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Apple: We Would Never Degrade the iPhone Experience To Get Users To Buy New Phones
Apple today responded to reports that the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are probing its decision to throttle older iPhones, confirming that the U.S government has asked questions. From a report: Apple said it would never intentionally "degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades." Apple acknowledged in December that it was secretly slowing the speeds of iPhones in an effort to help preserve aging batteries. In response to consumer backlash, the company dropped the price of battery replacements for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus from $79 to $29.
Seriously there is a much easier alternative. Just do what most other phone makers do and not provide security or bug fixes. Customers will have to buy new phones to avoid not joining botnets and getting hit by drive-by malware. Apple is putting way too much effort in.
Apple only has the best interests of its customers at heart.
Apple: "We would never intentionally degrade the user experience! All that we did was secretly and with no notification to the phone user throttle down the processor depending upon the life of the battery. "
That must be why most Macs cannot have their memory upgraded after purchase, or that you need to disassemble 90% of the computer to get to the RAM slots, because it makes for a better user experience... somehow.
#DeleteFacebook
Then why did it take several 3rd party sources to confirm what was going on? Why did Apple wait until several 3rd party sources confirmed before they came forward and admitted what was going on? Every step of the way Apple missed the opportunity to get ahead of this and make it a non-issue. Now they want everyone to just take their word for it that there wasn't an ulterior motive? The sad thing is that I expect that many will.
Either they are playing people for chumps or they are grossly incompetent.
...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.
... use flushing toilets.
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.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
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.
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.
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.
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...
Yay! Again!
#DeleteFacebook
Wording is so important; Apple's wording in this is terrible; they shouldn't ever have mentioned "driving upgrades" at all. Apple should have maintained that it was in their self-interest to make the phones operate as well as possible at all times, and that it was a *policy* decision that "at all times" meant tipping the balance towards stretching the battery life. And that their only mistake was not making this an explicit setting, so that even people with NEW batteries could adjust their performance to extend battery life. ( I wish I could reference the SIGPLAN article in the 1980s that said "This limitation was removed by renaming it as a feature . . ")
"Never believe anything until it's been officially denied".
- Claud Cockburn
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
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.
Ezekiel 23:20
He probably doesn't use them because corporate tax law is completely different than personal tax law. I think you're struggling with the difference between "unethical" and "illegal". Note that I am not defending the loopholes (I think they should all be closed, but I suspect that is part of what the new tax bill is supposed to do).
Think of it this way: If you were running a corp with a market cap of $900B and your tax lawyers and accountants were not taking advantage of every loophole they possibly could to reduce your company's tax burden you would fire them or you wouldn't be the CEO of a $900B company. Sorry Mr. Fabriciom, we thought you would rather see that $500M go to the US governments list of stupid programs rather than off-shore R&D to keep us competitive. We'll do better next time...
The root of the problem is election funding and lobbying. If you want to change the system you need to change the funding model and turn lobbying into nothing more than boardroom presentations. IMHO.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
I heard tech companies black ball people from each other's companies. Pretty sure on /.
we would never help red china unlock phones but we did and not the FBI
Rants about "UNIDENTIFIABLE FAKE NAME" of another user.
Posts as Anonymous Coward.
?
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.
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?
Are loop holes legal?
Do you consider stealing to be illegal?
How do you put these two together?
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.
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?
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.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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!
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Buy a Samsung phone. There's *NOTHING* wrong with their batteries...
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.
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.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.
http://www.hawknest.com/
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.
By definition, loopholes in laws allow for unintended, but legal behavior. Otherwise, it's not a loophole, it's an illegal behavior.
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.
Yes they abide by all the laws of Ireland...
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...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.
Out of curiosity, do you consider someone who is patriotic and takes pride in their country, to be stupid or are they lazy?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
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.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
...ourselves humbly apologizing.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
They got caught with their hand in the cookie jar, it's time to come clean...
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.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Exactly. Someone doesn't understand language.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Riiiiight!
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?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
"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."
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
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.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
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.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
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.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.
Sure they would.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
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.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
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.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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!
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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...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
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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.
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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!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
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.
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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.
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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!
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