Apple Apologizes For iPhone Slowdown Drama, Will Offer $29 Battery Replacements (theverge.com) 254
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple just published a letter to customers apologizing for the "misunderstanding" around older iPhones being slowed down, following its recent admission that it was, in fact, slowing down older phones in order to compensate for degrading batteries. "We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down," says the company. "We apologize." Apple says in its letter that batteries are "consumable components," and is offering anyone with an iPhone 6 or later a battery replacement for $29 starting in late January through December 2018 -- a discount of $50 from the usual replacement cost. Apple's also promising to add features to iOS that provide more information about the battery health in early 2018, so that users are aware of when their batteries are no longer capable of supporting maximum phone performance.
Start from the top. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Or they could have made it an on/off setting, but they know the Faithful(c) will STILL buy their overpriced shit no matter what. After all, you're nobody if you don't have the latest iPhone!
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Apple really didn't want to have to go down the route of indicating/advising that something is wearing out and could be replaced because it infers that the phone is serviceable, and if people feel their devices are serviceable then that'll tend to bite in to the annual churn & profit rates.
From a technical perspective, throttling back the phone could have been pitched as a nice feature but again, it opens up the can of worms on serviceability, particularly in light of Apple's strong push against the "Ri
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1) The device capacities were fading, little by little. This is suspicious: a 3 year old iPhone 6, having an old battery, did not go slow the first day, but very softly over several weeks (while its battery was bad from the first day of iOS 11).
2) The iPhone 8 is not subject to that "feature", while its battery wi
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It is a negative of the "walled garden" -- my Apple TV was losing track of some TV episodes, and on a Mac you might think, well I can try deleting some caches. Instead, it is cloud weirdness, where the instant I went to report the problem with that TV show, using Apple's iTunes problems website, I received a message saying that the, now two weeks old, and missing, episode, was suddenly available. All I did was select that show on the report page... I didn't even get as far as clicking to submit the issue. *
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And I'm sure their plan is if they are dragged screaming and kicking into court they will say 'well we did knock down the price of the replacement battery by $21, that that means we do listen to customers and we are a nice company'.
You mean knock down the price of the replacement battery by $50.
Battery replacement price is currently $79.
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And you can buy a full replacement battery kit for $25 from third parties.
Apple isn't doing their customers any kind of favor with this.
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If Apple damages your iPhone while they replace the battery, Apple will cover the damage.
If you damage your iPhone while you attempt to replace the battery, you're SOL.
Re:Start from the top. (Score:5, Insightful)
Only because Apple made the procedure hard in the first place.
Replacement batteries for other phones are often $5, and easy enough to replace that there's no chance to damage the phone.
"These are not bullshit excuses, these are genuine problems!" is an old Apple bullshit mantra - these are "genuine problems" which Apple deliberately chose to create artificially in the first place.
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And you can buy a full replacement battery kit for $25 from third parties.
Apple isn't doing their customers any kind of favor with this.
For $4, you get the repair done by someone who does it five times each week, plus a 90-day warranty.
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And you can buy a full replacement battery kit for $25 from third parties.
Apple isn't doing their customers any kind of favor with this.
For $4, you get the repair done by someone who does it five times each week, plus a 90-day warranty.
Where?
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Spoken like a true idiot that doesn't know Apple uses the exact same $4 'knock-off' batteries.
Come back when you've actually worked the repair lines like I have, you fuckwit.
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Spoken like a true idiot that doesn't know Apple uses the exact same $4 'knock-off' batteries.
Come back when you've actually worked the repair lines like I have, you fuckwit.
You've worked IN an Apple authorized Service center. Prove it.
Re:Start from the top. (Score:5, Informative)
If you're working the repair lines then you'll know if you tear apart a clone and compare to the genuine and you'll see there's notable differences. The protection/controller board attaching to the cell on those $4 batteries is a random hackjob at best. The cell quality too is different, cheap replacements have poor internal resistance compared to the genuine.
The $4~$12 replacements are a crap shoot, sometimes you get a decent quality unit, other times not so much. The resellers of replacement batteries give you grading options, cheap = 'zeroed' cycle count, non-original board, then you can get a "pulled from existing phone" batteries and their markings rubbed out, and then you can also get "Genuine zero cycles, high quality" packs but even if you ask for those, usually someone up the supply chain at some point pulls a swifty and starts sending you dodgy packs.
While Apple might pay $4 for theirs, the "3rd party" ones are probably $1 and it shows.
Apple has had some dud events like the iPhone 5 puffer fiasco but overall their packs definitely are of higher quality/consistency than the 3rd party replacements.
Couple of hundred batteries a year and it's averaging about 50% duds within 3 months.
Re:Start from the top. (Score:4, Insightful)
Somehow none of these "miracles" happen to any other brands... Only Apple. How is it that every company in the world can get this right, only where it comes to Apple suddenly you're faced with insurmountable mountain of problems?
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Unless you've been smoking [apple.com] near your iPhone. Or farted. Or looked at it wrong. Apple is extremely happy to disclaim any responsibility for repairs. And the reason why the procedure is difficult and labor-intensive = expensive? Because Apple deliberately made it so. Other companies somehow can keep battery replacement easy.
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Unless you've been smoking [apple.com] near your iPhone. Or farted. Or looked at it wrong. Apple is extremely happy to disclaim any responsibility for repairs. And the reason why the procedure is difficult and labor-intensive = expensive? Because Apple deliberately made it so. Other companies somehow can keep battery replacement easy.
Prove it.
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Simple real-world math: Apple pays about $5 for the battery itself. There's a $24 profit margin.
Why, yes the BOM on the battery is pretty easy to get if you just Google the fucking numbers on the cells.
Someone ban this dipshit fuckwit already.
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Simple real-world math: Apple pays about $5 for the battery itself. There's a $24 profit margin.
Why, yes the BOM on the battery is pretty easy to get if you just Google the fucking numbers on the cells.
Someone ban this dipshit fuckwit already.
Prove it, or STFU.
Your move.
Re: Start from the top. (Score:2)
Because genius bar workers are all volunteers, they never break a phone, and phones never come back for warranty claims... Yep, $25 pure profit!
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I've engineered devices which would need to be serviced later. I'd lose my job if I made them such that a routine maintenance procedure like battery replacement took more than five minutes to perform, and more than ten minutes to train someone to do it.
I bet if I lost my job that way, though, Apple would welcome me with open arms and request me to develop a device as complex and difficult to repair as only possible.
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...and still end up charging some $15 more than in case of other brands.
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Oh, but that cost of labor somehow miraculously happened all by itself? Or some nefarious entity engineered it into the innocent Apple's products (and only Apple products!) with no Apple's involvement?
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It's simple, they didn't want the users to know about it. It's planned obsolescence.They knew the Lithium batteries would deteriorate after a few hundred charge cycles, ~18-24 months and the software would slow down the phones.
The fact that it was NOT disclosed, tells you about their motive. Sell more hardware.
If that was the real motive, the "slowdown" would have been baked-into iOS 2 rather than iOS 10 or 11.
Instead, the timing of this (no pun) makes it OBVIOUS that the "current spike-spreading" code was added to iOS when Apple said they had a software-fix for the iPhone 6 "shutdown" problem. They just didn't take the infinity amount of time it would take to discover how that fix would affect every single iPhone on the planet, and thus, eventually, someone noticed. But what's clear is that Apple was DEFINITELY
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Kind of funny that you have all the standard errors in your text, due to the crappy iPhone's keyboard turning apostrophes into something that's trademarked, so you're obviously using an iPhone. Back that ass up!
Apple: Caught red-handed. AGAIN. (Score:5, Insightful)
It certainly is.
It looks like either they did a really poor job of power supply design (other phones don't "suddenly shut down" and they don't have this "feature"), or that they're just throttling for the obvious reason: they want you to buy a new phone.
As for their protest, quoted verbatim here from their letter:
They threw the PPC emulation out the window for just as little reason (no, probably less.) They let all those user's software suddenly go obsolete for a reason that boils down to "weren't going to pay for the emulation any longer", again, when they had tons of cash to maintain the tech and users had tons of PPC software. I still support PPC software running on (very) old machines, specifically because there is no reasonable in-OS upgrade path that lets that stuff keep running. The irony is that the massive power of the machines we have now would make those apps run very well indeed — and we know Apple did this as a choice, not a need.
I have more examples. From apps they took out of the store because they had integrated the tech into a new phone, thereby removing the possibility of users of an older phone having the tech unless they upgraded — to severe bugs they leave mouldering in old versions of the OS while not allowing upgrades to the new version of the OS, Apple is a known serial offender of the "let's pressure the customer."
Apple is lying here. Flat-out lying. And caught at it.
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if anything I only see my battery get stronger over time!
that is the sort of dumb shit I would expect an apple fanboy to say. Seriously Apple are arseholes we know that, that doesn't mean you should make up garbage like that and if you actually believe it is true you better sell it back to Samsung as I am sure they would be interested in this magical battery.
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if anything I only see my battery get stronger over time!
that is the sort of dumb shit I would expect an apple fanboy to say.
But unsurprisingly to everyone else, a Fandroid said it.
Looks like the Verge is playing defence (Score:2)
for Apple a bit like BGR did
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Finally doing what they should have done (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article on the $29 battery replacement:
Apple's also promising to add features to iOS that provide more information about the battery health in early 2018, so that users are aware of when their batteries are no longer capable of supporting maximum phone performance
I'm more happy about that than anything, it will be great to have something concrete to point to if someones phone seems slow and I want to rule out an old battery being part of the issue.
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Crap, that means I'm going to have to downgrade to iOS11 after all. There's nothing else there except stuff that take up cpu cycles for eye candy and the increasingly crappy Music app (if you just want to play music you have downloaded onto the device that is).
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Re:Finally doing what they should have done (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually...other phones suffer the battery issues constantly. I deal with the crap all the time where Android users complain thier phone have weird issues crop up as their phone ages past the 12-18 month stage. They swear it can't be the battery, we wipe the phone, and yet it persists. A new OEM battery later, and their issues are almost always cleared up. When phones required the small amount a Nokia candybar used it was no problem. There's more power in a modern iPhone than desktop computers released a few years ago. Just as when a PC PSU is failing & making for bizzare shit going on, so can a battery make for high speed computations to eat it.
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Three words: User Replaceable Battery
There is absolutely no reason why Apple, and every other mobile device can't do this. But it doesn't fall within their planned obsolescence marketing strategy.
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Three words: User Replaceable Battery
There is absolutely no reason why Apple, and every other mobile device can't do this. But it doesn't fall within their planned obsolescence marketing strategy.
Exactly. I use an old Galaxy S5 and replacing the battery takes about a minute and costs ~$25 or so. What's not to like about that?
Yes there are reasons (Score:2)
"User Replaceable Battery -There is absolutely no reason why Apple, and every other mobile device can't do this."
Yes there is, it's because all of the space taken up by battery casing and door support is space you could have used for more battery.
That's why most Android makers are also going with sealed batteries - which are still user replaceable if you care, which most do not.
Also dropping the option for user replaceable batteries solves a huge problem - the utter crappiness of third-party batteries these
Re: Finally doing what they should have done (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Finally doing what they should have done (Score:5, Informative)
It's not as much bullshit as you think. When Lithium ion batteries age, they are no longer able to handle peak loads while maintaining the rated voltage. Apple was not lying about old batteries causing phones to mysteriously shut down for no apparent reason.
I've seen the same thing happen in other phones -- the battery indicator says you have adequate charge, then you do something computationally intense and your phone shuts down without warning.
Having an indication that your battery is in this condition is very useful. Otherwise, it's not clear what's wrong with your phone.
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As Mr. Scott would say, you canna change the laws of physics.
All batteries have internal resistance, which limits the power the battery can deliver. As you draw more and more current, the voltage across the internal resistance increases, and that limits the amount of power you can actually deliver into a load.
This is true of every battery, so to the designers have to supply a "big" battery -- which is the same as saying a battery with a low internal resistance. The wrinkle here is that batteries age. Lit
Re:Finally doing what they should have done (Score:5, Interesting)
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Most manufacturers design their phones to work at maximum performance with aged batteries. If the battery is fairly large it's generally not a problem anyway.
Apple likes to use small, low capacity batteries. I guess it helps them keep the smaller models thin. What is really bad is that they apparently didn't test with degraded batteries. That's a really basic mistake to be making.
Even if they didn't test before launch, I'd expect them to have phones on long term test, going through charge cycles and stress
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Well, there is the amplification effect of the Hatorade Distortion Field. There are many [tumblr.com] phones where the manufacturer advises users not to hold it wrong - but they weren't made by Apple so it wasn't a problem.
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First of all, ten years isn't the right time frame. For most of that time replaceable batteries were still the norm. You have to focus on the the period in which replaceable batteries had become a rarity. During that shorter period, more phones than just those two developed battery issues over their lifetime. The Samsung Galaxy S6, for example. That would have been a fiasco, except that by the time it started to be a problem it was overshadowed by a bigger fiasco Samsung was having with its next gen pho
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First of all, ten years isn't the right time frame. For most of that time replaceable batteries were still the norm. You have to focus on the the period in which replaceable batteries had become a rarity. During that shorter period, more phones than just those two developed battery issues over their lifetime.
The battery being user replaceable doesn't matter for this - even if users could replace the battery themselves we would have heard complaints about phones with widespread issues consistently crashing
The Samsung Galaxy S6, for example. That would have been a fiasco, except that by the time it started to be a problem it was overshadowed by a bigger fiasco Samsung was having with its next gen phones.
What Samsung S6 problem? High battery drain after the update? That sounds very much like laziness with software support than a hardware battery issue
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Apple was not lying about old batteries causing phones to mysteriously shut down for no apparent reason.
Not lying, but not exposing the truth which is the Apple's design was fucked from the onset and that these sudden poweroffs under load are unheard of from any other manufacture. An ancient lithium cell will happily provide 2A of power. If you are able to crash your phone due to that limit you've screwed up your design.
Don't agree with you saying Android makers idiots (Score:2)
Even a severely degraded battery is capable of supporting maximum phone performance.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
No other phone on the market slows down no matter how bad the battery gets.
I'm not willing to make the same claim that Apple is the only phone maker smart enough to optimize for what people most want out of a phone generally - battery life.
I'm pretty sure some other Android maker must care more about users than performance metrics? Yet you seem so sure, hmm.
Comsumable component (Score:2, Insightful)
That's inside a phone SEALED SHUT with **GLUE**.
One part of this saga I still don't understand (Score:2)
So early on after iOS 10 was released, we started to see a significant number of people reporting an issue where their phone batteries would be at 30% (or thereabouts) and suddenly the phone would just quit. This apparently is the problem the 10.2.1+ slowdown was intended to fix, and the one Apple is saying is due to older batteries not being able to provide as much power under load, as it were.
So if this was simply an "old degraded battery" issue - why didn't we have people reporting these problems in iOS
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Still sounds like bs to me lithium batteries are very good at providing amps up until they run dead so it seems to me that their battery meter just needs to recalibrate. So 1% battery actually means 1% instead of 30% meaning 1%.
The older IOS versions could handle this as their batteries degraded did they just forget how to do that?
Also IIRC they implemented a low power mode years ago that would lower the processor speed at 10% and below but nothing directly related to the battery capacity.
Re: One part of this saga I still don't understand (Score:2)
Could have avoided this mess (Score:3)
by including in iOS the ability to see health information of battery like you can on MacBooks. Show the Cycle Count and Condition and other pertinent info so users have a better idea of when the battery is bad and needs replacing.
Just proves the adage... (Score:2)
Sort of stuck now (Score:3, Interesting)
If they remove the slowdown, then they will be admitting that the excuse was a lie in the first place. So providing inexpensive batteries doesn't force them to admit to lying and open themselves up to a lawsuit.
Obviously I don't know if the original excuse was true or not, but this was pretty much the only thing that they could have done in either case.
Does anyone know enough about Li Ion batteries to weigh in on whether or not this makes sense? Does the peak power capability drop enough that its likely it couldn't support the power use?
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The limiting factor in how much power can be supplied is usually the physical layout of the battery. In particular the size of the cathode. Because Apple want physically small batteries they selected marginal batteries.
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Sorry, not sorry (Score:4, Insightful)
These are my favorite types of corporate apologies:
"We at Apple want to apologize to any of our snowflake consumers who misunderstood our intent to force them into our new models. We did not mean to offend these little pricks who expect our products to work more than a couple of years. Now send us some money and we'll totally fix the problem we created."
Re:Sorry, not sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
So why not say that to customers? Why not make it a setting so customers can decide whether they want their phones slowed down? Why not make it a setting and give customers a choice? Remember, the fact that Apple was slowing down older devices was only revealed after an independent study proved it. That's what it took, to make Apple admit what they had done.
One should always assume a corporation is complete corporate assholes until there is ample evidence to the contrary. If someone buys a product, the owner has something of a right to know when the company that made that product is remotely slowing down their device.
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Maybe I'm fine with a 6 hour charge and max performance.
And since it's based on OS versions instead of actual battery health info, it looks ever more like another lie.
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"Maybe Apple started slowing down phones with diminished batteries because they realized that their customers, on average, prefer a phone that lasts 20 hours with diminished performance, than one that operates at peak performance but is dead after they've been out of the house for four hours? And I can see where having a phone that doesn't die midday would cause you to keep using your current phone for LONGER!"
Actually, you can fuck right off. When you sell me a product, you sell me a product that works at
Re:Sorry, not sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
They should have been transparent about it from the get go, but I do not think they were acting in a nefarious way or with poor intentions.
Not even with the glaringly obvious reason that they wouldn't be transparent? The fact that they can let consumers assume it's because their phone is "old" or "behind the times" without having to lie to them directly. They had a huge profit motive in not stopping or slowing customers from buying new phones.
Think seriously about Apple's development process (Score:2)
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Has Apple really gotten that sloppy with their software development process?
Have you not been paying attention to the parade of Apple software bugaboos, large and small, that’ve occurred in the fairly recent past? Do you - or anyone in your circle of friends - honestly think iOS 11 is functionally better than iOS 10? Do you honestly believe that High Sierra is an improvement over Sierra, or that Sierra was an improvement over El Capitan?
Looking back a bit further... did you watch as Apple basically threw away a professional niche they pretty much owned with the ill-planned
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Has Apple really gotten that sloppy with their software development process? ... Really.... Apple is famed for their software developemnt process and the user experience it creates. imo, this was an intentional "feature" that the fan bois would love. Unfortunately, it backfired.
Have you been living under a rock for the last 3-4 years? Apple's software quality is on par with a high school computer class these days. They can't even merge OS fixes from one OS forward into the next release branch.
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It would put them closer to par with their hardware development process. They've been designing hardware with major flaws for years and never acknowledging a thing. If a customer complains loud enough, they get a free replacement with no explanation - but no recalls, no attempts at anything better. Especially see every Macbook Pro for the last 10 years.
The cynic in me asks (Score:4, Interesting)
Did they do it all on purpose for some twisted marketing reason, from slowing it down, to leaking the problem, to giving a solution. The X is not selling well. I was at my carrier's store getting a new phone today (not an apple) and asked about the X. The manager said they had 20 in stock and they were not moving. Worse for them, they own it, can't discount it and can't return unsold inventory back to apple. There could be some very unhappy carriers if the get stuck with a bunch of X's. Could this battery getting headlines actually help sales of the X in some weird way?
what apple should do for old phones (Score:2)
Baseless hysteria (Score:3)
Your phone depends on complex thermal and power management to avoid unpleasant things like suddenly shutting down, burning your privates or bursting in flames. When the later case occurs, like with Note 7, you have a cause to complain. Otherwise, it's normal for performance to vary based on the weather or a particular bumper case. Would you prefer for devices to be artificially throttled when conditions allow faster operations so you don't get disappointed when they are a little slower?
Oh, you caught us (tee hee!) (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, goodness gracious- you caught us. We're so embarrassed that we'll use this opportunity to sell you something else, like an overpriced battery. Aren't we just a bunch of naughty little rascals?
Hey, look over there- it's the iPhoneXs! The "s" is for "suckers", but you knew that, and we know you'll STILL buy it!
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Oh, goodness gracious- you caught us. We're so embarrassed that we'll use this opportunity to sell you something else, like an overpriced battery. Aren't we just a bunch of naughty little rascals?
$29 is a good price for an official battery replacement. That's not the problem. The problem here is that they're only going to charge a reasonable price for one year, then raise the price again.
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It only seems like it till you realize its less power than 3 AAs.
Try fitting AAs in your cellphone.
User-replaceable batteries (Score:2)
Not an acceptable "fix", just a lie. (Score:3)
An actual fix would be to allow users to decide whether they want performance or battery time.
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Re:in other words (Score:5, Informative)
And those are likely to be dismissed - no evidence yet shows any correlation between iOS version and performance scores that's not actually due to a poor battery.
FWIW, I replaced the battery in my 3yo iPhone 6 a few months ago, and it despite heavy use it hadn't dropped enough to trigger the slowdown. It had degraded noticeably from a battery life standpoint though, so well worth replacing regardless.
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As I understand it, the lawsuits don't really have much to do with battery life, but rather Apple intentionally slowing devices as new devices are released. Do I have that right? IANAL, of course.
My understanding is that the lawsuits are about the fact that Apple concealed from users the fact that slowing down thw phones was done to prevent a degraded battery from causing intermittent shutdowns, in the hope that users would buy a new phone rather than opting for a much less expensive battery replacement.
This was my first thought (Score:2)
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A battery pack costs Apple about $5: https://technology.ihs.com/api/binary/595761
Which means they are only making a $24 profit instead of $74.
Where is Apple getting the free labor from?
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The parent is stating that Apple is "only making a $24 profit" which isn't true.
The battery might "costs Apple about $5" but the parent fails to factor in the cost of labor, rent, electricity, and other overhead costs. Apple's true profit is lower.
Re: $79 is typical Apple: overpriced. (Score:2)
It's not free - look at the that summary and you'll see that labour is approximately 2.4% of cost price.
Seriously? So the labor to replace the battery only costs 12Â?
Re: $79 is typical Apple: overpriced. (Score:2)
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The iOS update itself is the cause.
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the non-apology.
a chance to give apple more money!
Oh, boy!
$30 rather than $1k for a new phone.
Apple sure are some evil geniuses...
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Sounds about as good as the Republican tax plan.
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Oh, so now it only costs twice as much as other phones' batteries... until the price cut expires in a year.
Sounds about as good as the Republican tax plan.
Prove it"
Re: scummy (Score:2)
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I'm an apple fan, and their not making the info available right up front, "hey guys, new feature! we call it replicant-survival mode, where the candle which burns half as bright burns... ah whatever you get it, anyway, it is there", was definitely an oversight/bad decision/rubbish.
A lot of people will sensibly think, yeah ok, that feature makes sense, even if there was no way to turn it off. If you have an old phone, you are probably into "conserving" anyway, so it makes lots of sense.
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I'm an apple fan, and their not making the info available right up front, "hey guys, new feature! we call it replicant-survival mode, where the candle which burns half as bright burns... ah whatever you get it, anyway, it is there", was definitely an oversight/bad decision/rubbish.
A lot of people will sensibly think, yeah ok, that feature makes sense, even if there was no way to turn it off. If you have an old phone, you are probably into "conserving" anyway, so it makes lots of sense.
I think Apple realizes NOW, that it should have been more transparent about what their "fix" for the premature shutdown issue was actually doing. My personal opinion was that they expected that their timing changes would be small and relatively infrequent, and so really WOULDN'T be noticed by Users. But then Real Life intervened, and some phones' batteries were bad enough that the temporary throttling WAS noticeable; especially when compared to what performance was AFTER a battery-change...
And the rest is h
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Fuck, you're being obtuse. Up until recently, people thought their best option to a slow phone was a newer $1000 phone, not a $79 repair. People think of battery as operating life, not operating performance. If it reports having juice, it should be at max speed, right?
By hiding this "feature", many people couldn't make an informed decision. Given the new information, how many people would have been happy to replace the battery instead of the phone?
Apple is going to take a beating on new sales because now that this is public, those old, slow ass phones will get a $29 new battery and resold for cheaper than a new phone. The resale market is going to boom and people will not upgrade as often.
Dumbfuck. When you get your battery replaced by Apple, you get your original phone BACK.
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Car companies sell cars with lots of parts that wear out. You generally pay for new ones when the car is serviced.