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Slashdot Asks: How Should Apple Have Responded To the Battery Controversy? 177

Posted by BeauHD from the hindsight-is-20/20 dept.
Yesterday, Apple officially apologized for slowing down older phones in order to compensate for degrading batteries. In a letter to customers, Apple said, "We apologize," 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 unusual replacement cost. They're also promising to add features to iOS that provide more information about the battery health in early 2018.

Apple's response has left many wondering whether or not it is enough. Even though they are discounting the cost of a battery replacement, for example, they are still profiting from each battery replacement. At the end of the day, "Apple only came clean after independent investigation, giving the whole situation an air of underhanded secrecy," writes Macworld. Should Apple have responded differently to the battery controversy? In the first place, should Apple even issue a software update to older devices to purposefully throttle the CPU and prevent the phones from randomly shutting down when experiencing rapid power draw?

Quinn Nelson via Snazzy Labs explains the controversy and how it is largely exaggerated.
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Slashdot Asks: How Should Apple Have Responded To the Battery Controversy? More

Slashdot Asks: How Should Apple Have Responded To the Battery Controversy?

Comments Filter:

  • By giving away free phones to everyone (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    full communism now

    • Re:By giving away free phones to everyone (Score:5, Funny)

      by ichimunki ( 194887 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @04:39PM (#55830557)
      Not enough. Full on seppuku is the only way past this type of shame.

      • I think ichimunki was fishing for a "Funny" mod, but it's hard to say without looking for the invisible AC comment he's replying to. Moot in my case, since I never see a mod point to give.

        Having said that, I'm seriously wondering if this fiasco is my opportunity to learn about the iPhone on the cheap. It would seem that I could now get a secondhand iPhone at the usual low cost, but then replace the battery and make it almost as good as new thanks to Apple's tiny dip into their humongous cash reserves.

        Any ex

        • At $29, they might not be making a huge profit. But I seriously doubt Apple is taking an loss on this. A few bucks for the new battery, and 20 minutes of labor can't cost that much.

          Their biggest hit is that they can't force folks into an expensive and unnecessary replacement.

          • Re:Almost free iPhones to everyone? (Score:5, Informative)

            by shanen ( 462549 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @06:33PM (#55831363) Homepage Journal

            The replacement battery for my oldest smartphone (not an iPhone, but a popular model from [never again] Samsung) costs around $30, and that's with me doing all the work. Even if Apple can keep the labor time to 20 minutes, I think that's at least another ten bucks, and on top of that you have the administrative costs of tracking the phones.

            Not sure, but I think the original battery-replacement charge was pretty close to their real costs. Apple is NOT in the business of trying to make money from replacing batteries. If there was a significant premium in the original charge, then I strongly believe that was mostly to encourage people to upgrade their iPhones. That's where Apple's big profits are coming from, and lost sales of new iPhones are their biggest profit reduction from this new battery replacement program.

            • Not sure, but I think the original battery-replacement charge was pretty close to their real costs. Apple is NOT in the business of trying to make money from replacing batteries.

              It probably is close to their real costs, because of the way they designed their phone. But that was a choice, and they should provide reasonably-priced battery replacements. It's sad that they will only do it for a year, but that should be ample time for anyone who finds this offensive to jump ship, so a year is not bad.

            • It's a major gift. (Score:4, Insightful)

              by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Saturday December 30, 2017 @01:36PM (#55835179)

              Apple was faced with the PR problem of convincing people their approach was right--which it totally is-- or accepting blame. If you are going to do the latter, accept fault for something you are wrongly faulted for then your best move is not to do it grudgingly. Do it so everyone feels they got more than they deserved but isn't too painful. Apple is buying some customer loyalty with a write down.

              What astonishes me the most is the other companies saying they don't throttle power usage as a battery degrades. How happy are you going to be when you fire up Halo or whatever on your fully charged Moto and in 2 minuted the phone hard shuts down? Or you can't make it through half a day with the phone, used just to send texts and calls?

              That's insane. Of course you want the phone to take measures to deal with a weak battery.

              People say, well it should be my choice. it should be a setting. Well people without iphones probably don't realize it is (partly) a setting. When your charge gets below 20% IOS asks if you want to use low power mode. So it is a choice now. Apple went a step further and had a second layer of adaptive power management on top of that as well. But they still gave you a choice on that. The Choice was to buy a new battery or not.

              Everyone would prefer the option of a battery that lasts forever and never degrades and costs the same and weighs the same. But no phone has that option. Every phone in existence needs a new battery after enough use. For most people, the upgrade cycle is fast enough they never need that new battery. But for some, they do. ANd for those folks they are much better off with a slow thottling of the battery than not. That can buy you a year or more before you need to choose: Buy a new battery or live with noticably slow phone. That year probably converts most of those people to be within their upgrade cycle.

              SO this is a feature not a bug. You can if you like fault apple for not touting this up front as a positive benefit. But as you can see from the idiots commenting below me that it's very hard to explain this in a few words and not people think "oh gosh they slow my phone down?". They don't think that it's always preferably to having the battery life be unusably short.

              For the crazy people who run super computing calculations on their iphones and demand no degraded speed and don't understand that battery operated devices have considerations, then by all means buy a moto. or buy anew battery. But stop whining.

              • Interesting comment, perhaps even worth an "Insightful" mod if I ever saw a mod point to give. (In contrast to receiving so many of the trolls', eh?) Still a bit stretched to see how your comment fits as a reply to my questions. It does sound like you might be someone in a position to answer some of them, so let me recap:

                I think Apple designs well, but limits my freedom through monopolistic practices. For that reason, I have only purchased one Apple device in my life, a MacBook Pro with Retina display. I do

                • I'd not reccomend a second hand iphone. for a couple reasons. First, the whole point of buying apple is that you value having fewer problems and frustrations alsong with the idea that you have to pay more to get that. If you don't value that and prefer economy then other phones are a better proposition. Buying a used phone wont satisfy that requirement and since apple's phones also retain their resale value more than other's you still pay some premium as well. So it's a false economy.
                  If you have some o

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shanen ( 462549 )

          I think ichimunki was fishing for a "Funny" mod, but it's hard to say without looking for the invisible AC comment he's replying to. Moot in my case, since I never see a mod point to give.

          Having said that, I'm seriously wondering if this fiasco is my opportunity to learn about the iPhone on the cheap. It would seem that I could now get a secondhand iPhone at the usual low cost, but then replace the battery and make it almost as good as new thanks to Apple's tiny dip into their humongous cash reserves.

          Any experts willing to address possible problems and questions with this plan?

          (1) What older models are worth considering?
          (2) Are the secondhand prices already jumping up?
          (3) How do older models compare with using newer iPhones?
          (4) Can I just pop my SIM from my Android phone into the iPhone and go?

          I can guess a bit on Question (4). I think it should be okay as long as the used iPhone is locked to the same network I am using now. However I'm not sure about the SIM form factors for iPhones...

          Whoops, thought up three more questions:

          (5) What are the time constraints?
          (6) Does Apple profit from secondhand iPhones?
          (7) How much backward compatibility is there from newer apps to older iPhones?

      • I find myself not disagreeing.

    • User-replaceable batteries wouold be sufficient.

    • Put it in the Errata file that you slow down phones with old batteries. Nobody reads those so it remains secret, but when caught you point out you "Disclosed" it.

  • Option (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They could have made it an option. Speed or longer battery life.

    • Re:Option (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sneeka2 ( 782894 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @04:30PM (#55830497)

      *crashing phones or no crashing phones, FTFY.

  • Apologize and correct (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @04:25PM (#55830455)

    They should have issued a statement saying the code was written to extend the life of the battery and prevent reboots due to voltage drops.

    Then they could have issued a patch that made the behaviour optional, perhaps with a pop up message suggesting enabling it when the battery started failing.

    Finally, the battery replacement discount is not a bad PR move.

    • Obviously, they should have used their vaunted "Time Machine" to go into the past and make different choices, like user-replaceable parts and full disclosure on how they were fixing the battery power related crashing issue.

      What good is a time machine if you can't use it to fix past mistakes?

      • What good is a time machine if you can't use it to fix past mistakes?

        If you accept multiverse theory, it's no good at all to you.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by tlambert ( 566799 )

      They should have issued a statement saying the code was written to extend the life of the battery and prevent reboots due to voltage drops.

      That would have been lying.

      Because the voltage doesn't drop; it's the current that drops.

      The only people who would ever see it are people with very, very high CPU utilization.

      Mostly the people who jailbreak their iPhone run a CPU benchmarks.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        No, it's the voltage that drops. If you pull more current with a given internal resistance of the battery, the voltage available to the phone will drop accordingly. If the internal resistance grows with the age of the battery, the voltage will drop further. One day it will be too much and the phone will either manage a shutdown or simply crash. The latter being bad since it might damage the filesystem if it happens at the wrong time.

        • No, you can't measure it that way.

          Attempting to dray too much current, and watching the voltage is the only way to determine the amount of current available to draw. Not the other way around.

          You ramp up current draw at a given voltage, and if your voltage starts to drop, you have to back off on current utilization. The only way to do that is to back off on current utilization.

          It's the current draw that matters; you aren't drawing off 9 volts, and then suddenly you can only draw off 7 volts. That's not ho

          • You're both right. A battery is (more or less) a perfect voltage source, in series with a resistor. From that perspective, the current you see, and the voltage you see, are just different ways of looking at the same thing.

            You can't 'ramp up the current draw' at a given voltage, because the voltage across the battery will change precisely in sync with the current, according to ohms law and the nominal battery voltage. Inside an iPhone, of course, there is complex power management circuitry that will attempt

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        It's not a lie, it's saying essentially the same thing, and is a completely uncontroversial statement except to electronics dabblers who barely know enough to be dangerous.
        Battery voltage is lower when in-circuit under load than when open-circuit. And this effect is more pronounced especially with discharged or dying old batteries. And for a linear circuit, lower voltage means lower current. Yes a cellphone isn't a linear circuit but that's not important. Point is that current spikes will brown out the circ

      • Because the voltage doesn't drop; it's the current that drops.

        If resistance is the same, how do you change the current without changing the voltage?

        • If resistance is the same, how do you change the current without changing the voltage?

          Does the internal resistance remain the same over time? I would suspect that it does not, as the battery chemistry breaks down.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's the voltage drop that causes the reboot. Battery voltage is dependent on load, i.e. the amount of current being drawn. As more current is drawn, the voltage drops. Even in new, healthy batteries.

        In older batteries the voltage drop is larger. Of it gets too low, the phone's system-on-chip automatically enters reset state to protect itself. Low voltage can result in things like failed flash memory writes. There is also a lower limit below which the voltage regulators don't work.

  • Exactly as they did (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @04:25PM (#55830459)

    I think what they did is about right - apologize for not making it clear, make it cheaper to get a new battery than any replaceable would have been, and then (most importantly) add information so people can tell if a battery is wearing out or not.

    It's not like it's a manufacturing defect, where Apple would actually replace a part. The whole system is acting as designed, and in fact in the best interests of the users - lots of other companies would have just added an info panel and called it good. The batteries are still working just fine. The cheap battery replacement is beyond what they really had to do, but is good customer service.

    I also question between parts and labor if Apple is really making money on the battery replacement at that price. That was just thrown out as a given but who claims that is still a profit?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You think its in the best interest of users to intentionally mislead them into thinking that their phone's performance has degraded to the point that they need to replace it with a new phone, rather than making it clear right off the bat that the problem is due to an aging battery which can be easily replaced? I am astounded that there are *still* people who can spin this story into one that makes Apple sound benevolent and innovative. There is one reason and one reason alone that they weren't upfront about

      • Re:Exactly as they did (Score:4, Insightful)

        by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @06:29PM (#55831333)

        Do *you* think ti's better for the users that the phone shuts off randomly, or over time does not last nearly as long? That would ACTUALLY force a user to buy a phone sooner than if it is just getting a bit slower.

        Why are you advocating an approach that leads to users replacing phones more often than they do already? Cruel man.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      It's not like it's a manufacturing defect, where Apple would actually replace a part. The whole system is acting as designed, and in fact in the best interests of the users - lots of other companies would have just added an info panel and called it good. The batteries are still working just fine. The cheap battery replacement is beyond what they really had to do, but is good customer service.

      Actually, it is a manufacturing defect — and one that they admitted to, but only for a narrow range of serial n

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's a design defect. In Europe they might be legally required to give free battery replacement because of that.

      When designing a phone you need to calculate and then measure to confirm the maximum current draw. You then select a battery that can meet your requirement for its entire useful life (which the international standards bodies define at 80% remaining capacity).

      Apple failed to do this. The undersized the battery and caused the phone to malfunction, even though the overall capacity of the battery was

  • The first "should" of this mess is: batteries should be user-replaceable.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by tlambert ( 566799 )

      The first "should" of this mess is: batteries should be user-replaceable.

      They are.

      Unless you are not a very technically competent user.

      Then there's the Eastern European guy in the Mall kiosk who will do it for you with parts from stolen iPhones bought off eBay for about $50.

      • Re:The first "should" of this whole mess... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by JohnFen ( 1641097 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @05:07PM (#55830719)

        They are.

        Unless you are not a very technically competent user.

        There are a lot of decent defenses for getting rid of user-replaceable batteries (I disagree with them all, but they are reasonable arguments).

        This, however, is just a stupid thing to say. The only reason I'm replying to it now is that I'm seeing it more and more often, and someone has to pipe up about it.

        Everyone (including you) knows what people mean by "user replaceable battery": a battery than an ordinary user can replace. If you need spudgers, soldering irons, and skill to do it, then it's not user replaceable.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by guruevi ( 827432 )

          The question is, how many people WANT a user-replaceable battery vs a thinner, lighter, more efficient and recyclable phone. How many people have ever actually bought a battery, even when they were user-replaceable, I've worked in a tech store, the ones on the shelves were the only ones in stock, it didn't move inventory and the occasional person that did buy it would buy the knock-off brand.

          So why put the effort into logistics if virtually nobody buys them from you?

          • While I agree with you in general, I also used to work in a staples durring that timeframe. Actually did have relatively regular people asking for batteries... however those were the wild wild west of phone days. IE there were 40 competing battery types, heck there were like 15 competing phone charger cables. So we had a bunch of batteries, but when people asked for them, we never had the right one for their phone. No one type of phone was popular enough to be the right one.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by tlambert ( 566799 )

          Everyone (including you) knows what people mean by "user replaceable battery": a battery than an ordinary user can replace. If you need spudgers, soldering irons, and skill to do it, then it's not user replaceable.

          Yes, I understand.

          You long for the days when you can charge more than one battery, and carry around more than one battery, and swap it out, so that you can go 15 days without a recharge, or you can watch 9 hours worth of movies on your flight to another country, without paying the extra $15 for them to turn on the plane's power jack at your seat.

          Battery degradation in sealed battery devices is not an issue, unless you are frequently letting them run all the way down, or they are doing so because you are run

          • Re:The first "should" of this whole mess... (Score:4, Informative)

            by JohnFen ( 1641097 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @06:03PM (#55831171)

            Yes, I understand.

            Clearly, you don't understand, since you wrote a lot of words that didn't address my comment at all.

          • 1.) Unless your phone has been infected with cryptomining malware, the single biggest drain of battery power will always be the display.

            2.) The 2 most important factors in battery life are recharge cycles and temperature conditions.

            In short, to maximaize battery life, move to somewhere with temperate weather and turn on the screen as little as possible.

            For yourself, and the tiny fractions of users like you

            For most of us battery degradation is a very real concern and your post is just an idiotic rant

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Other manufacturers manage to make thin, waterproof phones with batteries that are not soldered or glued in, and where the back of the phone can be removed with only moderate effort in a way that doesn't damage anything.

            Since all batteries are consumable, all phones will eventually need new ones.

            Since most phones, including the iPhone, can barely go a day of typical use, and this only gets worse as the battery degrades, a daily 80% cycle is a reasonable requirement.

        • At what point does it become user-replaceable? Some devices need a screwdriver to open the battery compartment; are their batteries user-replaceable? Apparently, for some of these phones, the screwdriver is all you need.

        • If you need spudgers, soldering irons, and skill to do it, then it's not user replaceable.

          You certainly don't need a soldering iron to replace an iPhone battery, and you don't need much skill beyond the ability to read and follow straightforward directions. And the idea that a battery isn't user replaceable because you have to use a tool that came with the replacement battery rather than one out of your red Craftsman toolbox is just plain silly.

      • They are.

        Not really.

        In my Samsung Galaxy S5 you pop off the back, put in a new battery and replace the back. That's "user replaceable."

        https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfr... [cloudfront.net]

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      I'm actually OK with the batteries not being easily replaceable. There are decent reasons why they're glued in. I'd rather have a bigger battery than a smaller battery and a door to make replacing it trivial.

      However, that being said, as the batteries will need replacement, I think it's only fair that if you glue the batteries in to your phones, you should be required to replace the battery at cost of the battery, at any repair shop of the owner's choice.

      None of this "mail it in" or "find the nearest Apple S

    • Or, if being able to carry extra batteries with you and swap them in is important to you, then you should buy a phone that meets your needs and desires by including that feature. They're apparently very common. Every time the topic of the iPhone and its battery come up in any capacity on Slashdot, people stumble over themselves to point out that, on their Android phones, they can very easily pop the back cover off, swap in a fresh battery, and add a microSD card for more storage.

      And, for those of us who a

  • The reality is that most users have replaced phones over this. I certainly have. Also make sure you don't put any nastiness in a EULA when the user gets their free battery. Nothing shady, you've already done something shady. Now is not the time to try and slip one by your users. They should probably also be handing out coupons for $100 or $200 off your next iPhone. Keep in mind those of use who accepted these phones had a shelf life are still pretty angry. I'd taken all 3 phones I've replaced to Apple and h

  • If you buy any device, you put yourself into the manufacturer's hands, trusting it with technical decisions. The throttling was such a technical decision: Apple wanted to prevent unexpected shutdowns of their devices and therefore implemented throttling. Of course this makes experience for users worse, but the cause for this is bad batteries. As long as the slowdown is being communicated to the user, there is no issue. If Apple did not communicate it, throttling might motivate users to buy new phones entire

    • With Apple more than almost any other company, and with phones more than almost any other product, "you put yourself into the manufacturer's hands." Apple has been clear from the start that they don't really care what customers want, so long as they can get more iPhone sales.

      Customers wanted physical keyboards, to be able to add Apps from anywhere, free ring tones and the ability to record your own, standard chargers, and being able to plug in audio devices with a universal jack. Guess what? Apple does thei

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Demena ( 966987 )

        Customers wanted physical keyboards, to be able to add Apps from anywhere, free ring tones and the ability to record your own, standard chargers, and being able to plug in audio devices with a universal jack

        I am a happy Apple customer. iPhone 6, iPad Pro, pencil, earbuds and watch series 3. And I want none of those things. What I do want is a phone with decent water resistance, secured with regular and immediate updates (when there is a problem) and some control of apps that minimises exploitative ones. Apple gives me this. No one else does.

        Nowadays, you have to 'trust' someone. Trusting Apple is better than trusting a whole lot of randoms.

      • > Customers wanted physical keyboards
        No. *Blackberry* customers wanted physical keyboards. And they kept buying Blackberries until the company imploded. For the first several years of Android's existence, there were many available with physical keyboards. The first Android *EVER* had a physical keyboard. The models with touchscreens outsold the ones with keyboards by far; and Android manufacturers eventually quit making keyboard phones because they weren't selling. The iPhone just predicted the tre

  • Informing the users (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JohnFen ( 1641097 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @04:34PM (#55830519)

    A simple notice telling users that their battery was tired and the phone is being slowed to prevent unexpected shutoffs would have avoided the entire issue.

    • The annoying thing is that Apple already had a notification saying that "battery performance is degraded" in the settings screen when the battery goes bad. I know, I've seen it. They just needed to add something alongs the lines of "this may cause decreased application performance until the battery is replaced", and they would have been golden.

      Oh, and now I'm pissed off because I just paid $79 for my replacement battery a few months ago. Bastards.

  • I don't use iPhone but I want to see some executive responsible for this to step down.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sneeka2 ( 782894 )

      Do you request the same thing of executives at CPU manufactures who decided to throttle your CPU when it's about to overheat?

      • No, because that's well documented behaviour of the CPU, and is a temporary state - when the temperature goes down, the CPU speed will go back up.

        These updates by Apple were permanent, and would get more aggressive over time, so your once snappy phone would become sluggish, eventually making you upgrade to a new phone, since you weren't informed that the true problem was the battery, that could be cheaply replaced.

    • Blame someone? No problem. All they have to do is blame Steve Jobs. Jobs being beyond the reach of retribution and all. (And I won't be all that surprised if that's exactly what they do).

      • Nah they need to keep selling the point that they are still working off of the flawless plans written by steve jobs. Blaming jobs would be like North Korea blaming Kim Jong Il, or Kim Il Sung for their problems. They are supposed to imply thier past leaders were divine gods incapable of mistakes.

  • a) Not dunnit in the first place (device slowdown as battery degrades). That was a crappy thing to do and serves to highlight the "mandatory 18 month upgrade" that's so much a part of the Apple business model.

    b) Build their business model around the battery as a consumable (which they finally admitted in their apology) and make it easier / less expensive to swap out. (Whether this is a user action or something that can be done with a minimum of pain at the apple store is left up to them.)

    What the user ca

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sneeka2 ( 782894 )

      a) Not dunnit in the first place (device slowdown as battery degrades). That was a crappy thing to do and serves to highlight the "mandatory 18 month upgrade" that's so much a part of the Apple business model.

      You'd really prefer the random crashes instead of the degraded performance, ya?

      • a) Not dunnit in the first place (device slowdown as battery degrades). That was a crappy thing to do and serves to highlight the "mandatory 18 month upgrade" that's so much a part of the Apple business model.

        You'd really prefer the random crashes instead of the degraded performance, ya?

        A degraded battery, that is, a battery that goes flat sooner than it did when new, causes random crashes? I don't see the connection. Do you have an example?

  • If your cell phone CPU can't eventually cause this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tlambert ( 566799 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @04:47PM (#55830601)

    If your cell phone CPU can't eventually cause this problem, by drawing more current than it's possible for a worn out battery to provide, triggering a shutdown...

    You probably own a Nokia "feature phone", and not a smart phone.

    Other cell phone vendors have already stated that "Yes, we do the same thing".

    Do you know one company with a sealed battery that's going to want a lawsuit against Apple about this to be successful?

    That's an automatic precedent against them doing the same thing, as well.

    • If your cell phone CPU can't eventually cause this problem, by drawing more current than it's possible for a worn out battery to provide, triggering a shutdown...

      You probably own a Nokia "feature phone", and not a smart phone.

      If your cell phone shuts down while attempting to draw even a fraction of the power that is still used to fast charge these old phones, you've stuffed up the design. It's also quite telling that it only effects a subset of Apple models too.

      Other cell phone vendors have already stated that "Yes, we do the same thing".

      Except where they haven't, where they have outright denied it (just scroll down the Slashdot front page a bit), and where the whole issue seems to be a uniquely Apple problem.

      Do you know one company with a sealed battery that's going to want a lawsuit against Apple about this to be successful?

      Yeah let's start with all the companies who don't have a problems with their batteries at end of

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Maybe you missed the story earlier, but every other manufacturer has denied doing it.

      The only one that had this issue was Google, and they replaced every affected Nexus 6P for free.

      If the battery is properly sized then by the time it becomes an issue the user will have replaced it because 1 hour of use per charge is inadequate. It's the size of the cathode that matters.

  • Why do investigators need to to go to great lengths to "prove" Apple's wrongdoing.
    We should be able to look it up in the source code history.

    Apple uses the BSD kernel and LOTS of other open source code, so they pretend to share: http://opensource.apple.com/ [apple.com] [apple.com]
    But, really, that is just a joke. A browser of a bunch of fragmented stuff that nobody actually uses on any actual machine that I am aware of.

    FreeBSD and Linux are super secure and dependable, in large part BECAUSE they are open source.

    Google'

    • Why do investigators need to to go to great lengths to "prove" Apple's wrongdoing. We should be able to look it up in the source code history.

      To the best of my knowledge, the evil bit was only standardized for IPv4 packets, and there's no standard way to indicate evil in source code. Therefore, in order to conclude that source code constituted wrongdoing, you'd need to find out what it does, and, more importantly, if the behavior constituted wrongdoing.

      The source code change was intended to stop random

  • This year's "gate" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sneeka2 ( 782894 ) on Friday December 29, 2017 @04:52PM (#55830617)

    If the media wants to find a 'gate, they'll find a 'gate. There's nothing Apple coulda done to prevent it besides BEING PERFECT IN ALL REGARDS AND CREATE PERFECT EVERLASTING PRODUCTS.

    • If there is one lesson to be learned in Trump's age is that the medias ability to influence is severely overblown and can be easily countered with denial, misinformation and straight out lies. If one the richest Corporations in the world decides to own up to their mistakes instead of unleashing their PR department, then there is a lot more going on then a sensational media 'gate
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sneeka2 ( 782894 )

      Indeed, all other phones are always slow, not just after their second or so year. Brilliant tactic.

      And all other batteries last forever too, obviously.

  • They should've shut the company down, open-sourced their codebase and donated their blood-money to the EFF.

    Though I might be biased.

  • I think Apple should have given everyone a free battery replacement for the inconvenience cause by slowing down the older iDevices (including mine),

  • Maybe they should have responded with... um... hmmm... the truth, perhaps?

  • Apple should have released an app to allow the user to control battery life versus performance and explain the pros and cons and the alternative of installing a new battery.

    • Actually, that's enabling top performance and random crashes, not reducing battery life. Unfortunately, there have been zero Slashdot posts that clarify exactly what the issue is, apparently.

  • My wife owns an iPhones 5s. The battery is pretty worn, and needs replacement.

    I borrowed it the other day to use the GPS to get somewhere; half-way to my destination it shut down, even though it claimed to have 15% battery remaining. I would MUCH rather it had slowed down and stayed running; as I was driving at the time I didn't notice it had turned itself off (as I was driving, I relied on the audio cues), and missed my turn.

    If Apple should have done anything different, it's that there should be a notifi

    • Are you sure that it doesn't already have one? The "degraded" battery warning shows up under the Settings screen. They should probably make it show up in the notifications page as well, though.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pjbass ( 144318 )

      The issue isn’t they didn’t provide this or that, the core issue is they were addressing an isolated issue with some phones shutting down unexpectedly due to current draw on older batteries. It wasn’t a fully-widespread issue. Only on a subset of phones out there. But the solution was to apply the throttling everywhere, under the radar. That is the issue.

      If they were more forthcoming, they could have positioned it as “through additional research based on isolated customer reports

  • Ones with batteries that can be removed and replaced. Although that would dissappoint the NSA.

  • 1) batteries should be user replaceable
    2) phone (or any other product) should be reparable
    3) OS should be open sourced to allow scrutiny and avoid misconduct by companies. A battery has a limited lifespan, driven by the laws of physics. An OS should not have a limited lifespan limited by the will of Apple, Google or any other.

  • > they are still profiting from each battery replacement

    At $29 per replacement?

    That sounds like break-even to me, at best.

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