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Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones

abc.net.au

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Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones

#31

Post by izacus »

alecthomas wrote: post #29

My wife and I both just upgraded our iPhone 6's because they became unusably slow after iOS 11. Prior to the upgrade they had been running fine with no issues. We tried many things including disabling all background app usage, full wipe and restore, etc. My wife eventually took hers into the Apple store and they said they didn't know why it was slowing down but that she shouldn't have upgraded and that there was noth…

Well but you DID buy another iPhone right? Apple got exactly what they wanted - you spending another 700$+ to replace a perfectly functional device after just a few years.

The iPhone now goes to the garbage bin adding to pollution even though it can run the OS just fine without being crippled via update.

Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones

#32

Post by aikinai »

izacus wrote: post #20
williamscales wrote: post #12

Can someone explain to me how this can reasonably be considered fraud? I don't think Apple makes any guarantees about the performance an iPhone will sustain over time.

Every year you see Tim Cook happily quote performance numbers on the keynote about how superior iPhones are compared to other manufacturers. When you buy the iPhone, they go and slow it down to make it run slower after a two or three yearsa. Like VW would lock your 300HP Passat to 200HP after three years with excuse of keeping the mileage up... without telling you in any way. How is that NOT considered false advertis…

Cars do get weaker over time as the parts wear. And I would certainly expect the microcontroller to adjust to provide the best performance possible under the new limitations. I assume most well-made, modern cars already do that.

Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones

#33

Post by izacus »

simion314 wrote: post #13
williamscales wrote: post #12

Can someone explain to me how this can reasonably be considered fraud? I don't think Apple makes any guarantees about the performance an iPhone will sustain over time.

Usually in the user manual of product you get informed about the battery life decreasing with time, maybe Apple did not mention that also CPU performance will drop with time. From the article it seems that customers wanted to get a new battery from Apple if the current one degraded while in the warranty so phone shutdown but Apple decided to hide the problem with an update that slowdown the CPU.

Why would you want to live in a country where adding a blurb to user manual excuses your device being crippled after few short years? Even though the hardware functions perfectly well?

Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones

#34

Post by mistercow »

alecthomas wrote: post #29

My wife and I both just upgraded our iPhone 6's because they became unusably slow after iOS 11. Prior to the upgrade they had been running fine with no issues. We tried many things including disabling all background app usage, full wipe and restore, etc. My wife eventually took hers into the Apple store and they said they didn't know why it was slowing down but that she shouldn't have upgraded and that there was noth…

>but that she shouldn't have upgraded and that there was nothing they could do.

The "blame the user for using the product normally" mentality that seems to has arisen around Apple products drives me crazy. I recently upgraded to High Sierra, and Mail decided to delete all of my filters in the process. When I went looking for a fix, I found someone with a similar issue on Apple's forums, and most of the responses were basically berating the user for not taking a backup before upgrading. The attitude was as though this were a perfectly reasonable way for software to behave, and the user was stupid for not anticipating it.

It must be nice to build tech products knowing that your users will blame themselves if you screw up.

Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones

#35

Post by izacus »

Note that this goes well with Apple fighting against right to repair and 3rd party repairers - if they can make your phone slow over time and prevent you from cheaply and easily replacing the battery, they essentially force you to replace your pocket computer every two years or so - the pesky "iPad Upgrade Problem" disappears for them.

I think we shouldn't look at this issue in isolation - Apple (earning bulk their money with hardware sales) has tried quite hard to make planned obsolescence an accepted thing. Soldered components, special screws, lobbying against legislation to allow you to maintain electronics.

Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones

#36

Post by blocked_again »

izacus wrote: post #31
alecthomas wrote: post #29

My wife and I both just upgraded our iPhone 6's because they became unusably slow after iOS 11. Prior to the upgrade they had been running fine with no issues. We tried many things including disabling all background app usage, full wipe and restore, etc. My wife eventually took hers into the Apple store and they said they didn't know why it was slowing down but that she shouldn't have upgraded and that there was noth…

Well but you DID buy another iPhone right? Apple got exactly what they wanted - you spending another 700$+ to replace a perfectly functional device after just a few years. The iPhone now goes to the garbage bin adding to pollution even though it can run the OS just fine without being crippled via update.

Holy shit. You people just throw away the old iPhone after buying a new one? That is a luxury almost no one in my country has. So weird that the people get to live the life on basis of how well the seed generator of Universe performed during their birth.

Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones

#37

Post by mistercow »

chrisper wrote: post #17
simonbarker87 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple slowed the phone down upfront then people would complain that Apple were throttling as the user is “too dumb to look after their battery properly” so instead they are doing when they can point to a proven need to throttle the device. This feels like a no win situation for Apple unless they had/will put in “throttle my phone so it doesn’t go weird” switch in settings. Side note: we’ve known for years that ham…

LiOn is all about loading cycles. In the same amount of time (let's say 5 days) she has used up way more cycles than you did. You probably charged 5 * 20% while she maybe charged 5 * 90%. Obviously she is using up her load cycles much faster than you are. So no surprise her battery isn't very good anymore. I don't think you two are using the phone equally much (meaning using up the same loading cycles in the 5 days).…

Do you have a source on lithium ion batteries working this way, because all of the sources I'm finding (and it's not the first time I've researched this) say that shallow cycles dramatically improve battery longevity.

My understanding is that "cycles" are used in discussing battery lifespan for the purposes of warranties and the like because they're an easy-to-define user behavior, not because they actually reflect how the batteries perform.

Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones

#38

Post by ktta »

blocked_again wrote: post #36
izacus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well but you DID buy another iPhone right? Apple got exactly what they wanted - you spending another 700$+ to replace a perfectly functional device after just a few years. The iPhone now goes to the garbage bin adding to pollution even though it can run the OS just fine without being crippled via update.

Holy shit. You people just throw away the old iPhone after buying a new one? That is a luxury almost no one in my country has. So weird that the people get to live the life on basis of how well the seed generator of Universe performed during their birth.

Welcome to the concept of inequality.

Most people in the world don't have the access to internet you have. And I would imagine some would say "Holy shit. You people browse message boards? I would rather spend that time on a MOOC".

While it is weird looking at the affluence scale above, it is very depressing looking what's at the bottom of the scale. I don't mean to chastise you. It is just a realization I've come to.

Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones

#39

Post by williamscales »

izacus wrote: post #31
alecthomas wrote: post #29

My wife and I both just upgraded our iPhone 6's because they became unusably slow after iOS 11. Prior to the upgrade they had been running fine with no issues. We tried many things including disabling all background app usage, full wipe and restore, etc. My wife eventually took hers into the Apple store and they said they didn't know why it was slowing down but that she shouldn't have upgraded and that there was noth…

Well but you DID buy another iPhone right? Apple got exactly what they wanted - you spending another 700$+ to replace a perfectly functional device after just a few years. The iPhone now goes to the garbage bin adding to pollution even though it can run the OS just fine without being crippled via update.

Can you install Linux on it and run a small server or something? That at least would get some more use out of it rather than straight into the garbage bin.

Re: Apple faces lawsuits after admitting it slows down aging iPhones

#40

Post by [deleted] »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #6
chipperyman573 wrote: post #2

I really like Linus' (Sebastian, not Torvalds) thoughts about this: https://youtu.be/TJUeHmdzSx4?t=11m22s Basically, Apple chose to tune the phones to run at a dangerously high configuration to increase benchmarks, knowing that the battery will degrade like this (and that when the iphone X2 comes out, nobody will be talking about this, instead they'll be talking about how much faster the X2 is than the X). His exact…

If Apple slowed the phone down upfront then people would complain that Apple were throttling as the user is “too dumb to look after their battery properly” so instead they are doing when they can point to a proven need to throttle the device. This feels like a no win situation for Apple unless they had/will put in “throttle my phone so it doesn’t go weird” switch in settings. Side note: we’ve known for years that ham…

[deleted]
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