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Apple: We Would Never Degrade the iPhone Experience To Get Users To Buy New Phones
Apple today responded to reports that the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are probing its decision to throttle older iPhones, confirming that the U.S government has asked questions. From a report: Apple said it would never intentionally "degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades." Apple acknowledged in December that it was secretly slowing the speeds of iPhones in an effort to help preserve aging batteries. In response to consumer backlash, the company dropped the price of battery replacements for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus from $79 to $29.
Seriously there is a much easier alternative. Just do what most other phone makers do and not provide security or bug fixes. Customers will have to buy new phones to avoid not joining botnets and getting hit by drive-by malware. Apple is putting way too much effort in.
Apple: "We would never intentionally degrade the user experience! All that we did was secretly and with no notification to the phone user throttle down the processor depending upon the life of the battery. "
That must be why most Macs cannot have their memory upgraded after purchase, or that you need to disassemble 90% of the computer to get to the RAM slots, because it makes for a better user experience... somehow.
#DeleteFacebook
Then why did it take several 3rd party sources to confirm what was going on? Why did Apple wait until several 3rd party sources confirmed before they came forward and admitted what was going on? Every step of the way Apple missed the opportunity to get ahead of this and make it a non-issue. Now they want everyone to just take their word for it that there wasn't an ulterior motive? The sad thing is that I expect that many will.
Either they are playing people for chumps or they are grossly incompetent.
Why don’t you use them if they are perfectly legal? How come everyones doesn’t use them? I find it funny how you who Im sure pay all your taxes think its fine for others not to.
Wording is so important; Apple's wording in this is terrible; they shouldn't ever have mentioned "driving upgrades" at all. Apple should have maintained that it was in their self-interest to make the phones operate as well as possible at all times, and that it was a *policy* decision that "at all times" meant tipping the balance towards stretching the battery life. And that their only mistake was not making this an explicit setting, so that even people with NEW batteries could adjust their performance to extend battery life. ( I wish I could reference the SIGPLAN article in the 1980s that said "This limitation was removed by renaming it as a feature . . ")
"Never believe anything until it's been officially denied".
- Claud Cockburn
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
He probably doesn't use them because corporate tax law is completely different than personal tax law. I think you're struggling with the difference between "unethical" and "illegal". Note that I am not defending the loopholes (I think they should all be closed, but I suspect that is part of what the new tax bill is supposed to do).
Think of it this way: If you were running a corp with a market cap of $900B and your tax lawyers and accountants were not taking advantage of every loophole they possibly could to reduce your company's tax burden you would fire them or you wouldn't be the CEO of a $900B company. Sorry Mr. Fabriciom, we thought you would rather see that $500M go to the US governments list of stupid programs rather than off-shore R&D to keep us competitive. We'll do better next time...
The root of the problem is election funding and lobbying. If you want to change the system you need to change the funding model and turn lobbying into nothing more than boardroom presentations. IMHO.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Apple said it would never intentionally "degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades."
And yet they were caught doing exactly this. And besides that, Apple has sealed in the battery and made the cost / terms of replacement so onerous that it could have no other expected effect than drive customer upgrades.
Business is business. You, and everybody else, will do whatever is necessary within the law (and without the law, when one can get away with it) to increase your bottom line. It is just a matter of undertaking a cost analysis study on each of you major steps. You know it and we know it. Please spare us the self-virtuous, good-goody statements and do not insult our intelligence, OK?
So they can demonstrate to users that the new features don't work as well on their phone. Seems obvious to me.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.