Slashdot Mirror
Senator Wants Apple To Answer Questions on Slowing iPhones (reuters.com)
The chairman of a U.S. Senate committee overseeing business issues asked Apple to answer questions about its disclosure that it slowed older iPhones with flagging batteries, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing a letter. From the report: The California-based company apologized over the issue on Dec. 28, cut battery replacement costs and said it will change its software to show users whether their phone battery is good. Senator John Thune, a Republican who chairs the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said in a Jan. 9 letter to Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook that "the large volume of consumer criticism leveled against the company in light of its admission suggests that there should have been better transparency."
I'm not an Apple fanboi... really I'm not. I have an iPhone, but won't use their overpriced Macbooks because of Apple's draconian design decisions. Having said that, I really do not see what the issue is here. We know lithium ion batteries degrade with use. I (and I think most people) want their phones to last through the entire day. Besides making the display dimmer, which really isn't much of an option, slowing the CPU to reduce power consumption is one of the only viable methods available through software to preserve the operating time throughout the lifetime of the phone. Should Apple have made this a user controlled option? Sure. In fact, Apple could have had the phone show some message "Your battery needs replaced - your phone only has 75% of the capacity from when it was new" and could have made a lot of money off of people replacing their batteries.
I do not think that the devices are slowed to make them unusable so people would buy new phones. Having a totally dead phone after 8 hours instead of 12 hours is worse, in my opinion.
Better known as 318230.
The corporations give the orders, the Congressmen follow them. Understood?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I think you mean to say that the Senator should thank Apple for not letting it's customers down by capitulating to government pressure to provide a back door. A door that hackers would certainly find and exploit in order to steal our personal data. A door that could be used by law enforcement without a warrant. I applaud Apple for standing up for personal liberties, even if it makes it tougher on law enforcement.
Tackling the important issues I see...
And ask them why we can't change the batteries - like I can on my Samsung.
Or why for no reason at all why I can't go above iOS 9.3.5 on my iTouch5 or iPad 2. And why I can't get the security updates and why my apps are starting to not work. And many new apps only work on iOS 10+. Sorry, I'm not spending another $500 just because a developer is too lazy.
I expect a $500 device to last more than a couple of years and not have forced obsolescence.
Apple's iOS devices are overpriced crap.
that is nearly unusable. I have been pondering since December on buying the X or Galaxy but now I may just have the battery replaced.
Thereâ(TM)s nothing wrong with a 6 and Iâ(TM)m against upgrading just for the sake of it. Also i am happy with touchid, but would not buy a new phone that looks like the old phone.
As it stands currently the iPhone 5 we have laying around with an old iOS and a dying battery is actually faster than he 6 with current iOS.
Apple has normally been good with keeping stuff going and with this latest move they are hopefully back on track.
I could easily buy the latest and greatest, but I prefer to spend more, buy quality and make it last. The late 2011 15â(TM) MacBook is an ace that with minor upgrades (SSD+Ram) keeps going strong.
Just my 2 pence.
Dennis Onstenk
An Aide for the Senator was quoted as saying: "The Senator believes that Moore's Law is an antiquated piece of legislation that no longer has relevance to today's technology. Instead of fostering growth, Moore's Law has become an impediment to innovation. We need to free the marketplace from these cumbersome regulations and government interference. Therefore, the Senator will be introducing legislation to repeal Moore's Law, and ensure that all software, regardless of language, compiler, or hardware affiliations will be free to continue running as fast as the day it was released on any platform, anywhere, at any time."
Check your premises.
I think our Senators have much, much better things to worry about. How about Net Neutrality? Work Visa Abuse? Our endless wars? Jeff Session's push to enforce federal marijuana laws in states where it is legal? Heck, I'd rather they weigh in on the loot box controversy than this.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
And he's not even up for re-election for another 5 years...
Hmmm.. He must think this is important then..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I have an iPhone that was "throttled". I noticed that the charge would last nearly as long as when it was new. After an update it went back to the time-between-charges as when it was new. I was happy about that. (I hate plugging my iPhone "in" while in my car, etc.) It was slower, the screen would dim, it would "slumber" and take a bit to wake up. But what I considered most important -- making it through my day's activities on one charge -- was the way it was acting. I'm glad Apple installed this change. I appreciate the change. The only fault that I see is that Apple didn't tell us. The fact that they made the change benefited me. I really don't care that they didn't tell me; it just would have been nice.
It is bovine scat that Congress-critters are wasting time about this. There really are more important issues than a stinking smartphone charge IMHO.
Senator wants Apple to donate to its campaign funds. You know, to resolve the "issues" that they may have due to "consumer criticism"
I doubt it.. His seat isn't up for election for at least 4 more years, is a 3 time incumbent and he won his last election by 40 points... He's in no danger of losing his seat...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
fuck me clicked Overrated in the mod dropdown... posting to remove bad mod
Apple apologized, heavily discounted battery replacement, and promised to modify iOS to show when throttling happens. They also explained they did it for better user experience: the slowdown is to avoid under-powering due to battery age. I would actually have liked to have that feature for my Android that randomly power cycles.
Somehow the congresscritters think they could do better than Apple? These politicians only pretend they do something for the people only to distract people from their own incompetencies.
I once had a signature.
There is a big difference. Before the shakedown, Microsoft was pointedly not involved in politics. Apple has long been deeply involved in the affairs in Washington.
Since when did the US SENATE become an escalation contact for internal Customer Service issues between Apple and their customers?
overseeing business issues asked Apple to answer questions about its disclosure that it slowed older iPhones with flagging batteries .... the large volume of consumer criticism leveled against the company in light of its admission suggests that there should have been better transparency.
Sounds like Apple made a design decision to limit their costs: a less-performant or more fragile than originally expected battery will be tolerated and compensated for by the devices, with graceful degradation, and without showing an explicit notification to the user -- instead the end user will have to detect if their device is degraded below what they feel it should be and then contact Apple based on that.
It is the same story for MANY kinds of hardware issues ---- many failures can go undetected for years, Or only cause an occasional crash, and
the device automatically reboots itself to help reduce the impact of a periodic glitch. If the end user themself cannot identify that there's a problem, then there is no problem.
Apple is a huge technology player, but they're no monopoly on paper.
Although I am personally of the mind that these 5 companies should be broken up: Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Apple, and in that order.
Just because they're large and they therefore upset a LOT of people if they make a mistake, or make a decision that makes customers dissatisfied: does not suddenly mean that it is valid government business to poke into Apple PR and Customer issues.
what about not helping the FBI as well?
They already excoriated Apple for standing up for our privacy rights, remember?
There is a big difference. Before the shakedown, Microsoft was pointedly not involved in politics. Apple has long been deeply involved in the affairs in Washington.
Actually, not so much until the past few years.
Unless he's looking to pad his bank account for retirement. Maybe looking for a cushy seven figure "Lobbyist" job in 4 years.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
The same goes for having a battery life shorter than we expect from a company like Apple that seems to pride itself on quality and customer service.
My iPhone 6, purchased basically on day one of sale, back in September 2014, just showed 93% battery health when I tested it the other day.
If anything, I think that battery life is LONGER than I expect from a secondary battery over 3 years old.
My mom went to the Apple store yesterday and reports that they didnâ(TM)t change her battery because it was still good but took it in the back to install a âoespecial patchâ and after installation the iPhone 6 is as fast as when it was new. She said many others at the counter at that time were told the same.
Prove it.
"Couldn't they just replace the battery themselves for $10?"
"No, it must be done at a dealer."
"Why? Is there soldering?"
"No, it's a normal battery plugin, but it is behind a warranty sticker."
"Why?"
"So we could charge a lot more. Android phones do this, too. The real goal is to make people throw up their hands and pay for the overpriced monthly infinite care package."
"What is that?"
"That's where we replace a phone with a returned one from an ever-growing pile of phones we don't know what to do with, as the phones age and people upgrade. But it looks premium to the customer."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I have an ancient iPhone 4 and it has gotten agonisingly slow. I no longer use it to browse the web. I thought that was because web pages got more and more bloated as devices got faster. But sometimes the phone freezes when I try to take a photo. In theory that could be caused by the power surge related to reading GPS coordinates (and then the phone would delay the start of the camera app). Anyone swapped the battery in iPhone4 and noticed a performance boost?
What I find most interesting about this is that smartphones have become so critical to people's everyday lives in just 10 years, that a Congressional committee is taking steps to grill a major provider of said phones.
I'm an iPhone user and actually do like them. But, I really dislike the system that a duopoly has put in place. First, I can't switch to Android even if I want to without losing all the money I've invested in music, apps, etc. and having to re-buy collections on the other platform. Second, the restrictions Apple has placed on hardware lately are just crazy. Power users don't want throwaway appliances. Users who know what's up don't want to pay insanely inflated prices for flash memory. The planned obsolescence thing is understandable, but why in the world couldn't Apple just stick an SD slot under some Ive-ian waterproof door? They could even give it a dumb consumer-friendly name like "Escape Pod" or something.
The problem is that Apple knows that 90+% of its audience is absolutely brain-dead when it comes to technology and will just do what they tell them. While tech should be easy to use, it's gotten ridiculously easy to use in the smartphone era. Obviously Apple admitted to throttling the CPU, but they could just as easily have said. "Oh, that's because your average consumer-facing website is downloading 2 GB of JavaScript and images from 450 ad providers and tracking services, and executing it all on your 4-year old CPU."
When Congress starts setting up public inquiries about your product, it's no longer a niche thing.
What makes you think Apple phones have slowed down? Despite all the clamour, they have not been "slowed". The processor frequency is only lowered while there is insufficient current. I cannot see how this can translate to "Apple slowed my phone. It is a lie. I have a four year old iPhone 6 and it has not slowed at all. Because the battery is fine (86% original capacity). I'm not the only one in this situation. In fact, I personally don't know anyone with this problem.
This is created story by all the droids who are anxious to prove that their worship of google was the right thing. Now the evidence is in and they picked the insecure charlatans. They have to prove Apple is worse and they cannot do this with any truth. It is likely Apple will get hit bad in some places. Very unjustly.
How did the stock market crash during the Great Depression?
Perhaps the software world adopted a common term with similar meaning across many industries (crash == "this thing failed unceremoniously") and now they're lecturing the rest of the world on how to use it.
While I agree this is over-hyped and generally represented as worse than it is.
Throttling the frequency of the processor is slowing down the phone. Doing it in a transparent manner would mean that the user would say my phones running slow I should get a new battery. Just doing it and not indicating why would probably result the user investigating why, removing apps, doing a factory reset and then going out and buying a new upgraded phone. This wastes users time and money.
It is still slowing down the phone omnly when the load capacity is exceeded. That is really not very much of the time. I suspect that Apple's engineers thought it insignificant. Yes, they should have been more public but I think they (mistakenly) didn't see the need. A mistake they are fixing. If anyone went out and bought a new phone because they thought the phone was "wearing out" has a rather pathetic understanding of technology. [Aside: It is not that they don't wear out, they do, but it is slow.] I mean investigating it should come to the issue real quick.
All of this tells me that I'm not crazy. The phone becoming slow, clunky, and such wasn't "compared to the new one", nor was it "the apps you are running" or is it "the new OS has crazy hardware needs"...no... It was simply they are buggering YOUR phone to make you buy a new one.