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Apple's iPhone Throttling Will Reinvigorate the Push for Right To Repair Laws (vice.com)
Jason Koebler, writing for Motherboard: The news that Apple throttles iPhones that have old batteries will reinvigorate the right to repair debate as the movement enters a crucial year. Third party repair shops say they've already seen an uptick in customers asking for battery replacements to speed up their slow phones, and right to repair activists who are pushing for state legislation that will make third party and self repair more accessible say Apple's secrecy about this behavior will give them a powerful rallying message. "If Apple were serious about battery life, they'd market battery replacements," Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org, told me in an email. "Apple clearly has a big financial benefit when people decide their phones are too slow and head to the Apple Store for a new phone." Repair.org is a right to repair advocacy group that is made up largely of small, third party repair shops, which is spearheading the effort to get states to consider legislation that will make it easier to repair electronic devices.
I noticed they still throttle old iphones even when plugged in and 100% battery. There goes that excuse.
Slowing down customer's phones without a choice with the apparent reason being to push them to buy more stuff sure seems criminal to me!
The company that professes sustainable living, equality, environmentalism and then...
Gave birth to the touchbar MBP.
QED.
The devil himself probably golf-clapped and wiped a tear away when witnessing the birth of this product for how it almost exists as a Manichean opposite of Apple's professed values.
Most modern super-thin phones and other devices are glued together in such a way that it's difficult or impossible for even a fairly careful, experienced person with small nimble fingers to get them apart without destroying some expensive component, usually, the screen/digitizer/glass assembly.
This isn't just a problem for phones, but tablets and many modern computers (Surface, cough, cough), too.
Checkout the reviews on sites like teardown.com, and you can see that most (thin) modern electronic devices are held together with glues that are clearly selected with no concern for the device ever coming apart again.
There is no punishment too severe for Apple for deliberately degrading the performance of devices after they have been sold. (This is argualbly far worse than the hardware/software tying & lying that got IBM put under antitrust consent decree back in the 1960's!)
I've uncomfortably used Apple phones for the last several years, but I'm done with that - replaceable batteries and expandable storage are on the required list for my next phone!
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Just buy endless more iPhones.
--Tim
Of all the times they needed to use the enormous cash reserves they have, they will probably lobby hard to prevent this.
"If Apple were serious about battery life, they'd market battery replacements," Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org, told me in an email. "Apple clearly has a big financial benefit when people decide their phones are too slow and head to the Apple Store for a new phone."
Apple offers battery replacement as part of their services. Cost is $79 which is not cheap but certainly much cheaper than a new phone.
The only reason I upgraded to iPhone 8 from 6s was the slowness. The 6s more than met my needs with both iOS 10 and 9. 11 killed it. Can I sue?
If the phone is under warranty Apple will replace the battery for free.
If it's out of warranty, Apple charges $79 to replace it. Granted, it should be $39 or $49, but it's not like people have no choice but to buy a new phone.
There are also plenty of third party batteries and iPhone repair kits so you replace your own, or offer the service at your shop. Granted, this would void the warranty, but devices under warranty would get free replacements from Apple anyway.
I'm 100% in favor of the right-to-repair laws; cracked glass, water damage, and hard-to-source parts could and should be replaceable by small shops for a fraction of what the OEMs charge. Many hardware failures could be fixed with a $0.50 component and a soldering iron instead of a $800 replacement logic board. But iPhone batteries seem an odd rallying cry for the movement.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Have you been paying attention to politics at all?
In other words, a corporate lobby group.
Just remember that the next time you see a lobby group you disagree with that happens to be funded by other corporations. Who funds the lobby group does not inherently change the value of the lobbying. Debate the issue on its merits.
In this case, as a right-winger, I agree with this lobby group, at least on the issue presented here in the way that it is presented. The right to purchase a good, and thereby own it, is a fundamental aspect of a fair, open and free market. If I cannot repair that which I own, then I don't really own it. Now, granted, as we shrink our circuits to the point of ICs, we may not be able to replace individual resistors or diodes or anything, but there does need to be some level of repair available, especially for parts that can wear out. Batteries, even rechargeables, definitely fall under that category. Screen glass probably as well, based on the number of cracked phone screens I've seen over the years.
Not a problem. Simply legislate that any device over say $250 be designed, actively designed to be repairable ie easy example, user replaceable batteries, no ifs not buts, don't give a crap, user replaceable batteries and screens at minimum. This asking and begging for stuff from greedy corporations are you nucking futs, no asking, no begging, grind on politicians until they legislate and fines, a fine per device that is not essentially consumer repairable. Want super thin (bullshit I know) glued together phones sell them for less than $250, suck it up. Every phone more expensive than that and the user themselves have to be able to repair the most likely to break elements of the phone, screen and battery and probably connectors. Think it is not a pretty, basically bugger off, how stupid do you think we really are.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I have a thin, modern phone which, coincidentally I just ordered a replacement battery for from ebay for eleven Washingtons. The back comes off easily and I can swap out the battery in about 30 seconds.
The push towards non-replaceable batteries has excuses given by the companies, but it's really designed to extract more $ from your pocketbook. And since most shee^h^h^h^hpeople will put up with it, there's no reason not to.
It's contains Apple's intellectual property. You have no right to repair it if Apple doesn't want you to.
Taxes? Tax the everloving hell out of anything that is not at the very least service friendly.
We want to get rid of job killing regulations
We don't want a bunch of unelected Washington bureaucrats telling us what to do and what not to do
On second thoughts, it is a good idea to pass such laws. The right thing to do is to cut funding and cut the balls of the regulatory agencies. We get the credit for passing the laws and photo ops and all the great campaign sound bites. Then we get to blame the dysfunctional government and stupid government bureaucrats. It is a great formula we have invented. We should continue to milk it.
It is a democracy. You will get the government you deserve.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Replacing the damned battery shouldn't be something considered a "repair". It's only the greed and asshole nature of phone manufacturers than make it that way.
"Simply legislate that any device over say $250 be designed, actively designed to be repairable"
Good luck getting TV, dvd/bluray, speaker, microwave, washing machine, dryer, smartphone, dumbphone, tablet, monitor, manufacturer to do that. They'd be more likely to pull out of the US market.
"If Apple were serious about battery life, they'd market battery replacements," Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org, told me in an email.
They do.
And no amount of title-cased clickbait will convince me otherwise.
Ok. What about that, doesn't sound fucking fantastic?
All the shitty ones are distractions and it makes it harder to find the decent ones. I have even sometimes bought shitty unmaintainable products by mistake because it didn't even occur to me to spend a lot of time researching whether or not I would be able to repair it.
(How many people bought an iPhone and only later learned they couldn't replace the battery? Tech people know, but laymen?)
If the shitty ones pulled out of the market, that'd make things easier for everyone.
don't buy their stuff ... you empower and support them to do that kind of stuff by buying their latest shiny toys ...
Good luck finding your next phone. LG G5 user here, but my next phone?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I've uncomfortably used Apple phones for the last several years, but I'm done with that - replaceable batteries and expandable storage are on the required list for my next phone!
Well, you pissed in the pool and now expect it to be filled with potable water. Thanks for steering the industry in the wrong direction, buddy.
I've uncomfortably used Apple phones for the last several years, but I'm done with that - replaceable batteries and expandable storage are on the required list for my next phone!
This is what you want because you won't get it from the big corps.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
That must be why Apple is soooo butthurt about right to repair legislation.
Apple is also known for bricking phones with non-apple batteries. So right to repair should prohibit any means of restricting the right to do so.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
We give such monsters a license to exist , they are not people with inherent rights!!!
We have the authority to tell them to exist only for our good or else. Because
when shit hits the fan, when a major evil is done even if its spread out over the whole
populace one penny or dollar at a time, or worse like ecological disaster,
does anyone go to jail as a person would in a criminal felony would ? raerly if ever.
So lets regulate them like the monsters that they are , they have no right to exist
unless they serve us ! You can have your profits! But you better make sure you
do not undermine us at every fucking step with an army of lawyers , lobyists and
congressitters . How about a separate constitution just for corporations in what
they can and cannot do , and how much insurance should they have for down the road
screwups , after they folded and went bankrupt?
but then again i am just dreaming of this world being rational.
(Note: I have no love for Apple.) The performance degradation is actually a service to the customers. Lithium-ion batteries can't deliver as many amps as they get older. Not only does their capacity drop, but their voltage under load drops as well. Try to draw as many Amps as you could when the battery was new, and the voltage drops more than it used to - sometimes so low that the device stops working. You may have experienced this with a laptop with an old battery. It'll work fine until it hits around 30%, and suddenly it'll power off. There actually was 30% battery life left, it's just that the laptop was trying to draw more Amps than the aged battery could deliver, resulting in the system acting like the plug was pulled.
By limiting the max performance of the phone, Apple is limiting the maximum amperage the phone tries to draw from the battery. This prevents the instant shutdown scenario, allowing you to use that remaining 30% of battery power. The you pay is that you lose the top end of the phone's performance,
The more elegant solution of course is a user-replaceable battery, and the customer simply buying a new battery. But that went the way of the dodo thanks to Apple and hundreds of drooling fanboy reviewers criticizing phones with "flimsy" backs which hid user-replaceable batteries. The masses wanted their phone to have a solid metal shell. They got it, and all the drawbacks that come with it. It always confused me why people would want their phones to be metal like it was a durable good, but they were ok with giving up a replaceable battery like it was disposable.
I was in an Apple store in the UK this week to have my Mac Mini un-fcsked after the High Sierra update screwed it up. An Apple employee was trying a very hard sell on a customer who had a problem with their iPhone 6. The Apple employee said that the battery could be replaced for 70 pounds and that it would take an hour or so. They pushed hard on an up-sell though.
Degrading the handset performance in an attempt to promote a sale - I.e. failing to detect a new battery and instead keeping performance degraded - would fall foul of The Sale of Goods and Services Act in the UK...
Except all the non-portable devices you've named are generally all repairable.
TVs and monitors are not economical to repair if you break the screen though, since all they are is a power supply, control board and case for the panel. Replacing power supplies in them is pretty straight forward though
You can't buy one.
They don't sell the old one anymore and they haven't released the new one.
Yet to be seen if they still sell the spare parts for the old one once the new one is available.
The Fairphone 2 is going to come with Android 6... that's a bit shit for something not yet available.
Powered by a SoC from 2014, one that Qualcomm doesn't provide support for Android 7, so good luck with any updates. It's the same one used in my Moto X 2014, which is why that's also stuck on Android 6.
If Apple has deliberately slowed the older iPhones in order to sell more new iPhones, they deserve hell.
and to top it all off, at 529 euros it's going to cost more than my Moto X did 3 years ago.
The only real differences are it has a crappier screen, FM radio, dual sim, an SD slot and no NFC so it won't even work with Android Pay.
And they don't sell the Fairphone 1 battery in their online shop anymore, only the Fairphone 2 one.
replaceable batteries and expandable storage are on the required list for my next phone!
You'll be pretty lucky to find one - especially one that actually integrates the expandable storage with the phone's storage, so that you just magically have more space for everything. I'm not sure these even exist.
If you wanted to make a law around device performance, which I think might be a fairly sensible idea, then it should be that OS upgrades do not degrade performance of your device, and the OS upgrades must be available for some period of time after purchase (say, I don't know, five years - looking at you, Android). This is the trouble with the argument - that OS upgrades invariably bring new features to your device, but often at the expense of performance, people expect their device to keep getting more and more features the longer they own it. It's my view that the camera app, for instance, has no business whatever getting slower and slower to launch on each iOS update - and that is the kind of thing that could potentially be covered by consumer protection laws.
I don't see what it all has to do with "right to repair" though. The right to repair is long, long gone, it pretty much went away once we got microscopic surface mount components, and parts that you simply can't get your hands on.
You're adding 100s of dollars in overall cost to manufacture a "repairable" machine while 99% of us don't really care. You're talking access hatches, extra electronics and larger/heavier plastic stuff, more screws just so 1 in 100 people can tinker with it, and half of those actually screw it up during "repairs" making the repair irrelevant or more expensive.
When I was young, I loved to repair stuff, nowadays, I just want it to work, I actually pay extra for on-site replacement on the server hardware. Sure, I can replace a hard drive, but for $180 Apple will do it free of charge and come on-site for the next 3 years. I don't have to worry about screwing up, spending an hour reading up on the various parts and disassembly procedures (if they're even available) and then waiting for days for replacement parts.
How many times have you actually repaired a washing machine? Ever even opened one? There isn't much to it these days, a circuit board and a motor. Replacing any of those costs more than the cost of a new machine in shipping alone, and that's if you get the motor off the pulley without damaging anything. Same goes for the iPhone, after 3-4 years when your battery actually is low enough to be bothersome, your iPhone is worth $50. You want to sink in $50-100 for a repair to extend the lifetime what, a year, maybe two which is exactly the amortized cost of the device.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
> pull out of the US market.
Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. If the election of Trump has taught as anything, these globalist corporations and open borders libertarians are full of shit.
sounds like you own stock in LANDFILLS.
why do you hate the earth so much?
(repairing is GOOD FOR EVERYONE. its fucking evil that companies have convinced idiots like yourself that we should live in a throw-away world.)
designing things to be repairable is NOT hard. NOT HARD. but the reason they don't do is is JUST for the cash gab.
sorry, but that's just too selfish a reason; and it hurts everyone but the company. really sucky attitude and I find it very common with younger people. sucks!
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
...just not buy proprietary garbage the manufacturer won't let you actually own, modify and/or repair. Geeze, not rocket science folks. And a pointless battle. You think after what, 30+ years of doing business in this fashioned, the manufacturers are gunna change? Vote with your wallet.
Feel free to replace 'The Manufacturer" with whatever you see fit.
Nobody want anything over 2 years old, it has no use or value?
Thank you for the first world viewpoint and analysis.
Many LG flagships have adoptable storage, just pop in a microSD and choose to use it as internal storage
Source: Used a marshmallow phone with adoptable storage, missing it in my Xiaomi
What Apple won't tell you is that they now have plans to make all of their new products become obsolete for work poorly unless you buy their latest and most expensive upgrade. Take that consumers. Under Trump, you have no right to fight back.
Designing things for longer lifetime then most people use them is extremely wasteful. Designing things to be repaired while they will never be repaired in significant numbers is extreme waste of resources. Looks like you actually hate the Earth and want people to waste resources for your selfish reasons.
Apple enthusiast pride themselves on overpaying for a complete un-modifiable environment. Apple is simply trying to give them the same service with their Apple Battery; otherwise, it would just be some generic Android battery that costs ~$20...
Most modern super-thin phones and other devices are glued together in such a way that it's difficult or impossible for even a fairly careful, experienced person with small nimble fingers to get them apart without destroying some expensive component, usually, the screen/digitizer/glass assembly.
Sorry but that's just flat out wrong. The vast majority of modern phones are easy enough to disassemble for even a first timer with the right tools (which are often delivered in a kit with replacement batteries).
IFixIt has a good rundown on repairability: https://www.ifixit.com/smartph...
Of note is that the only popular high-end smartphones that are an issue are those with fancy curved edges on the display or glass all over front and back. iPhone generally rank quite well, and even many of the devices that rank poorly don't get their rank from difficulty of replacing the battery, but rather general construction of the rest of the phone. Glue isn't really an issue, most of them weaken with just a basic and very safe amount of heat applied, and in the kits you'll get a fresh gasket to re-glue your device together.
Your assessment of the tablets is right though. The glue and large surface of the screens make them especially easy to crack.
100s of dollars? By that light then phones should be way cheaper now that they don't have those hugely expensive small screws. Except they're actually more expensive.
I don't see it as unreasonable to allow the user of a phone to change their own battery rather than having to pay someone else to do it. It wasn't that long ago that we could, this glued together bullshit is about ripping consumers off pure and simple.
Of course, they donâ(TM)t tell you that they are slowing your phone due to the battery, thus giving you a chance to replace the battery. No, instead they tell you nothing, hopping youâ(TM)ll assume that the phone itself is just too old to run the latest OS. And this is a service to the customer because it results in in them paying $800 for good performance again instead of $800. Okay, I can see that. Along with the flaming monkeys that are currently shooting out of my ass. Just kidding, Apple loves us. We donâ(TM)t need to know these kind of details, you know, like the amount of RAM in our devices. Let go and let Apple, people. If they donâ(TM)t want us to know, they have a good reason. Take off your tin foil hats and learn to accept Apples love into your heart. You know itâ(TM)s true, everything they do, they do it for you.
That you get your mac mini fixed instead of buying two new ones to replace it means that your canâ(TM)t afford a Mac. Iâ(TM)m sick and tired of your poors trying to claim a piece of the identity I paid good money for. Real iPeople donâ(TM)t get repairs. They purchase replacements. And they care about social justice and climate change. Youâ(TM)re out of youâ(TM)re league. Stick to Android or Windows and stop trying to social climb beyond your value to corporations that matter.
you poor people and your repairs. real ipeople laugh at you. you canâ(TM)t afford a mac so stop trying. i can afford a mac so People know i matter. unlike you. iâ(TM)m better than you. and happier. and more successful. iâ(TM)m secure in my identity too. it takes talent to own a mac. talent that only i have.
Except they'd even pay MORE to make something not last as long, if it still meant more in a margins*sales equation.
In practice, it wouldn't be unreasonable for reuse of materials that cost 10% more to reduce consumption overall, by 100%+.
There have actually been some huge complaints from the recycling industry, especially in China about this kind of nonsense. Inks that make paper harder to recycle, plastics not clearly marked (or cleaned - rinse your stuff, consumers!), to point where there's talk of adding cost of recycling to some goods beyond the obvious electronics!
I thought Right To Repair was a hardware thing. If anything, it should invigorate the need for Apple to give users more access to the OS.
You whine like a clueless child. It's not so easy to do the extra engineering to everything, unless you're a self professed genius.
Why do you hate people so much?
Good thing they aren't doing that, then. What they are doing is making the device run more smoothly with a degrading battery, avoiding possibly worse glitches. If you get the battery replaced, you'll get that performance back.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Looks like I can spend $20-$25 to replace my iPhone 5S battery at iFixit. The extra $5 is if I want a complete replacement kit as opposed to just the battery. I don't know why you're complaining about not being able to change your own battery when it's fairly inexpensive to do so.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Have you any evidence that it would fail to detect a new battery and go back to top performance?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
How do you measure performance degradation? Is this going to evolve into accusations and selected benchmarks? What if a function becomes slightly slower because it does more?
If you legislate that OS upgrades must be available, the manufacturer may just say that there are no upgrades for that device, and that the later OSes are for later devices. If you try to rule that manufacturers must provide upgrades that apply to similar devices, you need to define "similar". Is a 32-bit phone similar to a 64-bit phone?
This stuff really can't be covered by useful laws. You need to buy phones that suit your purposes from manufacturers that will supply them. If no manufacturer sells one you like, that's too bad for you.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Twice now since the upgrade, my iPhone6 has gone into a mode where it got warmer and chewed up the available battery in about an hour or two (when I wasn't doing anything with it, except and occasional e-mail check). Usually, I can go two or three days without recharging if I have to. After a recharge, it worked fine.
This makes me think that there is a bug in the slow down mechanism which causes it to occasionally eat power instead of saving it...
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
No, as someone who's designed battery charging systems for mobile devices, I can tell you that there are FAR better ways of dealing with this problem than what Apple did. Don't let any tech handwaving fool you - the PRIMARY purpose of this code in iOS is to make old phones so annoyingly slow that users are more or less forced into buying a new one. This only confirms what's been widely suspected for years - that Apple's updates continually slow down their phones and iPads, and the only way to avoid that is to not upgrade - a process that is became far harder with 10.3.3.
(For those who don't know - you really can't turn down an iOS "upgrade" any more - it insists on downloading and trying to install it. Even "declining" the installation just postpones it to the upcoming night. You have to do that, then go an manually delete the update through Apple's deliberately clunky "Manage Storage" interface in Settings. This will work for about a week or two, until it decides for you that you really do need to upgrade, since it's their phone, not yours, and the whole customer-pissing-off process begins again...)
The deliberate slowdown of all but the newest hardware, in conjunction with the new policy of effectively forcing "upgrades" is in my mind, prima facie evidence of an antitrust violation far worse than the one that got IBM slapped for decades. I'm as done with Apple as I am with the NFL. Never again. Ever.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
I stand by my comment. While the glue problem isn't as bad with the phones, it's bad enough to cause a great many screens to break in the process of trying to open the phones. (The only reason this isn't seen as a bigger problem is that screen replacement is a more common reason than battery replacement for taking the phone apart in the first place.)
I'm well familiar with iFixit, and have used their guides. And yes, tablets and 2-in-1s are a true nightmare.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Agreed. You certainly can't come up with technical mandates in law that will make any sense. (And we should all be opposed to further government intrusion into our lives anyway - we've gone far too far down that road already...)
That said, it does seem to me that what Apple has done here clearly and flagrantly violates several significant Federal laws around antitrust and warranty issues. The sad thing is that, like Hillary, they will almost certainly get away with it because they are the darlings of the "in" crowd...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Would you like to tell me what these laws are? What should Apple have done to stay legal? Allowed phones to crash? Shipped unicorn-ion batteries that don't degrade? Put a "crash your phone when it's busy" option in the Settings?
I haven't heard of Apple doing anything to stop iFixit from selling battery replacement kits, so I have no idea why you're mentioning anti-trust.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Ah, you have some real knowledge about this? Great! What would be a better technological way for Apple to handle battery degradation? You appear to have left that out of your posting, in favor of speculation about Apple's motives.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
So you're saying the washing machine I got rapaired under warrenty simply doesn't exist? I've been piling my clothes on the utility room floor for 2 hours and then throwing them in the dryer all these years?
It shouldn't have taken as much effort as it did to find the repair manual for future reference, and the spare parts should be a lot easier for end users to order.
My parents 30 year old washing machine (Maybe even older) is running currently thanks to elbow grease, and a Born-in-the-Depression mentality that you should be able to fix things. Does everything a modern washer needs to do: Wash Clothes. Who needs one I can stream Rick and Morty on?