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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

#31

Post by willis936 »

neohaven wrote: post #16
post_break wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if ford started to detune your engine as you added miles to the car, but DIDNT TELL YOU. You lost X horsepower every 1,000 miles.

Imagine if, to avoid damage to engine parts, engines would keep their heat limits in safe zones to not blow up when friction goes up. Imagine if, when you don't tune up your car, it starts running, factually, with less horsepower. You do lose X horsepower every 1000 miles. You get it back with your tuneup. Which involves changing the oil. You lose X MHz every Y% of battery discharge capacity lost. You get it back wit…

What's annoying about this particular issue is that the problem that users don't like isn't Apple's battery saving measure, or even being lied to, it's phone performance slowing over time. That is what users care about. The battery peak load degrading over time is a factor, but even with battery replacements phones will feel more sluggish over time because the NAND is a disposable part. Fill up a higher percentage of your total storage? Feels slow. Take videos for a year? Feels slow. There is no reasonable oil change for this and it's something that is not being talked about anywhere.

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

#32

Post by andai »

throwaway_tech wrote: post #27
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 ther…

I think on Android if you show developer tools, you can set the CPU governor mode.

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

#33

Post by oarsinsync »

dangus wrote: post #9
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.

It’s definitely a multifaceted issue, especially because Apple’s communication was so poor. Though it’s not like companies are in the habit of communicating their CPU scheduling strategy to their customers. The customers don’t care nor can the comprehend that information. It still boggles my mind how many people I know refuse to get batteries replaced. The price is totally reasonable from all manufacturers, way more…

> A lot of the people who essentially say that a random shutdown due to lack of supplied voltage is preferable to throttling are flat out wrong.

Agreed. My iPhone SE running iOS 13 has randomly shutdown (I guess due to cold? In London, and in my jeans pocket?) about a dozen times in the last 2 months. It's really annoying. I'd much rather throttling. Apparently, this is what Apple does already though, just not well enough it seems.

Battery health is marked as 88% and peak performance capable though, so yay?

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

#34

Post by baby »

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...

They found a way to legitimize planned obsolescence at the eyes of the public. Apple should be celebrated for this, not sued. /s

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

#35

Post by justsayinghi »

throwanem wrote: post #19
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…

That's the problem, yeah. If they'd made the tradeoff clear and advised that a battery replacement would alleviate it, that would be one thing. But the margin on a $50-70 battery replacement is a lot thinner than the margin on a $500-1000 new phone, so...

I did the battery replacement and it didn’t help at all.

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

#36

Post by s3r3nity »

throwaway_tech wrote: post #27
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 ther…

Because for >80% of users, they DO know better.

I can try to start this conversation with my grandmother, but as soon as I say "throttling," her eyes glaze over - and just says "can you do it for me?"

Apple is trying to cut out that middleman. Even Android is getting on the "smart battery management" AI train, as no one outside of experts wants to do this.

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

#37

Post by CamelCaseName »

throwanem wrote: post #19
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…

That's the problem, yeah. If they'd made the tradeoff clear and advised that a battery replacement would alleviate it, that would be one thing. But the margin on a $50-70 battery replacement is a lot thinner than the margin on a $500-1000 new phone, so...

While keeping revenues and margin is certainly a priority, I think the bigger issue is a desire to not split the Apple userbase across multiple iOS versions.

"Less than a year after release, iOS 12 has reached 88% of all active iOS devices" [0]

By contrast, Android has an insane amount of fragmentation, though the link is outdated, at the time, Marshmellow 6.0 had the most users, at 16.9% of all Android users, while Android 9 had just 10.4% (this was 10 months after Android 9 had been released) [1]

I know this comparison isn't perfect by any means. Apart from the differing time frames, Android has more use cases than just mobile devices. Nonetheless, the difference is staggering.

[0] https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ios-distribution-news/

[1] https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

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

#38

Post by zepto »

throwaway_tech wrote: post #27
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 ther…

There isn’t, because most users actually don’t know how to do things like regulate speed vs performance, and the whole point is that the throttling is dynamic to prevent shutdowns. What do you think the control should look like? An always present display of voltage levels, temperature, and throttling status?

And what do you mean - ‘make things as bad as possible to prove our point’? Where is that coming from?

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

#39

Post by azinman2 »

hrktb wrote: post #21
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.

The alternative would be to have phones turn off when they requested more power than was available. What do you think would cause people to want to replace their phones faster?

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

#40

Post by zepto »

willis936 wrote: post #31
neohaven wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if, to avoid damage to engine parts, engines would keep their heat limits in safe zones to not blow up when friction goes up. Imagine if, when you don't tune up your car, it starts running, factually, with less horsepower. You do lose X horsepower every 1000 miles. You get it back with your tuneup. Which involves changing the oil. You lose X MHz every Y% of battery discharge capacity lost. You get it back wit…

What's annoying about this particular issue is that the problem that users don't like isn't Apple's battery saving measure, or even being lied to, it's phone performance slowing over time. That is what users care about. The battery peak load degrading over time is a factor, but even with battery replacements phones will feel more sluggish over time because the NAND is a disposable part. Fill up a higher percentage of…

Is there any reference at all for this?

My iPhone X is 3 years old, and feels just as fast as when it was new.

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