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!

[duranaki]

I don't know what they are investigating, but I for one would be looking for documentation (emails, meeting minutes, etc.) that people inside Apple also considered this as having the bonus side effect of getting people to buy new phones and if there was a plan in place to avoid disclosing the nature of the change, not making it a user selection on purpose, etc. And I don't know where I draw the line between big-brother being nosy and big-giant corporation taking advantage of their market position and nerfing hardware customers bought out-right to trick them into buying more.

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:Investigate!

[rtb61]

More importantly, the issue is a non user replaceable battery, which saves Apple money and generates big profits at replacement. So if more people noticed bad battery and more people replaced them, more people would be pissed off about the price. So in terms of longer term outcomes, the idea of non user replaceable batteries, designed obsolescence, loss of user capital worth in the products, also need to be checked. Should expensive phones need to last say a decade, with reasonable care and repair. How much repair should an end user have access too, replace screen, replace battery, replace sim, replace memory at minimum. Are laws required.

Re:Investigate!

[TheFakeTimCook]

Don't sully the sacred memory and lyrics of the GREAT Francis Vincent Zappa (and the performances of Mark Vollman and Howard Kaylan) by making it into some dumbass, halfassed ad hominem attack on ANYONE, even cd Reimer!!!

Just. Don't.

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:Hopefully they'll force Apple to allow repairs

[tlhIngan]

That's because they don't "replace" the battery in iPhones. They copy the data from the old one on to a new one, hand your that, and then ship your old one to be "refurbished" (which is, of course, basically just replacing the battery).

Because they can't do the battery replacements in-store (because the phone is glued shut and impossible to open without special tools), that's the best they can do to enable a "quick" repair. (Still takes a couple of hours to do the copy.)

Why are haters always the latest to get the news? I mean, if you're gonna parry some "facts". at least let it be recent enough to be true.

The last iPhone to be glued shut was the iPhone 3GS. Circa 2009. The iPhone 4 (from 2010) and onwards are not glued shut and can be opened by removing 2 screws. Yes, 2 screws. Granted, replacing a battery in an iPhone 4 is a royal PITA, but the iPhone 5 and onwards is easy.

Apple does it all in-store nowadays - takes 15 minutes. And since the affected iPhones so far are the iPhone 6 and similar, it's not too hard.

Hell, that cellphone repair shop in every mall ought to be able to do it as well for $30 long before Apple offered it. And even iFixit will sell you a kit to replace your battery for $20.

It ain't hard. And the battery has been easier to change for most of the iPhone's history, too. There's plenty of true things you can use to hate about Apple, so stick with true facts, not what's fake news today.

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.

Re:Battery Replacement Scam

[TheFakeTimCook]

Do you remember how Apples PR team quickly jumped at offering customers a solution of replacing their cell phone battery for cheap?

Well what good is a solution if the company will not "act" on it?

I have two clients that were turned away from Apple after attempting to get their battery replaced for their IPhone 6.
They were told by the reps that there are no batteries available, "they may come in April". Then the rep immediately tried to encourage my client to buy a new phone.

Has anyone else experienced this?

It is becoming tiring that companies can say whatever suites them to make problems go away.
Will we ever live in a world of corporate accountability?

Hey dumbass!

There ARE no batteries available, thanks to everyone FORCING Apple to replace batteries that are still at 90+ capacity, like the battery on my iPhone 6 Plus that is over THREE years old, and sitting at 93% battery capacity.