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Apple Apologizes For iPhone Slowdown Drama, Will Offer $29 Battery Replacements (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Apple just published a letter to customers apologizing for the "misunderstanding" around older iPhones being slowed down, following its recent admission that it was, in fact, slowing down older phones in order to compensate for degrading batteries. "We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down," says the company. "We apologize." Apple says in its letter that batteries are "consumable components," and is offering anyone with an iPhone 6 or later a battery replacement for $29 starting in late January through December 2018 -- a discount of $50 from the usual replacement cost. Apple's also promising to add features to iOS that provide more information about the battery health in early 2018, so that users are aware of when their batteries are no longer capable of supporting maximum phone performance.
Saying all of that in the beginning would have saved them a lot of grief. It's not like they solved a mystery today. So, why did they not simply disclose this? They could have buried it in a KB article and been done with it.
Beware of the Leopard.
And those are likely to be dismissed - no evidence yet shows any correlation between iOS version and performance scores that's not actually due to a poor battery.
FWIW, I replaced the battery in my 3yo iPhone 6 a few months ago, and it despite heavy use it hadn't dropped enough to trigger the slowdown. It had degraded noticeably from a battery life standpoint though, so well worth replacing regardless.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
From the article on the $29 battery replacement:
Apple's also promising to add features to iOS that provide more information about the battery health in early 2018, so that users are aware of when their batteries are no longer capable of supporting maximum phone performance
I'm more happy about that than anything, it will be great to have something concrete to point to if someones phone seems slow and I want to rule out an old battery being part of the issue.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's inside a phone SEALED SHUT with **GLUE**.
by including in iOS the ability to see health information of battery like you can on MacBooks. Show the Cycle Count and Condition and other pertinent info so users have a better idea of when the battery is bad and needs replacing.
If they remove the slowdown, then they will be admitting that the excuse was a lie in the first place. So providing inexpensive batteries doesn't force them to admit to lying and open themselves up to a lawsuit.
Obviously I don't know if the original excuse was true or not, but this was pretty much the only thing that they could have done in either case.
Does anyone know enough about Li Ion batteries to weigh in on whether or not this makes sense? Does the peak power capability drop enough that its likely it couldn't support the power use?
These are my favorite types of corporate apologies:
"We at Apple want to apologize to any of our snowflake consumers who misunderstood our intent to force them into our new models. We did not mean to offend these little pricks who expect our products to work more than a couple of years. Now send us some money and we'll totally fix the problem we created."
You are welcome on my lawn.
Did they do it all on purpose for some twisted marketing reason, from slowing it down, to leaking the problem, to giving a solution. The X is not selling well. I was at my carrier's store getting a new phone today (not an apple) and asked about the X. The manager said they had 20 in stock and they were not moving. Worse for them, they own it, can't discount it and can't return unsold inventory back to apple. There could be some very unhappy carriers if the get stuck with a bunch of X's. Could this battery getting headlines actually help sales of the X in some weird way?
Your phone depends on complex thermal and power management to avoid unpleasant things like suddenly shutting down, burning your privates or bursting in flames. When the later case occurs, like with Note 7, you have a cause to complain. Otherwise, it's normal for performance to vary based on the weather or a particular bumper case. Would you prefer for devices to be artificially throttled when conditions allow faster operations so you don't get disappointed when they are a little slower?
Oh, goodness gracious- you caught us. We're so embarrassed that we'll use this opportunity to sell you something else, like an overpriced battery. Aren't we just a bunch of naughty little rascals?
Hey, look over there- it's the iPhoneXs! The "s" is for "suckers", but you knew that, and we know you'll STILL buy it!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
It would put them closer to par with their hardware development process. They've been designing hardware with major flaws for years and never acknowledging a thing. If a customer complains loud enough, they get a free replacement with no explanation - but no recalls, no attempts at anything better. Especially see every Macbook Pro for the last 10 years.
Oh, so now it only costs twice as much as other phones' batteries... until the price cut expires in a year.
Sounds about as good as the Republican tax plan.
It certainly is.
It looks like either they did a really poor job of power supply design (other phones don't "suddenly shut down" and they don't have this "feature"), or that they're just throttling for the obvious reason: they want you to buy a new phone.
As for their protest, quoted verbatim here from their letter:
They threw the PPC emulation out the window for just as little reason (no, probably less.) They let all those user's software suddenly go obsolete for a reason that boils down to "weren't going to pay for the emulation any longer", again, when they had tons of cash to maintain the tech and users had tons of PPC software. I still support PPC software running on (very) old machines, specifically because there is no reasonable in-OS upgrade path that lets that stuff keep running. The irony is that the massive power of the machines we have now would make those apps run very well indeed — and we know Apple did this as a choice, not a need.
I have more examples. From apps they took out of the store because they had integrated the tech into a new phone, thereby removing the possibility of users of an older phone having the tech unless they upgraded — to severe bugs they leave mouldering in old versions of the OS while not allowing upgrades to the new version of the OS, Apple is a known serial offender of the "let's pressure the customer."
Apple is lying here. Flat-out lying. And caught at it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
An actual fix would be to allow users to decide whether they want performance or battery time.
Fuck, you're being obtuse. Up until recently, people thought their best option to a slow phone was a newer $1000 phone, not a $79 repair. People think of battery as operating life, not operating performance. If it reports having juice, it should be at max speed, right?
By hiding this "feature", many people couldn't make an informed decision. Given the new information, how many people would have been happy to replace the battery instead of the phone?
Apple is going to take a beating on new sales because now that this is public, those old, slow ass phones will get a $29 new battery and resold for cheaper than a new phone. The resale market is going to boom and people will not upgrade as often.
Dumbfuck. When you get your battery replaced by Apple, you get your original phone BACK.