Refer what other comments says about un-repairability of Apple hardware, or software slowdowns, or the inability to replace the battery on phones/tablets.
The answer seems to be that Apple doesn't have a monolithic pro/anti consumer opinion, but just whatever is better for their business profits.
- Do whatever they can to push people to buy more devices and more expensive ones.
- Do whatever they can to make their iOS devices seem preferable to Android.
Apple is not a special snowflake, as far as large corporations go.
Except that people are misrepresenting all 3 of those situations to make their point. Apple didn't slow down people's phones in order to get them to buy newer models. They actually slowed them down to extend their lifespans when the battery started to fail. While I do think that they could have communicated that better and that their current solution is pretty decent, it's a huge leap to say that this was an intentional move on their part to screw their customers over.
And the repairability and replacement are also 2 things that I understand because it forces users to ensure that they're using genuine Apple components that won't detract from the device or the experience of using it. When so much of your business stems from the reputation of having quality products, third-party repairability seems like a terrible trade-off if there's no quality control.
As I understand it, Apple increased the peak power usage of the 6S (as a result of making the processor faster), but chose to use the same battery (in order to avoid making the phone thicker). As a result, unexpected shutdowns became much more common - while this did happen on older models, it seems to have been much less frequent.
Strictly compared to the alternative of letting people's phone shut off, throttling seems like the right decision, but I would also argue that Apple produced a defective product, where the battery wore out much quicker than consumers expected (because even if it had sufficient capacity, it couldn't provide the peak power necessary). As a result, Apple's decision seems more like a way to cover up their design flaws, rather than to actually be helpful to consumers.
Disagreeing with Apple PR (which you're repeating here ( isn't misrepresenting the issue. It's just disagreeing that Apple's official explanation is beneficial for consumers.
It's not disagreeing with Apple PR. People are saying that Apple hid the CPU slowdown from consumers to fix a problem with the batteries so that people would be forced to upgrade to newer devices. That's not true and the only evidence needed is that the release notes, which are shown to everyone before the device is updated, said exactly what the resolution and throttling were for. The only disagreement to be had is whether or not they could have been more vocal about the change (they could have) and whether putting it in the changelog was enough (it wasn't). It was absolutely beneficial to those customers suffering from the issue but it should have been communicated better which, unfortunately, is not at all what's being argued.
The answer seems to be that Apple doesn't have a monolithic pro/anti consumer opinion, but just whatever is better for their business profits.
- Do whatever they can to push people to buy more devices and more expensive ones.
- Do whatever they can to make their iOS devices seem preferable to Android.
Apple is not a special snowflake, as far as large corporations go.