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Apple Will Soon Send Payments in $500 Million 'Batterygate' iPhone Throttling Lawsuit

tripsync said:
Overblown issue. Apple doing the right thing in stabilizing the device by throttling the CPU while Samsung and others say "whelp, your battery is old so it's causing your phone to reboot" and Apple gets the lawsuit while other companies go free.

What a bunch of complainers. 🤦‍♂️

Now, I do agree with the lawsuit that Apple did wrong in failing to notify, but throttling is absolutely the correct course of action which goes above and beyond what other companies fail to do.
Click to expand...
O. M. G. Are we still going with this trope?

  • Apple made the software work well for users, great. Check. We all want this.
However.....................
  • Apple KNEW their geniuses were telling people they needed new phones when they did not.
  • In numerous cases, people that KNEW they needed batteries were not allowed replacements as THEY WERE TOLD, that was not the issue by Apple.
  • This was on numerous forums as well as the sensationalist MSM outlets. It was raised countless times on the OFFICIAL Apple fourm, (that they pretend they have no part in), where the regular shills told users that they were; Off topic/abusive/or otherwise violating the TOS and of course had their posts deleted.

Why do people not look at the details????
 
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tripsync said:
Overblown issue. Apple doing the right thing in stabilizing the device by throttling the CPU while Samsung and others say "whelp, your battery is old so it's causing your phone to reboot" and Apple gets the lawsuit while other companies go free.

What a bunch of complainers. 🤦‍♂️

Now, I do agree with the lawsuit that Apple did wrong in failing to notify, but throttling is absolutely the correct course of action which goes above and beyond what other companies fail to do.
Click to expand...
I agree with you completely. But there's an issue regarding property rights here. If I own my phone, I alone should decide if I want it throttled. Maybe Apple should have allowed an option in the battery setting that throttled the phone, and provided an together advisory detailing the reasons why.

But, if I recall correctly, at the time the media made it sound like Apple deliberately slowed-down our phones, the despicable reason that we’d upgrade, and thus, keep their revenue streams going.

Everybody wants a pound of Apple's flesh.
 
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H2SO4 said:
O. M. G. Are we still going with this trope?

  • Apple made the software work well for users, great. Check. We all want this.
However.....................
  • Apple KNEW their geniuses were telling people they needed new phones when they did not.
  • In numerous cases, people that KNEW they needed batteries were not allowed replacements as THEY WERE TOLD, that was not the issue by Apple.
  • This was on numerous forums as well as the sensationalist MSM outlets. It was raised countless times on the OFFICIAL Apple fourm, (that they pretend they have no part in), where the regular shills told users that they were; Off topic/abusive/or otherwise violating the TOS and of course had their posts deleted.

Why do people not look at the details????
Click to expand...
I think people who suffered harm (purchased a new device they didn’t need) should be made whole.
 
Jay Tee said:
I agree with you completely. But there's an issue regarding property rights here. If I own my phone, I alone should decide if it want it throttled. Maybe Apple could have allowed an option in the battery setting that throttled the phone together with an advisory, maybe.

But if I recall correctly, at the time, the media made it sound like Apple was secretly conspiring to slowed-down the phones so we all upgrade to keep
Click to expand...
To be fair, having the option is exactly what users ended up with. Users can choose to either have performance slowed or have the device randomly turn off.
 
SilvioInfante said:
Tim Cook cost Apple $500 million by admitting fault where none existed. All he had to say was, "How Apple manages the CPU power draw is a complex thing that's really not anyone's concern outside of Apple engineering."
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He didn’t admit fault. This was Apple’s position. The lawsuit was primarily about that lack of disclosure.
 
robbietop said:
Everyone go get your $25 because a bunch of fools don't understand how voltage with aging batteries works!
Click to expand...
There is a lot more to the case than that. A LOT.
Even if you end up with a dollar each but a large corp ends up with a $500M bloody nose for being dishonest, it was worth it. They need incentives to do the right thing.
 
indychris said:
And many people who never even experienced the issue will receive money just because they can. Oh, what a wonderful world...
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Perhaps but in legal matters regarding payments (class action lawsuit payouts, fines, etc.), the hope is that the financial cost to the company will discourage the same "inappropriate" behavior (in this case, the coverup/not informing customers) in the future which can be good for all customers. Hopefully that will happen here, although $500 million isn't really that much money for a company the size of Apple.
 
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H2SO4 said:
There is a lot more to the case than that. A LOT.
Even if you end up with a dollar each but a large corp ends up with a $500M bloody nose for being dishonest, it was worth it. They need incentives to do the right thing.
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They were not dishonest. People are dumb. Their feelings got "hurt", and then a bunch of lawyers saw an opening and made a big payday.
 
robbietop said:
They were not dishonest. People are dumb. Their feelings got "hurt", and then a bunch of lawyers saw an opening and made a big payday.
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I don't think Apple were dishonest, I think their communication was poor (with both customers and their internal staff who clearly didn't know the appropriate corrective action when a device presented to them operating slower than normal).

However, for those who like a good conspiracy theory, they attribute malice to Apple's actions rather than incompetence. Also, people who are biased against Apple are likely to see this incident as malice rather than incompetence.
 
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webkit said:
Perhaps but in legal matters regarding payments (class action lawsuit payouts, fines, etc.), the hope is that the financial cost to the company will discourage the same "inappropriate" behavior (in this case, the coverup/not informing customers) in the future which can be good for all customers. Hopefully that will happen here, although $500 million isn't really that much money for a company the size of Apple.
Click to expand...

Selfishness should never be a motivation for 'justice'.

If apple did something wrong, I'm all for them being punished. Giving people money who never earned or were actually victimized does nothing but perpetuate our silly litigious climate that hurts EVERYONE.
 
robbietop said:
They've made 100s of billions
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That’s the scale at which apple makes money. There is no way to prove or not that consumers en-masse were “duped” by apple and went out and purchased new phones. I was an affected party and I did NOT purchase a new phone until mine was no longer useful.
 
phenste said:
this single hit piece that every single news outlet picked up and sensationalized made a vast majority of people adopt a mob mentality about planned obsolescence in Apple’s most popular product when it factually isn’t true. it went way beyond the specifics outlined in the case, leading people to believe Apple just generally slowed down older iPhones at all times.
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I’d say don’t let it bother you. Anyone that lacks reading comprehension to THAT degree deserves the Android phone they eventually get :) Even in a down year, Apple still sells over 150 million phones, they’ll be ok!
 
phenste said:
should Apple have notified people “hey, your battery’s degraded, performance might suffer at lower percentages?” sure.
Click to expand...

See? We agree. Took a lot of editing to get to the key sentence you wrote.

Class action lawsuits are imperfect, but they do let companies be held to account. And we agree—they did it, and covered it up for a year.
 
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phenste said:
this one “controversy” is the biggest source of chronic headaches for me when talking about iPhones with people who are…uh…I’ll just say normal in terms of the websites they browse.
Click to expand...

This is the other thing that matters. Apple lied and played right into this perception. Normal people did notice, and they remember. You should be upset with Apple that they screwed this up so entirely. I still hear about it all the time.
 
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