Apple slowing down devices to extend battery life when the battery itself is low or degraded is awesome.
All the lawsuits coming out of this over recent years are uncalled for. Users that “suffer” from this likely need to simply replace the battery.
I expect an OS (and/or kernel) to manage resources. iOS/macOS actively doing so by adjusting its behavior when the battery’s shot is exactly the kind of magic people want in Apple products—so why is the opposite true when it comes to to this subject?
It’s wild to me that someone would be so upset as to sue over this.
Edit: I’m not arguing that Apple is superior or that everyone should happily go along with buying Apple products. The way a lot of these comments are written make it sound like they’re the only smartphone manufacturer and living with their software is forced upon you. If Apple makes you angry or unhappy, I happily encourage you to seek alternatives; I don’t believe any one company can make the perfect product for 100% of people.
The problem is not that they added a feature, the problem is they didn’t communicate the feature and it’s side effect, then deny any such feature till they were caught with their pants down.
This was just ‘you are holding it wrong’ once again. Their goto excuse every time.
Is that what happened? I don’t remember them hiding anything. I just remember that yes, the OS did slow down to accommodate the shitty battery. Honestly it never seemed like a shady thing to do to me.
Apple said it was a battery issue that affected only a few iPhones, and that the reason for slowing of the hardware was the battery not their software patch.
Users that “suffer” from this likely need to simply replace the battery.
Maybe, but 1. Apple should have been transparent about the changes, 2. Apple (and frankly all smartphone manufacturers imo) should make it easy to simply replace the battery, and 3. making it easy shouldn’t mean bringing it to their store or sending it in for a replacement.
The fact that they weren’t transparent about it is the problem. If they came out and said “We’re going to do this because otherwise your phone randomly reboots” I don’t think people would have a problem with it, even without replaceable batteries.
- Apple should have been transparent about the changes
I can neither agree nor disagree. The change didn’t bother me in the slightest so I can’t really speak to that.
- Apple (and frankly all smartphone manufacturers imo) should make it easy to simply replace the battery, and 3. making it easy shouldn’t mean bringing it to their store or sending it in for a replacement.
Again, this doesn’t bother me. At most you’re losing 2-3 days of device use by sending it in for repair and receiving it back. I’ve done that before. I’ve also done it in-store and it took like an hour.
If this is important to you, buy a phone with a removable battery. None of this bothers me personally.
It just seems so petty that you’re buying a phone without a removable battery and then crying about how hard it is to replace it. What more do you want? What do they need to do, drive to your house and immediately hand you a brand new replacement?
None of this bothers me personally.
So the only part of any of this that does bother you is seeing people’s complaints about something that doesn’t personally bother you, if I’m following you correctly? Then why/how is it you’ve been coming across these complaints and why are you letting them bother you when it seems like nothing else about the situation is bothering you?
I don’t really follow why, in a situation where you’re seemingly by and large unaffected to the point that you really shouldn’t have any complaints, you’re complaining about those that were affected complaining about…Y’know, being affected.
Apple may have had good intentions, but the optics of it are bad. It feeds into the planned obsolescence narrative.
They are the only vendor that has done this. Phones will work just fine on an aging battery, albeit with a shorter run time, as expected. It’s such an obvious cash grab.
They said they were doing it because there were occasions when a phone with an old battery tried to pull too much juice the device would become unstable and reboot. I’m sure this did happen but probably not to the extent that would require a global change.
The Samsung phones I had would stay working at full speed… then suddenly die with 25% battery power.
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No business had good intentions.
So edgy
I agree that it’s a good feature but my problem is apple doing is secretly and without giving the users the ability opt in or out of it. A company should not be able to change how something you own works with out your consent.
In that case is all opinionated software bad?
I raise this question because as a programmer that’s how I interpret your logic.
It makes me think you want every single little switch in the OS to be there for users and personally, I’m very much against this. I want the OS to take care of the little things and spend my time using it rather than configuring it.
I remember in the olden days I switched from Windows to Mac OS X and found myself bored because I didn’t have to maintain the Registry, defragment the hard drive, etc. In my mind Apple makes the opinionated software and Windows is configuration hell.
It’s not necessarily opinionated. Making the phones slower drives sales of new phones. They’re not doing it to be charitable to your hardware. Case in point: they are the only vendor that is doing this, and it’s not because it’s innovative.
I have to disagree on Apple’s motive. Going on the assumption they’re greedy:
- It would make more sense for the device to simply fail (shut off) when the battery can’t hold a stable charge (prompting users to upgrade)
- One of their primary metrics in marketing is battery life, so it makes sense to slow the OS to meet that target as closely as possible (even when a component is failing) as often as possible (by not simply dying)
I think if your changing something very fundamental then you should give the user some way to opt out of it. It’s not necessary for example, a security patch (that doesn’t meaningfully impact performance) or a new feature because users can just not use them. In the battery gate case, the performance of device impacts everything you do on it.
We’re talking about a battery that is critically low and/or is failing. Who’s expecting their phone to operate at full capacity under such circumstances?
The fact that the phone is trying to stay powered on for longer (albeit with degraded performance) keeps access to emergency services more readily available, access to critical apps, etc. Where’s the benefit of operating at 100% if you’re only doing so for a limited amount of time?
It feels like people just can’t be bothered to either charge their battery or replace it if it’s bad.
Alright, I did some brief research into this because I have just been talking out my ass this whole time. I think the crux of the issues is that the affected Iphones basically have a battery deign flaw and can not supply the current the Iphones needs at peak power after a year or so of degradation. It seems apple should have recalled the phones and fixed the flaw. But instead they band-aid fixed it with software and changed how the phone work fundamentally and hoped no one would call them out.
Ooooo! You got a link for that?
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-pay-113-million-to-settle-batterygate-case-over-iphone-slowdowns suggests they did it to drive new sales by making old devices sluggish. But it doesn’t mention a battery flaw.
It’s how I understood this ifixit article: https://www.ifixit.com/News/11208/batterygate-timeline
That’s an awesome timeline. Thanks!
If that’s the case then I finally get it. I was operating under another pretense.
You’re advocating for anti-choice, which is anti-consumer and against freedom. Just thought I’d point it out.
What are you talking about? The consumer can choose another platform if it’s such a problem.
I hate Windows. You know what I don’t do? I don’t continue buying it, find something I can’t change about it (hell, let’s say the Registry) then turn around and complain I don’t have “choice” or “freedom.”
Isn’t (part of) the problem that Apple didn’t tell customers they were doing this?
Maybe so, but I don’t expect any OS vendor to tell me every tiny of detail of how they manage their hardware/performance (especially on consumer devices known for simplicity).
Feel free to disagree, but I don’t think your operating system vendor artificially reducing performance is a tiny detail.
Artificially reducing performance? You make it sound like it happens all the time without reason. That’s not the case.
Performance is only reduced when the battery is critically low or when it’s degraded to the point it should be replaced anyway.
There’s a trade off for sure, but calling it artificially reduced performance isn’t fair.
If the throttling makes the device unusable, and it’s because the battery degraded to the point it couldn’t power the processor in a year or two, then they need to throw out a mea culpa at the least. Ideally they’d replace the faulty batteries.
Agreed. If the batteries were faulty to begin with (as I’ve seen mentioned in the comments here) then I’d argue Apple is at fault.
As far as the batteries simply being worn out I know that macOS has shown the battery health for some time, on iOS I don’t recall if that was available pre-lawsuit. If that information wasn’t readily available to the user then yes, Apple would be at fault here as well.
All the lawsuits coming out of this over recent years are uncalled for. Users that “suffer” from this likely need to simply replace the battery.
The battery that’s slathered in glue to keep it in place and make it almost impossible to replace, you mean? That battery?
Maybe if Apple made the batteries easily-replaceable you’d have a point. They don’t, however, so nor do you.
Maybe Steve Jobs’ corpse will finally kiss you for this post
Real original and productive
it seems like many people are giving valid responses on why this is bad practice.
it seems like you just want to debate instead of understanding.
If you look at the other comments I actually agree with people where they have a point. But most the comments are along the lines of “oh no, I have to go to an Apple Store or send my device in for a few days, what will I ever do?” or “Apple bad” and not much beyond that.
Poor society, what will we ever do with our evil Apple devices that don’t magically replace the batteries? Curse Apple, they wouldn’t even give us some shitty plastic removable cover for the battery! 😱
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That’s not what this is. This is slowing the phone when the battery is old and can’t handle the power output needed, not for low battery.
Yea there are a lot of anti-consumer things Apple does but, this wasn’t one of them.
