Apple Starts Sending 'Batterygate' Settlement Payments to iPhone Users
(www.macrumors.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 07 Jan 2024 12:00
https://lemmy.world/post/10419938
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 07 Jan 2024 12:00
https://lemmy.world/post/10419938
Apple Starts Sending ‘Batterygate’ Settlement Payments to iPhone Users::Apple in 2020 agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle a class action lawsuit in the U.S. that accused the company of "secretly…
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First comment on that story (as of right now) blames the media for not being able to report the issue correctly and then goes on to describe what he fails to recognize as a serious design flaw.
It’s all the comments. I don’t know what else to expect from the forum of macrumors.com.
I think they don’t understand or don’t want to understand the real issue. The problem is not that batteries degrade and Apple throttles the phone to protect electronics. The problem is that batteries are designed to degrade, are not replaceable, and Apple profits from this by having you buy new phones.
Shameless plug of Fairphone here. I am not buying any headphones that are not from them any more. The sound is great, at least for me (I am no connoisseur), the whole thing works OK. But when one of the straps broke, I didn’t have to buy a new thing, I just needed to unscrew two screws, pull out and USB-C cable and put the new thing I bought for 10 bucks in.
Well it is a complicated situation that the media (predictably) reports poorly. Although it’s very possible, and even likely, they contacted Apple regarding the issue and received no reply.
On the one hand, Apple did remotely throttle the CPU power on older devices.
On the other hand, they supposedly did so in an effort to preserve battery life.
So what appeared on the surface (and may have been, I dunno, I’m not an electrical engineer) to be Apple just throttling older devices in an effort of planned obsolescence, could be seen as the opposite.
The problem is that they didn’t disclose this anywhere or give owners the option to opt out of it.
As an Apple hater, I’m inclined to suspect the planned obsolescence but I’m not going to judge them for this specifically, because I simply don’t know, and there more than enough other, less controversial reasons to hate Apple.
My iPhone 6 was nearly unusable until they added in CPU throttling. It would try to draw more current than the battery could provide, which caused the phone to shutdown. Sometimes I would get the same issue during the boot process, which effectively created a boot loop. Resolving this issue was Apple’s stated reasoning for implementing the throttling.
I am no Apple fan, but in this case, I think the only thing they did wrong was not communicate what they were doing and not give the user an option to turn throttling on or off.
Honestly, this whole episode screams “Well meaning engineering team fixed a problem, but didn’t consider the optics of such a change.”
Yeah that’s pretty much what I said 🙂
Did it give you any sort of warning that your battery was dying?
Yeah. I did want to reiterate that usability of the phone was the primary driver of the change, not necessarily battery life.
I got no indication of a dying battery other than needing to charge frequently until Apple implemented a battery health feature. That was after they fixed the shutdown issues.
Oh I see my mistake now, thanks for clarifying
What are you all going to do with your $2.18 check?
The article says it’s $92.17
What ever, just tell us lol
It’s funny when it’s the litigious mega corp setting to avoid costly litigation when that’s the shit they push on others to keep them out of their industry.