
Forget conspiracies; Why Apple’s reason for slowing your iPhone is hostile - MRSallee
https://medium.com/@mrsallee/forget-conspiracies-why-apples-reason-for-slowing-your-iphone-is-hostile-584b91a42603
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antonyme
So imagine Apple starts to show warning messages saying "your battery cannot
hold sufficient charge and is EOL - you should replace it now".

We would have a different spin on Batterygate where Apple is greedily telling
people to replace their batteries when they allegedly still work just fine,
because all they care about is selling more batteries and making more profit.

~~~
MRSallee
Whether or not Apple alerted users is still missing the point.

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gumby
I get the feeling the author has never designed hardware, much less shipped
any.

~~~
MRSallee
That's an easy bet...

What's the relevance?

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gumby
If you don’t know what you don’t know it’s hard to be pithy. You claim that
one device in particular you happened to own has a certain characteristic
failure, yet offer no discussion of the n on the issue, distribution, nor
anything else really except “well I felt this way”

Then you claim that thermal throttling is somehow unique to Apple yet every
device these days does such thermal management, and such things we’ve even
visible at the user code level (e.g. selection of vector instruction use).

And when you look at the trade shipping any product, and what defects are
considered acceptable... you write as if you have zero experience or
visibility into any of these issues.

So what’s the relevance? Your argument is unconvincing because you haven’t
made any effort to justify it.

~~~
MRSallee
Thanks for elaborating.

> You claim that one device in particular you happened to own has a certain
> characteristic failure, yet offer no discussion of the n on the issue,
> distribution, nor anything else really except “well I felt this way”

What I wrote: "For option [c], it’s important to view this hardware crash as a
problem unique to these phones. ... Admittedly, I don’t know that it’s unique
to this hardware."

I've essentially invited anyone with better knowledge to knock down my posit,
while giving my reasoning with the facts that I know.

> Then you claim that thermal throttling is somehow unique to Apple yet every
> device these days does such thermal management

What I wrote: "unlike any rechargeable device I’ve ever owned — the iPhone 6
and 6+ suffered hardware resets (crashes) when their batteries drop below a
certain output"

For starters, this isn't about thermals, as far as I understand the issue
Apple was trying to solve. And what I described as unique to the iPhone 6/6s
is that the hardware crashes as the battery health degrades. I've owned a lot
of rechargeable devices over the years. When their batteries degrade, the
battery doesn't last as long. I don't recall that any of them began to
experience crashes.

> And when you look at the trade shipping any product, and what defects are
> considered acceptable... you write as if you have zero experience or
> visibility into any of these issues.

There's a lot we don't know about this iPhone 6 + battery + slowdown, like at
what battery health does Apple begin to slow down phones, how long before
users reach that battery health (within warranty?), how can users identify if
they're affected by this, and how many devices are actually affected. It is
entirely possible that the problem is overstated, and not widespread. It's
possible that nearly every device is affected within warranty. Probably
somewhere in between.

But none of that is my point. My point is that -- on the assumption that this
is a hardware/software design problem unique to these devices, and I invite
you to kill this assumption -- resolving the crashing problem by slowing down
devices is hostile in that it penalizes consumers for a problem Apple created.

~~~
gumby
I have had to use this exact strategy myself at the suggestion of a colleague.
This was not invented by Apple, much less invented by them for this one piece
of hardware.

------
endemic
Every year I see hardware folks write breathlessly about how good the
performance of Apple's AX chips. In retrospect, seems like Apple is pulling a
fast one: amazing performance, but only while the phone is new
(coincidentally, when all the benchmarks get run). I'm curious how this will
impact future reviews of iDevice performance.

------
mtgx
Following his own logic, then you could also argue that Apple not recalling
its broken iPhones is also a matter of incentive = avoiding negative PR.

So to be consistent, he should admit that in both cases Apple is in the wrong
and user-hostile. Apple could avoid the issue for the majority of users by
increasing battery size and quality (Samsung has said that its S8 battery will
only drop 5% of its charge after 3 years, for instance).

Instead, Apple chooses the easy and more profitable way out - degrading users'
performance, which coincidentally also happens to get users to buy iPhones
more often.

There is a false dilemma not just between "conspiracy vs not conspiracy", but
also between "performance vs battery life", a dilemma manufactured by Apple
itself.

