[mikestew]

And you base your first sentence on…? Surely not the ol’ “my phone slows down when my battery is failing so that I’ll buy a new phone” canard?

To be clear, these are new features that will likely have a setting to turn off. There’s no conspiracy, nothing “forcefully” added for the purpose of driving upgrades. (Ah, ninja edit): There’s not even a guarantee these features will be supported on an eight year old phone. EDIT: wait a minute...your eight year old phone won't even be supported.

(EDIT: reworded first paragraph to account for the ninja edit.)

[hshdhdhj4444]

What’s the exact canard here?

It’s a legitimate concern even assuming good intent.

But Apple has had to publicly admit bad intent specifically with their batteries and had to offer people money etc.

Strange to criticize people for something Apple publicly admitted they did wrong.

[mikestew]

Apple publicly admitted they did wrong.

When is the last time a company has admitted wrong-doing? No, Apple admitted to slowing down phones when the battery was shot so it wouldn’t just suddenly shut down.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate

[nerdsniper]

I adamantly believe this was the right call for Apple to make. I frequently switch between Apple and Android phones across different generations. At the time I had an aging flagship Samsung that did NOT do this. My battery indicator would say "18%" and it would last however long that implies...if I didn't do anything remotely CPU-intensive. If I did anything that boosted the CPU, the current draw caused the battery voltage to fall off a cliff and the phone would instantly shut down without warning.

The worst part was that during the boot sequence, the CPU ran at full-throttle for a few moments until the power-management components were loaded. So I couldn't restart it. As long as I didn't open a game or YouTube or a wonky website with super awful javascript, I could continue using the phone for another couple hours. But if the phone turned off, it couldn't be turned back on without charging it more ... even though it had "18%" battery left (as determined by voltage, not taking into account increased internal resistance in the battery as it ages).

I was envious of iPhone users that got a real fix for this (Apple slowing down the phone when the internal voltage got low). I would have greatly preferred that Samsung had done the same for my phone too.

[ascagnel_]

I agree, it was the right call to make -- a temporarily-impaired device is always better than a temporarily-failed device, especially when you're talking about something you may need in an emergency situation.

That said, Apple _significantly_ erred in not over-communicating what they were doing. At that point, the OS would pop warnings to users if the phone had to thermal throttle, and adding a similar notification that led the user to a FAQ page explaining the battery dynamics wouldn't have been technically hard to do.

[slt2021]

the solution to old battery is $15 replacement battery, not the $1500 replacement iPhone.

which I am doing exactly, but still new iOS version make my phone slower and slower and I cannot even opt out of updates.

because some apps are forcing me to use the latest version of iOS (Authentication, Okta 2fa, etc)

[threeseed]

Apple provides a battery replacement program.

And you can use third parties as well which Apple now officially supports.

It is just a lie to say you need a new phone.

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

We don't need to carry water for greedy billionaires.

[bigyabai]

JWZ was right about us the whole time.

[sanswork]

You can opt out of updates by not using new software. You want the best of both worlds.

[slt2021]

the software forces me to update

[DecentShoes]

That was fake, tho. They slowed down old iPhones to make you buy a new one. My iPhone 7 wasn't auto shutting down, battery health was good, but they still made it so slow it was unusable the same week they released the iPhone X.

There is literally a zero percent chance it was anything to do with batteries. This is not a conspiracy theory. It's an objective fact.

[Klonoar]

Right, yes, your anecdotal experience is totally objective fact.

[sanswork]

They didn't admit bad intent. They admitted to doing something with good intent(the slowing was to stop crashes with near EOL batteries) but that they weren't transparent about it.

I'd much rather us have progress and people with 8 year old phones suffer than ensure that everything continues to run smoothly on any old device for eternity.

[skywhopper]

Disagree. I much preferred my phone running slightly slower to shutting down randomly. Maybe that’s just me.

[wolpoli]

I would prefer to be told that my battery is weak so I could make a decision on if I want to replace the battery, replace the phone, live with the phone shutting down randomly when battery is low, or continue with a slower phone. That's just me.

[DecentShoes]

So why did they slow down iPhones that weren't shutting down randomly?

[tatersolid]

To prevent random shutdowns.

Apple absolutely effed up by not communicating the specifics well, but that’s corporate policy. Apple docs have always been targeted at the non-technical user and therefore inadequate for others.