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

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]

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.

Of course not

[cyber-vandal]

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

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

[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

[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

[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]

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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[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: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.

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 . . ")

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.

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

[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.

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?

[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?

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?

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.

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.

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: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.