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I've heard plenty of arguments that don't misrepresent Apple. For example, the iPhone has never had replaceable batteries. Also, they were proven to slow down old phones without telling users why, until it became an ordeal [1].

[1] - https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/10/26/the-new-iphone-come...



Please don't spread misinformation. It causes real damage.

Your statement is verifiable misinformation.

I am a customer who was actually experiencing unexpected shutdowns due to voltage spikes on a naturally degraded Li-Ion battery on my iPhone 6s. This is something that happens to all Li-Ion batteries. I had experienced this on my previous Android phones too when they got old.

The change Apple made was throttling the voltage from spiking to a point that it can shut down a degraded battery when your phone estimates that it has 50% charge left. Yes, this means older phones with degraded battery health (due to normal wear/tear) would run a bit slower. This is the right thing to do because otherwise it means customers would have phones shutting down unexpectedly when they needed them the most (e.g. calling an Uber, or some other critical function). It's a serious issue that absolutely needed addressing, and I'm glad Apple addressed it (and I hope other manufacturers do too).

The mistake Apple made was not communicating this change more widely or explaining in more detail from the start. But they did communicate it in the change notes of the original update they delivered. They weren't trying to intentionally hide it like you're trying to imply.


I made the appropriate edit in my original comment.

edit - Apple did not communicate this information to users from the start...that is not misinformation. When I replied to your comment, your comment originally consisted of just your first sentence.


Here's a link to the change-log of iOS 10.2.1 (scroll down a bit) where the throttling feature for degraded batteries was first introduced: https://support.apple.com/kb/dl1893?locale=en_US

Every single person that upgraded their phone saw this change-log.

There's a line there that clearly says: "It also improves power management during peak workloads to avoid unexpected shutdowns on iPhone."

If your argument is that it's lacking detail, then fine. But that's an entirely different implication. A much less interesting one.


Yes, they did. It's in the changelog for the version of iOS that introduced the battery performance changes.


> they were proven to degrade old software to strong-arm users to update

I don't recall this being proven. I recall Apple stating the power consumption was limited to prevent the devices over drawing power from the battery and self-resetting. They subsequently added a battery status overview so users could judge if they could simply replace the battery.

I won't argue that they couldn't have done this sooner or handled it better, but it's quite different from software degrading old devices.


> they were proven to degrade old software to strong-arm users to update

They never did this.


Looks like they didn't. Slashdot did a story on it [1] that was disproven later [2].

[1] - https://slashdot.org/story/347559

[2] - https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/10/26/the-new-iphone-come...


Yeah, no. That source is a complete misrepresentation: Apple didn’t intentionally slow down devices so you could buy a new one: they throttled devices with weak batteries so they wouldn’t shut down randomly. The issue was that Apple communicated this to users somewhat poorly.


I found a source that came out afterwards and made the appropriate edit. I am surprised slashdot did not provide a redaction in the original link.


I think that telling you that my 2002 PPC iBook actually had remplaçables batteries, as well as all Apple laptop of that era, is pretty much proving misrepresentation...

They were very practical (especially when video playback autonomy was limited to 2h and word processing to around 5h) but clunky. We could discuss for ages if, now a common choice across multiple manufacturers, moving for internal non-moving battery was clever or odious. But the verifiable facts remains that Apple once sold replaceable batteries out there.


I should clarify, I was referring to iPhones. Edited.


That’s also making the point if you need to edit your message because you stand corrected, while very nice and very honest of you, it was misrepresentation at first shot.

Beside you can also imagine than two decade experience with replaceable batteries might also have come to play when they decided that they’re phones will never have one because of constraint on this form factor...


> I've heard plenty of arguments that don't misrepresent Apple'l. For example, Apple has never had replaceable batteries.

Not only have many apple devices had replaceable batteries, I actually own an apple battery charger (model MC500LL/A)


I was referring to iPhones if it wasn't clear before. I don't remember users being able to replace the battery in those.




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