They think a lot of things that are incorrect.
First of all, the choice was between having the phone suddenly shut down on the user or having very slightly reduced peak performance. It is stupid to assume anyone would have preferred their phone to be unusable rather than ever so slightly slower. And on top of that, these phones continuously adjust the cpu clock speed and related energy drain dynamically. That's part of how they get good battery run time in the first place. The "slowdown" only made sure that the peak energy consumption of the cpu remained within what the aged battery could provide. It was not a general slowdown of the phone. So no, Apple did nothing nefarious.
It's not about the pretended reason. It's about not explaining the update would do that and the lack of transparency. The throttle was so rough that it made some iphones nearly unuseable.
To be clear this is an out of court settlement, the courts have decided nothing of it. Apple just chose to pay some amount to make it go early rather than drag this for years before the courts.
Come on. Do you really think this is only decided by engineers? The finance guys need to approve their every move+
Yes this is what I asked
Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of Law will tell you that the PR costs and general attorney expenditures over years of dragging a case like this through the courts far outweigh the price paid to settle early out of courts. The fact that the parties suing Apple agreed to settle also indicate that they knew they wouldn't get more by going to trial. Apple is far from dumb. There is no admission of guilt, only the cost of doing business in the overly litigious USA.
Haven't read the settlement, but it is sadly common for lawyers to get most of the settlement money, either directly or because unclaimed settlement money revert to them.
Actually, I do kind'a think that, especially in this kind of scenario. I would suggest that the finance guys don't know or care about the vast majority of what happens in the bug fix stages of a product lifecycle; they're focused on marketing the next product, and almost certainly couldn't care less what software engineers do with respect to previous products -- so long as some amazing new whiz-bang features are reserved as exclusives for that next great thing.
It's only a "pretended" reason if you don't understand the technology and you wear a tin foil hat at home. Second, yes I do know why they did it, because it's clear what they did. It was either letting old phones "randomly" shut down on the user or having slightly reduced peak energy consumption and thus performance. If you think someone would be less likely to upgrade a phone that is seemingly malfunctioning than a phone barely getting slower, you are delusional. And finally, no, this change could not have made phones nearly unusable. We're talking insignificant percentage points speed impact on demanding tasks, it's not even a general slowdown. You've read too much FUD and nonsense.
No, the initial problem was the trash batteries they put in these phones, then doubling down on hiding it proved their guilt. I updated to iOS whatever-it-was and immediately saw such bad keyboard lag that I couldn't type.
