them for how things went, or how things are continuing to go forward?

Re: France fines Apple €25M for iOS software that slowed down older iPhones

#26

Post by tsukurimashou »

privateSFacct wrote: post #5

Apple implemented this to help users extend life of older devices. Apple should just have phones in France run full clock at all times to comply with this regulation. These types of things don't recognize that phone design is a CONSTANT power management / speed tradeoff. If you demand things run 100% speed at all times - poof - your batter life is gone.

how about giving the OWNER of the device the choice instead of doing it silently and in the back of everyone?

Re: France fines Apple €25M for iOS software that slowed down older iPhones

#27

Post by throwaway_tech »

privateSFacct wrote: post #5

Apple implemented this to help users extend life of older devices. Apple should just have phones in France run full clock at all times to comply with this regulation. These types of things don't recognize that phone design is a CONSTANT power management / speed tradeoff. If you demand things run 100% speed at all times - poof - your batter life is gone.

>Apple implemented this to help users extend life of older devices.

Or to encourage users spending $500-$1,000 to upgrade their slowing devices.

>Apple should just have phones in France run full clock at all times to comply with this regulation.

Why does tech always seem to have the attitude of "we know whats best for you" and if you challenge us we will make things as bad as possible just to prove our point? Is there not a common sense approach of giving users the ability to throttle their own devices to manage power/battery trade-off?

Re: France fines Apple €25M for iOS software that slowed down older iPhones

#28

Post by zepto »

eitland wrote: post #14
privateSFacct wrote: post #5

Apple implemented this to help users extend life of older devices. Apple should just have phones in France run full clock at all times to comply with this regulation. These types of things don't recognize that phone design is a CONSTANT power management / speed tradeoff. If you demand things run 100% speed at all times - poof - your batter life is gone.

I think the message is that Apple (and everyone else) should deliver quality that lasts more than two years.

Apple are the only ones who actually do.

Re: France fines Apple €25M for iOS software that slowed down older iPhones

#29

Post by kemayo »

rbritton wrote: post #15
bilekas wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple implemented this to help users extend life of older devices. Is there a statement from them to this point ? I couldn't find it in the article. But this isn't the point anyway really. The users were not told. > IPhone owners were not informed that installing iOS updates (10.2.1 and 11.2) could slow down their devices This means that the users would definitely just assume their phones were now in need of upgrad…

They did [0], and to me it's a legitimate course of action to extend device life and minimize support load a bit. However, it should be disclosed clearly and not covered up until it blows up. [0]: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-slows-down-older-iphone-batt...

Yeah, they _eventually_ got to an acceptable balance where they announce it and show the current status in the battery settings. But that was only after the PR blowup about it.

I'm sort of conflicted about the fine hitting now, as a result. If they were still being intransigent about the issue, sure, but they've already fixed it...

Re: France fines Apple €25M for iOS software that slowed down older iPhones

#30

Post by zepto »

behnamoh wrote: post #12

I think the more important issue is when Apple doesn't provide some features of newer iOS versions to older iPhones, even though they can perfectly run the features. A classic example is the Airdrop which wasn't available for iPhone 4s, but people got it running on their gadgets anyway. I know that new iOS features are supposed to drive the customers to switch to newer iPhones, but to exclude other users from such fe…

Why is it not right?
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