[throwaway12351]

Everyone defending Apple's behavior is missing the point completely. Yes, it's a reasonable way to manage degrading battery life and related electronic issues.

What's NOT reasonable is Apple CONCEALING this behavior. This led people to believe that they needed a new $1000 phone, instead of a $79 battery replacement.

[CydeWeys]

My phone gives me a warning notification if performance might be getting degraded because the storage is getting full, and provides suggested actions to delete stuff stored locally.

Something about replacing the battery would have been perfectly reasonable for Apple to have suggested similarly, since we know the hardware can detect poor battery performance. Of course, we know why they didn't do this; it would cut into sales of new models.

[JacobJans]

Ironically, I regularly get a warning on my Macbook Pro that I am running out of disk space, even when I have over half left.

The kicker? They try really hard to sell me on paying for iCloud.

Scammy?

Absolutely.

Someone who is NOT computer literate will likely pay for iCloud storage based on false information.

[matthewmacleod]

Do you, though? That sounds like a bug. I have also seen that warning, but only when I have about 10% free space.

[JacobJans]

Do I what? I have a 512gb disk. It has over 300gb free.

[matthewmacleod]

Yeah, this is definitely not a normal thing then. It's certainly not a standard Apple feature to start warning people that they're running out of disk space when there's so much free.

[1123581321]

Your problem is so unusual that I don’t see how it can be deliberate on Apple’s part.

[sarreph]

I personally don’t think that those two things are causally related.

And that’s not with the ‘benefit of the doubt’, either. If you’ve run out of disk/swap space, then it doesn’t matter how much iCloud storage you have, your Mac will still be slow.

[ghouse]

My four year old laptop (Mac) gives me a battery health warning.

I doubt the PM, UI, or otherwise responsible person made the decision to include this warning in MacOS as a way to dissuade me from purchasing a new laptop, just as I doubt that the responsible person intentionally omitted the feature from iOS (when the performance/battery feature was introduced in 10.2.1).

> Of course, we know why they didn't do this; it would cut into sales of new models.

We don't _know_. Many people have suspicions.

> I am certain there is too much certainty in the world - Michael Crichton

[maoistinquisitr]

With the phone under warranty the new battery would be Apple's problem. This is about a defective product and fraud to cover it up, for reasons of cost.

[jdietrich]

>With the phone under warranty the new battery would be Apple's problem.

The warranty only covers defects, not "wear from normal use". Unless your battery fails completely, Apple aren't going to replace it under warranty.

[Neil44]

That’s exactly the reason for the slowdown though. Phone shutting off = new battery under warranty. Phone silently slowed down = increase in new iPhone sales.

[drchiu]

I’ve been on the fence about this whole battery gate deal. After all, I own some AAPL shares. But what you just said kind of hits the point. Having dealt with Apple’s support over various times in the past, every single encounter I’m crossing my fingers they would continue their generous ways and cover the issue — which they should. But by engineering an intentionally vague symptom of a real underlying problem, it gives their support staff some leeway to interpret each case and whether the customer gets the coverage (eg. Do they buy a lot of Apple products or have AppleCare on a lot of existing products owned?)

[2muchcoffeeman]

When I used to get Apple Care, the fine print said that if the battery capacity fell to 50% or below, within the warranty period (2 yrs) they will replace the battery (swap phones).

This worked for me twice.

Ironically, I stopped getting it because the batteries seemed to get better and better every year.

[scarface74]

That's not their policy. The policy is to replace a battery under warranty if the capacity is less than 80%

[sbuk]

This is clearly a defect after 4 months.

[m52go]

Apple's own laptops give warnings when the battery has been reached a certain level of usage.

Why they wouldn't also do this on their phones is mighty suspicious.

[makomk]

Modern smartphones seem to be a step backwards across the board in this regard compared to laptops. Pretty much all laptops have been able to do this across all OSes for well over a decade, probably closer to two. Smartphones almost universally hide battery health information from the user, even though they presumably have some way to monitor it.

[cageface]

More importantly, why have they designed their phones to exhaust their batteries so quickly? Either their processors are overspeced or their batteries are underspeced. This puts an asterisk next to all the benchmark numbers Apple loves to tout so much.

[toomuchtodo]

They traded function for form. Smaller batteries to make the phone slimmer mean less tolerances for charging and discharging (depth of discharge), causing short battery life (for the inverse, see Tesla; big batteries means less need to max charge or discharge, which means battery packs that last for a decade).

[textor]

It's funny how nowadays (for a few iterations, actually) Apple's phones have bottom of the barrel battery life, even facing severe degradation in a few months, yet the reputation from 4S and earlier lives on. I know many people who still believe that Android phones suffer from faster discharges.

[izacus]

And it's also very important to consider the context: Apple is a company which earns the bulk of their revenue through new hardware sales. As opposed to their other issues (e.g. AntennaGate), concealing the performance degradation directly drove new sales and profits. It's significantly harder to give them the benefit of doubt when taking into consideration their hardware-sales focused business and the fact that they're actively fighting against right to repair legislation.

[perseusprime11]

+1000. None of the Apple fanboys are willing to think in this direction. They are cozy and comfortable in their bubble. Apple did something here that is not trustworthy.

[kipari]

Has anything pertaining to how long this have been going on for been revealed? Apple hiding this is definitely not reasonable.

[vbezhenar]

Apple didn't hide it. It was in changelog of some iOS version. They just didn't make it a big deal. Honestly I don't think that this is a big deal. Today's iPhone is absurdly powerful. This speed is not needed for average user, so he won't notice this downgrade.

[Someone]

Here’s the full release notes (from https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1893?locale=en_US):

”iOS 10.2.1

iOS 10.2.1 includes bug fixes and improves the security of your iPhone or iPad.

It also improves power management during peak workloads to avoid unexpected shutdowns on iPhone.

For information on the security content of Apple software updates, please visit this website: https://support.apple.com/HT201222 ”

They mention it, and an investigative journalist could have dug deeper based on it, but as is, that’s fairly vague.

[kipari]

Huh. That changes things a bit. I did not know about this. Do you have a link to relevant material?

[throwaway12351]

It's a pretty hollow defense, because users are clearly not reading changelogs, and a reasonable person would obviously understand that a consumer's response to a poorly performing phone is conclude that it's time to buy a new one.

And my understanding is that there is no explicit mention in the changelog, just an opaque mention of new power management feature. But again, no one reads changelogs and the folks at Apple know that.

[melling]

What do other manufacturers do? I remember with AntennaGate, other phone makers had similar problems.

Companies don’t typically tell you the bad news.

We should push companies for the right to repair:

https://ifixit.org/right

[enraged_camel]

"Conceal" is the wrong word to use. It implies intentionally hiding something that was previously visible.

"Failing to disclose" is a better description of what happened.

[aw3c2]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-QNAwUdHUQ