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

Posted by msmash on from the he-says-she-says dept.

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.

6 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Much easier alternative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Of course not by cyber-vandal · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  3. Let me see if I have this correct by Jahoda · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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. "

    1. Re:Let me see if I have this correct by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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".

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  4. Then why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Sincere? Maybe. Probably defective batteries by adosch · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...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.