US Government Investigates Apple Over iPhone Battery Slowdowns (phonedog.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PhoneDog: The U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating Apple about its updates that slowed performance on iPhones with older batteries. Sources speaking to Bloomberg say that the agencies are looking into whether Apple violated securities laws regarding disclosures about its updates that throttled older iPhones. So far, the DOJ and SEC have requested information from Apple. Because the investigation is still early, it's unclear if the agencies will actually take an action against Apple. Apple apologized for not being more clear about its actions after the news of its performance-throttling updates came out, but we've still seen class action lawsuits and now this investigation come out. The good news is that Apple will be more transparent about iPhone battery health and performance in the future, but for now, it'll have to deal with the DOJ and SEC.

Comments

Investigate!

[tripleevenfall]

What's there to investigate, really? They admitted that they did it. The information is public. Is it illegal to write software which could be construed to have a useful purpose even if it negatively impacts performance? That could describe features of just about any software out there. Is this something we really want the government doing?

Re:Investigate!

[Austerity Empowers]

It's easier to shake them down than to actually fix broken tax laws. This is the shake-down.

Re:Investigate!

[twotacocombo]

It's less about the technical facts and more about the intent. Did they truly slow these phones down for the sole intent of managing aging batteries, or did they do it knowing full well that it may discourage users of these phones enough that they would then see purchasing a new phone as the best course of action? If you cripple working phones in order to drive sales, is that not something you would want the government to investigate? Imagine if you had an older car and the manufacturer, without your knowledge or consent, dropped the performance of the engine down to a level that caused it to be sluggish and aggravating to drive. Would you not have a problem with this, no matter what reason they coughed up when pressured for an explanation?

Re:Investigate!

[ljw1004]

What's there to investigate, really? They admitted that they did it. The information is public.

From TFS: agencies are looking into whether Apple violated securities laws regarding disclosures.

Is this something we really want the government doing?

Do we want the government checking whether publicly companies illegally fail to disclose important information to their investors? And punishing any companies found to have done so? -- YES, emphatically YES.

Re:Investigate!

[AmiMoJo]

Interesting that they are investigating potential defrauding of investors, where as in Europe it's potential defrauding of customers.

Re: Hopefully they'll force Apple to allow repairs

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't get all the rage over throttled CPUs.
Everyone is fine with throttled bandwidth. Gov won't even investigate that.
Gov is just mad at Apple because they don't help the gov spy on iPhones. Oh! I do get it.

Re:Hopefully they'll force Apple to allow repairs

[Freischutz]

it will put you where you would have been if this feature had not been implemented.

It will give people back all the time they lost waiting for their slow-assed phone all this time? No? Yeah. It won't. It does not people people where they would have been. Stop apologizing for apple using insane bullshit logic.

Congratulations, by trashing Apple for not extending your lifespan by the same amount of minutes you feel you lost waiting for apps to load you have finally taken Apple hatred beyond what the laws of physics can deliver.

Re:Pretty soon it will investigate DrDos too.

[drinkypoo]

Apparently the rumors about "DOS is not done till Lotus wont run (in DR-DOS)" has reached the ears of the government. It will start an investigation anytime soon.

The USDoJ found that Microsoft had acted in basically every anticompetitive way possible, and then John Ashcroft (GWB's AG) declared that any punishment would not be in the best interest of America. Shortly thereafter, Gates formed his Foundation and continued the work on strong IP law that he began at Microsoft, this time largely on behalf of Big Pharma — financially benefiting both the Foundation, and Gates directly. This is merely an escalation of the earlier strong-arm tactics of the Business Software Alliance.

Call me a nutter if you like, I'm used to that. But Gates is a career criminal, and the only reason he's still wealthy is that some kind of deal was struck with the Bush Administration. It's not like government doesn't like to take money from people.