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Apple Faces Another iPhone Lawsuit Over 'Programmed Obsolescence'
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I believe that Apples intentions were good. However the execution stank and that is why there are lawsuits and fines. Call this what it is, which is a money grab. If these watchdog agencies think that Apple is executing some "planned obsolescence" strategy, they are missing a basic tenet of business, which is if you screw your customers today, they won't be your customers tomorrow.
Well said. This society is broken beyond repair.
I hope this investigation will trigger a big enough domino effect that it will crawl back to USA. Even if USA people love to see apple rampaging their wallet and digital life unrestricted, at least other parts of the world can take a breath and take a pause before going out and getting “the latest and greatest”.
I guess, hard to prove, be I have been using Apple computers/products since the 512K and Apple never seem like a company that was out to screw the customers on purpose. They might have made some bad choices, but they seemed to have owned up to it.
Europe has got their own issues with the whole fix it thing. Yes things should be as repairable as possible, but with electronics technology that is getting harder and will continue to get harder...unless the progress stops. components are getting much smaller and more integrated. It is getting more and more that repairs are done as modules....boards. The labor to fix boards to component level is getting more difficult as in needing much more expensive and specialized testing equipment and tooling. It becomes more costly to repair and rather than replace. What needs to happen is correct recycling, none of the should be going into landfills.
I am not saying that it is wrong or right, I'm just stating my perception.....I worked in a major corporate television facility as chief engineer for almost 37 years. I used to replace individual components on boards in cameras, recorders, etc, now you just pulled the board and send it back for exchange on the more expensive boards 4 or 5K for each board.
swingerofbirch
macrumors 68040
What I have always been curious about is why this started happening with the newer phones and not the earlier iPhones?
My theory is that they started using more powerful processors—as they themselves called them desktop class processors—that required more than the usual sustained energy from the battery, which may be why Apple was able to leap ahead of the competition so much. But over time those chips started to run on fumes as the batteries degraded. People talk about the miracle of Apple Silicon in Macs, but is it possible they were putting too powerful of chips in the phones? Why didn't this happen with phones prior the iPhone 6?
My theory is that they started using more powerful processors—as they themselves called them desktop class processors—that required more than the usual sustained energy from the battery, which may be why Apple was able to leap ahead of the competition so much. But over time those chips started to run on fumes as the batteries degraded. People talk about the miracle of Apple Silicon in Macs, but is it possible they were putting too powerful of chips in the phones? Why didn't this happen with phones prior the iPhone 6?
That is true, but amazingly the amount of people on this forum that are constantly trashing Apple but are still buying Apple products. They could always buy another brand too.
Honestly, the intentions were dishonest. Battery capacity was insufficient for power draw plus it worsens over a short time with battery wear so they tried to silently cover up it but it blew up in their face when customers found out. If Apple had good intentions they would've been upfront with explaining that customers can enable software throttling with side effect of impacting performance or get their defective battery replaced.
This programmed obsolescence should stop! not even apple fanboys in Macrumors can defend apple anymore, even you guys know this has happened to you, you miss your idevices working well they have all turned into paperweights beautiful paperweights sitting in a drawer waiting for the lithium to explode...
Planed obsolescence? Apple products are supported with updates for 5+ years. Android devices are lucky to be supported for three years. That's planned obsolescence.
Yeah, beating the worst is not necessarily an achievement.
'Schrödinger's Apple' states that Apple is both good for supporting a five year old phone with modern features and bad for slowing down a five year old phone with modern features. Of course you'll never know if Apple is good or bad until you update your phone.
The obvious solutions are to add a warning in the update, allow people to downgrade back to a saved backup if they don't like the update, and allow users to disable the update prompt.
The obvious solutions are to add a warning in the update, allow people to downgrade back to a saved backup if they don't like the update, and allow users to disable the update prompt.
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But Apple loves nuclear option. Most support documents about fixing somewhat complicated issues involve “backup, destroy and start over”.
I’d say it more like you can trust it once (and that “once” can be now or two years from now), but don’t think you can go deep diving every day after and that it’ll be safe.
The easiest way for this to play out would be for Apple to just limit upgrades to phones outside some legally set timeframe (say 4 years). The fact that old phones can run the latest OS to some is seen as a feature, but if it’s seen as a liability then, even though those phones could support the OS, Apple could just disable the ability to install it. This way, if you’ve got a 5 year old phone running fine, you won’t get the latest OS with security patches and features.
It appears the problem is with UNEXPECTED obsolescence. Planned obsolescence, sanctioned by the government, is what I think they’re looking for.
Like the warning on poison that says “DO NOT EAT”, folks in the future will be wondering “Why do we get these warnings EVERYTIME we update? Doesn’t everyone know how to backup and restore?”
While limiting upgrade is an option, some Apple fanboy would cry out “why my shiny new iPhone 14 cannot get iOS 19 even if I feel it is super snappy”. It exist.
While in theory a business should not piss the customer, Apple has grown so large that they can screw all of their customer and customer would just need to suck it. Accusing of programmed obsolescence certainly has some ground, and I will look forward into a domino effect.
As for now, I doubt Apple will alter their software upgrade schedule and allow users to downgrade to whatever version they see fit. I just don’t believe they did NOT run real hardware test AT ALL during the development. Not sparing money for a real world test of their flagship software is a massive oversight or omission imo.
5 year old phone being a 6s at this point. What ios version from 9 to 14 slowed down any phone subsequent to the 6S that didn't have power management active. Not talking about people's perceptions of animations completing in .0001ms faster or some such thing.
Bwahaha Apple is being bombarded from all sides, every day a new hit.
Like! +1
Yeah sure I know, ALL baseless... good Apple, they just want the best for us!
I wonder how long it will take for them to realize that it's all intelligently planned and lovely interlocked.
The AppStore + sideload prohibition + reduced performance + healthcare, car, home automation, etc. all carefully tied together, till there is no easy way out.
Like! +1
Yeah sure I know, ALL baseless... good Apple, they just want the best for us!
I wonder how long it will take for them to realize that it's all intelligently planned and lovely interlocked.
The AppStore + sideload prohibition + reduced performance + healthcare, car, home automation, etc. all carefully tied together, till there is no easy way out.
The alleged “performance drops” are BS. This myth has been debunked time and time again, and this lawsuit will be dismissed like all the other sham lawsuits that have met the same fate.
The complaints are that users don't have the ability to downgrade to a previous backup, not that newer OSes are more demanding.
Are people so used to believing the "reality distortion field" is so real that they will believe a business can screw with their customers and these customers will happily continue to buy product from this. The "reality distortion field" is not really a thing and a businesses can't screw with their customers and expect repeat business. Including Apple.
so you’re saying you don’t want an investigation? And who debunked it? Someone with access to the source code? (I already know the answer this is a test)
Alternatively, Apple can let your iPhone shutdown due to battery physics like all the Android manufacturers are doing and offer only 2-3 years of iOS updates. Bet you’ll still be complaining then.
I’d love to be the software engineer that gets told to artificially slow down iOS each year by an executive solely for the reason of planned obsolescence. Stick that into my book of dirty Apple stories. Sadly, that scenario remains purely in your imagination
Should yet another investigation at taxpayer expense be had when there have been multiple investigations in the past that contains the data points needed is really the question, rather than a deflection back to az431 about it?