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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

#161

Post by ivanche »

ceejayoz wrote: post #142
choward wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having easily replaceable batteries is definitely the root problem. Everyone knows that batteries can't last forever and the weak link in having something last for years yet everyone is perfectly fine with non replaceable batteries. I know so many people who have bought new phones when all they need is a new battery. It's mind boggling.

Apple replaced my battery for $29. Not bad. Replaceable batteries come with their own trade-offs, namely water intrusion through failing seals. I'd rather pay occasionally for someone skilled to replace the battery than replace the entire phone after a drop in the sink.

Honestly, how many times you damaged your phone with water? In the last 23 years I spilled a bit of water on the phone once and it survived.

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

#162

Post by djmobley »

I was glad when Apple “slowed down” my old iPhone.

It fixed the sudden shut down issue for me that was driving me insane. The shut downs were unpredictable and rendered my phone unusable until it was plugged in to charge.

It would have been better if Apple acknowledged the sudden shut down issue in the first place, rather than rolling out this secret fix.

They denied all knowledge when I took my iPhone 6 in for service, and refused to replace the battery as it was still showing more than 80% of its original capacity.

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

#163

Post by sjwright »

hinkley wrote: post #144
wmeredith wrote: post #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.

This is less true now than it once was, but one of the things Apple used to be good at is producing a new OS for the last generation of hardware that made it faster. Most manufacturers unerringly make the old hardware slower. There's an old trick in software development, some of us learn it by example, others by experience: be conservative when rolling out performance improvements. If you have a feature you know will…

Recent major iOS updates have been great for performance. Where they’re being let down is in robustness, particularly where cloud syncing is involved.

The iOS updates most notorious for slowing down iPhones were generally slower for a good reason. Most famously, iOS 8 introduced whole-disk encryption and the oldest compatible phones ran like crap.

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

#164

Post by rasz »

speedgoose wrote: post #52
aerovistae wrote: post #2

Such a small fine as to not be worth reporting. "Man in California fined 15cents over parking dispute"

It's not about the amount, it's about sending a message. It's in the news, it's a lot more expensive for Apple.

and the message was "pay 15 cents"

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

#165

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

teddyuk wrote: post #155
jonplackett wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you bought a top of the range machine for windows 95 and put windows 98 on it, it would have been slow.

Fortunately, you could've just reverted to a previous OS - unfortunately, that's another thing that isn't possible with an Apple phone.

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

#166

Post by jonplackett »

flatiron wrote: post #151
jonplackett wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Faster I’ve toggled the switch before on an iPhone. It’s not a night and day type difference. Feature creep kills it way more than battery throttling.

I had an iPhone 6S Plus. The most affected phone. I was genuinely considering replacing it because it got so slow.

Then this happened, I replaced the battery and kept it another 2 years. I replaced the battery again and now my wife has it.

Definitely was on the verge of replacing it.

Yes feature creep plays its part but this was a big deal.

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

#167

Post by flatiron »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #147
vbezhenar wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is only partly with slow OS. For me the real culprit is inability to downgrade OS and apps. I have iPhone 4S. It was amazing phone when it was running iOS 6. Now it's slow as molasses. May be it should not be one-click, as it causes security issues and user must understand the implications. But there must be a way for official downgrade.

> Now it's slow as molasses Given that the iPhone 4s can't run iOS versions past 2015's iOS 9, "now" would seem to be fairly relative. Also, I'm not sure I'd describe iOS upgrades as "one-click"; IIRC, you need to click through at least one screen telling you about the new OS and enter your passcode before the install. A lot of people probably do breeze through that without really understanding they're going through…

No way they could do this securely. They would have to patch old OSes for flaws and such.

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

#168

Post by jonplackett »

teddyuk wrote: post #155
jonplackett wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you bought a top of the range machine for windows 95 and put windows 98 on it, it would have been slow.

Pretty sure windows 98 was about the same speed as windows 95. (And this is from someone who still remembers their windows 98 25-digit key by heart!)

But regardless, this is not the point. The point is they misled people and let them think it was that the new OS was slow, but it was not! When you replaced the battery the phone became very noticeably faster.

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

#169

Post by ShinTakuya »

jonplackett wrote: post #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.

Classic mistake of conflating revenue with profit. They made closer to $25 billion.

Ignoring that, it's a mistake to think that these "small" amounts don't matter to companies. They just lost the yearly salaries of 150 or more engineers. It's worth it for them to assign 5 guys to add and maintain a feature that notifies customers of the performance drop.

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

#170

Post by jonplackett »

punnerud wrote: post #153
jonplackett wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And the solution was to replace the battery to get your old iPhone fast again, not to buy a new one. Not intuitive for most people.

Exactly. I'd always considered a battery replacement a waste of money up til that point. Now I replace batteries in everything! Good lesson to learn. My 6S has had 2 replacements so far and is still powering on!
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