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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

#121
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely disagree. These phones were unusable with the throttling. I switched to Android because my iPhone 6 was unusable less than 3 years after getting it. This is like saying that an appropriate fix for a car manufacture is to limit the maximum speed of a car to 25 miles per hour. It breaks so many use cases that the car becomes worthless.

> This is like saying that an appropriate fix for a car manufacture is to limit the maximum speed of a car to 25 miles per hour. It breaks so many use cases that the car becomes worthless. Would you prefer the car simply turn off entirely while driving at highway speeds? Because phones with this issue would turn off entirely below certain charge levels, when the batteries had this issue. A more appropriate analogy wo…

I think people would prefer to know about it and be in charge of the decision.

Unlike a car, a phone doesn’t pose a threat to my safety so I’d like to at least turn the throttling on/off according to my needs - given that Apple provides accurate information about the implications.

In retrospect throttling might look like a good idea, but back then it was outright bizarre.

Some people were already suspecting that older models don’t get along with newer software, but there was no certainty.

I remember I avoided some iOS updates without being sure it’s helping my phone - all until Whatsapp (or some other critical app) stopped working and I had to upgrade.

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

#122
> The French watchdog said iPhone owners "were not informed that installing iOS updates (10.2.1 and 11.2) could slow down their devices".

I think that's reasonable. I doubt many people would've cared if Apple had TOLD us that's what they were doing, and also made it an switch. "Hey you can slow down your phone so the battery lasts longer now that you've upgraded" or something like that. It still feels like they made a deliberate choice to not let us know what they were doing so we'd buy new phones.

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

#124
This is so dumb. Apple has a lot of flaws but old hardware support certainly isn’t one of them. Firstly, they only slowed down older phones to prevent them from crashing as they had less and less reliable battery draw. Secondly, Apple’s support for legacy phone hardware is the best in the market. It’s absurd that they’re being punished for this.

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

#125
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be one of the few, but I think it does warrant it. People buy devices and expect them to work and keep working. If the battery had an issue then it should have flagged up that the phone was saving battery life and that they should replace the battery. We can't keep throwing away devices like this; it isn't good for the environment. Why do I think it is important to be told? My old iPad has almost overnight sl…

Personally the turnaround time on new device updates has caused me to stop believing that I can expect to use the same device three years from now. I used the original Pixel for 3 and a half years and at this point it's gotten completely unbearable to use. If it wasn't so I wouldn't have felt forced to upgrade to a phone lacking the features I wanted. Maps takes half a minute to load, the share dialogue is O(n) since…

My OP3T is running just fine. It's three years old now. I've put Lineage on it, sure, but that's to escape the Chinese data hose more than anything. I do miss OxygenOS, it's actually pretty decent.

The specs are perfectly sufficient to run anything modern. Granted, I don't play games. But browsing, navigating, chatting, watching silly videos, they all work flawlessly. So far, the battery has been holding up, too, even though I use dashcharge all the time.

So that's just that, two data points. I do believe a lot of people could probably fix their phones by hard reset or using Lineage — in turn, that puts the burden on the OEMs to produce good OSs for long-term use. They don't want to, obviously. I don't think the mobile market is FUBAR, but I do agree it's not in the best state. That's not due to the phone per se, it's due to the ridiculous vendor/OS situation we're in with Android.

And don't get me started on security patches…

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

#126
Fined $27 million.

Made $64 billion in the last 3 months.

So that's about 1 hour of profit.

I'm sure they've been taught a lesson they'll never forget.

EDIT: as pointed out below, that was revenue not profit. But apple make so much damn profit it's not as crazy different as it would be for most companies. So it's more like 2.5 hours.

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

#127
This feels like a reasonable outcome. I think Apple could have done a much better job of communicating what was happening, and I imagine having to agree to having committed a "deceptive commercial practice" probably stings much more than the fine itself.

Apple has already made the settings for all of this much more apparent, which seems like the outcome that actually helps customers here.

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

#128

This is so dumb. Apple has a lot of flaws but old hardware support certainly isn’t one of them. Firstly, they only slowed down older phones to prevent them from crashing as they had less and less reliable battery draw. Secondly, Apple’s support for legacy phone hardware is the best in the market. It’s absurd that they’re being punished for this.

The problem is they didn't tell anyone they were doing it.

So people thought their phone was just old and slow and bought a new one, when they could have just replaced the battery and made it fast again.

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

#129

This is so dumb. Apple has a lot of flaws but old hardware support certainly isn’t one of them. Firstly, they only slowed down older phones to prevent them from crashing as they had less and less reliable battery draw. Secondly, Apple’s support for legacy phone hardware is the best in the market. It’s absurd that they’re being punished for this.

The fine, it appears, is because users "were not informed." They "committed the crime of deceptive commercial practice by omission."

Not because they slowed it down, contrary to the headline.

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