Just like the Google Adsense settlement, those who were truly damaged by the wrongdoing will get next to nothing IF they fall between such-and-such date. Meanwhile the law firm(s) that sponsor the suit get millions. How is that fair?
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Apple's Plan to Pay $500 Million to Settle Lawsuit Over 'Secretly Throttling' Older iPhones Gets Preliminary Approval
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Have any of you had an old iPhone with a battery on its last leg? I have, and when I used the camera app, the performance drew so heavily on the battery they regardless of the charge level, the phone would often just shut off immediately. What Apple was doing with this “slowing down” was actually to prevent this sort of random shutdown. I wouldn’t consider what Apple did to be deceptive or an underhanded tactic to get people to buy new phones. The big mistake was when Tim Cook treated the revelation as if it was something to ask for forgiveness for. What he should have done instead of apologizing is have the PR team release a YouTube video explaining what happens with batteries that are on their last leg and how they cause random shutdowns. It’s Cook’s fault that Apple has coughed up so much cash over this. If he would have taken a different tactic and stance and stayed firm that the software was doing what was in the best interest of the customer to begin with, then none of these lawsuits would have succeeded.
Well anecdotally, Apple. when explaining a 4m year on year drop in iPhone sales said one of the key reasons was people were taking advantage of the battery replacement program instead of buying new phones, so by implication, before the replacement program, people were buying new phones when they wouldn’t have done so if their phones were still performing correctly.
I still find it incredible that people still think that what Apple did was some sort benevolent gesture to save their phone; they knew exactly what they were doing and why. (If it was for the claimed reason it would have been implemented for all of their phones, including older models which would have had even older, degraded batteries). Apple have got away with it, commercially (probably a huge net upside) and more remarkably “forgiven” by the very people they were exploiting and taking advantage of.
Some law firm made 150 million because a few Apple engineers tried to prevent your 3 year old iPhone from dying.
I have a hard time believing your phone lasts longer than a few hours on a charge at 6 years if you use it every day but the fact you're still using iOS 9 is what's keeping you from noticing any major slowdown.
Apple offered a battery replacement for $29 which fixed the issue of the slow down from degraded battery. Yes, they should have been more clear and the next version of iOS gave a battery health score so people know now what's going on. Hardly a scandal that will give millions to lawyers and people $25 each.
Low power mode reduces average power consumption, to extend your battery life. It stops things like mail fetching and background app updates. It throttles the CPU speed a little, reducing overall power consumption.
The aged battery throttling reduces peak power consumption, and to levels FAR further than low power mode does. It's trying to keep battery voltage above a cutoff when the internal resistance is too high to maintain that much current.
You can get a preview of the kind of throttling phones do for aged batteries, even with a fresh one. When your battery gets down to around 1% and your phone is about to shut down, it will often slow down, animations will get stuttery and it'll feel like slogging through mud. This is the same kind of throttling done for an aged battery. It's meant to get you a few more minutes of battery life before the phone finally shuts down.
Pay me.
My SE CPU had 1/2 of the speed measured by CPU DasherX when the battery got down to 50% charged.
My SE CPU had 1/2 of the speed measured by CPU DasherX when the battery got down to 50% charged.
Yeah, you are going to get sued by your customers and fined by multiple governments.
On the other hand, I think it’s naive of people to believe that Apple could think they could fleece their customers and get away with it.
I agree with your point about communication but, not with manipulation. To be fair, the alternative would also result in people buying new phones.
If Apple did not add the CPU throttle feature and people's phones suffered from weak battery problems and constant crashing then they would still be persuaded to buy new phones.
Sure, some people would just get new batteries instead o new phones but, battery replacement also benefits Apple.
The CPU throttle did not apply to all phones, only phones that already had battery problems.
They did get away with it until the lawsuits or public outcry came for various issues. I remember each of those Macrumors threads involving lawsuits or customer outcry had the same people defending Apple as if they can do no wrong, and that the lawsuits would get thrown away
Yet Apple’s market capitalizations currently sits at $1.33 TRILLION. Trillion. That’s a hell of a lot of trees, and you’re tripping over little pinecones.
Introduce me to the shareholder who is weeping over your bullet points and I’ll apologize.
Market cap isn't real money. Additionally, it's not even Apple's money.
Yes and no. There's the added factor of plateauing advancement in iPhones that complicates this interpretation. People were taking advantage of the battery replacement program because their phones were still good enough for another year or two. I can't imagine it would have made people hold on to their iphone 3G after the iphone 4 came along.
They are not little pine cones, is my guess. We will find out.
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The law operates as it sees fit. This one didn’t get dismissed, but others did. It’s possible Apple wanted to end this so they agreed to the settlement.
Apple’s mistake was to not clearly state what they had done and why. They probably should pay some price for that. A class action lawsuit that only really benefits sleazy lawyers wouldn’t be my first choice.
Yeah, engineers should hush stuff even better and even more subtle, eventually screw customers when it is already too late.
$500m settlement is the equivalent of losing billions in sales, to assume Apple made at least $10b from hiding this feature from everyone(which includes Apples own staff) for many years is a very safe bet.
But would they have bought iPhones? I'd argue a phone that starts totally crashing gives a much worse impression than one that's "just" getting slower.
Look, I agree that the throttling is the best possible engineering solution to the issue -- but Apple failed to inform customers that a battery replacement would let their phone run faster and more smoothly. That failure drove increased iPhone sales. Even if that's unintentional, financial damage was done to customers and profit was made by Apple. Full stop.
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And this is why we don't let software engineers run everything.
Uh, you know they offered that battery replacement program for several months or longer...