About a week after confirming that the company does indeed throttle the processors of phones with aging batteries, Apple has issued an apology while announcing changes that should ease the process for consumers with aging phones while also keeping them more informed.
The problem wasn't so much the throttling of the processors, which perceptibly altered the experience on phones of approximately a year or older, but rather that users were not notified of the slow-down being due to battery health and thus, may have elected to buy an entirely new phone instead of simply having the battery replaced, which typically costs about $79 versus a much higher cost for a new handset. Today, the company put out a release, apologizing and explaining the initial philosophy behind the behavior, which was intended to prevent sudden shutdowns during peak loads on older batteries. Apple also announced that they will issue an update to iOS that promises to give users more transparency regarding the relationship between their devices' battery health and performance. Lastly, the price of out-of-warranty battery replacements on iPhone 6 and newer models has been reduced from $79 to $29, something I'd definitely recommend at that price if you're noticing slowdowns or decreased battery life.
Lead image by Torsten Dettlaff, used under Creative Commons.
[via Gizmodo]
Personally, I'm pleased with this response and appreciate how Apple has dealt with this. I've sent this article to my uncle already so he knows to get the battery in his iPhone SE replaced :).
I disagree, they promise more transparency... because they are facing several lawsuits over intentionally slowing down old iPhones. Not because it is a honest company.
Or they could have done nothing and continued to make shitloads of money. Lawsuits are nothing to a company like Apple. At least they are trying to make it up to people.you think other companies like Samsung and LG aren’t slowing down their older phones?
To do nothing would have been an absolute PR disaster for them and would cost them far more money in the long run. Hell, it's already a PR disaster because they didn't do the right thing in the first place which would have been to inform consumers and give them the option. Apple is just trying to mitigate the damage at this point as any other sensible company would.
What you perceive to be them "trying to make it up to people" is not an act of altruism on their part. It's a corporation doing what it must to protect its greater interests.
I never said it was an act of altruism did I? No. My point was that other companies are doing the same damn thing and keeping their mouths shut.
Of course they are protecting their interests. What kind of company wouldn’t?
"I never said it was an act of altruism did I? No."
When you said:
"Or they could have done nothing and continued to make shitloads of money. Lawsuits are nothing to a company like Apple. At least they are trying to make it up to people",
it certainly seemed to me like you were implying that they were doing customers a favor rather than acting for the purpose of protecting their profits. In fact, the way you phrased your statement seems to suggest that Apple's profitability would not have been significantly impacted even if they chose to just ignore the situation, which is simply not true as can be evidenced by the fact that they are acting upon the issue to put out the fire.
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"My point was that other companies are doing the same damn thing and keeping their mouths shut."
Do you know this for a fact or are you just assuming that it's an industry-wide thing? If you have the tests to back up this statement, please post them and I'm sure we'll all jump on board with bashing them about it, too. While I suspect that you're right, the difference at this juncture is that we have hard facts and a subsequent admission by Apple while we have none of these for the other mobile device manufacturers.
"you think other companies like Samsung and LG aren’t slowing down their older phones?"
Right, the Steve Jobs approach, try to throw everyone else under the bus.
Not throwing anyone under the bus. People love to bash Apple. I’m just pointing out that they are all a bunch of a greedy assholes, not just Apple.
People love to bash any company that screws up. Just look at all the flak Samsung got when their phones started to catch fire. No company is (or should be) immune from criticism.
That’s true. A bit different considering one endangered lives but still I see your point.
This will probably never happen, but boy, what a riot if it did!
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/apple-facing-jail-time-massive-fines-ip...
A matter of opinion of course. Steve made bad mistakes, but wouldn't accept responsibility for them. I actually have for more respect for Cook than I ever had for Jobs (which was none).
The only thing Jobs ever cared about was himself.
Well, yeah... There's that difference there. At least these things aren't turning into little tinder boxes so as far as problems go, at least it's not a health hazard.
No, YOU just made a false and unfounded claim that other manufacturers are also slowing down their phones, which makes you nothing more than a whiny Apple fanboy pissed off that your corporate god just got caught red-handed pulling an underhanded move. I hope they get their asses sued and their stock value tanks for what they've done, because they deserve it.
Ok I’m not doing a back and forth with you if you’re just gonna insult me. Have a nice night.
Really, and you like the alternative better? All my iPhones at the end of their battery life were horrible. They would shut down at 30 to 40% and could not figure out why because when they came back on, they still showed 30% left on the battery. I wish they would have had the update sooner. When the battery is old, the phones were useless unless they were tied to a charger.
The update itself was fine, but they should have informed customers from the outset and given them the option to employ the feature along with informing them that they could solve the problem via changing their battery (rather than allowing the customer to assume that they need to go get a new phone). Either that when they advertise their CPU clock speed for their phones, add an asterisk on the advertisement and fine print that says that this will degrade with battery performance over time.
For me, the entire issue lies in the lack of transparency and the fact that they only decided to admit it once they were outed by independent sources.
You are basically congratulating them for being honest about their stratyegy to make you buy more phones / battery than you would need if they didn't bloat the software with each (non optional) updates.
You drank too much KoolAid.
Heh. Maybe I'll hold onto this iPhone a bit longer. $29 isn't bad
They did not run and it was horrible. All the iPhones I had suffered from the shutdown when the batteries got old. They basically needed to be tied to a charger to use them. I could not figure it out because when you restarted the phones, they still had 30-40%. I would have preferred the updated firmware then to the many shutdowns that my phones suffered.
My iPhone 7 is only a year old and it will go down to 1% now, a much better experience now.
And as far as other manufacturers, you do not know what they have done to prolong battery life.
If it were not for independent people looking into it, we wouldn't have known what Apple have done either. The only reason they came out with the information was because they were forced to.
Remember when Apple were the cool, innovative guys and Microsoft were the evil, corporate guys? How the mighty have fallen.
Jonathan I feel you need to explain yourself further. It’s easy to make a throwaway populist comment without supporting it. It’s trendy to bash Apple right now but I see no evidence of statements that they are not innovating. I see nothing innovative from Microsoft in a long time. Adding touch screen tech to laptops and desktops is not innovating. In fact it shows a huge lack of creativity. And Apple continues to completely rock the boat with almost every design they’ve released recently. You may not like what they’re releasing and that’s fine of course but they are the definition of innovation at the moment: iMac Pro, iPhone X, touch bar MacBook Pros. Perhaps you misunderstand the term innovate.
I think you missed the part where you're on the internet. Nobody needs to explain anything and making broad stroke comments off the cuff is pretty much the norm.
Besides, his comment was clearly not for you if you see the iMac Pro, iPhone X, and a freaking touch bar on MacBook Pros as true innovation. For the record, I don't believe that Microsoft is doing much innovating either, although I do think the past few years (2 or 3) have shown them being superior to Apple in terms of their implementation of technology in their computers from a user standpoint.
Apple really needs to stop with the gimmicks and go back to focusing on real innovations that transformed the user experience in a meaningful way. Their last crop of devices seem far more focused on making headlines and providing fodder for flashy keynote presentations than improving the user experience.
Perhaps I'm being too hard on them. After all, it's unrealistic to expect a company to regularly shake the industry with paradigm shifting releases the way the iPhone did upon its original announcement. That is, however, the bar that Apple have set for themselves throughout their own history, which is certainly a compliment.
Mick, everything I was planning on saying was perfect put by Michael Jin. You said, “I don’t see it” on an article all about Apple deliberately slowing down a product to force users to upgrade. Apple used to prioritise excellence and innovation over profit and share price. Those days are long gone.
Steve Jobs is rolling over in his grave. Apple being more transparent? Must be a different Apple today.
I'm not pleased that Apple thought they could do something sneaky like this and then philosophize that it was for our own good. Now, they can throw us a bone to make the boo boo all better. Geez!