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Apple Offers $29 Battery Replacements After PR Disaster

Apple has been absolutely pummeled over the last week amidst accusations that the company throttles the performance of older iPhones. The company has faced accusations it has been covertly engaging in forced obsolescence -- or intentionally making devices work more poorly over time in order to drive consumers to the latest and greatest (and more expensive) devices. The problem, first discovered by reddit users and then proven by Geekbench founder John Poole, has resulted in multiple lawsuits that were quickly filed against Apple.

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"Apple purposefully and knowingly released operating system software updates to iPhone 5, iPhone 6 and certain iPhone 7 phones that slowed the performance speeds of the central processing units (‘CPUs’) of these devices,” said the plaintiffs in one lawsuit.

"Apple’s software updates purposefully slowed or ‘throttled down’ the performance speeds of iPhone 5, iPhone 6, certain iPhone 7 phones and as yet unknown versions of iPhones because operating system software updates wreaked havoc on batteries within these model devices."

Apple, for its part, denies it's engaging in forced obsolescence.

The company issued a statement saying it released the update last year in order to help older phones handle the fact that "Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands" and to prevent an older iPhone from "unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components."

The problem for Apple remains that the company didn't clearly communicate these limitations to customers. Apple has since made public statement apologizing for the practice, and offering $29 battery replacements to impacted out-of-warranty customers (it was originally $79).

"First and foremost, we have never -- and would never -- do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades," Apple insists. "Our goal has always been to create products that our customers love, and making iPhones last as long as possible is an important part of that."


Most recommended from 217 comments



ArrayList
DevOps
Premium Member
join:2005-03-19
Mullica Hill, NJ

28 recommendations

ArrayList

Premium Member

should be free

Apple sabotaged peoples devices. They deserve just compensation.

tc1uscg
join:2005-03-09
Gulfport, MS

19 recommendations

tc1uscg

Member

VW vs Apple

VW gets raked over the coals for it's "Diesel-gate" (and they should have IMO), but apple pulls th is crap and the Apple fans are not up in arms? Listening to some news casters this morning, they were talking about it. Geez. They were like no big deal, I'll just go buy another.. GMAFB. What does it take, one to blow the side of your 14 year old's head off before you hold them accountable? Apple should be FORCED to take back all affected phones and give it's users new ones or just buy them back.
tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Brooklyn, NY

18 recommendations

tmc8080

Member

still a ripoff

$3 batteries plus the cost of tools kits sold originally as $80 now $30.. jeez, how will Apple survive on that 400% markup?!
Slyster
join:2015-01-08
Sugar Grove, VA

9 recommendations

Slyster

Member

Not sure

Not sure if I believe that they doing it because the batteries were going bad.. I work with 3 people with iPhones that had issues as soon as the recent ones released. Two showed way down and the other bricked completely. Up to that point they say they had no issues.

Sounds like an apple tactic to get their drones to buy new phones to me.
dutenhnj
join:2002-01-29
Monroe, WI

5 recommendations

dutenhnj

Member

Poor engineering choices.

When designing a lithium-ion battery there is a general rule of a trade off between power and capacity. If batteries were automobiles, power would be how fast one can go and capacity is how far one can go. When designing one you can tune more for one or the other, capacity at the expense of power, or power at the expense of capacity. The important thing here is all batteries lose both power and capacity with age, but at the end of the day if you don't have enough power you can't run the device at all. Which means it is better to engineer it with a comfortable margin of extra power so even when aged/degraded a battery still has enough to keep the device running at least (if for less time). Apple (and many android phones for that matter) prioritize capacity/run time to such an extent that the batteries lose the ability to supply enough power fairly early into its lifespan.

A battery tuned with a moderately higher power may give up 10% of its capacity, but in exchange it will still be able to power on the device at peak performance even after years of ordinary degradation. Of course it won't win as many "look how many hours this battery lasts (when new)" benchmarks.
Radioman991
join:2001-09-24
Dayton, OH

4 recommendations

Radioman991

Member

They'll get a pass...

They always do. The Magic Fruit & Unicorn Company can do no wrong.