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That's absolutely right! College engineering programs have entire semester-long courses on failure rate analysis, six-sigma production, high-reliability engineering, and best of all engineering ETHICS. In fact, you can make failure-rate-analysis a career!

But does it pay more than Chief Obsolescence Engineer?
 
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Sorry, but anyone who calls himself a professional has to design with future in mind, as well as other external factors. That applies to any profesional from engineers to architects to scientists. Every reputable company has an estimate of the life span of their products, that's very basic, and of course Apple know how long their products and every single component in them should last under certain conditions.
Doesn't mean they can't miscalculate, or in the case of the gigantic application envelope of the iPhone and the notoriously fickle characteristics of batteries in general, mis-GUESS...
 
What I don't "get" is the people that insist that this is some sort of evil conspiracy on the part of Apple.

I am an embedded designer with 4 decades of hardware/software development experience. I can EASILY see how all this happened.

Without exception, the people that are yelling the loudest are the same people with the LEAST amount of actual technical knowledge/experience.

Good for you, so what? it still hasn’t helped with you understanding what people are saying. Or why they are raising law suites. And you shouldn’t presume People shouting loudest are not technically experienced... because you have no idea who they are or their history and knowledge.
 
So just the minute iOS11 was installed, the device was suddenly busted? It could happen any time, and it did the very same moment a new version of IOS is installed?

Only on your device. Not so on many many other iPad devices. Why is yours different? Maybe it's badly misconfigured? or otherwise broken...
 
That's absolutely right! College engineering programs have entire semester-long courses on failure rate analysis, six-sigma production, high-reliability engineering, and best of all engineering ETHICS. In fact, you can make failure-rate-analysis a career!
The rub in all of that is the "Certain Conditions" phrase.

The Application Envelope for something like an iPhone is uncommonly-HUGE, and the variability of batteries is also quite large.

Put those two "Huge" and "Quite Large" pools together, and what you have is something that DEFIES anything like ***ACCURATE*** failure-rate-analysis theories, Six-Sigma Process Control, and hi-rel engineering practice, Mr. "I know some engineering terms to throw-around".

And as far as Engineering "Ethics"; what do you mean by that side-swipe?
 
"Absent the code inserted by Apple, the reduced battery capacity of these phones would not have negatively affected processing performance."

There's your first candidate for being immediately dismissed by the court system. If the voltage is too low for what the CPU needs, the phone shuts down. That obviously "negatively affects processing performance" by itself, and is a worse scenario than the phone running slower.
If I ever experienced shut downs like this on any phone I used, I would decide I needed a new battery or there was a faulty connection to the battery. Apple masked this by just slowing the phone, which would lead me to the conclusion that the phone was now not up to the software demands. By not giving a message that the battery may be needing replaced it leads to the obvious conclusion of deception.
 
Good for you, so what? it still hasn’t helped with you understanding what people are saying. Or why they are raising law suites. And you shouldn’t presume People shouting loudest are not technically experienced... because you have no idea who they are or their history and knowledge.
You are correct.

I am judging by apparent technical knowledge-level of the online posters on several forums.
 
The rub in all of that is the "Certain Conditions" phrase.

The Application Envelope for something like an iPhone is uncommonly-HUGE, and the variability of batteries is also quite large.

Put those two "Huge" and "Quite Large" pools together, and what you have is something that DEFIES anything like ***ACCURATE*** failure-rate-analysis theories, Six-Sigma Process Control, and hi-rel engineering practice, Mr. "I know some engineering terms to throw-around".

And as far as Engineering "Ethics"; what do you mean by that side-swipe?
I am an engineer; that's just the way I talk.
 
Macrumors carrying water for Apple again

“It may, at times,” = Apple does

“dynamically manage the maximum performance” = slow down

“of some older iPhone models” = All iPhone models 99% people still use

“with chemically aged batteries” = crap batteries

“in order to prevent the devices from unexpectedly shutting down” = said nobody ever

“an issue that can be made worse by cold temperatures or a low charge.” = normal conditions all phones have to deal with


Go back and read that one paragraph again. It’s literally ONE sentence, and it’s nothing but talking point after talking point
Or maybe, just maybe, it is FACT after FACT.

Ever consider THAT possibility, even ONCE? Of course not!
 
What?

You can replace the battery in an iPhone. It's really not even that challenging.
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They aren't???

Guess we've identified the NON-DEVELOPER here...

It was speculated that the only thing intensive enough to trigger the throttling was the benchmark & battery test apps themselves - so that is where I am coming from.
Apps are launched all day, every day. So how does it make sense to say "only during peak usage" when it is triggered all the time.
Anyway, even typing a text message resulted in 1-2 second delays in key presses on the throttled iPhone 6 that I had. Does typing an iMessage also constitute "peak usage?"
Is scrolling "peak usage?"
Is "Apps refreshing in background" peak usage?

Direct quite from Apple web site:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208387

...the user may notice effects such as:

  • Longer app launch times
  • Lower frame rates while scrolling
  • Backlight dimming (which can be overridden in Control Center)
  • Lower speaker volume by up to -3dB
  • Gradual frame rate reductions in some apps
  • During the most extreme cases, the camera flash will be disabled as visible in the camera UI
  • Apps refreshing in background may require reloading upon launch
Many key areas are not impacted by this power management feature. Some of these include:

  • Cellular call quality and networking throughput performance
  • Captured photo and video quality
  • GPS performance
  • Location accuracy
  • Sensors like gyroscope, accelerometer, barometer
  • Apple Pay
 
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What I don't "get" is the people that insist that this is some sort of evil conspiracy on the part of Apple.

I am an embedded designer with 4 decades of hardware/software development experience. I can EASILY see how all this happened.

Without exception, the people that are yelling the loudest are the same people with the LEAST amount of actual technical knowledge/experience.

What I don't "get" is how you call people yelling the loudest are the same people with the LEAST amount of actual technical knowledge/experience.

Care to connect the dots for me?
 
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Have they disabled this throttling yet?

No.

Because they can't

Which is why those arguing for apple haven't a leg to stand on.
 
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As Apple said, the slow down was to protect the phone from shutting down and avoiding damage to the phone. Nothing was intentional in that for any other purpose. I have a friend with an android phone and a bad battery, guess what?, his phone is always shutting down regardless how often he charges it. After all this mess maybe Apple should remove the code and let phones with bad batteries just die...whats the complaint then? No battery lasts for ever and how well one takes care of them varies from user to user.
Are people like you being deliberately obtuse. Phone random shutdowns directs people to the conclusion that the battery is gubbed and needs replaced. By slowing the phone secretly, people are led to another conclusion. Not making the reason for the phones running slow is the reason for all these legal claims. People were DECIEVED!
 
I am an engineer; that's just the way I talk.
And so am I.

That's why I am calling your bluff.

No matter what typical engineering theory and practice says, you can't deny the fact that something as popular as an iPhone, with millions upon millions of users doing WAY different things with it, and with millions upon millions of those users' batteries experiencing almost as many different charge/discharge cycles and habits (some people tend to always deep-cycle their batteries, some people tend to always top-off their batteries every night, etc.), are going to form a dataset that has millions upon millions of statistical outliers, with every ONE of them thinking that THEIR experience is THE one that should be "designed-for".

IOW, there is literally NO WAY that Apple (or anyone) can design a secondary-battery-powered device that has consistent, unit-to-unit performance, especially over-time that will "please" everyone, regardless of their usage or charging habits (or the luck of the draw of their particular battery). The statistics are just too "noisy".

And ESPECIALLY not with the variability of batteries. We just aren't that good at controlling all the factors that determine EXACTLY how a particular battery will perform, ESPECIALLY OVER TIME. It's at best a statistical crapshoot.

Garbage in, Garbage out. Not that Apple has Garbage batteries; but that our collective understanding of batteries in general is pretty much Garbage, when it comes to predicting what YOUR battery will do, ESPECIALLY OVER TIME.
 
No, it would be like Tesla giving you batteries that aren't capable of running the car at the acceleration promised unless the batteries are brand new, so when the car is 12 months old and the battery health dips to 95% they install a stealth firmware patch that scales back the acceleration.

Then when customers take the car in and complain about the poor performance, the Tesla maintenance staff tells them the car and battery are fine, and if they aren't happy with the acceleration, they should buy the newer model with 20% more power. All while pretending they didn't reduce the car's performance on purpose for any reason.

There is exactly zero evidence that iPhone batteries aren't capable of running the phone properly unless they're brand new. Apple's statement refers to and much of the anecdotal evidence is based on batteries that are years old, under heavy strain, operating in cold temperatures, chemically degraded, or some combination thereof. Your reference to 95% health is entirely arbitrary. The update wasn't remotely "stealth," it was publicly announced. Your speculation that any Genius told any customer to buy a new phone if they weren't happy is exactly that: speculation.

So overall, also a pretty poor comparison.
 
Or maybe, just maybe, it is FACT after FACT.

Ever consider THAT possibility, even ONCE? Of course not!

Fact you want to hear?

Fact is that my 6s+ started having crappy battery life after 6 months. From 75% left in battery life to 20% when I get home.

Guess what Apple did in my case? "Oh wait, you are experiencing crappy battery life? Let me slow down your device and please allow me to call it a "feature" too."

Apple: "We take care of customer."
 
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Joe @ Macrumors "Keep in mind that Apple is not permanently or persistently slowing down older iPhones. Even if your iPhone is affected, the performance limitations only happen intermittently, and only when the device is completing demanding tasks. "

The above appears to be FALSE as per Apple:

the user may notice effects such as:
  • Longer app launch times
  • Lower frame rates while scrolling
  • Backlight dimming (which can be overridden in Control Center)
  • Lower speaker volume by up to -3dB
  • Gradual frame rate reductions in some apps
  • During the most extreme cases, the camera flash will be disabled as visible in the camera UI
  • Apps refreshing in background may require reloading upon launch
The above do not appear to be particularly "demanding tasks."


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So you are admitting that Apple use cheap batteries to keep the cost down.

I think the issue is not "cheap batteries", but rather that the batteries are TOO SMALL. They sacrificed battery capacity in order to make the Thinnest Phone Ever.
 
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I
Anyway, even typing a text message resulted in 1-2 second delays in key presses on the throttled iPhone 6 that I had. Does typing an iMessage also constitute "peak usage?"
Is scrolling "peak usage?"

Hard to tell. An iPhone is running dozens of processes in the background, plus multiple alway-on radios. While you are typing:

Who knows if the battery is providing most of its max power to the cellular radio to check for new text messages from some distant cell tower? Or iCloud is uploading old movies. Or the processor is running voice recognition stuff to see if some noise around you resembled Hey Siri? Or the flash memory storage system is doing background wear leveling or data compression of memory data? Etc.
 
There is no reason for an iPhone to shut off unexpectedly unless there is something seriously wrong with the battery. As the battery gets used, the voltage drops. To compensate, the phone increases the amperage draw. There is bottom limit to the voltage, and once that threshold is reached the phone considers the battery to be depleted and at 0%. The software knows the battery level at all times based on the voltage reading.

In order for this system to stop working, the voltage reading is either incorrect or the battery has a fault where it cuts out at a higher voltage than the phone is programmed to recognize as empty. A battery with normal degradation will not behave in this manner, i.e., cutting out at a higher than expected voltage. Either way, it's a hardware problem that Apple is attempting to mask with a software patch that reduces performance peaks. When performance spikes, so does the voltage and/or amperage draw.

The proper way to have dealt with this issue would have been to inform those with compromised batteries. All they had to do was pop up a notice saying that the phone is experiencing reduced performance due to a battery issue, and to have the phone serviced to restore full performance. If under warranty, a free battery replacement should be provided. And give the user the choice to toggle this battery saving feature on or off until they can have the battery replaced. Easy, right?

But they did not do this. The only plausible reason is that they do not want the user to be informed of a possible battery issue. Why would they not want the user to know? This is where you will find Pandora's box.

I say... Free iPhones for everyone! lol
 
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Hard to tell. An iPhone is running dozens of processes in the background, plus multiple alway-on radios. While you are typing:

Who knows if the battery is providing most of its max power to the cellular radio to check for new text messages from some distant cell tower? Or iCloud is uploading old movies. Or the processor is running voice recognition stuff to see if some noise around you resembled Hey Siri? Or the flash memory storage system is doing background wear leveling or data compression of memory data? Etc.

Regardless it is not "few and far between slowdowns" as some are implying. It's overall VERY slow.
I had a throttled phone, have you tried one yourself firewood ??
 
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Bring it on. You will not find Apple such easy prey.
 
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