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.

Comments

Taxes

[fabriciom]

We would never use loops holes to steal from the American people.

Re:Taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes perfectly legal accounting techniques are stealing.

Re:Taxes

[fabriciom]

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.

Re:Taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

We would never use loops holes to steal from the American people.

So you don't take ANY deductions when you fill out your taxes every year?

And you wind up giving more money to the government than you legally have to?

Why do I think you're a fucking hypocrite?

Re:Taxes

[K. S. Kyosuke]

If you don't pay the money to the government and you're an US-based individual, at least that money still stays in the US economy. I'm not sure that Apple sitting on international piles of cash is completely comparable, though.

Re:Taxes

[lazarus]

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.

Re:Taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don’t you use them if they are perfectly legal? How come everyones doesn’t use them?

Because it's not worth my/their time? Or I/they don't make enough money for it to be worth it?

I find it funny how you who Im sure pay all your taxes think its fine for others not to.

Could you please rewrite that in English? Thanks.

Re:Taxes

[the_B0fh]

Are loop holes legal?

Do you consider stealing to be illegal?

How do you put these two together?

Re:Taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Too late, you drank the Kool-Aid.
No, the new tax bill is not supposed to "close loopholes," it is solely to reduce corporate taxes and punish residents of states with high tax rates (i.e. California, New York, and other "blue" states"), while at the same time adding an irresponsible increase to the federal deficit and kicking the can down the road for a future congress to deal with

Re:Taxes

[fabriciom]

You can make your personal tax corporate. All you have to do is create a company and say all your expense are related to the company. A lot of people do this every day. Is it unethical, yes, is it illegal, yes. Problem is that everyone in the US thinks that everything is a corporation and its fine what the corporate world does. Not taking into account that that taxes companies evade are taxes not going to your police, fire department, streets, city maintenances, etc. People see the government at evil, when the true evil are that people in government.

Re:Taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

amazing how many people defend the orange turd pile.

Re: Taxes

[saloomy]

Actually, if you live in California you can donate money to the state (California has a 501 non profit charity) and pay your taxes through that, which make the taxes you pay federally deductible. But that's not the point. Unless this individual is earning a significant sum from sales of good abroad, they can't benefit from Apple's accounting tax system. Apple is not doing anything illegal, that would be stupid. They are doing something that tax policy didn't intend, but is allowed. This is the difference between tax evasion, and tax avoidance. Doing tax evasion is illegal. Doing tax avoidance is not. Corporations are REQUIRED to do tax avoidance. It's the management's fiduciary duty to shareholders to save money where possible and not illegal. If apple knew how to save cash and didn't, they would be sued by their shareholders, unless doing so improved their operations. Tax does not.

Re: Taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it funny how you, who Iâ(TM)m sure pays all your taxes, think itâ(TM)s fine for others not to (pay all their taxes).

Re: Taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a loophole should be considered an admission of guilt.

Re:Taxes

[Dog-Cow]

Expensing non-business-related expenditures in order to evade taxes is illegal, but that's not what actual corporations do. Problem is that you conflate what you want to be illegal with what actually is.

Re:Taxes

[Dog-Cow]

By definition, loopholes in laws allow for unintended, but legal behavior. Otherwise, it's not a loophole, it's an illegal behavior.

Re:Taxes

[Dog-Cow]

What does that have to do with the tax rates on tea in China? Taxes are not a moral obligation, they are merely legal. If the law allows paying less, you are generally stupid (or lazy) for paying more.

Re:Taxes

[slazzy]

Yes they abide by all the laws of Ireland...

Re:Taxes

[tbannist]

Out of curiosity, do you consider someone who is patriotic and takes pride in their country, to be stupid or are they lazy?

Re: Taxes

[king neckbeard]

Fiduciary responsibility is more about embezzlement or getting a lousy contract with your uncle's company, pretty much limited to conflicts of interest or outright sabotage.

Not avoiding taxes would be likely to get the CEO fired, but they wouldn't be in trouble for failing their fiduciary duty. Management can do just about anything legally, as long as there is a remotely possible business explanation. So, in regards to paying taxes, they could argue that it's good PR or that it's to avoid punitive changes to the law. The shareholders probably wouldn't by it, but they'd be okay legally.

Re:Taxes

[king neckbeard]

You do know that around 70% of households take standard deductions, right? Slashdot skews a bit higher up economically, but there are plenty of people who pay exactly what they legally have to.

Re: Taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

Ergo states with 1%ers. Isnt that what Dems wanted? Theyve been yelling raise our taxes right?

Re:Taxes

[king neckbeard]

Taxes are payment for services the government renders, and giant corporations like Apple are the biggest users of those services. It is unsustainable for them to not be paying appropriate levels of taxes.

Re:Taxes

[the_B0fh]

Exactly. Someone doesn't understand language.

Re: Taxes

[LynnwoodRooster]

Why would you pay through a 501(c)3 unless you are well into the AMT thing, though? Or have a SALT above $10K? With a charitable deduction, you only get $0.33 on the dollar, so unless you have a $30K SALT due, it's better to just pay directly. Which, I think for 99% of all /. folks, would be the better option.

Re:Taxes

[LynnwoodRooster]

Given that the corporate tax rate cut just passed brought our corporate income taxes into line with most of the rest of the OECD (including the EU), I don't see how they are NOT paying appropriate levels of taxes. Unless your contention is that all companies, everywhere, aren't paying enough in taxes?

Re:Taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

American companies don't pay that tax though...Looking at your data American corporate taxes are way higher than in Canada for example. The actual money collected tells a very different story.

The U.S. corporate income tax, as a share of GDP, averaged 2.2 percent of GDP for the 2000 to 2011 period. This is in sharp contrast to its northern neighbor, Canada, which collected far more corporate income tax revenues than the United States at roughly 3.4 percent of GDP during the same period (Chart 2)

https://taxfoundation.org/us-c...

You still (conveniently) forget about VAT payroll taxes and social security etc that are higher for businesses in other countries.

So not only do Americans pay less tax than you keep claiming, other places pay more in other corporate taxes as well.

Re:Taxes

[LynnwoodRooster]

From your own link:

US Marginal Effective Tax Rate: 35.3%

Canada Marginal Effective Tax Rate: 19%

OECD average Marginal Effective Tax Rate: 19.4%

Your own link shows my point; the US used to hit corporations at nearly twice the rate of our neighbors, and everyone else in the OECD. So what's your point, again? You claim they do NOT pay that tax - so what do they pay, if they are not paying the tax claimed in the data which you provided?

Re:Taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet the actual money collected tells a very different story.

The U.S. corporate income tax, as a share of GDP, averaged 2.2 percent of GDP for the 2000 to 2011 period. This is in sharp contrast to its northern neighbor, Canada, which collected far more corporate income tax revenues than the United States at roughly 3.4 percent of GDP during the same period (Chart 2)

https://taxfoundation.org/us-c...

They don't actually pay that because there are so many loopholes deductions and subsidies. They pay a much smaller amount of tax because of this. As shown repeatedly in the data.

Re:Taxes

[Maritz]

Why don’t you use them if they are perfectly legal? How come everyones doesn’t use them?

Because it's not worth my/their time? Or I/they don't make enough money for it to be worth it?

I find it funny how you who Im sure pay all your taxes think its fine for others not to.

Could you please rewrite that in English? Thanks.

It's English. It could use some punctuation but it's fine. Maybe you should just read more slowly, or trying saying the words out loud.

Re: Taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is yelling to raise taxes. Republicans constantly batter about how great cutting taxes will be for the economy, with zero examples of that happening despite myriad examples of the opposite. Dems are more like: Look at western Europe. High taxes, a thriving wealthy class, strong economies, and much less poverty, death from preventable disease. Effectively, an equitable society where more people describe themselves as happy then in the good oleâ(TM) land of the free and modestly taxed.

Re:Taxes

[LynnwoodRooster]

No, that is irrelevant. You can have a high tax rate, and yet pay a small amount relative to the GDP. Here is an example:

Country A has a 30% tax rate, and a GDP of $1,000,000. Country C has a 20% tax rate, and a GDP of $500,000.

A company that makes $100,000 per year is looking to relocate to either of these countries. In country A, they would pay (0.3 * $100,000) $30,000 per year. In country C, they would pay (0.2 * $100,000) $20,000. So the company chooses country C, because it would pay less tax.

Outside observer AC notices this, and does a quick calculation. In country A, the company would pay $30,000 in taxes; but that would only be 3% of the GDP. In country C, the company would pay $20,000, but that would be 4% of the GDP.

In his wisdom, observer AC declares the company is paying less taxes in country A! Why? Well, the fact that the company pays $10,000 more in country A doesn't matter to AC, he looks only at the share of GDP. Because country A's GDP is twice that of country C, the higher taxes paid by the company accounts for a smaller share of the GDP. But then, that doesn't matter to the company - because relocating in country C saves the company $10,000 - even if the $20,000 they pay is actually more of the GDP.

Does that clarify it for you? The US economy is huge compared to Canada; in fact, California and Texas both have GDPs greater than Canada! Paying $100,000 in corporate income taxes in Canada is definitely lower than paying $500,000 in corporate income taxes in the US. But if you look at the irrelevant statistic of "scaled by GDP", Canada has a bigger number. It means nothing - $100,000 in Canada is a higher percentage of the Canadian GDP than $500,000 is of the US GDP. But that's $400,000 difference - and cannot be ignored.

And once again, the data you link to explicitly states that the EFFECTIVE TAX RATE - that is the tax rate paid after all the deductions, loopholes, and such - is HIGHER in the US than in Canada. It says so right in black-and-white in your own reference. If you choose to ignore it, that is your loss. The fact is that the US had one of the highest marginal, average, and effective corporate income tax rates in the world. And now we've come down to about the OECD average, putting us on a more even playing field with the rest of the world.

Re: Taxes

[saloomy]

Your deduction from Salt is off your income, not your tax bill. Top vs bottom line. Same thing goes for a 501. You shave the same either way.

Re:Taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is an example:

Country A has a 30% tax rate, and a GDP of $1,000,000. Country C has a 20% tax rate, and a GDP of $500,000.

A company that makes $100,000 per year is looking to relocate to either of these countries. In country A, they would pay (0.3 * $100,000) $30,000 per year. In country C, they would pay (0.2 * $100,000) $20,000. So the company chooses country C, because it would pay less tax.

Snipped your irrelevant nonsense.
Country C is Canada so they end up paying 19.9% because they qualify for a few deductions. Canada is much better at actually collecting the taxes.
Country A is America and they only end up actually paying 14% after all the deductions tax breaks etc etc.America is basically a tax haven for Canadians.Many can't wait to retire there and pay much less tax than back home in Canada.

Only an idiot would look at the statutory rate and not work out what other things will lessen the tax you have to pay. Thanks for playing though.

Much easier alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Much easier alternative

[The123king]

You forget that most users aren't technically savvy. Most probably don't know what a botnet is.

Re:Much easier alternative

[Hal_Porter]

Or they could backport fixes to older OSs and not force people to either upgrade to a new major release to get bug fixes.

E.g. if you want to get a Meltdown fix and you're on 10.10 Yosemite you need to upgrade to High Sierra 10.13.3. Well if you're on El Capitan there's a fix, but Apple won't let you download El Capitan to install it on current machines, only High Sierra.

Meanwhile Microsoft patched Windows 7 - they didn't force you to upgrade to 8 or 10.

Of course in terms of work saying "Upgrade to the latest version, find the performance sucks and then buy new hardware of be insecure" is easier than back porting. More lucrative too.

Re:Much easier alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

if you want to get a Meltdown fix and you're on 10.10 Yosemite you need to upgrade to High Sierra 10.13.3. Well if you're on El Capitan there's a fix, but Apple won't let you download El Capitan to install it on current machines, only High Sierra.

Please do not spread lies. They do not make it easy to get a non-current OS, but it is not impossible. I was able to upgrade to Snow Leopard long after they stopped making it available in their app store, I just had to call them and purchase it over the phone.

Re:Much easier alternative

[the_B0fh]

Too bad I already responded to another thread, your level of sarcasm against these idiots is high. Respect!

Re:Much easier alternative

[the_B0fh]

You mean, you can't download like this? A simple google for download el capitan osx and the first hit was this.

https://support.apple.com/en-u...

Now that High Sierra is available, you should upgrade to High Sierra instead of El Capitan. For security and compatibility reasons, Apple always recommends using the latest version of macOS.

If your Mac doesn't support High Sierra, or you're using Snow Leopard or Lion and would like to upgrade to High Sierra, follow these steps:

1. Use this link to open the El Capitan page on the App Store: Get OS X El Capitan.

And that "Get OS X El Capitan" points you directly to: https://itunes.apple.com/app/o...

Just because you hate Apple, or you are incompetent, doesn't mean you have to show that off to the world.

Re:Much easier alternative

[Hal_Porter]

Hmm, interesting.

Except when I click the Get button it says

"We could not complete your purchase.

This version of OS X 10.11 cannot be installed on this computer."

This is on a 2012 Macbook Pro running Yosemite. If you read the blurb it says it's for users of Snow Leopard or Lion who want to upgrade to High Sierra - they need to install El Capitan first and then upgrade that.

However they don't want me upgrading to it - they want me to go straight to HS.

I'm sure I could get El Capitan, but not necessarily legally.

Re:Much easier alternative

[Hal_Porter]

Purchased? LOL! How much did they make you pay for it?

Re:Much easier alternative

[parkinglot777]

You forget that most users aren't technically savvy. Most probably don't know what a botnet is.

And I still don't understand how your reply has anything to do with the AC GP??? The GP suggested an alternative that Apple simply stops providing patches and let customers (whoever wants to purchase their products) keep buying a new phone instead.

Re:Much easier alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

but Apple won't let you download El Capitan to install it on current machines

Typical Slashdot anti-Apple FUD. It's not remotely true. Also Windows 8/10 are paid upgrades on 7 (yes I know, plenty of ways to skirt this) - El Cap and High Sierra are not.

Re:Much easier alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

Your obvious agenda is showing, troll.

Re: Much easier alternative

[Type44Q]

Typical Slashdot anti-Apple FUD

Bitch, that's just concensus.

Re:Much easier alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a valid question, though. I'd be curious to know how much they are charging their customers for a version software they already have a license to use.

Re:Much easier alternative

[Hal_Porter]

Where can I download a free, legal copy of El Capitan to upgrade my Yosemite machine to?

Re:Much easier alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we know El Capitan and High Sierra are not paid upgrades to Windows 7.

Thanks, professor.

Re:Much easier alternative

[sl149q]

You mean Windows 7 that won't work with current and next-generation Intel CPU's?

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/...

Re:Much easier alternative

[sound vision]

It's a much easier alternative for me as well. I could buy 20 new phones, plus an SD card to keep the same data on each them, for less than the price of a single iPhone. But in reality, I only need to switch phones every 18 months or so - pretty much the same schedule as someone who always gets the new iPhone.

Re:Much easier alternative

[larryjoe]

Seriously there is a much easier alternative. Just do what most other phone makers do and not provide security or bug fixes.

Is this true? Do iPhones users really believe this? I've had HTC and Samsung phones on T-Mobile for many years, and I've always gotten several updates per year, mostly for security issues.

Re:Much easier alternative

[the_B0fh]

Well, darn, now I look like the silly one.

I normally get it from the developer portal, just like how I get old versions of windows from msdn... :)

Re:Much easier alternative

[dgood]

It's a valid question, though. I'd be curious to know how much they are charging their customers for a version software they already have a license to use.

Snow Leopard was back when Apple still charged for major OS upgrades. I imagine they charged him the $29 list price.

Re:Much easier alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that High Sierra is available, you should upgrade to High Sierra instead of El Capitan. For security and compatibility reasons, Apple always recommends using the latest version of macOS.

Now that Windows 10 is available, you should upgrade to Windows 10 instead of Windows 7. For security and compatibility reasons, Microsoft always recommends using the latest version of Windows.

And, as you say, if you dont do this you must be a hater or incompetent.

Re:Much easier alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

All they had to do was ask. Provide a slider: "Favor performance" versus "Favor battery life."

All they had to was ask.

Re:Much easier alternative

[Hal_Porter]

That's the difference between Apple and MS. If you have MSDN Universal you can get old versions of Windows.

Admittedly MSDN Universal costs a tonne of cash and you're only supposed to use the old versions for testing.

MS used to provide digital downloads of old versions via Digital River but they killed that service off when 8 came out and people were using it to get 7

https://answers.microsoft.com/...

Unfortunately Microsoft suffer from Apple envy and have a tendency to copy the things Apple do, usually in a way that makes Windows a less desirable platform.

One example would be not patching old OSs to run on new CPUs and requiring new CPUs for new OSs. I.e. in a very Apple like way they're trying to tie a new OS to new hardware and old OSs to the old hardware.

Re:Much easier alternative

[Hal_Porter]

Apple stopped charging because if people paid $29 for an OS they could argue that running it on a Hackintosh was legal because of First Sale doctrine.

E.g

https://arstechnica.com/gadget...

I.e. there's no way that it's in Apple's interest to charge people $29 for an upgrade when selling software opened up a legal vulnerability where people could claim that since they paid money for it, they could install it on any hardware they wanted.

Of course not

[cyber-vandal]

Apple only has the best interests of its customers at heart.

Re:Of course not

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't want to slow down customer phones, then don't release a new OS version every year. Keep a gap of 3 years between major OS changes. As it is, hoggage from new OS versions forces many people to buy new phones. Where's the government investigation for that?

Re:Of course not

[jellomizer]

Ok, here is a business reason.
Apple normally releases their iPhones annually following the following pattern.
Flagship phone the first year, an upgrade the next year. iPhone - iPhone 3G - iPhone 4 - iPhone 4s - iPhone 5 - iPhone 5s...
So for their customers Apple would like them to upgrade their next phone to an other iPhone. However some people like getting the new fancy cool model while others want the upgrade version. So based on their habits that leaves them a 2 year window for someone to consider upgrading.
Now if one of the customers is on a 4 year phone cycle. They Get the iPhone 4, then the 6 then the 8 (or the X). Now in this window if their phone breaks, or dies. Say between keynotes. Lets say my iPhone 6 wouldn't work properly say back in June of 2017. Then I would be faced with a problem of what should I do for an upgrade.

the iPhone 7 is now the lagging phone, Samsung Note 8 was recently released, plus an assortment of superior phone from other companies. I may consider it worth it to upgrade to an Android phone, at the cost of my paid for apps.

Being the battery is one of the biggest wildcard (as Samsung Note 7 users know) which makes it difficult for them to last the duration. Apple decided to slow down the phones with poor battery to keep the phone working, as least until their planed upgrade time.

Re:Of course not

[rkordmaa]

I wonder how they managed to make that statement with a straight face? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Of course not

[Opportunist]

With Apple, the customer is at the center of their concerns.

So they can fleece him from every angle.

Re:Of course not

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the laugh this morning. Well done.

Re:Of course not

[Dog-Cow]

While the reminders get more annoying on the desktop, my wife has been happily ignoring iOS 11 availability from the day it was released. You are not forced to upgrade iOS.

Re:Of course not

[tbannist]

Oh, that's simple, you see, Apple doesn't slow down phones to intentionally make people upgrade, people wanting to upgrade because their phones are slow is merely a profitable side effect of slowing down their phones for completely valid technical reasons that they can't recite right now because of trade secrets. Furthermore, I'm sure that Apple's spokespeople and Apple's lawyers have had many, many meetings where it was made absolutely clear that Apple has a totally valid technical reason for slowing people's phones down.

Re: Of course not

[Anonymous Coward]

My kids have upgraded before being told not to. Their phones ran so poorly I had to return them. It's unfortunate they don't allow older phones to roll-back to previous OS versions. Also, what changes to OS are making things run so slow? It's pretty lame either way (planned obsolescence or negligent design)

Re:Of course not

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple decided to slow down the phones with poor battery to keep the phone working, as least until their planed upgrade time.

Apple's battery technology is not that shit that phones would stop working after only a few years if not throttled. You think Tesla starts reducing the performance of my car because of such severe battery degradation that my car will otherwise stop working?

The fanboy tagline used to be that Apple's phone batteries were so superior and you didn't need replaceable batteries because they lasted for years with no degradation, oh and that Apple doesn't intentionally slow down phones. Now both those things have turned out to be bullshit but of course the apologists have a new spin to put on this.

Apple kept this a secret until the point at which is was proven beyond any reasonable doubt that they were in fact doing this and only now have they come out and admitted it yet the apologists still crow that there's nothing suspicious or nefarious about that at all.

Let me see if I have this correct

[Jahoda]

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. "

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[DontBeAMoran]

What they did is take the decision that all users would rather have a phone that works for longer on a charge than a phone that works at its normal speed.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

And just forgot to include that "feature" in every single set of patch notes

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I believe their priorities are as follows:

1. Money
2. Reputation
3. User Experience

Good reputation and user experience makes them sell more devices.
In this case they did not notify anyone about throttling phones with older batteries since it would damage their reputation.
They took the risk of not telling anyone in hopes that no one would notice, and that risk was apparently not worth it.

So technically I actually do believe that they would never "degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades." because they don't care about the upgrades themselves but the money.
If they instead said that they are "degrading the user experience to keep their brand reputation and have more future sales" I would congratulate them on being honest to their customers.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[rsmith-mac]

If we're going to make up fictitious quotes, maybe we should at least finish them.

"... in order to prevent devices from unintentionally shutting down due to undercurrent conditions."

Everything about the silence around the throttling is annoying. But throwing out the context of the situation strips the whole matter of any meaning.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

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. "

Sounds like Throttle Down economics.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Hal_Porter]

Funny how other phone manufacturers don't seem to have the "phone shuts down when it is cold" bug that Apple had and was the excuse to throttle old devices.

Also funny Apple didn't just have a message saying "Your battery is worn out. Please visit an Apple store for a repair. In the meantime you may see lower performance".

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[tsqr]

"... in order to prevent devices from unintentionally shutting down due to undercurrent conditions."

Here, let me help you with that: "... in order to prevent devices from unintentionally shutting down due to undersized batteries that are degraded by bursts of high current demand."

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

That's ok. Googles is:

1. money
2. money
3. money
4. give government what they want
5. more money

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[lazarus]

So, you understand that they throttle up and down the processor all the time for a number of other technical reasons, right? If they ran the CPU cores at full speed all the time your battery would last an hour. Battery management is a HUGE part of the mobile balancing act.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

... and manipulate you into buying a new phone instead of replacing the battery of an otherwise functional phone.

Re: Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason the phone has this problem is the performance of the processors. Most older phones and including almost all android phones won't have this problem cause they are dogs performance wise. Android phones like the Samsung 9 however will likely start exhibiting similar issues if they continue to push performance. It's simply a limitation of what a battery can do compared to what a processor can want.

That said most older phones are fine and there is no reason for people to upgrade them. About half the people I know own iPhones the other half Android, and for the most part they are all happy, the only exceptions are two people who had super junk android phones, but there is some truth to the saying you get what you pay for, and if they had simply bought a decent android phone they would probably be happy.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but what they did is they sent out patches that reduced the maximum speed your processor could run at. So maybe opening an app takes a burst of 0.5 seconds at the original maximum speed, but when the phone is 2 years old it'll take 2 seconds at your new (lower) maximum speed. All the user knows is the phone is getting slower, and Apple never notified them why it's getting slower even though they knew why.

If Apple had sent an e-mail saying "Hey, your battery is getting old and you may see performance issues until you get it replaced." then this entire thing would have been avoided. Not to mention AppleCare covers things like this, so many of their customers deserved replacement batteries all along.

The title of the post is probably correct, technically speaking: "Apple would never degrade iPhone performance to get users to buy a new iPhone", but they still degraded iPhone performance without notifying users. Whether that lead to more iPhone sales (it did) or whether that was the real intent (it probably was) are both moot.

Re: Let me see if I have this correct

[Hal_Porter]

So you're saying Apple are better and have better processors. And the reason we know they have better processors is because the phones die on a cold day, which must be due to them being better. And presumably Apple, as a benevolent God, have throttled old phones to stop this.

This is the computer user equivalent of "He hits me cuz he love me", right?

Re: Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but a benchmarking app presents maximum workload to the cpu. If the chip is throttled, permanently, below the published specs, that's a nonconformance / defect.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[edtice1559]

More specifically the recognized that, if the battery is degraded, that running at full-speed would result in random shutdowns. The fact that the batteries they are using isn't up to the task at hand is the real issue here.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[edtice1559]

The batteries seem just not to be sized well enough to handle the current draw and it's a source of constant frustration. The phone probably should all be throttled from day one. But then they would all run like crap. Or you know, Apple could use better batteries that can handle the load.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[ArhcAngel]

If that were true BlackBerry would still be the #1 phone maker.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Except when the battery actually fails. Instead of showing obvious symptoms of an impending failure (reboots under heavy load), a casual user will not notice much until the battery just dies as the battery is extremely degraded.

I hope they don't need the phone for anything important.

Again, most people don't have a problem with what you say. It's just that they'd like to be notified of it. Imagine if your car just started using more and more fuel and the manufacturer refused to include dashboard lights. Is your car getting old, or is there a problem with it?

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[elcor]

they're afraid of all the class action lawsuits + bad pr their throttling is supposed to prevent random shutdown, guess what, my 5s has been doing just that since ios11

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny though, your list is closer to APL than Google.

As an Android user, you're free to use Amazon or FDroid app stores, maps, browsers... pretty much everything seamlessly. They also don't make nearly as much money per unit as any phone manufacturer either

As for Gov't requests: https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2017 They still give out as much information as they can, especially considering you can only use their cloud solution to be truly useful. (Referring to APL, lol)

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm yes they do. I have a galaxy S6 and it shuts down if it's too cold. I left it in my car over night last week and couldn't charge it. Gave me an alert it was too cold to charge.

Re: Let me see if I have this correct

[thegarbz]

Most older phones and including almost all android phones won't have this problem cause they are dogs performance wise.

Rather than writing 2 paragraphs, next time just go with "I have no clue". It's shorter and gets your point across just as well.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

What they did is take the decision that all users would rather have a phone that works slower on a charge than a phone that works at its normal speed. Coincidentally, also when a new phone model was released.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[sl149q]

Or more likely "... in order to prevent devices from unintentionally shutting down due to abuses batteries that are degraded by bursts of high current demand. Batteries that did not meet their design lifetime because of daily 90-95% discharge/recharge cycles."

Don't abuse your battery with repeated deep discharge cycles and it will last a lot longer. And you probably will never see your iPhone getting slowed down to allow it to continue functioning at all.

Of course, Apple could never come out and blame customers for abusing their phones.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, Apple could never come out and blame customers for abusing their phones.

Of course they do. It took courage to say 'You're holding it wrong.'

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how other phone manufacturers don't seem to have the "phone shuts down when it is cold" bug that Apple had and was the excuse to throttle old devices.

Also funny Apple didn't just have a message saying "Your battery is worn out. Please visit an Apple store for a repair. In the meantime you may see lower performance".

Posting as AC to avoid undoing mods.

You are a either a moron, or are willfully ignorant.

Do about 2 seconds worth of Googling, and you will see EXACTLY this issue for EVERY phone OEM, including the supposed "bulletproof" iPhone 4s and 5.

But Samsung, LG, HTC, et al., ALL have multiple reports of "sudden shutdowns" when battery charge is in the 50% or lower range, and/or the phone gets cold.

Here's some random examples:

https://us.community.samsung.c...

https://us.community.samsung.c...

https://forums.androidcentral....

https://thedroidguy.com/2016/1...

https://www.ifixit.com/Answers...

https://www.reddit.com/r/lgv20...

https://forums.androidcentral....

https://forum.xda-developers.c...

https://androidforums.com/thre...

https://android.stackexchange....

https://discussions.apple.com/...

http://iphone-tricks.com/tutor...

https://apple.stackexchange.co...

So, it appears that Apple actually found a REASONBLE software fix for an INDUSTRY-WIDE problem.

Their ONLY "sin" was in not being clear about the fix.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Or more likely "... in order to prevent devices from unintentionally shutting down due to abuses batteries that are degraded by bursts of high current demand. Batteries that did not meet their design lifetime because of daily 90-95% discharge/recharge cycles."

Don't abuse your battery with repeated deep discharge cycles and it will last a lot longer. And you probably will never see your iPhone getting slowed down to allow it to continue functioning at all.

Of course, Apple could never come out and blame customers for abusing their phones.

I'd buy that if this didn't affect the majority of iPhone owners. Just about everyone with an iPhone 6 or 6S noticed degraded performance after a year. (Haven't heard anything from iPhone 7 owners yet, but I'll bet that's coming now that they're out of warranty.)

The real answer is that Apple was trying to cover up their bad batteries. I believe them when they say they weren't trying to drive people to new phones - because I believe they were really trying to avoid a class action lawsuit that would require them to recall and replace the batteries in every single iPhone 6, 6S and 7 they ever made. (As the slowdown explicitly targets those models, and only those models.)

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[cmseagle]

Your battery is worn out. Please visit an Apple store for a repair. In the meantime you may see lower performance

Slashdot headline the next day: "Apple advertising Apple Stores with claim that degraded batteries may affect performance"

Slashdot comment the next day: "I CAN'T BELIEVE APPLE WOULD DARE ADVERTISE THEIR SERVICES ON MY PHONE! Why don't they just make the obvious choice of dynamically throttling the processor to avoid the most negative consequences?"

Apple will never win in the argument against the armchair product designers.

Re: Let me see if I have this correct

[david_thornley]

Logic. It's not just for breakfast anymore. Try it sometime.

Re: Let me see if I have this correct

[Brockmire]

The fix is a design change and/or replacing defective batteries. You keep describing workarounds and mitigation. These are not "fixes". Also, someone needs to define "cold". I wasn't surprised at all when my phone died at 24% when in a non running car between - 29*C and - 39*C at the time. The battery is over a year old and the model is known to shit the bed after 10 months. From a design point of view, I wouldn't expect the phone rated for this temp. It sure sucked, but I wasn't expecting different. Anything rebooting at room temperature is just pure design defect or defective battery that should be replaced. Between zero and - 30*C, I don't know. I'm lucky enough to live in milder temperature, usually.

Re: Let me see if I have this correct

[Brockmire]

BlackBerry fanboy here. There's a dozen reasons, but ultimately they took too long to get more social and media consumption shit into their phones. You would be amazed how many kids abandoned ship based on lack of motherfucking emojis or social apps. I'll probably go back to using a Z30 as daily driver over Android.

Re: Let me see if I have this correct

[Brockmire]

Can you post the battery and charging instructions that come with an iPhone for ensuring the battery lasts the longest lifetime achievable? Can you describe some of the features the phone has to help maintain the optimal charging schedule?

Re: Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

The person you replied to made a very well written response, you responded with an asinine comment. Either you are a teenager or have stock in Apple. Regardless, you are, imo, a fool.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is in the business of selling hardware. No matter what they're trying to backpedal on now, their main profit comes from selling new hardware. That they never disclosed their battery issues to their consumers (Thin is better! No need for a larger/thicker battery, trust us!) is utter bullshit.

And it they want us to believe that 'batterygate' is just an honest mistake, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn for sale...

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Except my girlfriend's Galaxy S6 is basically doing what apple are claiming to prevent right now. It will shut down at random (when under say 10-15% battery life remaining), battery life is garbage, etc.

Funny how her S6 has no such message, either.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Hal_Porter]

Perhaps, but I'd defend Apple if they did what I suggested. Silently throttling old phones to deal with the problem that they shut down when it's cold is dishonest. Then again Apple's user base is notoriously non technical. Maybe silent throttling was the right thing to do. Well, until someone reverse engineered what was going on and there was a scandal.

Re: Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how they avoid that by having a "shuts of when they get too hot" bug

Re: Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying Apple are better and have better processors. And the reason we know they have better processors

Oh, their processors are designed better - it's just that one of the manufacturers build quality isn't that good. Hint: you love that company.

Re:Let me see if I have this correct

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd buy that if this didn't affect the majority of iPhone owners. Just about everyone with an iPhone 6 or 6S noticed degraded performance after a year.

All iPhone users "notice degraded performance after a year". Even when there is none.

Jesus Christ, even the bloody blog post from Geekbench that started this whole brouhaha shows that only a minority of users are actually affected by the throttling. Don't fucking pretend.

Oh, right

[DontBeAMoran]

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.

Re:Oh, right

[Hal_Porter]

Ram is soldered in all the portable machines Apple sell. It's true the iMac Pro has socketed memory but as you point out you need to disassemble the machine to get to it. And the GPU, which is probably the component PC users upgrade most frequently is soldered.

The CPU and SSDs are upgradeable, assuming you can disassemble the machine and don't mind voiding the warranty but the SSDs are proprietary and even the CPU is apparently a custom device Intel made for Apple.

https://www.macrumors.com/2018...

Apple is using standard 288-pin DDR4 ECC RAM sticks with standard chips, which iFixit was able to upgrade using its own $2,000 RAM upgrade kit. A CPU upgrade is "theoretically possible," but because Apple uses a custom-made Intel chip, it's not clear if an upgrade is actually feasible. The same goes for the SSDs -- they're modular and removable, but custom made by Apple. Unlike the CPU, the GPU is BGA-soldered into place and cannot be removed.

Re:Oh, right

[cristiroma]

FYI most recent Mac clones have soldered memory chips and HDDs as well. If you don't like it get another laptop with replaceable RAM.
Dell XPS 13 - https://www.ifixit.com/Teardow... - Buyer beware: Just like in the MacBooks Air and Retina, the RAM in the XPS 13 is soldered to the motherboard, and cannot be replaced. When you're picking out your new laptop, configure what you think it'll need...forever.
Asus Zenbook - http://gearopen.com/gears/insi... - 8GB (!!!) soldered
etc.

Re:Oh, right

[the_B0fh]

Uh, I thought iMacs have accessible memory slots? Are you talking about MacBooks? For those with upgradable memory, removing the screws isn't that tough (and given Apple's inclination for keeping everything smooth and shiny and hidden away, that's to be expected).

Re:Oh, right

[Anonymous Coward]

You are confusing users with technicians. The average user doesn't even know what RAM is....

Re:Oh, right

[AmiMoJo]

I seem to recall that they crippled third party SSDs initially too... That's right, essential TRIM support was disabled if it wasn't an official Apple part. They only stopped after customers complained.

Re:Oh, right

[Hal_Porter]

Yeah, I had to force enable TRIM when I upgraded to an SSD in my 2012 Macbook Pro.

It's also a bit unclear what would happen if I upgraded that machine from Yosemite to High Sierra. HS has a new file system but that is only supported on Apple SSDs. Does that mean my third party SSD stays on HFS+?

Re:Oh, right

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't upgrade your TV, your toaster, or your microwave oven after purchase. Just because many types of general purpose PC have been upgradeable in the past does not mean that it is necessary for that to be the case. Buy a spec sufficiently high that it will continue to serve you for the expected useful lifetime of the device, and enjoy the benefits in terms of size, weight, ergonomics and reliability that come from making some of these components non-removable.

Re: Oh, right

[Anonymous Coward]

Many users tried but then Apple throttled their devices. Why on earth would anyone buy a device "for years to come" if Apple will just force degrade their devices performance to generate more revenue.

PS: very few people have to "upgrade" their toasters ever because of bad updates that consume more toaster resources.

Re:Oh, right

[DontBeAMoran]

AFAIK the only remaining Macs with easily-accessible RAM slots are the 27" iMacs.

Re:Oh, right

[willy_me]

They stopped after TRIM support was reliably implemented on SSDs. If you recall, initial SSD implementations of TRIM had some reliability issues. The need for TRIM was not foreseen early enough for the initial implementations to be adequately tested. It is understandable that a manufacturer would want to limit new features on such a fundamentally important part of the system - or at least make them opt-in options. It is not like the SSD manufacturers were writing their firmware for, and testing compatibility with, MacOS.

Re:Oh, right

[willy_me]

My third-party SSD was updated to APFS automatically. Mechanical hard drive was not.

Re:Oh, right

[Anonymous Coward]

They stopped after TRIM support was reliably implemented on SSDs. If you recall, initial SSD implementations of TRIM had some reliability issues. The need for TRIM was not foreseen early enough for the initial implementations to be adequately tested. It is understandable that a manufacturer would want to limit new features on such a fundamentally important part of the system - or at least make them opt-in options. It is not like the SSD manufacturers were writing their firmware for, and testing compatibility with, MacOS.

wow you guys get rapes and instead of being pissed off, you make excuses for your raper. does every apple buyer have stockholm syndrome? seems about right.

Re: Oh, right

[Brockmire]

Yeah they do, even if they mix storage and RAM size units. Every basic office bitch knows about RAM. Replacing RAM, that's entirely different.

Re: Oh, right

[Brockmire]

Toaster and microwaves are unitaskers and that doesn't change over time. TV'S are upgradeable these days and that is to support new technology and bugfix other existing technology. This changes over time. Are you stunned?

Re:Oh, right

[Hal_Porter]

Interesting. I'll probably have to upgrade to HS at some point to be able to use the latest XCode. E.g XCode 9 requires Sierra (10.12) or later.

https://developer.apple.com/li...

Xcode 9 requires a Mac running macOS 10.12.6 or later.

Re:Oh, right

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to recall that they crippled third party SSDs initially too... That's right, essential TRIM support was disabled if it wasn't an official Apple part. They only stopped after customers complained.

Yeah. That's because enabling TRIM on some SSDs (mostly from Samsung - https://blog.algolia.com/when-...) can lead to data corruption, and Apple doesn't want (actually: need) to keep a list on which SSDs that happens, because they don't use them in their machines.

Coincidently, early reports for the iPhone 6s said that the A9 CPUs made by Samsung put a larger drain on the battery compared to those made by TSMC https://apple.slashdot.org/sto... - so this may all be Samsung's fault. Will you defend Samsung when Apple sues them over this?

Then why?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Then why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they show their incompetence by being a multi-billion dollar company.

Re:Then why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Either they are playing people for chumps or they are grossly incompetent.

Why not both?

Re:Then why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Either they are playing people for chumps or ...

No way. I'm a loyal Apple customer.

If Apple wanted to play people for chumps, they'd sell them overpriced mediocre hardware with a popular logo stamped on the side of it.

I mean, ... hey, why are you laughing?

Re:Then why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Being profitable in no way indicates competence. One could effectively argue that Apple today is simply riding out the remaining momentum from the days of Steve Jobs. Additionally, there is a vast difference between technical competence, marketing competence, and PR competence. Even as someone who has never been a fan of Apple, I have to admit that they used to be good at all three, but without the reality distortion field of Jobs their PR competence appears to be rapidly eroding.

Dear Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you.

no but

[Anonymous Coward]

We Would Never Degrade the iPhone Experience To Get Users To Buy New Phones

no but youd do it because your gay

Sincere? Maybe. Probably defective batteries

[adosch]

...outside the typical no-so-much-a-conspiracy-theory-anymore side of things, it's quite possible Apple got a HUGE influx of bad batteries that went out into millions of their phone models. I do remember a small window last year about specific models of iPhone 6/6s having recalls for batteries, which caused hardware instability (e.g. unexpected shutdowns, phone reboots, etc.).

If there is anything honest and plausible I'll put my intuition on, it would be that those batteries were FAR reaching outside that. Apple tried a small recall to make it 'look good' but in essence, it was fucking everything on the mobile side. So they tried to cover it up with throttling hacks to preserve the batteries in future iOS releases and got caught by some tech savvy folk on reddit.

Sure, and bears in the woods...

[Viol8]

... use flushing toilets.

Re:Sure, and bears in the woods...

[93 Escort Wagon]

... use flushing toilets.

Fancy-pants California Golden Bears do, apparently.

Honestly, it was just a happy coincidence

[mykepredko]

I really feel like Apple needs a Jobs infusion, stat.

The PC lineup has stagnated.
They don't see the value of continuing the iPod (something Mr. Jobs was passionate about).
The phones are continuing on a modest growth path in terms of performance/Flash size but nothing disruptive (ie iPhone X falling flat).
They're dropping the server line.
Their stores are nice and, to be fair, getting better.

Mr. Cook has always been a competent CEO but they need somebody who looks at things differently and sees where things can be amazing, not just better.

Re:Honestly, it was just a happy coincidence

[the_B0fh]

You still want the iPod? The sales of iPod is basically gone, you know that, right?

Re:Honestly, it was just a happy coincidence

[geek]

I worked at Apple. Jobs is the one that killed the iPod. They cut the team by a 3rd every year for 3 years before he died. All that was left when he passed a handful of support people.

Re:Honestly, it was just a happy coincidence

[Anonymous Coward]

I want 24bit audio playback. WTF??!! This is inexcusable to not have this in 2018!

Re:Honestly, it was just a happy coincidence

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what he just said!

Re:Honestly, it was just a happy coincidence

[Anonymous Coward]

What people did they need? They just basically took an i device and stripped out it's cellular... or take a bog standard MP3 decoder chip with any decent battery. Literally no engineering was necessary.

Re:Honestly, it was just a happy coincidence

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPod was unchanged for 5+ years.

Liars: "We would never lie!"

[Anonymous Coward]

A liar will not be believed (or even not believed), even when he speaks the truth.

That's the problem with businesses these days, and why corporations are hated so much. It's not the concept of a coproration or business itself, but that it seems to be all about how to get away with taking as much money as they can and giving as little as possible, aka maximizing profit, above all else.
Making the amount of obfuscation basically the only difference from straight up stealing, robbery, fraud or racketeering.
Zero conscience, even though social behavior has a huge strategic advantage that even a psychopath should get,
and less forethought than a monkey, even harming the very resources one needs to survive, shitting right where they eat.

The ICD description of psychopathy fits their behavior quite well.

In the past, it was easier to get away with it, because one could hide in the anonymity of big societies, but now, with the Internet, that shit flies less and less.

DontBeAMoran = fake name massive human fail

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: Your MASSIVE FAIL in this life is you're nothing more than a chattering little do-nothing "ne'er-do-well" online & you know it...

* Is that the best your "phantasyland FAKE NAME" (for your fake lie of a so-called 'life') can manage?

When a FAKE NAME do nothing like YOU does better than I have? Then talk (you're all talk & no action)...

You can't help you're an immature little BUTTHURT no-mind, lol! I blew you away in TONS OF PLACES and easily dust your no-mind bullshit blatherings.

APK

P.S.=> The TRUE PRICE of your UNIDENTIFIABLE FAKE NAME do-nothing selves like you that I can ALWAYS CASH IN ON (lol) is that I can use FACT/TRUTH on them to SHATTER their all TOO fragile delusional egos that they actually know A DAMN THING in computing, lol... apk

Re:DontBeAMoran = fake name massive human fail

[DontBeAMoran]

Yay! Again!

Re:DontBeAMoran = fake name massive human fail

[Chris Mattern]

Rants about "UNIDENTIFIABLE FAKE NAME" of another user.

Posts as Anonymous Coward.

?

Re:Sincere? Maybe. Probably defective batteries

[OffTheLip]

This sounds like a reasonable explanation but I don't see how a corporation as large as Apple could effectively cover it up for this long. Especially in light of the recent backlash. One disgruntled manager or well placed employee could topple the scheme. Still, I like the theory.

Apple's Statement - Funniest thing today

[rjune]

When I read "Apple said it would never intentionally "degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades," I laughed out loud. I wonder if the Apple spokesperson was able to get this out with a straight face. They don't design their phones to make repairs harder either...

Duh... Of course not...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about people not realizing there's a problem until the warranty runs out. Saving millions on batteries and replacements. Also if you get a new battery at 2yr-1w, that's another 2 years before you upgrade... How come no one sees this?

Better: "We would never make our phones look bad!"

[DutchUncle]

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 . . ")

yeah well

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah well they did force me to buy a new phone. I was perfectly happy with an iPhone 5 and noticed as soon as the update hit the phone sucked. I had to tools to know if it was just a mega bloated updated or what but I was pushed into an SE. The thought did cross my mind if they were gimping older phones to force sales but I figured Apple was above this. Guess I was wrong.

Now we KNOW it's true

[Archtech]

"Never believe anything until it's been officially denied".

- Claud Cockburn

Re:Now we KNOW it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

In their case, "Never believe anything" because no reasonable person would believe their advertising. That's from their own mouths, not mine.

With a federal court order Apple's answer 2 me

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a order from a Federal Bankruptcy Judge for Apple to unlock property.

Apple's answer was to pay a fee to have the device shipped to them and replaced,

So yea, Apple *WILL* request money VS just going into their "reported lost" database and reset a flag.

Apple isn't being honest.

Re: With a federal court order Apple's answer 2 me

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a locked iPhone, it's likely they can't unlock it, take it into an Apple store they will probably just replace it there, bring the court order though.

Also it's not Apple, Microsofts, Google or anyone's job to manage a backdoor method to get on your phone. Remember if they can unlock a phone for anyone they can unlock it for everyone. Is it horrible for people who lose loved ones and then can't get access to import pictures or documents yes, but at the same time, the alternative is much worse, and there is no way they could build software that only they could control giving access to people like you, or legitimate government officials, ultimately it would get used by foreign agents and criminals.

Re: With a federal court order Apple's answer 2 me

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure Apple and TLA can surely unlock it, but it would set a precedent and also Apple was just playing safe, as the requester was just probably doing a honeypot project, *testing the waters* if Apple can unlock any secured device.

Re: With a federal court order Apple's answer 2 me

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because the regular person is going to be actually worried that their baby pictures will be used for nefarious government black ops.

Don't forget they willingly dump their cloud and another other service that's not on your phone (like Voice Assistant queries)

Re: With a federal court order Apple's answer 2 me

[Anonymous Coward]

Did bring the locked iPad and the order. And no they would not.

Re: With a federal court order Apple's answer 2 me

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the requester was not "doing a honeypot". This device was seized in a writ of replevin and "doing a honeypot" would have had required planning.

Depends on the context

[freedom4us]

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." https://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOL... "I thought the definition included any activity by [me], where [I] was the actor and came in contact with those parts of the bodies" which had been explicitly listed (and "with an intent to gratify or arouse the sexual desire of any person"). In other words, Clinton denied that he had ever contacted Lewinsky's "genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks", and effectively claimed that the agreed-upon definition of "sexual relations" included giving oral sex but excluded receiving oral sex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

No, never..

[Anonymous Coward]

Also we would never eliminate a standard headphone plug which works with generic $2 headphones in order to try to sell our wireless $160 headphones, which under any normal and reasonable conditions are completely unnecessary.

Re:No, never..

[Joe_Dragon]

we would never help red china unlock phones but we did and not the FBI

Re:No, never..

[Anonymous Coward]

Bluetooth is an open standard and we would never block bluetooth signals of other OS, but we did. Just so we can force our iPhone users to also buy iPods, iPads and macOS PC's, to hell with Android OS,, Linux and Win OS.

Re:Sincere? Maybe. Probably defective batteries

[TheCastro1689]

I heard tech companies black ball people from each other's companies. Pretty sure on /.

Reasonable expectation

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless of intention, anybody with a brain can see how such a practice might give consumers the incentive to purchase a new phone. I wonder if a conversation was had about what effect their design decision would have. Obviously, somewhere in the conversation, they thought it was best to conceal the battery degradation as well as the slowdown from the user.

Should intention be the most important factor in the discussion? People can lie about their intentions. There could be many different intentions ascribed to a given action. If a good intention and a bad intention can be ascribed to the same action, maybe that action is questionable.

If I was a sociopath trying to get away with performing an action with bad intent, I would choose an action that could also be defended with a good intention for the sake of plausible deniability.

Except they do and did

[DrXym]

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.

Re:Except they do and did

[Uberbah]

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.

Yes, phones randomly turning themselves off would be so much better! Hatorade Distortion Field....

Re:Except they do and did

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they did not "degrade the user experience".

They degraded CPU performance but IMPROVED user experience by increasing the time between charges.

At least that's what they're going with. And legally they're not lying.

Re:Except they do and did

[sl3xd]

The batteries aren't sealed in. Two screws, a suction cup to get the tight-tolerance screen up, and you're in. Pentalobe drivers are available at Walmart.

The batteries do have a removable adhesive tape, similar to 3M Command Adhesive. There are couple more screws inside that secure connectors, including the battery connector. That's really all there is to it.

It takes a couple of tools to replace the battery; I have to use a screwdriver to replace the batteries on my toddler's toys too.

Re:Except they do and did

[Anonymous Coward]

They would have been better off just saying "Sure we would like to drive customers to upgrade; we don't have to play underhanded tricks like throttle performance -- we'll just rely on good old-fashioned marketing and the RDF still in effect"

-- OR the seven most important words in American history:

My client has no recollection of that

Re:Except they do and did

[Anonymous Coward]

oh, come on, reall? had they designed the battery around the phone's specs, instead of designing it around the minimal space left to put a battery because this years phone HAS TO BE thinner than last years phone. this FEATURE is only there because they pushed the envelope too far and used a battery that was obviously not robust enough, nor does it have the capacity to allow the phone to run at full speed for more than a few months. they didn't include any overprovisioned capacity so that the battery would still get the job done past WELL AFTER YOUR WARRANTY EXPIRES. planned obsolescence, you obviously keep getting buttfucked, and yet you keep asking for more. crazy!

Re:Except they do and did

[Uberbah]

Blah blah blah blah. Like holding it wrong, phones turning off randomly with old batteries affects Android as well. But since Apple isn't involved, it's not a problem. /eyeroll

Re:Except they do and did

[DrXym]

Here on planet Earth, slowing a phone's operation IS degrading the experience.

Re:Except they do and did

[DrXym]

In other words, sealed in. By any reasonable person's definition.

Apple are vaunted as masters of design, yet it's amazing how they can't produce a phone that allows the battery to be replaced without the use of tools. Almost as if it is a deliberate, cynical ploy to drive sales of new phones.

Re:Except they do and did

[sl3xd]

seal: verb: Conclude, establish, or secure definitively, excluding the possibility of reversal or loss.

Sealed in would be covered in epoxy resin that cannot be removed at all.

Your definition would mean that batteries are “sealed” under the hood of the car, because tools are required to remove it. It ain’t so.

so Apple is evil huh?

[supernova87a]

If Apple cares so little about supporting users on older phones, why does it put so much time into designing OSes that are compatible with its older phones for years longer than competitors do? Hm?

I know it's fun to play the conspiracy game and blame a big company, but do you think they would be bothering to spend years on this stuff if they were trying to disable your phone? There are easier ways to do it, just stop writing iOS updates for out of date equipment. But they don't, they keep supporting it, years after other manufacturers or OS teams would.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2...

Maybe do a little independent thought before signing onto the lazy conspiracy theory and jumping on the mindless bandwagon?

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[fluffernutter]

So they can demonstrate to users that the new features don't work as well on their phone. Seems obvious to me.

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are easier ways to do it, just stop writing iOS updates for out of date equipment. But they don't, they keep supporting it, years after other manufacturers or OS teams would.

Come on, don't be stupid. That would be too obvious if Apple would just stop updating older iOS versions. Sales would suddenly slump and court cases would be filed left and right against Apple. Doing something nefarious _secretly_ is their trick-of-the-trade. That's what happened with this battery issue.

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[Goldsmith]

My old iPhone 3G would like to have a word with you about that "OSes that are compatible with its older phones" claim.

You're right that I don't know WHY Apple bricked my phone with an OS update, I simply know that they did.

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sales would suddenly slump and court cases would be filed left and right against Apple.

No they wouldn't.

You can see what would actually happen just by looking at any one of the many number of carrier branded Android phones.

Those phones run out of date software before they are even sold, and never receive any software upgrade. No updates to the date the phone was purchased, and no updates to any date beyond that.

What actually happens? Sales don't drop, and no lawsuits are to be found. Not even mass malware is spread that exploits bugs in Android that were fixed months if not years prior to the phone being sold.

Apple doing the exact same would not impact them at all.

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right that I don't know WHY Apple bricked my phone with an OS update, I simply know that they did.

How were you holding it when you performed the update? /accusatory tone

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

because second hand market sales drive first hand market sales?

look at it this way, if i have a phone and i am about to buy a new one i would like to get some money back from selling the old one. It also helps that apple controls the hardware which makes it much more cost effective to cross develop to older models when compared to android phones. This means that the cost trade off between the primary sales they get from people upgrading offsets the costs of back porting updates to older hardware. Or do you think that because OSX generally runs cleaner with less bloat than windows that they care about their users there too. or maybe its just because they have such tight control over the hardware that the software part costs a small fraction of what it costs the other guys.

In contrast android must deal with a multitude of hardware manufacturers, even when considering the Nexus devices there are several different hardware vendors for the phone.

But to get back to your original point, Apple doesn't care about the users, it cares about the profits. They are a hardware company that provides software that only runs on their hardware. They have shown time and time again that they will do what ever they want to drive their sales regardless of user preferences. You should take your own advice and do some independent thought before shilling for a company and jumping on the mindless bandwagon. Apple cares about its profits, not the users and that is plain as day in their offerings in the past 10 years. They are also a hardware company, not a software company (few of the software they produce runs on other hardware).

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[Uberbah]

Did you know the Hatorade Distortion Field applies to more than just the length of time a device is supported?

http://dontholditwrong.tumblr....

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[supernova87a]

I see. So they intentionally spend many, many man-years to build in extra functionality to slow down your phone while upgrading all sorts of other features, when they could've just stopped supporting it altogether like other phone makers do, to get you to upgrade? They really are clever and devious!

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[fluffernutter]

Everything with Apple is a marketing calculation. They probably don't purposefully keep upgrading old devices for this reason, but they probably don't see a downside either. It is relatively cheap to keep an old device upgraded when all you have to worry about is a device in which you controlled every aspect of its design. Certainly not as difficult as what Microsoft does with Windows. So if they can tout a new feature and make it unavailable on an old phone, why not?

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Apple cares so little about supporting users on older phones, why does it put so much time into designing OSes that are compatible with its older phones for years longer than competitors do? Hm?

In order to bog down performance, thereby "encouraging" the owners to buy a new, faster, shinier iPhone. If the phone was left running an older version of iOS, they way Android users are stuck doing, the old phone would continue to run well enough that the owner would probably run it into the ground before wasting money on a new one.

"So much time" put into making sure the new OS runs -- however just-barely -- on older devices translates into more "encouragement" to buy a new one. It may seem like a waste of the developers' time, but it's a salesman who's leading the company these days.

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[supernova87a]

Really, you think that it's easy to update the iOS for an entire previous generation of phone hardware and keep the full thing working, just to be able to add a slowdown-feature to a small part of the battery / power management algorithms to make people want to upgrade?

Cmon man, listen to your own bullshit...

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, you think that it's easy to update the iOS for an entire previous generation of phone hardware and keep the full thing working

Why the fuck not? Microsoft has been doing it with PCs for decades...

The reason Apple updates iOS for older devices is to keep people within their eco system. They'd rather extend the functionality of an older $600+ device and keep that user locked into their ecosystem and spending money on apps than give the user any reason to jump over to a competitor like Android where they can get a new phone every year for $200. They sure as shit aren't doing it out of the kindness of their hearts

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that "Hatorade Distortion Field" isn't a) a thing b) original or c) clever

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[Uberbah]

As opposed to the new original thing of harboring completely irrational animosity towards a company who's products you never intend to buy? Hypocritical hater, heal thyself...

Re:so Apple is evil huh?

[Waccoon]

There are easier ways to do it, just stop writing iOS updates for out of date equipment.

That's too obvious. Apple is all about image. They enjoy maintaining the image of being a premium vendor and supporting their old devices... whether they actually do or not.

Never degrade to get you to buy a new phone

[Anonymous Coward]

No we degrade your experience to get you to throw out your old phone. What you do after that is entirely your business.

Re:Never degrade to get you to buy a new phone

[freeze128]

Buy a Samsung phone. There's *NOTHING* wrong with their batteries...

I actually believe Apple

[Ensign_Expendable]

Hate me if you will, but I'm guessing Apple management never realized how the software update would be perceived by the public. The optics are terrible and now they have a situation to deal with.

Come on, Apple

[OneHundredAndTen]

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?

Re:Come on, Apple

[Uberbah]

Please spare us the self-virtuous, good-goody statements and do not insult our intelligence, OK?

What about insulting your own intelligence? If Apple was as greedy as the haters are insisting, they wouldn't have done anything to address older phones randomly shutting off in the software.
  Their "solution" would be to tell users they could pay for a new battery at $80 a pop, or to buy a new phone.

Re:Come on, Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

If Apple was as greedy as the haters are insisting, they wouldn't have done anything to address older phones randomly shutting off in the software.

They would have done whatever they would consider best for them from a business point of view, not whatever somebody in Slashdot would imagine would be the best for Apple.

Re:Come on, Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

> Business is business.... do whatever is necessary ... to increase your bottom line.

That's bullshit. You treat your customers right, you recognize that you're nothing without them, you do whatever you can to *keep them coming back* in the months and years to come.

Businesses that can't see past the next quarter are dinosaurs ... and the ruination of those businesses that do their best to do business *the right way*. In the year to come, thousands of franchises will SHUTTER because they chose the dark side. So Be It.

Re:Come on, Apple

[Uberbah]

Non-response. Again, if greedy Apple was just herding existing customers into giving them more money, as the haters are suggesting, they would have let older phones go on turning off randomly. To force the issue of paying for a new phone or paying for a new battery.

Calculations

[fluffernutter]

Apple is highly marketing-savvy. If they did something a certain way, you can bet it was discussed and every decision calculated for its effect on the consumer. For them to make the oversight to ask the owner before slowing down the device, they may be able to claim ignorance but I don't buy it.

Re: Calculations

[Anonymous Coward]

While people like to see Apple as market savvy and while in many cases they are. The issue here is they were improving performance management, this probably didn't even trigger any type of concern from anyone, it also probably went trough regression testing without raising a single red flag.

They probably had a bug/issue and addressed it with a good process on paper, ran some simple tests and called it a day, with this being a small part of overall performance management improvements.

Re: Calculations

[fluffernutter]

Yet look how bad it looked in the public eye. Still don't believe it was an oversight.

Re:Calculations

[Anonymous Coward]

Classic situation, was it evil genius or mere incompetence? Neither are a good look.

So you mean to say

[rsilvergun]

That me buying 2 new iPhones due to performance degradation is just a happy coincidence, right? And before you ask a they're for my kid. Posting this from a $220 Android that I won't upgrade until 5G gets cheap.

Re:So you mean to say

[Uberbah]

That me buying 2 new iPhones due to performance degradation is just a happy coincidence, right? And before you ask a they're for my kid. Posting this from a $220 Android that I won't upgrade until 5G gets cheap.

And how much sooner would you have bought those new phones if your old ones randomly turned themselves off. They screwed up by not telling people or making it an optional setting, but it made older phones more usable, not less.

Re:So you mean to say

[sl3xd]

And how much sooner would you have bought those new phones if your old ones randomly turned themselves off.

A lot of folks seem to miss that point.

Lithium Polymer batteries have a lifespan between 300-500 cycles. A consumer who bought an iPhone 7 in Sept 2016 can easily be reach the end of his battery's life when the iPhone 8 comes out in Sept 2017. It's coincidence, but the peanut gallery screams "planned obsolescence!" Why does my phone suddenly crash all the time now that the iPhone 8 is out?!?

The same problem rears its head were Apple to tell you to replace the battery when it starts to go -- it just happens to be around the time the new phone comes out.

Downclocking and other forms of power conservation are one way to mitigate the issue, though it shouldn't have been done without presenting the user an option to disable it, and definitely shouldn't have been done without notifying the user.

Re:So you mean to say

[Straif]

I don't know but if they told users that they could opt for a $90 battery replacement and keep their phone at it's current performance level how many people do you think would have just opted for the $90 instead of shelling out $1000 for a phone that is just overkill for their needs?

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why don't they offer the last compatible version of apps for devices from the store? 0/10 would not buy Apple products again.

Apple, you stink

[NikeHerc]

Apple acknowledged in December that it was secretly slowing the speeds of iPhones in an effort to help preserve aging batteries.

Apple, why would you secretly slow the speeds of iPhones? Something stinks about this and I'm glad you are being investigated!

Re:Apple, you stink

[Anonymous Coward]

Aging batteries are less capable of powering a phone when at high demand. If the phone wants more power than the battery can give, it either gets very unstable or it just crashes. Slowing down the CPU can lower the power draw, and seems preferable to A) dimming the screen when you might need brighter to see it B) dropping radio signal when you might need to call for help C) turning off GPS when you're lost, etc. The CPU is one of the few areas where the experience can be diminished without losing vital functions.

File under "B"

[Anonymous Coward]

For bullshit!

Get a JEWgleFone instead!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stolen shitty java dalvik 'secure' tech and cheap stolen from Linux OS (all they do is 'despoil' steal) by JUDENoidz!

Jews believe this of all they call goyim/gentiles (any non-jew): Jews = biggest racists of all (for which they "jew guilt" you for no less! They're hypocrites known as thieves all thru history or were Argentines in the 1940 under Perrone, Spanish inquistion & Spain 1492 (Christopher Columbus the jew https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22C... sailed to the US for them to create it), France (1306), Egypt (despoiled/robbed by jews), Arabs (pre & post 1948), England (1330 Edward longshanks), Romans under titus, Russia pogroms and Germany who got rid of them from their nations nazi german's too? No. Driven into DESERTS ages ago! Don't wonder why after all those exilings above. Should anyone doubt any of this see Jacob Javits' crony Rosenthal spill the beans on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4zMVZ8HnFI/ where he called all Christianity fools for helping Israel and the biggest scam of all time per their beliefs below from their Talmud. This is the province of the synagogue of Satan (Khazar/Pharisees whom Jesus Christ himself kicked to the curb out of the temple & they killed him for it. Jeremiah did the same to them also + the Essenes could not stand them either breaking away from the pharisee corruption):

Maria Abramovic satanist spirit cooker pal of Hillary Clinton the Voodoo queen is a jew https://www.google.com/search?... just like Hillary Clinton's mentor Saul Alinsky author of rules for radicals book dedicated to Lucifer

"Most Jews do not like to admit it, but our god is Lucifer â" so I wasnâ(TM)t lying â" and we are his chosen people. Lucifer is very much aliveâ Harold Rosenthal http://www.thetruthseeker.co.u...

Jewish rabbi openly admits to satan worship use white children's blood they kill for passover bread, infiltrating and subverting the catholic church, creating the Jesuit order https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Barbara Spectre, a jew, tells everyone it's jews orchestrating the muslim migrant problem in Europe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ/ . No migrant raping of women in Poland. Tons in Sweden. Do the math. Use common-sense. This is to get muslims and other goyim/gentiles to wipe one another out as incompatible cultures that will clash and always have.

Rabbi A. Finkelstein ADMITS their greatest enemies are ARABS and WHITES (blacks too) whom they wish to kill one another in a 'theater of war' which they find AMUSING https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Finkelstein also admits JEWS DID 9/11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?... profiting by it (and that 3,000 jews employed there did not show up for work that day knowing about it beforehand).

Finkelstein also admits JEWS are going to destroy the U.S. Dollar and dumping it for other world currencies and gold to destroy the United States.

George Soros who funds groups to create division in the USA?? A jew. One who sold his own jew people into death for the nazis. Zucker @ CNN is another frying publicly for lying about "russians" and John Bonifield a producer @ CNN said it is bs. Van Jones did also.

What World-famous Men have said About the Jews https://www.youtube.co

Re:Get a JEWgleFone instead!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, did you think of this all on your own??
Did you mom pat you on the head? Did you Dad hand you a lollipop in his panties and bra???
pull your head out, realize thre following:
1. you pay a Jewish person for your house and or your apt. Jews Own EVERYTHING at some level..
2. the lead Treasurer of the US is Jewish
3. you Laugh at them on the TV and in Movies..
4. You look at them when you hear certain people in the middle-east are kicking ASS.
Didnt you know the NAZI Belief System Died with it's leader.
I believe it was the US that Canceled that European Tour.
As others have mentioned here and other places,
"May you suck cock for coke and choke on the Produced By-Product."
It also would not be a bad idea to go back on your Medication, right?

Re:Sincere? Maybe. Probably defective batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

More like they ran the cpu at too high a clock so that benchmark reviews with new hardware would show them much faster then competition. (everytime a new ishit comes out the ishitfanboys exclaim how much faster it is!)

So they fucked the customer over and hid the fact and the ishitfanboys are still defending them (rather like trump and his idoit followers)

Planned Obsolescence

[Anonymous Coward]

Planned obsolescence is Apple's norm. The battery issue is nothing compared to what you have to go through as a developer. They'll nag you to update iOS on your test devices and once you do, you can magically no longer build apps on them without upgrading Xcode. In order to upgrade Xcode, you may need to purchase an entirely new dev machine because they won't let you install it on your current OS and they won't let you upgrade the current OS any further. That's their entire life cycle of creating profit and e-waste.

Re:Planned Obsolescence

[sl3xd]

In order to upgrade Xcode, you may need to purchase an entirely new dev machine because they won't let you install it on your current OS and they won't let you upgrade the current OS any further.

This only happened to me after my MacBook reached ten years old. It's inconvenient, but I have to admit the machine is a little long in the tooth.

Cook and Apple, Please stop insulting us and...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cook, please stop insulting us and take your punishment like a man.

Cook and Apple are so full of bullshit but I do admire their cunningness.

I like Google better

[houghi]

Google has "Do no evil" as a marketing trick. It is much shorter and to the point. Just as much bullshit (I learned when they raped Dejanews way back in 2001) but shorter.

I am waiting for the company that goes all Newspeak. "We are doubleplus good" But then, why should they? They have bought the politicians and the laws, so they should be allowed to say what is right and what is wrong.

Intent vs. Awareness

[hhawk]

That Apple has to be aware that their action would have that impact and that they didn't tell folks (e.g., they hid it) negates that their intention may have been 100% legitimate.

Their intention can be 100% legitimate but they were aware of the issue and how people would react e.g., this topic has been the popular press for years..

Air bags have reactive chemicals in them to help them deploy.. Govt. & manufacturers are not intentionally putting harmful reactive chemicals into cars - their intent is to rapidly deploy the air bag, and to do so safely. The intent is 100% legit but they know that harm may be caused.

They are not intentionally trying to hurt, harm or kill children but they aware that air bags designed for adults could harm small children. *its not their intent* but it COULD happen.. so that's WHY among other steps they put in warning labels.

Most engineering has trade-off including reliability, price and safety -- Apple may well have made the best choice - but since they would also know that the phones would perform worse and worse -- that they didn't discuss or recommend replacing the battery implicitly indicates that they knew and where happy about folks buying a new phone when there was an option far cheaper available.

Bullshit. They ruined my 4S.

[Anonymous Coward]

My iPhone 4S needed a new battery. It was happily running iOS 7, it wasn't the best for surfing the internet but all my applications ran (at the time) and it still made phone calls.

Apple outright refused to replace the battery unless they updated the software to iOS 9. No amount of complaining and offering to outright buy the battery could change this. Since the phone was useless without a new battery, I let them do it.

That phone was never the same. Post upgrade, I could only have one application running at once, everything else relaunched when I'd switch back to it. Mail, music, and the phone app were painfully slow to open and use, animations were janky and the whole thing took considerably longer to boot up and shut down.

So whatever they did worked, because I eventually got fed up with it and bought a new iPhone 5. That phone is showing similar signs of performance defredation via software updates, so I'm now looking at switching to Android.

Apple has and always will slow down your hardware with an iOS update. They might not go out of their way to do it (well, most of the time anyways), but they sure as shit know that their crappy code and iOS bloat is going to slow these devices down, and they let it happen regardless.

Get a JEWgleFone instead!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stolen shitty java dalvik 'secure' tech and "OI VEY" only ringtone available (lol) cheap stolen from Linux OS (all they do is 'despoil' steal) by JUDENoidz!

Jews believe this of all they call goyim/gentiles (any non-jew): Jews = biggest racists of all (for which they "jew guilt" you for no less! They're hypocrites known as thieves all thru history or were Argentines in the 1940 under Perrone, Spanish inquistion & Spain 1492 (Christopher Columbus the jew https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22C... sailed to the US for them to create it), France (1306), Egypt (despoiled/robbed by jews), Arabs (pre & post 1948), England (1330 Edward longshanks), Romans under titus, Russia pogroms and Germany who got rid of them from their nations nazi german's too? No. Driven into DESERTS ages ago! Don't wonder why after all those exilings above. Should anyone doubt any of this see Jacob Javits' crony Rosenthal spill the beans on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4zMVZ8HnFI/ where he called all Christianity fools for helping Israel and the biggest scam of all time per their beliefs below from their Talmud. This is the province of the synagogue of Satan (Khazar/Pharisees whom Jesus Christ himself kicked to the curb out of the temple & they killed him for it. Jeremiah did the same to them also + the Essenes could not stand them either breaking away from the pharisee corruption):

Maria Abramovic satanist spirit cooker pal of Hillary Clinton the Voodoo queen is a jew https://www.google.com/search?... just like Hillary Clinton's mentor Saul Alinsky author of rules for radicals book dedicated to Lucifer

"Most Jews do not like to admit it, but our god is Lucifer â" so I wasnâ(TM)t lying â" and we are his chosen people. Lucifer is very much aliveâ Harold Rosenthal http://www.thetruthseeker.co.u...

Jewish rabbi openly admits to satan worship use white children's blood they kill for passover bread, infiltrating and subverting the catholic church, creating the Jesuit order https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Barbara Spectre, a jew, tells everyone it's jews orchestrating the muslim migrant problem in Europe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ/ . No migrant raping of women in Poland. Tons in Sweden. Do the math. Use common-sense. This is to get muslims and other goyim/gentiles to wipe one another out as incompatible cultures that will clash and always have.

Rabbi A. Finkelstein ADMITS their greatest enemies are ARABS and WHITES (blacks too) whom they wish to kill one another in a 'theater of war' which they find AMUSING https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Finkelstein also admits JEWS DID 9/11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?... profiting by it (and that 3,000 jews employed there did not show up for work that day knowing about it beforehand).

Finkelstein also admits JEWS are going to destroy the U.S. Dollar and dumping it for other world currencies and gold to destroy the United States.

George Soros who funds groups to create division in the USA?? A jew. One who sold his own jew people into death for the nazis. Zucker @ CNN is another frying publicly for lying about "russians" and John Bonifield a producer @ CNN said it is bs. Van Jones did also.

What World-famous Men have said About the Jews

Get a JEWgleFone instead!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stolen shitty java dalvik 'secure' tech and "OI VEY" only ringtone available (lol) cheap stolen from Linux OS (all they do is 'despoil' steal) by JUDENoidz!

Jews believe this of all they call goyim/gentiles (any non-jew): Jews = biggest racists of all (for which they "jew guilt" you for no less! They're hypocrites known as thieves all thru history or were Argentines in the 1940 under Perrone, Spanish inquistion & Spain 1492 (Christopher Columbus the jew https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22C... sailed to the US for them to create it), France (1306), Egypt (despoiled/robbed by jews), Arabs (pre & post 1948), England (1330 Edward longshanks), Romans under titus, Russia pogroms and Germany who got rid of them from their nations nazi german's too? No. Driven into DESERTS ages ago! Don't wonder why after all those exilings above. Should anyone doubt any of this see Jacob Javits' crony Rosenthal spill the beans on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4zMVZ8HnFI/ where he called all Christianity fools for helping Israel and the biggest scam of all time per their beliefs below from their Talmud. This is the province of the synagogue of Satan (Khazar/Pharisees whom Jesus Christ himself kicked to the curb out of the temple & they killed him for it. Jeremiah did the same to them also + the Essenes could not stand them either breaking away from the pharisee corruption):

Maria Abramovic satanist spirit cooker pal of Hillary Clinton the Voodoo queen is a jew https://www.google.com/search?... just like Hillary Clinton's mentor Saul Alinsky author of rules for radicals book dedicated to Lucifer

"Most Jews do not like to admit it, but our god is Lucifer â" so I wasnâ(TM)t lying â" and we are his chosen people. Lucifer is very much aliveâ Harold Rosenthal http://www.thetruthseeker.co.u...

Jewish rabbi openly admits to satan worship use white children's blood they kill for passover bread, infiltrating and subverting the catholic church, creating the Jesuit order https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Barbara Spectre, a jew, tells everyone it's jews orchestrating the muslim migrant problem in Europe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ/ . No migrant raping of women in Poland. Tons in Sweden. Do the math. Use common-sense. This is to get muslims and other goyim/gentiles to wipe one another out as incompatible cultures that will clash and always have.

Rabbi A. Finkelstein ADMITS their greatest enemies are ARABS and WHITES (blacks too) whom they wish to kill one another in a 'theater of war' which they find AMUSING https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Finkelstein also admits JEWS DID 9/11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?... profiting by it (and that 3,000 jews employed there did not show up for work that day knowing about it beforehand).

Finkelstein also admits JEWS are going to destroy the U.S. Dollar and dumping it for other world currencies and gold to destroy the United States.

George Soros who funds groups to create division in the USA?? A jew. One who sold his own jew people into death for the nazis. Zucker @ CNN is another frying publicly for lying about "russians" and John Bonifield a producer @ CNN said it is bs. Van Jones did also.

What World-famous Men have said About the Jews

Apple is into damage control now

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course Apple only thinks about Apple. Every read about the mountain of cash Apple is sitting on. The iPhone is now Apple's bread and butter and don't tell me they didn't slow down your iPhone to nudge you into buying a new model. This all started when it was clear that any performance improvements with its chips were not revolutionary but rather incremental. In the end, Apple had to find a way to make users of iPhone's feel their phone was simply slowing down and needed replacement. No conspiracy here, just plain old smoke and mirrors marketing to move product.

Re:Sincere? Maybe. Probably defective batteries

[gmiller123456]

...outside the typical no-so-much-a-conspiracy-theory-anymore side of things, it's quite possible Apple got a HUGE influx of bad batteries

I don't see how you consider this "honest", the honest thing to do would be to disclose it to the customers. Selling customers a defective product and then covering it up by making it even more defective is pretty far from my definition of honest.

It is just retard APK being a retard

[Anonymous Coward]

It is just retard Alexander Peter Kowalski acting out and showing everyone he is retarded as he can't stand it when people prove him wrong.
He actually lacks the mental facilities to realize that his statements have been proven wrong so instead he lashes out.
I would however be cautious of commenting about him unless posting as AC as he will stalk and harass you.
All in all he is mostly harmless but caution is advised.

Warranty

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it has to do with older phones, but warranty replacements for current phones. By slowing down the CPU for these phones, the user will not see crashes due to failing, but warranty replaceable, battery.

This could even be averting a recall of a bad batch...

Get a JEWgleFone instead!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stolen shitty java dalvik 'secure' tech and "OI VEY" only ringtone available (lol) cheap stolen from Linux OS (all they do is 'despoil' steal) by JUDENoidz!

Jews believe this of all they call goyim/gentiles (any non-jew): Jews = biggest racists of all (for which they "jew guilt" you for no less! They're hypocrites known as thieves all thru history or were Argentines in the 1940 under Perrone, Spanish inquistion & Spain 1492 (Christopher Columbus the jew https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22C... sailed to the US for them to create it), France (1306), Egypt (despoiled/robbed by jews), Arabs (pre & post 1948), England (1330 Edward longshanks), Romans under titus, Russia pogroms and Germany who got rid of them from their nations nazi german's too? No. Driven into DESERTS ages ago! Don't wonder why after all those exilings above. Should anyone doubt any of this see Jacob Javits' crony Rosenthal spill the beans on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4zMVZ8HnFI/ where he called all Christianity fools for helping Israel and the biggest scam of all time per their beliefs below from their Talmud. This is the province of the synagogue of Satan (Khazar/Pharisees whom Jesus Christ himself kicked to the curb out of the temple & they killed him for it. Jeremiah did the same to them also + the Essenes could not stand them either breaking away from the pharisee corruption):

Maria Abramovic satanist spirit cooker pal of Hillary Clinton the Voodoo queen is a jew https://www.google.com/search?... just like Hillary Clinton's mentor Saul Alinsky author of rules for radicals book dedicated to Lucifer

"Most Jews do not like to admit it, but our god is Lucifer â" so I wasnâ(TM)t lying â" and we are his chosen people. Lucifer is very much aliveâ Harold Rosenthal http://www.thetruthseeker.co.u...

Jewish rabbi openly admits to satan worship use white children's blood they kill for passover bread, infiltrating and subverting the catholic church, creating the Jesuit order https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Barbara Spectre, a jew, tells everyone it's jews orchestrating the muslim migrant problem in Europe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ/ . No migrant raping of women in Poland. Tons in Sweden. Do the math. Use common-sense. This is to get muslims and other goyim/gentiles to wipe one another out as incompatible cultures that will clash and always have.

Rabbi A. Finkelstein ADMITS their greatest enemies are ARABS and WHITES (blacks too) whom they wish to kill one another in a 'theater of war' which they find AMUSING https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Finkelstein also admits JEWS DID 9/11 https://www.youtube.com/watch?... profiting by it (and that 3,000 jews employed there did not show up for work that day knowing about it beforehand).

Finkelstein also admits JEWS are going to destroy the U.S. Dollar and dumping it for other world currencies and gold to destroy the United States.

George Soros who funds groups to create division in the USA?? A jew. One who sold his own jew people into death for the nazis. Zucker @ CNN is another frying publicly for lying about "russians" and John Bonifield a producer @ CNN said it is bs. Van Jones did also.

What World-famous Men have said About the Jews

Re:Get a JEWgleFone instead!--lame, obscene..

[Anonymous Coward]

such hateful, obscene, ignorance..
Do you suck your Wifes penis with that mouth?
Do you French kiss your children with those lips and tounge?
do you face fuck, fornicate with others in a laytex GIMP suit?
Are you a Jizz Mopper at as local "NUT HUT"
do you frequent or "inspect" adult movie theaters on a regular basis, looking for "free samples"?

No go pay the nice Jewish person before he kicks you out of the domicile..

Taxation is theft

[Anonymous Coward]

And Apple is to be cheered for paying as little in taxes as possible. If an armed robber comes to your house, don't you want him to take as little as possible?

Taxes: pay up or we'll kill you
Mafia: pay up or we'll kill you

Taxes: It's for your protection
Mafia: It's for your protection

Taxation is theft.

Re: Taxation is theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I vote on who's the next don?

Re:Taxation is theft

[Maritz]

Taxation is theft.

Wow, a guy who has never been on a road or used electricity is on the internet. Weird.

Piss off to the Somalia and take some like-minded libertarian spastics with you.

Re:Get a JEWgleFone instead!--lame, obscene..

[Anonymous Coward]

See your so pissed off you cant even type..

I think you were trying to say..
Such hateful, obscene, ignorance..
Do you suck your Wifes' penis with that mouth, while she calls you a "trick??"
Do you French kiss your children with those lips and tounge? Did you register for Megan's law yet?
do you face fuck or fornicate with others in a laytex GIMP suit, or wearing your KKK outfit?
Are you a Jizz Mopper at a local "NUT HUT?"
Do you frequent or "inspect" adult movie theaters on a regular basis, looking for "Free samples" or other form's of "DNA?"
Now, go pay the nice Jewish person before he kicks you out of his domicile..

Re:Get a JEWgleFone instead!--lame, obscene..

[Anonymous Coward]

He goes to the Nut-Huts and Adult theaters looking for his wife, perhaps because he is hungry. ;)

Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

These iCrapp users should be punished. I even saw many SUV's with Apple logo behind their vehicles. I mean, WTF! Showing off you're an Apple user? And you're proud of your stupidity?!!

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it any different from ${SPORTS TEAM} logos on your car?

IOS 7 on an iPhone 4

[Anonymous Coward]

IOS 7 on an iPhone 4 - nuff said.

Apple: We would never degrade...

[magusxxx]

...ourselves humbly apologizing.

Cookies

[jmetropolit]

They got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, it's time to come clean...

Yeah, Right.

[Shogun37]

The check's in the mail, I'll respect you in the morning, it's not you it's me, and (my favorite) "we believe in diversity." Oh, and before I forget..."Don't Be Evil." People lie. If a corporation can make a buck, it will be done. "There are things no whore will do, regardless of the money. Politicians and CEOs don't have that problem."

Easy to say

[nachtelfjeiu]

The time between this becoming public and Apple's statement that they wouldn't do that intentionally, is just how long i guess it would take them to cover their tracks that it was intentional. This statement would be trustworthy if it had been published right away. Now it just confirms what many suspect: planned obsolescence.

Re:Sincere? Maybe. Probably defective batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is anything honest and plausible I'll put my intuition on, it would be that those batteries were FAR reaching outside that. Apple tried a small recall to make it 'look good' but in essence, it was fucking everything on the mobile side. So they tried to cover it up with throttling hacks to preserve the batteries in future iOS releases and got caught by some tech savvy folk on reddit.

There is nothing about Apple that is honest and plausible. Furthermore, small recalls are cheaper than large ones.

Right

[nehumanuscrede]

If they were slowing the phones to preserve battery, then there is zero reason to do so secretly is there ?

Be upfront with the folks paying $$$ for your hardware and all os well in the world.

Be all secret about it and you risk pissing your customer base off.

Well, it worked

[Anonymous Coward]

My iPhone 6 got painfully slow so I upgraded to an 8.

bad PR

[Anonymous Coward]

there is no doubt that Apple didn't handle this right, they should have announced it up front and given users the option to turn the feature on/off

but that being said, what they did is the EXACT opposite of force obsolescence, it was actually a very real attempt to keep degraded hardware working and I cannot for the life of me see why people can't understand that

ROTFLMFAO!

[MerlTurkin]

Riiiiight!

forced degradation

[Manqueman]

If I had an aged phone and its performance was prevented from degrading too much, wouldn’t I be disinclined to replace it, not encouraged, let alone forced to replace it? Isn't slower but capable of more better than faster and of limited use and ability? And if someone doesn't want to be forced [sic] into an upgrade, what's wrong with needing to replace the battery? I know one of the mainstream media's preferred storylines is Apple bashing, but this whole thing's kind of stupid. And wrong. And maybe the reason Apple is so fast to make the so-called throttling capable of being turned off is because that's what in the end may force [sic] more people into buying new phones than the so-called throttling.

Apple:

[Maritz]

"We would never do what it's really, really obvious that we're doing, and we're hoping this variant of The Big Lie makes you all shut up about it."

And bypass warranty claims on battery

[Anonymous Coward]

My iPhone 6 had water damage, so apple service center gave a new (refurbished one I guess) on paying a pretty hefty sum. It was slow from the beginning and battery went really bad after 3 to 4 months, just after its 90day warranty expired.

Had this feature not been there, I would have known that there is a battery issue. Most people would have found their new phones sluggish and instead of getting the battery changed, they just thought that phone is performing poorly.

Re:Better: "We would never make our phones look ba

[mjwx]

Wording is so important; Apple's wording in this is terrible;

Yes, they never "intended" to slow down your phone to make you pay £600 for a new one... that was just an added benefit.

Uh huh

[MoralCharacter]

Don't trust the marketing department when they talk to you about their companies business plans.

Reminds me of another company who's marketing team said "You're doing this to build trust!". They were refering to a multi week process of performing repetitive tasks using their online service. This 'trust building' is needed to unlock a pre-order bonus for pre-purchasing their next big product release. (This pre-order sold so well it brought the companies payment service to it's knees by the way)

More than likely, it's intended to prop up subscriptions at a time the service is notorious for losing customers who temporarily halt their subscription to wait for the next product release. Can't drop your subscription if you have to keep coming back weekly to 'build that trust' for a couple months in order to get any use out of that 'pre-order bonus'.

Is it the same as slowing down older devices and claiming it's because of expiring batteries? I think it fits the pattern at least, one is for planned obsolescence, the other is as an attempt to extort more fees from customers.

Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the problem as I see it. Even if Apple seriously, no joke didn't intend for this to shorten phone life. How hard would Apple work to lengthen phone life? Given the choice to fix a problem in the deployed phone fleet or work on a new phone, how would Apple choose to expend it's resources?

Employee: "Boss, this change in the code could kill the battery life by up to 20%!"
Boss: "We're doing it to preserve phone performance and don't you forget it! Now shut up and deploy that patch!"
6 Months Later: "Executive bonuses all around because revenues are better than ever!"

Is Apple making decisions in the customer's best interest, or for Apple's best interest? In the past I think a lot of Apple customers were happy to answer "the customer". Now those issues seem more murky and the customers are long longer sure.

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple: Us, We, Oh please we would never suck dick for coke.
US: really, whats that white shit under ur nose, and dribbling off the corner of your lips?
The builtin batrtery thing, is crap all the way around..
let these individuals die a natural life..

Flat out...

[HermMunster]

Sure they would.

Apple Is Shit

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't even get my three-year-old iMac to shutdown normally anymore after one of their OS updates. I have to power it off. Then, when I turn it back on, it takes literally (and I mean that in the literal sense of the word) five minutes to boot back up. Remember when Mac software was hailed for being simple and just working?

My two year old MacBook Pro's screen is falling apart, despite never being damaged, nor even leaving the living room. Remember when Apple's hardware was quality stuff? Before their "your holding it wrong" and "we're courageous" attitudes?

If Jobs could see the sorry state of the crap this company is pumping out -- both on a hardware and software level -- he would go fucking ape-shit.

DontBeAMoran a troll's impersonating me

[Anonymous Coward]

You've known me long enough to know I don't do that (unless it's merited & though you & I had diffs over time, I don't razz you for no reason). The Cause?

I've got an unidentifiable stalker (months of it now) impersonating me too all due to my blowing him away here https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11679505&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=56039569/ with fact & truth!

I.E. - He constantly stalks me & keeps telling me he's "so great" in security & writes 'real securityware' & has 'secured systems for 21 yrs' (I've not only done it longer but also write wares FOR SECURITY that others here like & use too praising its quality & efficacy)!

YET WHEN I ASK HE PROVE HIS BS, he RUNS every single time (hence his 'butthurt' childish impersonating me & more).

* Being reduced to impersonating me in every article on /. (in some attempt to make others 'not like me' (big deal - I'm not here to 'comfort people' OR win a popularity contest (that's for FAKEBOOK fools) by him quoting something I wrote AmiMojo (which was due him/her for wisecracks) is all ANYONE NEEDS TO SEE to evidence his childish butthurt antics.

That & my post link above that 'set him off' (rightfully so - I ask my stalker merely back up his BLOWHARD bluster (& he can't, lol)).

APK

P.S.=> Just stating facts with proof I can provide to back them up... apk

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no way in hell they didn't know this would wreak havoc on the 6. The company has tens of billions of dollars sitting in the bank and *supposedly* pride themselves on the user experience, and *nobody* knew this would happen?

I'm one of those affected and have had a terrible experience since I was forced to upgrade. I'll finally get the opportunity to fork over 30 bucks to fix it in three weeks -after the replacement batteries finally come in. Pre-update I had very few problems with battery life and had already spent the money on an external power pack. They should be paying me to have the battery replaced.

what the fuck are you smoking?

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet the actual money collected tells a very different story.

The U.S. corporate income tax, as a share of GDP, averaged 2.2 percent of GDP for the 2000 to 2011 period. This is in sharp contrast to its northern neighbor, Canada, which collected far more corporate income tax revenues than the United States at roughly 3.4 percent of GDP during the same period (Chart 2)

https://taxfoundation.org/us-c...

They don't actually pay that because there are so many loopholes deductions and subsidies. They pay a much smaller amount of tax because of this. As shown repeatedly in the data.

That is all the companies in the whole country. Not some made up company that is paying 2.2% of the entire countries GDP in tax. LOL
What single company do you think is paying half a trillion dollars of tax in the US??
You have no idea what you are talking about.

Total company tax actually paid to the US government by all companies is only 2.2% of US GDP
Total company tax actually paid to the Canadian government by all companies is 3.4% of Canadian GDP.
This is also averaged over a decade, not just one year cherry picked to prove a point.
Americans actually don't pay anywhere near the 'effective tax rate' Due to subsidies, deductions, loopholes etc.

Face facts
Lets look at a simple example
2016 GDP 18.6T
2016 Tax on corporate income 400B
Oh look its about 2.2%

Re:what the fuck are you smoking?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Again - IT DOESN'T MATTER. The tax rate on income for US companies was higher than that for Canada. End of discussion. Your own POST says that as much. You do realize that GDP is not just corporate income? It includes Government spending, individual spending, etc. Taxes were higher - your own source says as much. You keep going to the "percent of GDP" as a defense - but that's irrelevant and says nothing about the tax RATE that a company pays. Flat out.

Re:what the fuck are you smoking?

[Anonymous Coward]

But none of the companies actually pay that 'high rate'. You simpleton.
Show any evidence that they pay that high %

Re:what the fuck are you smoking?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Here you go. If you'd read the thread, you'd see I've posted it before. It shows marginal (nominal tax rate), average (meaning the tax paid relative to income tax - actual taxes paid, from tax returns), and effective (meaning with all possible deductions factored in). The US is 1st, 3rd, and 4th, respectively. And well above pretty much the entire EU and Canada. The only real world-power economy that is above the US in taxation is Japan - and their economy is in its umpteenth year of stagnation...

Re:what the fuck are you smoking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha what a joker you are. You claimed America paid 35.5% marginal before , but now your link shows 18.6% and you claimed the OECD average was 19.4%
So anyway it's true, you finally realise Americans don't pay the 35.3 you were claiming.

Re:what the fuck are you smoking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats funny lynwood liar. Pretending at the last second that you knew all along it wasn't the high rate you claimed before. Even funnier that you would now claim you showed the evidence for the low rate when you just spend post after post denying that very fact. Remember this https://slashdot.org/comments....

Re:what the fuck are you smoking?

[LynnwoodRooster]

I guess you don't know what marginal, average, and effective means! HINT: they're defined in the link I provided, and which also backs up the claims I made. I know I have a small troll following, but really - you should try harder than that, given the link I provided. Additionally, I never stated the Americans were paying an effective 35% tax rate; I stated we paid a marginal, effective, and average corporate income tax well above most of the rest of the OECD. Which is, in fact. true. Your trolling notwithstanding.

Re:what the fuck are you smoking?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Yes! Look at the link I posted in that you show - it actually states the marginal effective tax rate for the US is 35.3%. Where was I wrong? I simply stated what the AC's (probably you) own source claimed. And showed that it was MUCH higher than Canada. If you're going to try to rebut a point, make sure you have data that actually does that!

Re:what the fuck are you smoking?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you don't know what paid means. Hint, they didn't pay any of those numbers but a much smaller amount, same as Canada, and often lower.

Re:what the fuck are you smoking?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL so you just pretend to believe some random numbers if it agrees with the lie you want to claim, even though you knew it was not true...

Re:what the fuck are you smoking?

[LynnwoodRooster]

WTF? Effective and average come straight out of tax returns for corporations. It's all data from the IRS and the CBO, summarized by the Tax Foundation. I guess next you'll claim that the top 1% do not pay a higher income tax rate than the rest of the 99%, right? Even when the IRS data says otherwise. Facts are facts, data is data - trying to explain it away as "well it says they pay that much from actual payments made but that's not really what they pay" is a flight of fancy.

Stop pretending you don't know...

[Anonymous Coward]

A very pretty post, well formatted, lots of words. Did your supervisor finally approve the overtime or did you do this in your own time because you're looking for a raise?

Perhaps your indoctrination was so complete you don't even realize when facts go against what you have been brainwashed into believing.

It's clear that you are unable to comprehend the words, or perhaps they are just unable to sneak into your little fact proof bubble.
But what if we look at the pictures? Maybe your knee jerk reactions can be avoided and a fact or two can sneak in. Possibly you really are a complete idiot, don't worry, use the pictures, and I'll do my best to hold your hand the whole way step by step and guide you into understanding for yourself.

Look at the first pretty picture, it's called chart 1. Have you found it? It's under the heading that says "The U.S. Corporate Tax is a Poor Revenue Collector" It looks like a graph, it's a picture, and it has a few different coloured lines on it. Don't worry it's not too hard, we don't even need to worry about most of the colours.
See the blue line? That is called the 'Statutory Corporate Income Tax Rate'. It's the number that is written down in very important places, and people like you who like to claim American corporate taxes are 'very high' use it to show American taxes are 'very high'. It's nearly 40%, very important people tell us 'it's over 39%' it's 39.1% It does look big doesn't it.
Now see the yellow line underneath it? First thing to notice, is that this yellow line is under the blue line. That means the number for the yellow line is smaller. Second thing to notice is that the yellow line isn't straight like the blue one, it goes up and down. Sometimes it's near the blue line, sometimes it's much lower. This yellow line is the amount of tax American companies actually did pay. It's called 'Effective Corporate Income Tax Rate'

{Smart people can jump ahead now, notice chart 2 (for Canada) has the same blue and yellow lines. But those lines are much closer together. Smart people will notice how Canadian companies often pay a higher percentage of tax, the yellow line, than America. Even though the blue line is higher for America.}

If you haven't realized by now, let me show you. Notice the yellow line in chart 1, see how many times it dips below 25%. Now look at chart 2, this is Canada. See the yellow line here, it is also the actual tax paid by Canadian companies. Notice how many times it dips below 25%. Ok sorry I didn't mean to trick you by throwing you in the deep end. Look again and see that the yellow line never goes under 25%. This means the actual tax rate paid by Canadian companies was always over 25%.
Remember from before that America's yellow line was below 25% quite a bit.
Realize now that even though the blue line for America looks big and scary. Actual companies in America only pay the yellow line. And that yellow line is quite similar to other countries, often it's even smaller. This is because of tax credits, subsidies, tax breaks etc.

No one is going to read this now, being so late and deep. And no one is likely to mod it up, so it will remain hidden.
But the next time you go and try and claim America is a 'very highly taxed country'. Any one can just link to this post. And show that you have had the facts explained to you before, but still choose to believe your lies over the evidence.

In conclusion. Even though America has a high statutory corporate tax rate, actual American companies very rarely pay anything like that amount in actual taxes.

Re:Stop pretending you don't know...

[LynnwoodRooster]

You provide no data stating what you claim. How does share of GDP relate to tax rates? I've posted data showing actual tax rates; you've done the same thing and it confirms my point. Sucks that you want to conflate tax rates with share of GDP (which is irrelevant). Hey, why don't we also claim because Canada has more polar bears there must be a higher rate of sunglasses? It makes as much sense as what you claim...

Re:Stop pretending you don't know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you still not see the graph? Actual tax rate paid, less than Canada, not 'much higher' idiot.

Re:Stop pretending you don't know...

[LynnwoodRooster]

AND ONCE AGAIN, your data is irrelevant! It is about GDP, and it's about investment taxes - NOT corporate income taxes. From the same source, but with CLEAR data about CORPORATE INCOME TAX RATES. You have yourself wound up about capital investment tax rates and percent of GDP - neither of which are what are under discussion! If you can't understand that - there's no hope for you. PLEASE Check what you your titles for your own graphs and tables are, and then tell me how it relates to this discussion of CORPORATE INCOME TAX RATES. From the same source (Tax Foundation) that states - in my link - that corporate income tax rates (marginal, average, and effective) were all much higher for the US than Canada.

Where were you wrong? LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

When you lied and said America pays nearly twice the rate of your neighbours and everyone else in the OECD here using numbers you are now claiming you knew all along were wrong..

And also all the times you were told they don't pay that amount and you kept saying over and over that yes they did. Knowing all along that the US often paid a lower tax rate than Canada.

They are the most obvious places where you were wrong...

Re:Where were you wrong? LOL

[LynnwoodRooster]

Here you go. What is the marginal, average, and effective corporate tax rates for the US and for Canada. For the US it is 39.1%, 29%, and 18.6%. For Canada it is 26.1%, 16.2%, and 8.5%. The latter two - average and effective - are what is really paid after all deductions. For the average rate, the US is about double that of Canada (29% versus 16.2%); for the effective rate, the US is 2.5 times that of Canada (18.6% versus 8.5%). Oh look - I was right, you are wrong. Sucks to be you!

Re:Where were you wrong? LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

You were already shown here that that is not the case. You already know it isn't true. Why continue with the lie?
Those numbers are not the amounts of tax actual companies actually pay. Why do you still claim that they are?
You lie has already been noted, show to be false, yet you still persist.

Re:Where were you wrong? LOL

[LynnwoodRooster]

Except you're wrong. You showed no such thing. Collecting a small percentage of the GDP as a tax is irrelevant to the actual tax rate paid. If you don't understand that - there's no hope for you.

You still lying or claiming ignorance...

[Anonymous Coward]

So now you are claiming again that you don't know they don't pay those amounts. We already know you were told...here
Or were you just too stupid to read the graph even with step by step instructions...
America pays no where near twice Canada, and often times less as shown by all the time Canada paid less than 25% ie zero, and the times America paid less than 25% ie lots of times.

Re:You still lying or claiming ignorance...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Put up or shut up. I've posted data showing the effective and average tax rates. Those are ACTUAL tax rates, calculated from IRS tax returns as the sum of taxes paid divided by the sum of pre-tax profits earned. Straight out tax rates. YOU claim it's not correct; well, put up something that shows the corporate income tax rate (not percent of GDP, not tax on investment, actual corporate income tax rates) is higher in Canada than the US. Please. Or just give up.

No they are not ! Stop talking shit

[Anonymous Coward]

We've put up with your lies long enough.
Time for you to shut up.
Those are rates that no company pays, you have seen the actual data numerous times now, but each time you deny it, change your story and pretend you knew all along, only to forget again the next time it suits you.

Look at the first pretty picture, it's called chart 1. Have you found it? It's under the heading that says "The U.S. Corporate Tax is a Poor Revenue Collector" It looks like a graph, it's a picture, and it has a few different coloured lines on it. Don't worry it's not too hard, we don't even need to worry about most of the colours.

See the blue line? That is called the 'Statutory Corporate Income Tax Rate'. It's the number that is written down in very important places, and people like you who like to claim American corporate taxes are 'very high' use it to show American taxes are 'very high'. It's nearly 40%, very important people tell us 'it's over 39%' it's 39.1% It does look big doesn't it.

Now see the yellow line underneath it? First thing to notice, is that this yellow line is under the blue line. That means the number for the yellow line is smaller. Second thing to notice is that the yellow line isn't straight like the blue one, it goes up and down. Sometimes it's near the blue line, sometimes it's much lower. This yellow line is the amount of tax American companies actually did pay. It's called 'Effective Corporate Income Tax Rate'

{Smart people can jump ahead now, notice chart 2 (for Canada) has the same blue and yellow lines. But those lines are much closer together. Smart people will notice how Canadian companies often pay a higher percentage of tax, the yellow line, than America. Even though the blue line is higher for America.}

If you haven't realized by now, let me show you. Notice the yellow line in chart 1, see how many times it dips below 25%. Now look at chart 2, this is Canada. See the yellow line here, it is also the actual tax paid by Canadian companies. Notice how many times it dips below 25%. Ok sorry I didn't mean to trick you by throwing you in the deep end. Look again and see that the yellow line never goes under 25%. This means the actual tax rate paid by Canadian companies was always over 25%.

Remember from before that America's yellow line was below 25% quite a bit.

Realize now that even though the blue line for America looks big and scary. Actual companies in America only pay the yellow line. And that yellow line is quite similar to other countries, often it's even smaller. This is because of tax credits, subsidies, tax breaks etc.

Re:No they are not ! Stop talking shit

[LynnwoodRooster]

And we're done. You've got nothing. The data you post doesn't say what you think it does, and you have nothing else. Thanks for proving it!

Re:No they are not ! Stop talking shit

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it does.
If you don't understand 22% is less than 26% then there really is no hope for you.
It's not surprising, all you have is denial and lies.

Re:No they are not ! Stop talking shit

[Anonymous Coward]

https://science.slashdot.org/c... I wouldn't be surprised if all animals were better at counting and telling which number was bigger than you are lynwood.

Except I'm not.

[Anonymous Coward]

You were already shown here that that is not the case. You already know it isn't true. Why continue with the lie?
Those numbers are not the amounts of tax actual companies actually pay. Why do you still claim that they are?
You lie has already been noted, show to be false, yet you still persist.

The tax rate actually paid is not much higher in America, and is often smaller, notice the above and below 25% data from before.
2002, 2009, 2010 and 2011 all show American companies paying less than 25% tax. Canada was never less than 25% for the whole graph 2000-2011.
Keep denying it, you only look stupider and stupider.

When you lied and said America pays nearly twice the rate of your neighbours and everyone else in the OECD here using numbers you are now claiming you knew all along were wrong..

And also all the times you were told they don't pay that amount and you kept saying over and over that yes they did. Knowing all along that the US often paid a lower tax rate than Canada.

They are the most obvious places where you were wrong...

It is you who is incapable of understanding.