U.S. Government Investigating Apple's Power Management Features That Slow Older iPhones

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

BUSTED!!! Time for Tim Cook to go!

Tim isn't going anywhere. It's overseen Apple climb to their most profitable point in history. He's overseen quarter after quarter of record breaking earnings.

Please, tell us what he's done to be ousted from a position he's run beautifully?

 

[Darryl.Jenks]

To play devils advocate; iOS terms of use say they can.

Ok. We won't go into clickwrap details, but suffice it to say terms of use sorta take a back seat to the law.

 

[Krio]

Really hoping something comes from this. I've had iPhones since the 4 and there was always a bit of a decline in speed with a new iOS version each year. That is understandable as new features take more power, but it was brutal this time. My wife's 6S+ was nearly unusable and would lock up multiple times a day if she let the battery go below 40%. My mother's iphone 6 was even worse off.

We sold them and bought new phones over Thanksgiving, only for it to be revealed that a simple battery swap would have saved us hundreds. That, to me, is where Apple might be in a heap of trouble.

 

[mookc1]

This has gotten beyond absurd.

Apple can do whatever they want with managing CPU and battery performance on any device at any time. It is beyond insane to suggest that anyone outside of Apple has any right to any particular level of CPU performance at any given time.

Tim Cook has embarrassed Apple by admitting wrong where none existed and has opened the company to undue scrutiny.

Yeah, I'm kind of over this story too. I say remove the code and the let the phones shutdown.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Racist much?

That's not a racist statement. It's factual. It is a bunch of 60+ year old white men with little understanding of technology.

 

[clauzzz203]

Because my previous post got deleted here's the long version:
I am very glad this happened and I hope it serves bringing down Apple's share price and Tim Cook along with it.
This company needs to watch old Steve Jobs interviews to understand why it's got a poisonous mentality of chasing profit at any cost and not having any vision anymore.

 

[UsernameAlreadyInUse]

I personally changed the battery on my 6 last summer before news broke of throttling and noticed absolutely no increase in it's atrociously slow performance before and after. Is it user-confirmed that upgrading the battery actually increases performance?

 

[keysofanxiety]

This has gotten beyond absurd.

Apple can do whatever they want with managing CPU and battery performance on any device at any time. It is beyond insane to suggest that anyone outside of Apple has any right to any particular level of CPU performance at any given time.

Tim Cook has embarrassed Apple by admitting wrong where none existed and has opened the company to undue scrutiny.

Weeeeell...

From a technical point of view I can definitely see why they did it. The main issue is the lack of transparency behind the decision, not the decision itself.

There's a middle ground. The haters immediately sharpen their pitchforks at the smell of any anti-Apple rhetoric, eager to tie Tim to an Apple-shaped wicker and celebrate as the flames dance to the beat of primitive animal justice. The apologists will claim there's absolutely nothing wrong with any of this and that it's completely blown out of proportion.

The appropriate reaction lies between those two extremes.

 

[Act3]

Yeah, I'm kind of over this story too. I say remove the code and the let the phones shutdown.

supposedly the iOS 11.3 beta 1 removes the throttling but hasn't added a toggle yet. Havent seen any reports from that thread about reboot issues because of that

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-11-3-beta-1-bug-fixes-changes-and-improvements.2102664/

 

[cmwade77]

This has gotten beyond absurd.

Apple can do whatever they want with managing CPU and battery performance on any device at any time. It is beyond insane to suggest that anyone outside of Apple has any right to any particular level of CPU performance at any given time.

Tim Cook has embarrassed Apple by admitting wrong where none existed and has opened the company to undue scrutiny.

Actually, they can't, if I purchase a device, I expect it to operate per the specs I purchased it at over the life of the product. Yes, I understand at some point it will wear out and stop functioning, but I don't expect the manufacturer to slow part of it down because another part is degraded and I definitely don't expect them to do this without telling me. Add to that, if I take the product in for repair, I then get told that I need to replace the product completely with a brand new one, when really simply changing the degraded part at a fraction of the cost would have fixed the issue.

Are you beginning to see where there is wrong doing here?

 

[jazz1]

To make matters worse, I was at Apple the other day getting my iPhone X screen fixed (they made me come back to the store 3 times and ended up just replacing it instead). Anyhow, this other guy was there to get a battery replaced for $29 on his 6+, they told him they could order the battery now but the repair likely won't be done til late March or April. Needless to say he was super pissed off. As a third party repair shop owner, Apple's piss poor customer service put a huge smile on my face. I have plenty of 6+ batteries in stock. 😀

Just keep on sending all those pissed off customers straight into my loving arms, Apple.

Curious. How much do you charge?

 

[mi7chy]

The government also need to investigate Apple abusing iCloud locking people out of their devices to force them to buy new devices even when it hasn't been reported lost.

 

[Act3]

If their only mistake was not notifying people, then why would they add the option to turn off this "feature"?

quite possibly part of a plan in the long run to "prove" they throttled for the publics benefit. It could also raise the consipracy flag that they also then added code to force reboots when the "feature" is toggled off.

 

[clauzzz203]

Tim isn't going anywhere. It's overseen Apple climb to their most profitable point in history. He's overseen quarter after quarter of record breaking earnings.

Please, tell us what he's done to be ousted from a position he's run beautifully?

Because Steve Jobs laid down such a good legacy that anyone would have been able to keep growing the profits, and the recent success hapened despite Tim Cook's horrendous management style. He has the classic corporation manager attitude that has lead so many creative departments to destruction.

 

[mi7chy]

That's not a racist statement. It's factual. It is a bunch of 60+ year old white men with little understanding of technology.

You're describing Tim Cook and other Apple executives.

 

[HiVolt]

This has gotten beyond absurd.

Apple can do whatever they want with managing CPU and battery performance on any device at any time. It is beyond insane to suggest that anyone outside of Apple has any right to any particular level of CPU performance at any given time.

No, they cannot do whatever they want on devices people own.

 

[cmwade77]

Weeeeell...

From a technical point of view I can definitely see why they did it. Heck, I'd have probably done the same. The main issue is the lack of transparency behind the decision, not the decision itself.

There's a middle ground. The haters immediately sharpen their pitchforks at the smell of any anti-Apple rhetoric, eager to tie Tim to an Apple-shaped wicker and celebrate as the flames dance to the beat of primitive animal justice. The apologists will claim there's absolutely nothing wrong with any of this and that it's completely blown out of proportion.

The appropriate reaction lies between those two extremes.

Actually, I don't see why they did it, this would be something like this:
I buy an Electric Vehicle, it runs fine, then a few years later the battery is degraded to say 75%, but still usable for my daily commute as that still gives me about a 75 mile range, but the manufacture decides that because the battery is degraded to 75%, they are going to make the car not travel at speeds higher than 45 mph, even when the battery is fully charged and they claim that it may turn off randomly if they don't limit it like this.

Now, we all understand if the battery is down to 5%-10%, limiting the speed until it is charged again makes sense, but if the battery is fully charged to capacity at 75%, then full speed should easily be able to be achieved. What Apple chose to do is always limit the speed if the battery is degraded, not just when it got down to 5%-10%, plus Apple never gave any indication that it was doing this. In my EV example, when the battery is down to 5% or so and the vehicle is limiting the speed, there is a clear indication on the dash that this is happening so you know what to do to correct it. If Apple had been honest and upfront about it, you wouldn't see near as much outcry about it.

 

[keysofanxiety]

Because Steve Jobs laid down such a good legacy that anyone would have been able to keep growing the profits, and the recent success hapened despite Tim Cook's horrendous management style. He has the classic corporation manager attitude that has lead so many creative departments to destruction.

That's right, Apple just runs itself. 🙄

You really believe that? You're leaving yourself open with that sort of ridiculous hyperbole.

 

[cmwade77]

Because Apple run out these batteries.

Apple Delays iPhone 6 Plus Battery Replacements Until March-April Due to Limited Supply

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/01/11/iphone-6-plus-battery-replacements-delay/

Yeah and there really isn't any excuse for running out of them.

 

[loveios]

Keep dreaming. The shares aren’t down for anything related to this or battery.

They are down on fake news and usual pre earnings speculation.

Come back Thursday.

Completely agree with you!

 

[Zakzilla]

This has gotten beyond absurd.

Apple can do whatever they want with managing CPU and battery performance on any device at any time. It is beyond insane to suggest that anyone outside of Apple has any right to any particular level of CPU performance at any given time.

Tim Cook has embarrassed Apple by admitting wrong where none existed and has opened the company to undue scrutiny.

Totally disagree. This upset millions of consumers who were unaware their devices were being throttled. And in a way, it's planned obsolescence without disclosure. Not OK. Instead of quietly throttling old iPhones, maybe Apple should do what consumers are asking for and make a better battery?

 

[deanthedev]

If their only mistake was not notifying people, then why would they add the option to turn off this "feature"?

To prove that when given a choice people will choose a reliable, but slightly slower device than one that randomly reboots.

 

[tkukoc]

lol good grief they are still wasting time on this. Go investigate something that matters, there's more then plenty out there these days.

 

[jarman92]

To make matters worse, I was at Apple the other day getting my iPhone X screen fixed (they made me come back to the store 3 times and ended up just replacing it instead). Anyhow, this other guy was there to get a battery replaced for $29 on his 6+, they told him they could order the battery now but the repair likely won't be done til late March or April. Needless to say he was super pissed off. As a third party repair shop owner, Apple's piss poor customer service put a huge smile on my face. I have plenty of 6+ batteries in stock. 😀

Just keep on sending all those pissed off customers straight into my loving arms, Apple.

It isn't "piss poor customer service" to not have enough batteries in stock. The fact that you can go to an Apple store and have them fix anything is actually excellent customer service. When hundreds of thousands of people want the same thing at the same time, it obviously causes bottlenecks.
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There should be an investigation regarding manipulation to the public for unnecessary upgrades. For example, I want to make a back up of my iPhone X, but my mac is asking me to upgrade the entire OS just to do that, why? I have Sierra and works great, I do not need to upgrade my system for something as trivial as a back up. It will affect the performance of my computer to worst installing crap I do not need and affecting other softwares.

The same with my iPhone 5. Yahoo needed for me to install new OS and other applications too, why? what processing I need to read a text message?

So all that is pushing you to upgrade to things you do not need. Then Apple comes and tell their share holders "everybody is running the new OS", but is not because people need it or loves it, is because Apple is making me, almost like black mailing me.

I'm hoping this is sarcasm because if not...wow.

 

[Ladybug]

Apple altered devices not belonging to them well after the sale. If batteries were the issue they could have replaced batteries under warranty or notified users that their batteries needed servicing. Let the investigations begin.