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Apple Investigated By France For 'Planned Obsolescence' (bbc.com)
AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: French prosecutors have launched a probe over allegations of "planned obsolescence" in Apple's iPhone. Under French law it is a crime to intentionally shorten the lifespan of a product with the aim of making customers replace it. In December, Apple admitted that older iPhone models were deliberately slowed down through software updates. It follows a legal complaint filed in December by pro-consumer group Stop Planned Obsolescence (Hop). Hop said France was the third country to investigate Apple after Israel and the U.S., but the only one in which the alleged offense was a crime. Penalties could include up to 5% of annual turnover or even a jail term.
*Planned* obsolescence is a crime in France, not obsolescence per se. Thus, your comment is moot.
How in the hell is the average consumer supposed to assess the durability of a smartphone?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Very nice, are you ready to pay for a smartphone like you pay for a durable product like a car? A decade of usable life can be arranged as long as you are willing to accept tradeoffs such as price, weight, form factor and features. Not interested? Than STFU. Market delivers what customers are asking for.
Methinks that when I shell out $1000 for an I-phone, it is a durable product. You may have a point with el cheapo $50 smartphones, but then they break. They do not suffer from planned obsolesence.
I can say that the 'el cheapo' (well it was 180 when it came out, and ~50-80 when it was discontinued) has lasted me far longer than basically everyone I knew with a 600+ dollar contract phone. Basically all of them replaced it before the 2 year replacement period due to physical damage, failed batteries, or drops in the toilet.
While my phone wouldn't have survived that last one, it survived the former for years and is still running to this day. It won't be replaced until 2G GSM is turned off for good.
Maybe. Cars have never been better, so "more like a car" is quite appealing, actually. I know I don't want my smartphone (or the other airline passenger's smartphone) to behave like a Samsung Galaxy Note 7. It shouldn't electrocute anybody, it should be secure (and not only when the manufacturer first shipped it), and it should fully honor my privacy requirements. It should be repairable and not more fragile than a snowflake in Bangkok. I should be able to use it to summon an ambulance or police officer reliably, with my correct location, and even if I don't have the correct SIM and only have a weak signal on another carrier's tower (or a Wi-Fi connection). It should support truly important public safety alerting, such as "tornado approaching." It should not jam the signals of the whole neighborhood's baby monitors. If I ever get a hearing aid, I ought to still be able to hear the other caller.
In short, yes, there is some appropriate role for government regulation of smartphones.
Related to this.. but not 100 % ontopic..
Every time I updated my samsung s3 (i still use it) it got slower and slower.. until i just gave up.
Everybody I talked to said the same thing, about other manufacturers too.
I gave up updating my phone. I don't have anything I cannot live without on it (it's a phone people).. I don't install apps on it except maybe 2-3 apps such as Chrome, Guitar Tuner and LINE Messanger.
That's such BS and Apple users pay a premium as it is. "Durable" has nothing to do with "obsolete". I own a "durable" iPhone 4S - arguably the most "durable" phone they ever made - hell, it feels heavy in your hand - it's perfectly functional yet it has been rendered obsolete by Apple which quit releasing updates for it without warning. The day I bought it I had no idea how long it would be supported because Apple doesn't publish this information. That sounds like planned obsolescence to me. When you buy a Mac or iPhone you have no idea how long it will be supported once the warranty expires. Contrast that with Microsoft which publishes that e.g. Windows 7 will be supported until 1/14/2020: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet and they publish this shit like 10 years in advance.
Apple implemented a technical solution that kept phones usable for LONGER than other phone makers. By not shutting down randomly as the battery aged, by trying to maintain a day of battery life in the phone for a longer period of time, Apple was delaying the time when a user might have to repair or replace a phone.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've worked in this industry for over a decade (never for Apple) What people don't realize is that batteries age, and so do chips especially when pushed to a limit. Ever wonder why military or even automotive grade chips are running so much slower and cooler? It's because they are rated for much longer lifetime than consumer grade devices - they are limited so they last the required number of years. Consumers want top performance, but they trade lifetime due to stress on the hardware. What Apple did here is cap the device performance increasing the device reliability and potential lifespan.
I would suspect that it would generally be better all around for some kind of discounted exchange, especially if we start putting forth measures to increase the salvage from recycling electronics.
As for CPU performance drops due to inherent security flaws, that's a bit of a tougher question. I think that the only example we have right now is too muddled by a monopolistic control on the market to have a satisfactory solution.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
it's perfectly functional yet it has been rendered obsolete by Apple which quit releasing updates for it without warning.
How is it obsolete?
You can still download apps for it (any apps that originally supported the 4s).
You can still browse the web, or use it for maps/GPS.
You can still email with it.
You can still make calls with it.
Again, it's not obsolete - it just lacks features that newer devices have. But just because newer devices have more or better features does not render a device "obsolete".
My wife has an iPad 2 she still uses. That's not getting updates either but it doesn't matter - she uses it for many hours at a time for Netflix or browsing and it continues to work just fine, as it will until it breaks.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Where have you seen a phone, laptop or anything with an adequate lithium battery that shuts down randomly due to it being "old"? That thing pushes multiple of it's capacity in current. "Let's heroically overcome the problem we created on purpose!"
you don't really get it do you? they made it run slower on purpose.
but they will use their excuse that it was to save battery life and money for the customer.
never mind dude that.. it's made on purpose to not be repairable and you cannot change the battery and the battery fails after 2 years as per spec to the level where they started slowing them down on purpose, without telling the customer.
and yeah most people would accept such tradeoffs. but you can't buy a high end internals phone with a removable cover and battery nowadays.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You two might not, but you must be the 0.01%
I have.
Computers:
Power supplies going bang when they're turned on? Yes.
Stock RAM becoming defective? Yes
Graphics cards going defective? Yes
That's just computer kit, and there's lots more - mobo, cpu, etc, etc.
Now onto cars:
switches, relays, becoming defective? Yes.
ECU/SAM failures due to water ingres (design issue)? Yes
Defective airbag connector and/or airbag recall? Yes
Now house electricals:
My lightbulb stopped working. Amazing. Consumer grade. Yes.
Etc.
The list goes on and on. To say you've never had a failure in consumer grade electronics would basically be akin to an outright lie, or you are the single luckiest person on the planet, or an idiot.
I would not want my phone to reboot in the middle of a 999/112 call because some app needed more current than the battery could supply for a single moment. Throttle the processor, keep the device working, especially in case of emergencies
...or even a jail term.
LOCK 'EM UP! Throw away the keys!
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Everything I've ever owned with lithium batteries has this problem. Eg: My first netbook got cooked in the sun with the power off ... it would vanish from 50% after that.
I don't own a single Apple product, but maybe I should start buying ...
They didn't make it run slower in general, they limited the top speed of the CPU. The reason is not to save battery life, it's because the battery could already not support that top speed. All they did was make it not shut down. It's like a car that had a top speed of 120 Mph, but because of age it can no longer safely do that, so it tops out at 100. Any driving below that speed in unaffected.
If you have a complaint, complain that the battery wasn't designed to last longer.
All Apple had to do was advertise this from the start as a feature and let you turn it off if you wanted to; competitors would have been rushing to copy it! They've been strung up by their own controlfreakery and secrecy. Idiots.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
They didn't drop the operating performance. They limited the top speed. A speed which the aging battery already could not support, but now instead of shutting down the phone continues to function. Any operations not requiring that top speed are unaffected and function as always. If you want to complain, complain that the battery wasn't designed to last longer.
If you had worked in the industry you would know that you design your hardware to only work over the lifetime of the battery. Every battery datasheet has graphs and tables giving you the performance over its lifetime.
Keep in mind this started well within the warranty period. Apple did it to avoid millions of warranty battery replacements.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Market delivers what customers are asking for.
Could you please point to the market that thinks that thinner and thinner phones are more important than stability and battery life?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
By dropping it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
First, battery and chip wear are independent. You can possibly replace the battery, but less likely to replace the main SoC. If the slowdowns began during the warranty period, that means that either Apple pushed the chip and/or the battery harder to get good benchmarks on new devices, or their modeling of typical usage is too conservative, with people hitting the throttle threshold earlier than expected. Usually throttling will kick in based on battery age, temperature, open circuit voltage, source resistance, and how long the peak current was drawn in the last second, few seconds, days or even total since new. Similar restrictions apply to chips like the main SoC and even voltage regulators.
Bottom line is, the harder you use your phone, the faster it ages. If this French challenge will hold, that will result in Apple "smoothing" the aging by either limiting performance across the board, or start limiting it based on daily or weekly usage (for example you will only be allowed peak performance for so many minutes per day) which isn't necessarily what consumers want, but it would prolong the phone life with everyone getting nice performance in the morning, and those who use it heavily seeing slowdowns later in the day.
Yay for car analogies. Especially if they fall flat on the face because any car that can for some odd reason due to its manufacturer's decision no longer reach the top speed would be subject to recalls...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think the first rule should be that there is a clear 'map of obsolescence', that the communication should be clear, and that there are decent warranties. You can't rely on the PR for that. There are a lot of factors involved, some avoidable, some deliberate, some unavoidable. Making it hard to replace a battery is a form of intentional obsolescence so it should be made very clear.
Durability is another area. It is 'optimized' everywhere now and it is hard to measure but it can be covered by warranties.
Obsolescence is becoming a major design issue, and it can even be pushed from above, through laws arranged with lobbyists. Environmental norms for cars for instance generally have built in obsolescence and they raise the bar for newcomers and small players.
As the behavior of the device would have been worse if Apple did nothing, it takes a special kind of shit to suggest Apple was doing this to drive sales.
No, markets often do not deliver what the customer is asking for.
There is no such thing as an unregulated market. There may be over-regulated markets, or under-regulated markets. Markets, by their very nature, come about thanks to regulation.
Many companies do this too. :( Maybe companies can make users pay to keep support of old stuff going.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Well, I wish I had fallen off the update bandwagon before it made my iPhone and iPad unusable. The only iDevices that perform the same as the day I bought them are my iPods. Which do not get updates (they are not iPod Touch versions).
Very nice, are you ready to pay for a smartphone like you pay for a durable product like a car? A decade of usable life can be arranged as long as you are willing to accept tradeoffs such as price, weight, form factor and features. Not interested? Than STFU. Market delivers what customers are asking for.
Oh, so customers asked for phones to be made entirely of highly breakable glass? Non-removable batteries? Indiscernible display resolution upgrades? Removing the headphone jack? No memory expansion option? Software behind a walled garden? No ability to install 3rd party OS? Massive amounts of telemetry? So thin it bends and breaks in your pocket? Proprietary physical connectors requiring dongles?
Vendors have been following the manufacturing mantra that caters to one thing and one thing only; Profits. They don't give a shit about what you want. You'll get what what makes them the most money. And they've been doing this for years now, so STFU about them delivering what consumers are asking for.
Greed knows no limits when consumer demand is immeasurable. We thought a $1000 price point would never be eclipsed. It's now been crushed. The $1500 smartphone is coming soon. After all, I'm sure you asked for acoustical sound, vibra-touch interface, and a 16K display resolution...
Not everyone throws stuff away after first use.
If you were a just and honest person, you'd know that suicide is the only proper course for you.
I've worked in this industry for over a decade (never for Apple) What people don't realize is that batteries age, and so do chips especially when pushed to a limit. Ever wonder why military or even automotive grade chips are running so much slower and cooler? It's because they are rated for much longer lifetime than consumer grade devices - they are limited so they last the required number of years. Consumers want top performance, but they trade lifetime due to stress on the hardware. What Apple did here is cap the device performance increasing the device reliability and potential lifespan.
Unless you're one to beat the living shit out of your device physically, the main component going "bad" is the battery, which used to be a component that was replaceable and even upgradable by the end user.
Phones come with a 1-year warranty usually tied to a 2-year contract (where they often finance the cost of the phone with it). Due to the cellular contract length, consumer expectations are two years, plain and simple. Vendors need to stop being so damn greedy and offer a two-year warranty. If they can't design a battery to last more than a year (e.g. 1000 cycles) then offer a free battery replacement after a year. Making these products reasonably more durable isn't rocket science, and hardly requires military-grade hardware upgrades.
The fact they hid it, and never left it in user hand is suspicious, especially since they DO have a mechanism that at 20% you battery you can switch to a low power mode. They could have it pop up like "your telephone is discharging rapidly we will put you in lower power mode". But no, they hid it. to me that is an evidence they were well aware of potential backlash.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Very nice, are you ready to pay for a smartphone like you pay for a durable product like a car?
At just a little shy of $1000 I already pay for it like a car. Hell I pay for it more than most laptops. Why do most laptops seem to last longer?
Ever wonder why military or even automotive grade chips are running so much slower and cooler? It's because they are rated for much longer lifetime than consumer grade devices - they are limited so they last the required number of years.
No you haven't worked in the industry for a decade. With a line like that I will wager that you haven't worked in the industry for even a day. There are very big differences between the automotive / military grade chips and they go miles beyond life expectancy (something that is usually handled through derrating).
In any case it's quite telling that Apple seem to feel a need to derate their 2 year old phones. (Posted from a non-derated 4 year old phone that has suffered dearly at my hands).
If you look at the trends in consumer electronics over the last few years, designed-in obsolescence has become a feature from a range of different classes of device and a broad range of vendors.
For example, consider laptop/netbook computers, which arrive with major components such as CPUs, batteries, RAM and storage all soldered and/or glued in place. All of this makes it much harder to upgrade or use these products in a versatile way.
The same is true for almost all class of tablet, although I'd note that some Android devices [phones and tablets] do come with micro-SD card slots, which do allow for storage upgrades and flexibility.
On the desktop we are moving away from the "assembled" style of computer offered by Dell or Gateway from the 90s and 00s and now we seem to be trending towards all-in-one systems where, once again, everything is soldered or glued down and the potential for upgrades of individual components is virtually non-existent.
Or in the software business, where the latest editions of software are no explicitly programmed so that they cannot be operated on older generations of processors [which, ironically, may not have some of the vulnerabilities found with more modern chips] but with the net effect of forcing people to upgrade what might have been perfectly reasonable hardware just if they want to run modern software. Nor is this limited to Operating Systems - the same deadly embrace includes things like graphics cards and driver stacks and the compatibility demanded by "modern" games... all of which force upgrades to new GPUs, which in turn force upgrades to new OS editions... which force upgrades in hardware.
The hard part about this - for consumers at least - is that this sort of change is a "self-fulfilling prophecy" from the perspective of a tech company. This is because the companies that follow the trend will make more sales, be more profitable and thus displace those companies who had been willing to put the customer first. In other words, we have a situation in which market forces [profits for manufacturers] actually induce and encourage them to adopt practices which will be harmful to consumers in the long run.
Our society anticipated that situations like this might come to be from time to time, setting up regulatory institutions of government to ensure that consumer rights were protected and that facilities such as "right to repair" and "right to upgrade" were included. Unfortunately we are slowly but surely seeing these protections eroded, either by cuts to those agencies and/or [witness the recent actions of the FCC dumping telecoms disputes on the FTC] woefully overloaded.
We are told that in a capitalist environment, market forces win out and thus the consumer is protected because the market demands that only the best companies survive to offer the best products or services to people. Unfortunately, as we've seen with consumer electronics, the consumer now has virtually no worthwhile protection from any of these questionable practices.
We should applaud what France are trying to do here, and we should hope that this drives positive change.
The Consumer Electronics Industry has been sorely in need of a "Weinstein Moment" for a while now. Forced Upgrades, inability to repair and built-in-obsolescence have been spreading like cancer throughout the modern technology world, making a few companies super-rich at the expense of millions or billions of consumers' pockets.
That needs to change.
You're missing the point. The phone already cannot handle the top speed. The difference is that now instead of crashing it simply doesn't go that fast. The flaw is in the battery design itself, not what Apple did to mitigate it.
Lightbulbs became electronics when they started to include switched mode power supplies.
All Compact Florescent Light-bulbs (CFL) and LED lamps contain them, and often the power supply fails before the light emitter.
Driving CFLs
LED Driver
In the EU the minimum warranty period is 2 years, although some countries go even further.
Obviously batteries are consumable items, but the way the law usually looks at this is that if the battery is cheap it's okay for the consumer to replace it regularly. If it's really expensive like iPhone batteries are, requiring a special service appointment and considerable cost to get replaced, it needs to last a reasonably long time, like considerably more than the warranty period which is the absolute minimum.
So even if Apple argues that the battery is consumable, the speed with which it died (my girlfriend's iPhone 6 was about a year old when it started to go from 50% to 2% instantly or randomly crash) they are still on the hook for it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So your argument here is that I used the word "limited" instead of "derated"?
If you don't believe that all high end chips get slowed down, go build your favorite high end PC hardware (gamer PC built for performance). Image the hard drive, run your favorite CPU and GPU benchmarks. After a couple of years of gaming use, restore the imaged drive and re-run the benchmarks - I bet you would expect your benchmarks to be the same, but they won't be - even though the software will be identical, the hardware will have aged an will be throttled (or as marketing will sometimes call it - the "turbo boost" will no longer boost as high for as long as it did before).
Yeah they can be replaced, either at the Apple store for $99 USD(now $25 USD for the next year) or a 3rd party shop which can do it as well. You don't have to trash the device.
Your argument (that manufacturers are making phones thinner and giving them smaller batteries despite consumer preference) is weakened by the fact that the iPhone X is the thickest iPhone since the 5 and has a higher battery capacity than every non-Plus model. If those are the criteria are important to you, you should be pleased with the direction Apple took the X.
Everyone but Slashdot users.
Seriously, go back and listen to tech reviewers gushing about how *thin and beautiful* any given new smartphone is.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Let's for a moment imagine that tech reviewers find nothing worth mentioning with the new phones and know that if they don't find anything to praise, they will not be among the select few next time that get a preview model to review...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Market delivers what customers are asking for.
Yeah?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel
By gad you're right, it's criminal law.
I currently run the DirtyCow TWRP LineageOS 13.x Rom, and I am concerned about future BLU Devices such as the BLU Life One X3. I don't want to go back to the BLU Stock Rom under any circumstances. I don't even run GApps. I can't run the LineageOS 14.x Rom because of the Requirement the camera work and I have a Bluetooth headset.
I got lucky and picked up refurbished R1 HD. to Replace my Studio 5.x. It had not been updated and used the older Rom that could be unlocked to load LineageOS... More than 6 months have passed and here I am debating another handset because unless I move back to the Stock Rom, I have no means to patch against KRACK.
So the question becomes: Where do I go from here? Do I buy a BLU R2 or BLU Life One X3 now, stick it in a Drawer, and wait some months until a LineageOS Build is made for it?
XDA Developers Forum doesn't even organize the new devices. News about them is scattered around other forums. I'd hate to have move manufacturers because we are constantly battling BLU's Bullshit on this.
This needs to be investigated. BLU needs to put up a thing that says: Running a Custom Rom? Need Camera Drivers? Install this APK. And stop locking bootloaders on devices we buy outright! If I can do fastboot oem unlock, it should work.
No, it is not a durable product. It is a piece of crap that breaks very easily marketed cleverly so you'll ignore its problems. I can sell you $40 worth of parts for $1000 and it'll still be $40 worth of parts. iPhones (not I-phones) are not made much better than cheap Android phones if at all. iPhones often break the second one of the slippery bastards slides out of your hands, so you shell out another $1000 and get a big fat rubbery Otter Box hard case to fix the poor design. My current phone is a few years old and has been dropped more times than I care to remember. It did not break. It is not obsolete. I have to clear caches on it from time to time due to the limited internal storage but that's about it.
When you shell out any money for an iPhone, you're not getting "a durable product," you're getting swindled.
Ever wonder why military or even automotive grade chips are running so much slower and cooler?
They use slower parts because they are cheaper. They use no more hardware than is necessary to do a job, because when Bosch makes a run of a couple million ECUs that will go into various different VWs, Audis, and Lamborghinis, they want to avoid unnecessarily spending tens of thousands of dollars. If a hotter part were necessary to do the job, they would add a fat heat sink to it and fin the case, and in fact automotive manufacturers have done this in the past.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Especially if they fall flat on the face because any car that can for some odd reason due to its manufacturer's decision no longer reach the top speed would be subject to recalls...
No, no it would not. It is perfectly normal for horses to escape the motor over its lifespan. Some modern engines achieve a horsepower target through tuning, and can re-tune themselves to hit that power level consistently as they age and the motor degrades, but nobody is suing GM because a couple of ponies are missing from the paddock on a twenty-year-old Corvette.
Now, if your car suffered a loss of power during the warranty period, you'd have a claim, and the manufacturer would have to fix it. But you didn't say anything about warranties.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Here you go (1st link from 2012):
https://www.cnet.com/news/its-...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
They run cooler because they support a wider operating temperature range.
So yeah, unless you care about handling, feel, or visibility, new cars are better.
Visibility depends on the particular car. There have always been cars with good and with bad visibility. The 1976 Chevy Impala I drove in high school definitely did not have good visibility (or handling, or fuel economy, or acceleration, or comfort). The safety features of newer cars are a consideration but visibility and safety are not mutually exclusive and never have been. Not to mention that new cars have cameras, sensors and other safety features to provide situational awareness not dreamed of by cars from back in the day.
As for handling, the argument that old cars handle better is quite simply nonsense unsupported by any evidence. As a general proposition, new cars handle better in pretty much every measurable way, even allowing for their generally heavier curb weights as long as you compare vehicles in similar categories. (no comparing a 1976 Ferrari to a 2010 half ton pickup)
but they will use their excuse that it was to save battery life and money for the customer.
That's not quite what they said. They said as the battery got older and didn't work as well, a surge of activity could cause the phone to draw more power than the battery could deliver, which caused the phone to turn itself off. They already had functionality to throttle the CPU in order to save battery life, so they adjusted the way that functionality worked to prevent the phones from crashing.
If you have a complaint, complain that the battery wasn't designed to last longer.
That's not the problem. The problem was that they didn't tell anyone they were doing it. Had they been up front about this behavior, people could have evaluated whether they cared or not (most probably wouldn't care) and made their purchasing decision accordingly. But instead Apple tried to pull a fast one and now that is biting them in the ass.
Them slowing down the device for a reasonable technical problem is fine. Not telling anyone they are doing it and pretending it doesn't happen is not fine.
That is actually incorrect - military grade chips are not from the discount bin. Are the they the fastest bin of parks coming off the line, of course not, but that's not because of cost, but purely because that is not what the spec calls for (and in some processes slower parts are more power efficient, hence less heat). A heat-sink is not going to solve a problem of wear either - it would help, but not. That said, I cannot say any more on the topic, so if you still think so, we'll just have to agree to disagree on this.
Oh, so customers asked for phones to be made entirely of highly breakable glass? Non-removable batteries? Indiscernible display resolution upgrades? Removing the headphone jack? No memory expansion option? Software behind a walled garden? No ability to install 3rd party OS? Massive amounts of telemetry? So thin it bends and breaks in your pocket? Proprietary physical connectors requiring dongles?
Some of these things are what make modern smartphones thin and attractive and easy to use. Others are things average users don't care much about. While many geeks are happy with durable bricks and lots of options for hacking, the average consume wants a sleek and stylish phone that's also a status symbol and fashion statement, while being simple and safe to use. They don't care about user replaceable batteries or SD card expansions. They certainly don't care about rooting their phones, and I guaranteed they have never considered replacing their OS.
Phones that are thin and beautiful constantly outsell phones which are bulkier, sturdier, less attractive, more expandable, user-serviceable, and so on. Did you notice how much flack Apple got for it's "ugly" iPhone case? That should tell you how important aesthetics are to people. No matter how you try to explain the design advantages of the "hump", it still looks ugly, and people hate it for that reason alone.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I think you flipped the cause and effect. If they run cooler, they may operate at a more narrow temperature range simply because they don't heat up as much. That said, often military or automotive spec parts actually support a wider range of temperatures. Go to ti.com or other chip manufacturers and lookup temperatures for higher grade/more expensive chips, sometimes called "enhanced".
So do you think maybe I should have written something like "If you have a complaint, complain that the battery wasn't designed to last longer."? Yeah, I guess that would have been good to include in my original post.
What about a phone that only provides communications on a radio protocol that is going obsolete and would cost the carrier (and the customer) much more to support it? (In Canada, CDMA service ended on May 31st - would it have been so bad for customers to get new product before the shut off date?)
Most cell providers offered low-cost phones as replacements, or even free replacements for low-income individuals. Wind was doing that 6mo ago, Bell has had an "upgrade in place" plan for a few years.
On the other hand, my parents have a 2013 Terrain which was hit with the CDMA upgrade, GM sold millions of vehicles with technology that was being phased out. Then there's cases like Samsung that directly designed their refrigerators to fail after a particular period of time. There's multiple class action lawsuits in the US and Canada over that one.
Om, nomnomnom...
I have el cheapo 50EUR phones and they work great after 10 years. Put in a new battery and they just work. Why would they not? Electrons are not slower because of the age of the electric components.
As long as I can provide power to the phone, they work and I am still not able to play snakes very well. I can still use the phones to call and send and receive SMS.
The fact that people think it is normal that old hardware runs slower for some reason as if there is some mechanical deteriation, like with a car engine where you will lose some power over time, is an issue of and by itself.
And if you only talk about durable, those 50EUR phones are more durable than any thing that is cheaper, even if they are not a Nokia.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Nice conspiracy theory, but it's not just reviewers. It's the general public as well. Many Slashdot geeks simply can't fathom why average people actually like Apple products. Almost every geek I know turns their nose up at it. The walled garden, the lack of customization, inability to root, and on and on and on. We buy Android for those particular features, and so we can trick out our phones however we want.
And every normal smartphone user I run across enjoys their iPhone. Seriously, they don't care about the missing headphone jack, or the inability to replace the battery themselves. They just don't. All their family and friends use iPhones, and they all use Facetime, etc.
It's sort of similar to Facebook. Geeks like us tend to hate it. Average people love it, because it's simple and convenient for them.
.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
What I do not get is why there are no thick Android phones available from alternative brands.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The amount of uninformed nonsense on here is astounding.
The update doesn't "slow down" the phone as such - it limits peak power draws when the battery is down on overall capacity and the spike would cause a reset (which happens in many other manufacturers' phones - FFS google this, people). Most operations of the phone will remain utterly unchanged, just heavy workloads will be slower than previously.
Say what you like about non-replaceable batteries (hardly specific to Apple) or a badly communicated update, or anything else about them, but the "planned obsolescence" claim is patently nonsense - unless you believe that a phone that runs *some* tasks slightly slower as it ages is forcing users to upgrade more than one that reboots when it hits a CPU intensive task.
Realistically, this feature should have been in place from the start - it's basic power management, but as usual the howling mob would rather jump on the OMG APPLE EV1L BURN THEM bandwagon than actually take an objective viewpoint.
-Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience-
What Apple did here is secretly cap the device performance without notifying the user in any way, and despite massive amounts of speculation they kept their mouths shut until their scheme was detected by a third party.
Shouldn't the fix have been to reduce the instances where it would surge but not slow it down otherwise? Instead, they applied the throttle to everything.
The fact that people think it is normal that old hardware runs slower for some reason as if there is some mechanical deteriation, like with a car engine where you will lose some power over time, is an issue of and by itself.
The problem with older hardware, when it is able to run new software, is that the newer software is usually more powerful, less efficient, larger, so the older hardware will struggle with it. Other than that, you're right. The mechanical stuff will inevitably break at some point but until that it will ususally work fine. I have a Nokia 6310i at home. Not only does it still work (after 15 years), it also turns on with almost a full charge of battery after I haven't used it in over a year. And snake runs as fast as I remember it, maybe even a bit faster because I get slower in my old age :D The ony thing is that it needs some padding between the battery and the shell to make te connection work properly. That's mechanical wear.
So Apple is lying, because the 4S had its production halted in February of 2016. So why the fuck is the 4S no longer getting updates?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
There is planned obsolescence, apple has said as much. When you intentionally hinder a product to worsen it, after you've release a newer better product, that is exactly planned obsolescence. Apple claims it was to improve battery usage or what ever, but that is the worst PR excuse that I've ever heard.
Your argument is weakened by the fact the newest iPhones actually have LESS battery capacity than the prior model (iPhone 7.)
And it is further weakened by the fact that my phone (Kyocera Duraforce PRO) is thicker, with a bigger battery. It is also a tank that has withstood rock slides and a minor mining cave-in.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"They didn't drop the operating performance. They limited the top speed."
When the fuck is speed not considered part of operating performance? What are you smoking?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
but they will use their excuse that it was to save battery life
No they won’t, because it wasn’t designed to save battery life. The fact that people like you are still alleging that false notion, despite evidence to the contrary and the fact that it’s been made clear both in media and comments at tech sites that that is NOT what’s happening boggles my mind.
What’s actually happening is that older batteries or ones in out-of-spec conditions (e.g. sub-freezing temperatures) are incapable of supplying the necessary voltage for peak performance, so devices have been spontaneously powering down when that happens. Apple’s software update capped peak performance only when needed on those devices (i.e. when it detected a set of conditions that would indicate a high likelihood the device would spontaneously shut down), and only to the degree necessary (i.e. less severe conditions call for lighter throttling), apparently reducing crashes by 70% so far. They’ve indicated their intent to continue fine-tuning the feature to increase its accuracy.
Given that the alternative to throttling performance is a spontaneous shutdown, I’d actually suggest that this feature is better viewed as a performance boost, since 90% or 80% performance is far better than 0%.
Also, regarding your claims about battery life, I’m still using a 5 year-old iPhone 5s for my everyday phone. It still lasts through the weekend (albeit barely) on the charge it has when I leave the office on Friday. And I can change the battery. iFixit sells a $29 replacement kit with everything I need, including a new battery, to replace my battery, though I haven’t had the need to do so yet.
The one thing you said that I do agree with is that they failed to notify the user appropriately. They were already telling users when their battery dropped below 80% of its original capacity, but they should have been telling users when this throttling occurred and why it was occurring. To me, that’s the one thing they got wrong in this situation, but they absolutely shouldn’t be removing this feature, nor even making it a toggleable setting. If anything, this feature should be an industry standard.
"They use slower parts because they are cheaper."
No. They often use slower parts because the specification often calls for lower heat, or a design needs to be rigorously tested so there's something older that already meets those requirements and has the testing already validated.
On the other hand, as I look at my 1970's W-grade (military) tubes driving my 1978 Super Reverb, sometimes things just needs to be overdesigned.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Oh, so customers asked for phones to be made entirely of highly breakable glass? Non-removable batteries? Indiscernible display resolution upgrades? Removing the headphone jack? No memory expansion option? Software behind a walled garden? No ability to install 3rd party OS? Massive amounts of telemetry? So thin it bends and breaks in your pocket? Proprietary physical connectors requiring dongles?
Some of these things are what make modern smartphones thin and attractive and easy to use.
Thin and attractive? It's a fucking phone, not a girlfriend. And those same features also made it more breakable, which of course creates profits for vendors.
Others are things average users don't care much about. While many geeks are happy with durable bricks and lots of options for hacking, the average consume wants a sleek and stylish phone that's also a status symbol and fashion statement, while being simple and safe to use. They don't care about user replaceable batteries or SD card expansions. They certainly don't care about rooting their phones, and I guaranteed they have never considered replacing their OS.
Translation: Consumers don't care how they get fucked over, as long as they look good doing it. Consumers are nothing but narcissists.
Phones that are thin and beautiful constantly outsell phones which are bulkier, sturdier, less attractive, more expandable, user-serviceable, and so on. Did you notice how much flack Apple got for it's "ugly" iPhone case? That should tell you how important aesthetics are to people. No matter how you try to explain the design advantages of the "hump", it still looks ugly, and people hate it for that reason alone.
Perhaps we should have zero sympathy and no support for consumers subjected to Bendgate, shattered screens, and battery capacities that wear out well before their finance agreement does. After all, they asked for it.
I should clarify this mainly applies to US consumers. We wouldn't be having this discussion if this same ignorance existed worldwide; clearly there are some foreign consumers still armed with common sense.
No my argument is they fucked up the design from the onset and that CPUs in milspec equipment don't run slow because of the reasons you think.
Planned obsolescence is part of their business model. I have several perfectly good iMacs and Minis that run current (16.04 and 17.10 at the moment) 64bit Ubuntu releases like a champ. But it's been years since they could run the latest MacOS and apps because Apple decided they were too old.
They only slowed down the devices after detecting a problem with the battery which would have made the device shut down unexpectedly. I once had an iPhone 5 that suffered from that problem: battery would decrease to about 25% and then the whole device would suddenly shut off without warning.
So you have a choice: replace the battery or accept lower performance to keep the device from shutting down randomly.
This is not because the device is old, but because the battery has a problem (for example after having been dropped, or discharged too deeply too many times). I don't see how you can call this planned obsolescence.
It's like a car that detects a problem in the ignition system and therefore limits engine power until it's fixed. Would you sue the car company for that?
*Planned* obsolescence is a crime in France, not obsolescence per se. Thus, your comment is moot.
IOW Android isn't a crime in France, because nobody actually planned that you couldn't update it.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
And I could not refill it to the original amount of fuel? That's outrageous! I would definitely expect a recall if the tank gets smaller and smaller with every time I fill it up!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, probably because GM didn't decide to limit your Corvette to 50mph to ensure you don't notice the missing ponies.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They only slowed down the devices after detecting a problem with the battery which would have made the device shut down unexpectedly. I once had an iPhone 5 that suffered from that problem: battery would decrease to about 25% and then the whole device would suddenly shut off without warning.
So you have a choice: replace the battery or accept lower performance to keep the device from shutting down randomly.
This is not because the device is old, but because the battery has a problem (for example after having been dropped, or discharged too deeply too many times). I don't see how you can call this planned obsolescence.
It's like a car that detects a problem in the ignition system and therefore limits engine power until it's fixed. Would you sue the car company for that?
Exactly!
Shouldn't the fix have been to reduce the instances where it would surge but not slow it down otherwise? Instead, they applied the throttle to everything.
This is just so much horseshit.
I wanted to see how my iPhone 6 Plus, purchased when they came out in September 2014, and used consistently up through the present, fared on the Geekbench 4 and Battery Life apps.
First, my Battery health, according to 2 different Battery Health apps, was 93% on my now over 4 year old battery. So, the idea of "bad battery design" is bullshit.
And as far as my GeekBench 4 scores, my single CPU score is 1571 and Multi-Core Score is 2671. Both of these are OVER the average reported on the GeekBench site. My overall "Compute" score is 4445, which is within about 100 points of the Average GeekBench score for that model.
So: Battery NOT worn-out at ALL after 4 years, and according to the SOMEHOW "gold-standard" GeekBench 4, if there is throttling going on, it doesn't seem to be appreciably affecting performance at ALL.
I know that anecdotes are not data; but they aren't far from it, when a large percentage of the "anecdotes" "line-up".
Everyone but Slashdot users.
Seriously, go back and listen to tech reviewers gushing about how *thin and beautiful* any given new smartphone is.
Exactly!
What I do not get is why there are no thick Android phones available from alternative brands.
Hmmm. Imagine that!
It's almost like "thin is in"...
Very nice, are you ready to pay for a smartphone like you pay for a durable product like a car?
At just a little shy of $1000 I already pay for it like a car. Hell I pay for it more than most laptops. Why do most laptops seem to last longer?
You're on THIS site and you have to ask that question?
Wow. Just. Wow...
Instead, they applied the throttle to everything.
Not according the the analysis I saw. They basically slowed things down when the CPU was drawing a lot of power.
The problem with Apple is that they always feel they should make these decisions FOR people instead of telling them it is happening and letting them make the choice.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
A longer warranty will not motivate them to make the device less fragile. If anything, the device will become more fragile because if people break their phones for non-warranty reasons, Apple won't have to support them longer.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
because of the backglass, which is there for exactly that purpose. The added weight is also why it shatters when it hits the ground. To be fair to the 4, it was the most durable of the iPhones I've bought for my kid.
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because they look nice in the shop (even though they cause eye strain). First impressions matter in sales. It only takes hours to make a sale for a product you're going to have for years.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Well, probably because GM didn't decide to limit your Corvette to 50mph to ensure you don't notice the missing ponies.
Most Corvettes don't have enough power to hit their top speed limiter, which AFAIK is 205 now. Most Corvette drivers don't have enough life left to hit their Corvette's top speed limiter, and finding a place to do it is non-trivial as well, so it would be shockingly unlikely for one of them to notice in the first place. Max-V runs are expensive, dangerous, and uncommon. Where you might notice is in 0-60 runs, since people often measure that kind of thing now. (The car will do it, in this case.)
However, there is definitely more tuning headroom in Corvette engines, so the engine could degrade somewhat before they had to give up output.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I was speaking to the automotive stuff, sorry. I should have made that more clear, although I thought my example did that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes that is a problem. It's not a problem that this thread is discussing, but yes it is. Do try to follow along while you woosh.
A quick Google finds that the X has a 2700 mAh battery while the 7 has a 1900 mAh battery. My point (that the iPhone X is a move in the direction of thicker phones with larger batteries) stands.
Glad your ruggedized phone can take some hard knocks - that's what it was designed for. Let's see if it's getting security patches in 6 months (if it's even getting them now).
Apple glued the battery to the case for the sole reason to prevent you changing it yourself.
As the behavior of the device would have been worse if Apple did nothing, it takes a special kind of shit to suggest Apple was doing this to drive sales.
Precisely.
because they're quite literally defective by design).
If they are "Defective by DESIGN", then why, oh, why does my iPhone 6, purchased on September 2014, just return a 93% battery life with the popular "Battery Life" App? And why, oh, why did it actually score BETTER than the average on Geekbench 4 CPU scores?
If it were Defective by DESIGN, then ALL devices would show at least SOME indication of that design-weakness.
But they don't.
Outside of moving parts, batteries and leaking capacitors, have you ever had hardware failures in consumer grade electronics? I haven't.
I have. And as a former electronic bench-tech, I have seen many failures from bad design and under-spec'ed components.
The iPhone battery is neither of those.
I would not want my phone to reboot in the middle of a 999/112 call because some app needed more current than the battery could supply for a single moment. Throttle the processor, keep the device working, especially in case of emergencies
Well put, sir!
batteries should be able to be replaced without having to trash the device. My Samsung J1 Ace allows for the battery to be replaced.
My iPad 2 hardware is still going strong but I'm stuck on iOS 9 and I'm not getting any security upgrades, no OS upgrades and apps are starting to drop dead because the developers don't support old OSes.
My iTouch 5 battery lasts a day while just sitting around and I am also stuck on iOS 9 something and having the same issues as the iPad that I soent $500 on.
iOS Apple devices will no longer be purchased by me. They are expensive low value devices.
You're whining about your iPad 2?!?
Gimme a break!
They implemented a technical solution that saved them money.
Sorry, but that is totally false.
Without Apple's solution, phones would not last a day on battery after a few years, and/or would be random restarting.
Either way, an iPhone user would have to go to Apple and PAY THEM MONEY - either for a new battery or new phone.
With Apple's solution in place, it would be a while longer before people would come in for either a new phone or new battery. There is no scenario under Apple's fix where they get more money.
This issue is well understood
Not by you it would seem.
The datasheet for the battery... ...tells you nothing about how the battery will react after two years, under varying loads.
Other manufacturers did that.
What you mean is, other manufacturers did NOTHING. If you search you can easily find reports of older Android phones that randomly restart as the batteries age, of phones that mono longer last a day after just six months. Apple's fix means those phones would still be working but I guess the manufactures just want people to buy phones more often...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The problem with Apple is that they always feel they should make these decisions FOR people instead of telling them it is happening and letting them make the choice.
Most people enjoy Apple products precisely BECAUSE they don't HAVE to become an expert in things they really don't care about to use their products effectively. It doesn't make them "stupid", anymore than someone who doesn't care to know what goes on in their car's engine compartment is "stupid" because the car manufacturer "decided for them" what size radiator would be appropriate for their car's engine.
And, besides, Apple has already said they are going to provide much more detailed battery and performance information in subsequent versions of iOS, and will most likely make it a user-choice to accept Apple's attempts at keeping their device running with a degraded battery, or maybe even have some sort of "how much?" control over the performance adjustments.
You don't have to be an expert to say 'Allow my phone to reduce speed to extend battery life' or 'Always run at full speed'. You could even add a car analogy.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
You don't have to be an expert to say 'Allow my phone to reduce speed to extend battery life' or 'Always run at full speed'. You could even add a car analogy.
Which is why I pointed out that Apple has already said they are going to expose more battery data and power controls to the user.
Learn to read.
Nobody here is complaining that their older iPhones are running slower due to wear and tear.
What? Yes they are. They precisely are. If they aren't made to run slower, a subset of them will crash due to undervoltage, so this is actually Apple keeping their hardware running.
This is like GM recalling your car for an "update" and then de-tuning your engine.
Automobile manufacturers sell cars with specified horsepower, but you will not be able to go dyno your vehicle, get a lower result, and return your car on the basis that it doesn't meet the specifications. If an automaker were found to be cheating on the specifications, they might get fined, and there might be a class action suit. You might get five bucks and a keyring advertising the brand that screwed you over, but you wouldn't get a new car.
Automobiles could be made to last much longer for very little more money. For example, rubber bushings could be replaced with polyurethane; when designed in, they outlast the vehicle. (Some aftermarket replacements will, some won't, depending on the application.) The ones whose material I know of are EPDM. Polyurethane would be similar in cost. There are numerous other small upgrades which could be made which would substantially increase the lifespan of basically every component; a slightly larger bolt here, a little larger oil passage there. But they design them to do a certain job for a certain amount of time, and then they don't care what happens to them.
How is this different from what Apple is doing here?
Focus on the facts and not on car analogies.
No, we've done that already, but this thread is about car analogies. And my point was actually that using a car analogy here was dumb. Most people on Slashdot don't understand either cars or the automotive industry enough to be allowed anywhere near a car analogy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Thin and attractive? It's a fucking phone, not a girlfriend. And those same features also made it more breakable, which of course creates profits for vendors.
These features also make a girlfriend more likely to break up with you and run away without another guy. Sturdy and reliable is best.
It's France mate. Never heard of foie gras?
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
You could even add a car analogy.
Here is your car analogy
Your battery is a consumable, just like the tires on your car. Your battery wears out, and so does the tread on your tire. Once the tread gets worn out enough, you can have a blow-out at any time. Apple is simply reducing the maximum output of the engine, to reduce the chances of a blow-out, in the same way as it is reducing the maximum output of the CPU to reduce the chances of a sudden battery failure.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
I was thinking more along of the lines of reducing speed of driving when you are running out of gas to make it to the next gas station, because cars are more fuel efficient at a slower speed.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I see that.
I don't know what message you're referring to, as there is no message with that number. Why not post a link instead? The topic of the thread is the claim that Apple is "slowing down" old phones so they can sell new ones. My posts dispute that notion. You've changed the topic to Apple not properly disclosing what their mitigation did. I have no quarrel with that, but it's not what the thread was about. For what it's worth I think they did two things wrong. They didn't communicate, and, more importantly, they designed a battery that's not a durable as it should be. But I don't think they limited the top speed in order to sell phones, as that's ridiculous. They made old phones more useful, not less.
I gave specific reasons. I think you need to re-read my posts with a more objective eye.
Except your tires have indicators that say how much tread is left so that you can service them rather than continue to operate in lower performance mode UNBEKNOWNST to the operator. Instead of throwing on a low Tire pressure dash light, it just throttles the top speed. Why the fuck do people not get this is the crux of the problem?
So you fully understand it as a deficient design but refuse to call it that? It's a bad design. Plain and fucking simple.
If you had kept reading for just one more sentence you would have seen the answer to your question, but I will paste it here for your convenience: "A speed which the aging battery already could not support"
Cheapness is a thing. A-pillars have grown and making them small and still having rollover resistance is expensive.
Of course cost is a consideration and a crude design will typically be cheaper than an expensive one. However thick A pillars do not necessarily make for bad visibility if they are shaped cleverly and even if they did would you prefer a car that turns into crumpled aluminum foil in the event of a rollover?
Raw, unassisted handling peaked in the 1990s, when suspension geometry technology reached essentially the point we've reached today, but when vehicles were lighter.
Even if I accept your premise about "raw unassisted handling peaking" (which I do not) that doesn't mean handling has degraded since then. It's pretty clear that handling has improved quite a lot in the last 20 years. You don't have to take my word for it either - cars from the 90s are still on the road. It's not even a contest. Furthermore there is a LOT more to handling than suspension geometry and I disagree that suspension technology hasn't improved in the last 20 year either.
Bollocks
What an eloquent rebuttal. Full of facts and logic. I bow to your debating prowess.
You could get all that stuff on cars before, or swap it on. And it was common to do so.
Your argument is that because we could tune a car to perform better that cars from 20 years ago are the equal of those today? Dumbest argument I've heard in quite a while.
It got a security patch two days ago. Unlike your iDevices where Apple lies about support (The 4S quit being manufactured in Feb 2016 and
Apple claims to support a device for 5 years after they cease production of the model. Why is the 4S not getting any patches or upgrades?)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Got news for ya - That's not the battery, that's the fault of the Apple designers. I've taken plenty of 'dead' iPhone batteries and hooked them up to an ammeter. They're more than capable of delivering 1C or greater.
This is entirely the fault of Apple engineers for failing to understand basic electronics design.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Whatever the reason, the phones already could not support that processor speed without shutting down. So your smart-ass comment was inapplicable, but instead of simply acknowledging that like a civilized person you change your tack. Good on you.
Apple claims to support a device for 5 years after they cease production of the model.
Source?
That's because you didn't understand the argument.
Disagreeing does not mean I didn't understand the argument but thanks for the condescension.
The cars themselves from 20 years ago were mechanically the equal of cars today, power output aside.
I'm an automotive engineer with 20 years in the industry and run a company that makes parts for car companies. That argument is simply not true. Pick any measure you want and any automotive engineer worth their salary can show you how cars today have overall improved on cars from 20 years ago. Reliability, performance, power, traction, safety, durability, handling, materials, etc. It doesn't matter - cars today have as a whole improved across the board even in the fact of additional complexity. Your argument that cars haven't improved mechanically in the last 20 years is easily shown to be false as a general proposition.
If you want to argue that we are into diminishing returns on the improvement in cars then I can probably get on board with a reasonable argument to that effect. But claims that car mechanicals peaked in the 1990s and have gone no where since is just preposterous.
Anyway, back on topic; the cars of 20 and even 25 years ago had all of the important things we demand from cars, like being able to go over bumps gracefully, but none of the things we didn't, like remotely compromisable infotainment systems.
Saying cars 20 years ago could go over bumps adequately is true but it's false to say cars today don't do it any better. To argue otherwise is to claim that tens of thousands of automotive engineers have wasted their time for the last 20 years.
Therein lies the rub: If vehicles have become substantially heavier, and tires have only gotten a little wider, then handling is actually compromised
The width of tires is not remotely the only consideration. What tires are made of matters FAR more and that has improved. Furthermore, there is a lot more to handling than simply the tires. A car can be heavier and have better handling. While weight does play an important role, it isn't even close to the only factor that matters. Handling is a function of the sum of the parts and there is more than one equation to get it right.
People love the BRZ because it returns to that lightweight formula. The new Miata could have had more power, but that would have made it heavier.
Seriously? You're using a 2 seat sports car as an example of why all cars are no better than ones from 20 years ago? People love the BRZ and Miata because it's a fun and inexpensive little sports car for people who want fun and inexpensive little sports cars that drive well. Not everyone wants that and it's inappropriate to extrapolate that market segment to cars in general. It's one way to get a great handling car but not the only way. Good handling can be achieved in many ways. You'd be daft to argue that a Corvette or a BMW M4 doesn't handle well but light weight wasn't the primary goal of those cars. The lightweight sports car is merely one way to get excellent handling and not the only way. But even staying with the example you provided the Miata of today is measurably better than the one from 20 years ago.
Actually, about $80 (USD) to change the battery, considerably less if the phone is a 6 or newer. You can buy a kit from iFixit for $25 if you prefer. Either choice is a small fraction of the cost of a replacement phone.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Sounds like your girlfriend would have a warranty claim if she lived in the EU (you don't say whether or not she does). Stuff does fail within warranty periods, and nobody seems to complain about it if the device is actually fixed or replaced. I don't see the connection with the Apple soft slowdown to avoid crashes, though.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
They're advertised for thinness, in many cases. That suggests to me that people who actually do market research for a living and aren't pseudonymous Slashdot posters have observed that lots and lots of people want thin. The fact that it's not just Apple suggests to me that different people have come up with the same conclusion, and so it's likely no total rubbish.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"Over 4 years" . You can't call bullshit and then immediately fail basic math. September 2018 hasn't happened yet.
"Over 4 years" .
You can't call bullshit and then immediately fail basic math. September 2018 hasn't happened yet.
Actually, I fail at typing or proofreading. Too many "GeekBench 4"s, and I got happy and typed 4 years.
Sorry!
But my battery is STILL not worn out.
Odd. To me it feels more that this "want" for thinness is artificially created. If you tell people long enough that they want something, they'll eventually really want it.
It seems that me and a few others that I know are immune to this effect. I can't think of any reason why I want my phone to be even thinner. We have reached the point of "sufficiently thin" long ago. Don't get me wrong, I don't want the Mars-bar style phones back, but anything thinner than a centimeter is ridiculous.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You don't have to be an expert to say 'Allow my phone to reduce speed to extend battery life' or 'Always run at full speed'. You could even add a car analogy.
"Slightly slow down top speed to prevent my engine (already in bad condition and in need of replacement) from stalling and have my car come to a screeching halt in the middle of the street when driving at full speed or allow it to run at full speed anyway"? Yeah, idiots like you want that choice. Doesn't make it a good idea though.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
We're not talking about what apple 'will do'. Who cares what they do, now that they got their hand caught in the cookie jar. Anyway, if a user can't answer the simple question, they certainly won't be able to correctly interpret battery statistics.
So you are complaining that Apple doesn't give users information that they couldn't understand. Yeah, I see what you did there.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Why the fuck do people not get this is the crux of the problem?
The crux of the problem is that people can't tell when their battery doesn't even remotely last as long as it used to? And that they need Apple to tell them?
And if Apple did tell them, they'd complain that Apple forced them to replace their batteries, even though they couldn't see that anything was wrong with those perfectly fine batteries and that this was some conspiracy by Apple to sell more batteries?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
You and I are not typical smartphone buyers, and probably lots of our friends aren't either. (My phone is about 7mm, according to my calipers. Making it 1cm thick would be increasing the thickness 50%, and it would no longer easily fit into all the pockets I keep it in.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
They often have to underclock chips to be able to work from -40 to +85C (or even +125C). It has nothing to do with lifetime. Commercial and industrial grade should last the same as long as they are operated between 0 and 70 C.
"Whatever the reason, the phones already could not support that processor speed without shutting down. So your smart-ass comment was inapplicable, but instead of simply acknowledging that like a civilized person you change your tack."
You say as your first words are "Whatever the reason," which means you lost. good on you!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.