[cwingrav]

From the article, "It said the lithium-ion batteries in the devices became less capable of supplying peak current demands, as they aged over time. That could result in an iPhone unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components. So, it released a software update for the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE which "smoothed out" battery performance."

[Google234]

The alternative is that your phone shuts down

[yyyk]

The alternative is that Apple could tell the user the phone battery was going bad, so they'd buy a new battery rather than a new iPhone. The other alternative is that Apple could test the battery and apply the throttling only when appropriate (rather than generically over entire models). Weirdly, both decisions contributed to Apple's bottom line. What an odd coincidence.

[Xylakant]

All apple devices I’ve used in the past years tell you when the battery is degraded to the point it needs replacement. However, especially iPhones can be in situations where the battery may still be fine for most usage, but still not be good enough to support the required power draw - for example when it’s cold outside (aka winter). I much prefer my phone to slow down in these situations over shutting down as earlier versions did.

[yyyk]

Apple denied for years there was a slowdown of old devices under any circumstances. By not telling users, Apple encouraged users to buy new devices rather than new batteries, fraud in the moral sense (if maybe technically not in the legal sense).

[scarface74]

They did not slow down the battery “generically over entire models”. They slowed it down when the battery was degraded. Wouldn’t it be much easier for Apple just not to issue OS updates for older phones if they wanted to encourage users to get new phones?

[yyyk]

Making units more disposable makes perfect commercial sense. Making them overtly more disposable might figure out into customer decisions which would be bad for profits. Better be subtle about it.

[Xylakant]

In that regard, not slowing down the devices with degraded batteries would have been substantially better. The behavior before was substantially more annoying: The phone would just shut down.

[yyyk]

That would have led to bad publicity. Worse, people could have figured out by themselves the batteries were the problem. The trick is to annoy users, not make their workflow entirely impossible, and than to give them misleading advice so they'd buy a new phone.

[pantalaimon]

I still remember when phones had replaceable batteries.