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Slashdot Asks: How Should Apple Have Responded To the Battery Controversy?
Yesterday, Apple officially apologized for slowing down older phones in order to compensate for degrading batteries. In a letter to customers, Apple said, "We apologize," 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 unusual replacement cost. They're also promising to add features to iOS that provide more information about the battery health in early 2018.
Apple's response has left many wondering whether or not it is enough. Even though they are discounting the cost of a battery replacement, for example, they are still profiting from each battery replacement. At the end of the day, "Apple only came clean after independent investigation, giving the whole situation an air of underhanded secrecy," writes Macworld. Should Apple have responded differently to the battery controversy? In the first place, should Apple even issue a software update to older devices to purposefully throttle the CPU and prevent the phones from randomly shutting down when experiencing rapid power draw?
Quinn Nelson via Snazzy Labs explains the controversy and how it is largely exaggerated.
Apple's response has left many wondering whether or not it is enough. Even though they are discounting the cost of a battery replacement, for example, they are still profiting from each battery replacement. At the end of the day, "Apple only came clean after independent investigation, giving the whole situation an air of underhanded secrecy," writes Macworld. Should Apple have responded differently to the battery controversy? In the first place, should Apple even issue a software update to older devices to purposefully throttle the CPU and prevent the phones from randomly shutting down when experiencing rapid power draw?
Quinn Nelson via Snazzy Labs explains the controversy and how it is largely exaggerated.
full communism now
They could have made it an option. Speed or longer battery life.
They should have issued a statement saying the code was written to extend the life of the battery and prevent reboots due to voltage drops.
Then they could have issued a patch that made the behaviour optional, perhaps with a pop up message suggesting enabling it when the battery started failing.
Finally, the battery replacement discount is not a bad PR move.
I think what they did is about right - apologize for not making it clear, make it cheaper to get a new battery than any replaceable would have been, and then (most importantly) add information so people can tell if a battery is wearing out or not.
It's not like it's a manufacturing defect, where Apple would actually replace a part. The whole system is acting as designed, and in fact in the best interests of the users - lots of other companies would have just added an info panel and called it good. The batteries are still working just fine. The cheap battery replacement is beyond what they really had to do, but is good customer service.
I also question between parts and labor if Apple is really making money on the battery replacement at that price. That was just thrown out as a given but who claims that is still a profit?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The first "should" of this mess is: batteries should be user-replaceable.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Obviously, they should have used their vaunted "Time Machine" to go into the past and make different choices, like user-replaceable parts and full disclosure on how they were fixing the battery power related crashing issue.
What good is a time machine if you can't use it to fix past mistakes?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
A simple notice telling users that their battery was tired and the phone is being slowed to prevent unexpected shutoffs would have avoided the entire issue.
Do you request the same thing of executives at CPU manufactures who decided to throttle your CPU when it's about to overheat?
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
If your cell phone CPU can't eventually cause this problem, by drawing more current than it's possible for a worn out battery to provide, triggering a shutdown...
You probably own a Nokia "feature phone", and not a smart phone.
Other cell phone vendors have already stated that "Yes, we do the same thing".
Do you know one company with a sealed battery that's going to want a lawsuit against Apple about this to be successful?
That's an automatic precedent against them doing the same thing, as well.
a) Not dunnit in the first place (device slowdown as battery degrades). That was a crappy thing to do and serves to highlight the "mandatory 18 month upgrade" that's so much a part of the Apple business model.
You'd really prefer the random crashes instead of the degraded performance, ya?
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Why do investigators need to to go to great lengths to "prove" Apple's wrongdoing.
We should be able to look it up in the source code history.
Apple uses the BSD kernel and LOTS of other open source code, so they pretend to share: http://opensource.apple.com/ [apple.com]
But, really, that is just a joke. A browser of a bunch of fragmented stuff that nobody actually uses on any actual machine that I am aware of.
FreeBSD and Linux are super secure and dependable, in large part BECAUSE they are open source.
Google's Android is also mostly open-source.
Apple needs to do the same.
If the media wants to find a 'gate, they'll find a 'gate. There's nothing Apple coulda done to prevent it besides BEING PERFECT IN ALL REGARDS AND CREATE PERFECT EVERLASTING PRODUCTS.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
They should've shut the company down, open-sourced their codebase and donated their blood-money to the EFF.
Though I might be biased.
Indeed, all other phones are always slow, not just after their second or so year. Brilliant tactic.
And all other batteries last forever too, obviously.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
No, because that's well documented behaviour of the CPU, and is a temporary state - when the temperature goes down, the CPU speed will go back up.
These updates by Apple were permanent, and would get more aggressive over time, so your once snappy phone would become sluggish, eventually making you upgrade to a new phone, since you weren't informed that the true problem was the battery, that could be cheaply replaced.
How is waiting on an uber or taking a phone call a high performance job?
Oh, you mean the ones with the Eternal Battery(TM)(R)(C) from Acme Corp. Well then, nobody's keeping you from buying one of those instead.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
100% refund, no questions asked + contract buy out if you reuped for 2 years to get a new phone.
I think Apple should have given everyone a free battery replacement for the inconvenience cause by slowing down the older iDevices (including mine),
Apple should have released an app to allow the user to control battery life versus performance and explain the pros and cons and the alternative of installing a new battery.
Go well
I think ichimunki was fishing for a "Funny" mod, but it's hard to say without looking for the invisible AC comment he's replying to. Moot in my case, since I never see a mod point to give.
Having said that, I'm seriously wondering if this fiasco is my opportunity to learn about the iPhone on the cheap. It would seem that I could now get a secondhand iPhone at the usual low cost, but then replace the battery and make it almost as good as new thanks to Apple's tiny dip into their humongous cash reserves.
Any experts willing to address possible problems and questions with this plan?
(1) What older models are worth considering?
(2) Are the secondhand prices already jumping up?
(3) How do older models compare with using newer iPhones?
(4) Can I just pop my SIM from my Android phone into the iPhone and go?
I can guess a bit on Question (4). I think it should be okay as long as the used iPhone is locked to the same network I am using now. However I'm not sure about the SIM form factors for iPhones...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Haven't been following this closely. iPhone batteries are dying because users are holding the devices wrong? Have i got that right?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Yes, they either suffer from the same problems, implemented the same solution, or already slowed the CPU down whether they shipped. This is a hardware limitation (so it could be done in software, firmware or hardware.) But batteries that can power a CPU at 100% when new cannot power that CPU at 100% when old. So, either you have to prevent apps from using 100% of the CPU, or the battery randomly cuts out when it's eventually using 100% of the CPU.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Blame someone? No problem. All they have to do is blame Steve Jobs. Jobs being beyond the reach of retribution and all. (And I won't be all that surprised if that's exactly what they do).
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
He hits me cuz he love me
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
If your cell phone CPU can't eventually cause this problem, by drawing more current than it's possible for a worn out battery to provide, triggering a shutdown...
You probably own a Nokia "feature phone", and not a smart phone.
If your cell phone shuts down while attempting to draw even a fraction of the power that is still used to fast charge these old phones, you've stuffed up the design. It's also quite telling that it only effects a subset of Apple models too.
Other cell phone vendors have already stated that "Yes, we do the same thing".
Except where they haven't, where they have outright denied it (just scroll down the Slashdot front page a bit), and where the whole issue seems to be a uniquely Apple problem.
Do you know one company with a sealed battery that's going to want a lawsuit against Apple about this to be successful?
Yeah let's start with all the companies who don't have a problems with their batteries at end of life.
a) Not dunnit in the first place (device slowdown as battery degrades). That was a crappy thing to do and serves to highlight the "mandatory 18 month upgrade" that's so much a part of the Apple business model.
You'd really prefer the random crashes instead of the degraded performance, ya?
A degraded battery, that is, a battery that goes flat sooner than it did when new, causes random crashes? I don't see the connection. Do you have an example?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Yes, they either suffer from the same problems, implemented the same solution, or already slowed the CPU down whether they shipped. This is a hardware limitation (so it could be done in software, firmware or hardware.) But batteries that can power a CPU at 100% when new cannot power that CPU at 100% when old. So, either you have to prevent apps from using 100% of the CPU, or the battery randomly cuts out when it's eventually using 100% of the CPU.
and/or they have a user replaceable battery.
But seriously, in all the years I've carried a cell phone, back to those huge military walkie-talkie-looking Motorola monsters, through multiple Motorola, LG and Samsung models, to my current rather elderly Note 3, I've not yet had the experience of random crashes due to a degraded battery. Are you sure they're not just making that part up? Earlier reports were that they slowed down the CPU to retain the illusion of useful battery life when the battery started to degrade. "Random crashes" sounds like a marketing invention to me.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
With Apple more than almost any other company, and with phones more than almost any other product, "you put yourself into the manufacturer's hands." Apple has been clear from the start that they don't really care what customers want, so long as they can get more iPhone sales.
Customers wanted physical keyboards, to be able to add Apps from anywhere, free ring tones and the ability to record your own, standard chargers, and being able to plug in audio devices with a universal jack. Guess what? Apple does their best to make those things either impossible or very, very difficult. They don't seem to think it would sell more phones to do what customers want. Their profits tend to make me think they're right.
How is it even a little surprising that Apple would behave in this manner?! This is completely predictable and typical of the company. The reason they apologized was obviously to prevent it from becoming a big enough news story that the average iPhone buyer might notice.
And guess what? Most people who get frustrated with their slowing phone won't get the battery fixed because they won't know it's even an option. They'll buy another iPhone and Apple knows that. The few who actually know about it and take advantage of the offer will think Apple's doing something really good for them.
What should Apple have done? Exactly what they did. It's the best way to get money and that's exactly what they're accomplishing.
Apple's historic obsession with thin, tiny phones and the resulting sealed batteries is environmentally disastrous as well as creating these battery replacement dramas. The Samsung Galaxy Note and similar phones show that people like big phones. The Galaxy Note 4 has a 3000 mah user replaceable battery and it's still a great phone even in 2017.
Apple shot itself in the foot for years with its 3.5" phones when everyone else had moved to 5". When Apple finally did manage to start shipping decent sized phones (iPhone 6+) they had to do it literally over Steve Jobs' dead body. But they still haven't caught on that people want swappable batteries like back in the day, and Samsung has caught the disease as well.
Maybe this can become a redemption moment for Apple. Put a user replaceable battery in the iPhone 11 or whatever it's called. Then the rest of the industry will follow.
Customers wanted physical keyboards, to be able to add Apps from anywhere, free ring tones and the ability to record your own, standard chargers, and being able to plug in audio devices with a universal jack
I am a happy Apple customer. iPhone 6, iPad Pro, pencil, earbuds and watch series 3. And I want none of those things. What I do want is a phone with decent water resistance, secured with regular and immediate updates (when there is a problem) and some control of apps that minimises exploitative ones. Apple gives me this. No one else does.
Nowadays, you have to 'trust' someone. Trusting Apple is better than trusting a whole lot of randoms.
My wife owns an iPhones 5s. The battery is pretty worn, and needs replacement.
I borrowed it the other day to use the GPS to get somewhere; half-way to my destination it shut down, even though it claimed to have 15% battery remaining. I would MUCH rather it had slowed down and stayed running; as I was driving at the time I didn't notice it had turned itself off (as I was driving, I relied on the audio cues), and missed my turn.
If Apple should have done anything different, it's that there should be a notification letting the user know that their battery is failing, needs to be replaced, and was being slowed down to allow the phone to run as long as possible. It's not the throttling code that is at fault -- it's the social conventions that were missed that is the problem.
But then again, even if they had provided a pop-up to warn users, there would be a cabal of Apple-haters claiming it was just some plot by Apple to get people to replace their iPhone batteries before it was necessary to do so. Apple could invent the cure for cancer, and some people would bitch about it.
Yaz
Physics: batteries get tired after a while.
Consequence: the phone can no longer do everything at once without the risk of shutting down.
Options: new battery or new phone, or do less.
Economics: All phone makers like the new phone path.
Apple's first Plan: We are Apple so of course we choose so you don't get ^H^H^H have to. We will not do everything so fast so it won't shut down at random times.
Apples's second plan, we are embarrassed at the lameness of the first plan so we will now provide a really cheap path to a new battery.
Suggested customer friendly plan for the future: Reasonably priced battery replacement is nice, but a functioning aftermarket should have this covered. The phone should provide some clear indication as to the progression of this issue. (Perhaps a new phone should say expect battery issues in N recharges?) Then the phone should empower the user with the option of how the phone should handle the progression. Ignore and shutdown, slow down to milk the battery for all it can provide, or nag to schedule a replacement. Unless Apple provides free batteries, the phone is going to be the messenger for bad battery news. Tim's (he's in charge, so he owns it) plan of trying to hide the physics and then be met with lawyers was not optimal because it put Apple between a rock (physics) and a hard spot (the customers.)
So if you are going to charge $1K for a phone, would it make sense to make wear items like batteries free for 10 years?
The reason to buy a new phone should be the the new phone is so much better, not that the old one is worn out.
They told their followers that it was a feature that no one else had. Offered batteries that were probably rotting in some warehouse somewhere at fire-sale prices, while probably making a profit. Than suggested that said followers get on their knees, pull down their pants, and get ready for a 14 hour x-code update that breaks everything.
> Customers wanted physical keyboards
No. *Blackberry* customers wanted physical keyboards. And they kept buying Blackberries until the company imploded. For the first several years of Android's existence, there were many available with physical keyboards. The first Android *EVER* had a physical keyboard. The models with touchscreens outsold the ones with keyboards by far; and Android manufacturers eventually quit making keyboard phones because they weren't selling. The iPhone just predicted the trend, that's all.
> to be able to add Apps from anywhere
Even in the first several years when it was trivial to jailbreak an iPhone, only a tiny fraction of users bothered. A very few customers wanted this. The vast majority didn't.
> free ring tones and the ability to record your own
Trivially easy and free out-of-the-box with GarageBand. I've added plenty of my own rightness and notification sounds. It's not Apple's fault you never bothered to read any documentation or even Google a howto.
> standard chargers
Nope. MicroUSB connectors are crap in oh so many ways. My opinion on the matter may change once USB-C becomes ubiquitous. But I'd choose Lightning over Micro-USB any time.
> and being able to plug in audio devices with a universal jack
Five years ago you may have had a point. Once I was gifted my first pair of Bluetooth headphones though, I was hooked; and the 3.5mm port on my 6s went unused throughout most of the phone's lifetime. Now, the only wired headphones I have left are for my Playstation (Because Sony refuses to play nice with standard Bluetooth.). And I don't miss the port on my 8 at all.
Imagine all the people...
Maybe you missed the story earlier, but every other manufacturer has denied doing it.
The only one that had this issue was Google, and they replaced every affected Nexus 6P for free.
If the battery is properly sized then by the time it becomes an issue the user will have replaced it because 1 hour of use per charge is inadequate. It's the size of the cathode that matters.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
With apologies to Jack Nicholson ("A Few Good Men")
The truth? We can't handle the Truth
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Ones with batteries that can be removed and replaced. Although that would dissappoint the NSA.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
1) batteries should be user replaceable
2) phone (or any other product) should be reparable
3) OS should be open sourced to allow scrutiny and avoid misconduct by companies. A battery has a limited lifespan, driven by the laws of physics. An OS should not have a limited lifespan limited by the will of Apple, Google or any other.
Totof
We've had these complaints since long before iOS 10. My iPhone 4s took a terrible speed and stability hit overnight when I upgraded from iOS 8 -> iOS 9. But Apple's defined the conversation as being about slowing down iPhone 6 and newer with iOS 10. Is this just artful dodging?
Apple was faced with the PR problem of convincing people their approach was right--which it totally is-- or accepting blame. If you are going to do the latter, accept fault for something you are wrongly faulted for then your best move is not to do it grudgingly. Do it so everyone feels they got more than they deserved but isn't too painful. Apple is buying some customer loyalty with a write down.
What astonishes me the most is the other companies saying they don't throttle power usage as a battery degrades. How happy are you going to be when you fire up Halo or whatever on your fully charged Moto and in 2 minuted the phone hard shuts down? Or you can't make it through half a day with the phone, used just to send texts and calls?
That's insane. Of course you want the phone to take measures to deal with a weak battery.
People say, well it should be my choice. it should be a setting. Well people without iphones probably don't realize it is (partly) a setting. When your charge gets below 20% IOS asks if you want to use low power mode. So it is a choice now. Apple went a step further and had a second layer of adaptive power management on top of that as well. But they still gave you a choice on that. The Choice was to buy a new battery or not.
Everyone would prefer the option of a battery that lasts forever and never degrades and costs the same and weighs the same. But no phone has that option. Every phone in existence needs a new battery after enough use. For most people, the upgrade cycle is fast enough they never need that new battery. But for some, they do. ANd for those folks they are much better off with a slow thottling of the battery than not. That can buy you a year or more before you need to choose: Buy a new battery or live with noticably slow phone. That year probably converts most of those people to be within their upgrade cycle.
SO this is a feature not a bug. You can if you like fault apple for not touting this up front as a positive benefit. But as you can see from the idiots commenting below me that it's very hard to explain this in a few words and not people think "oh gosh they slow my phone down?". They don't think that it's always preferably to having the battery life be unusably short.
For the crazy people who run super computing calculations on their iphones and demand no degraded speed and don't understand that battery operated devices have considerations, then by all means buy a moto. or buy anew battery. But stop whining.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Interesting comment, perhaps even worth an "Insightful" mod if I ever saw a mod point to give. (In contrast to receiving so many of the trolls', eh?) Still a bit stretched to see how your comment fits as a reply to my questions. It does sound like you might be someone in a position to answer some of them, so let me recap:
I think Apple designs well, but limits my freedom through monopolistic practices. For that reason, I have only purchased one Apple device in my life, a MacBook Pro with Retina display. I do have LOTS of experience with Apple products, from professional programming on a Apple II through some years of teaching university students to work with Macs. My relatively recent experiences with the MacBook Pro have been quite mixed. It has some excellent features and I normally use it every day for certain tasks (though I do most of my work and play on Windows and Ubuntu Linux boxen), but many of my experiences with the MacBook and especially with the Apple websites have been extremely negative. I would say that overall my view of Apple have become much more negative, and right I now regard Apple as the nastiest and most dangerous case of corporate cancer in the world.
And yet I want to learn new things. The iPhone is a significant new thing in the world, but I have no firsthand experience with it. There is much to learn there, and perhaps the current situation allows me a way to learn some of those things with little direct profit to Apple (thereby preventing me from contributing too directly to worsening the problems created by Apple's cancerous ways).
Let me pose my questions more directly from my perspective:
Should I buy a secondhand iPhone?
If so, which models should I consider?
Will a cheap secondhand iPhone with a new battery be almost as good as an expensive new iPhone?
How much of the "iPhone experience" can I really get from an older iPhone?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Nah they need to keep selling the point that they are still working off of the flawless plans written by steve jobs. Blaming jobs would be like North Korea blaming Kim Jong Il, or Kim Il Sung for their problems. They are supposed to imply thier past leaders were divine gods incapable of mistakes.
> they are still profiting from each battery replacement
At $29 per replacement?
That sounds like break-even to me, at best.