Apple To Pay Up To $500 Million To Settle US Lawsuit Over Slow iPhones (reuters.com) 52
Apple has agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle litigation accusing it of quietly slowing down older iPhones as it launched new models, to induce owners to buy replacement phones or batteries. From a report: The preliminary proposed class-action settlement was disclosed on Friday night and requires approval by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California. It calls for Apple to pay consumers $25 per iPhone, which may be adjusted up or down depending on how many iPhones are eligible, with a minimum total payout of $310 million. Apple denied wrongdoing and settled the nationwide case to avoid the burdens and costs of litigation, court papers show. Friday's settlement covers U.S. owners of the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7Plus or SE that ran the iOS 10.2.1 or later operating system. It also covers U.S. owners of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus that ran iOS 11.2 or later before Dec. 21, 2017.
So a mild slap (Score:3, Informative)
So effectively Apple is given a mild slap and a note "don't do it again" sentence.
Insufficient management at Apple (Score:2)
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He was an asshole, he didn't shower, believed in fake medicine, and if not for his operating system would've been literally nothing. Steve Jobs was a disgusting, smelly, ignorant man who got lucky, a modern-day Diogenes.
Re:So a mild slap (Score:4, Insightful)
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It was a settlement, not a judgment, and they admitted no wrongdoing...
Yup. Just like every other mega-corp who knows they can afford to buy that settlement every time.
...I'm amazed at the amount of abuse Apple customers are willing to put up with.
Much like politics, the alternatives don't treat you any better. You just believe they do.
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At least the alternatives tend to screw you out of less money. If you're gonna get screwed, get screwed as little as possible.
Let me get this straight... (Score:1)
This is exactly the same thing as Apple coming out with a new phone, slowing down the older phones, and giving the owners of said old phones $25 toward a new iPhone. Blows my mind. They literally sold you something that they could later break, forcing you to buy a new model (newer models may not have the hardware capabilities of the older model).
If this is a simple matter of settling out of court, then I sure hope car manufacturers don't follow suit. "Here's your brand new 2020 Honda Pilot. In a year, i
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Funny)
Some good may come of it. Apple will presumably change its policies now.
Riiight... (Score:3)
Just like your boyfriend said he "changed" ... ;)
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Yeah, because the tens of billions they made from doing this certainly doesn't justify the half-billion settlement.
Oh wait, they're still up by tens of billions.
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The problem here is that Apple decided, without warning anyone, that older batteries meant less uptime, so slowing down the device meant you still had the same uptime as with a new battery.
People, as is expected, where furious with Apple's secret and one-sided decision about what's best for the users.
The whole thing made them add a toggle in iOS so that you decide what the device is supposed to do when the battery gets older. Do you want to keep the device as fast as it should but with less uptime, or slow
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Informative)
It wasn't about uptime per se - the batteries could not handle high load when they were near empty and been through a high number of charge cycles. If the current drawn went too high while the battery was under 30% or so, the phones would suddenly shut off. To prevent that, they throttled the CPU to keep the current draw lower.
Re: Let me get this straight... (Score:2)
Is this why my old Pixel 2 sometimes shuts down at 10-15% charge right when I open some app? Illuminating...
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Is this why my ......? Illuminating...
You need to buy an iphone.
Re: Let me get this straight... (Score:2)
So I can wait years for the Jobs cult to approve reasonable apps like tethering or Bitcoin wallets? No thanks. I'll stick with a system without software restrictions and a two-tiered system where app developers aren't allowed to use features that exist.
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how shit quality must a lipo cell be to not be able to push the 5 W needed for a cellphone?
more than that, if the cell has degraded and the system knows it (internal resistance sky high), why does it not notify the user as such?
More importantly: (Score:2)
Why can't you just pop in a new one?
Not a problem at all. Have a slot at the top/bottom/side for it.
Oh wait, planned obsolecense isn't a crime yet!
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THIS!
Some phones have a battery door and the end user can just pop in a new battery. Others solder it in, but any half skilled tech can open it up and solder in a replacement in a few minutes. Apple takes things a step further and uses glue and welding to make it much harder to open the thing up and have any hope of closing it again without expensive specialized tools.
Apple has been doing that crap since the original Mac where you needed an extra long torx driver and a special case cracker tool and they did
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It's poor engineering and lack of testing. It's well understood how batteries age and behave when worn. Most manufacturers manage to do it, and when they don't they do a recall, e.g. Google.
I don't know for Apple keeps doing this. Batteries, keyboards, hinges... The list goes on. My theory is it's the secrecy that prevents proper testing, because they aren't short of cash for engineers.
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Ahh, well that does make a bit more sense. But as you point out, they didn't inform the users of this fact. Had they done that, I'm sure everyone would have been in agreeance.
It's pointless to point out that other evil corporations exist and follow the same practices. We need them to stop this too.
Re: Let me get this straight... (Score:1)
When people came in saying their phone was running slow, the 'genius' should have told them it was being throttled and then given them the option of a new $70 battery to restore its speed. Instead I am sure they were sold on the idea of a new phone.
Oh come on, there is no free lunch (Score:2)
THere is no system without tradeoffs. And there's no computer system that lets you tweak every aspect of it. there is no a thing wrong with a company deciding the best way for a phone to degrade is slowly and usefully rather than stupidly and abruptly. Your edge case wehre you need your phone to run 25% fater but 1/3 as long is irrelevant. No need to warn you either. You know you needed a new battery and if you didn't you were not really the best judge of how to control your phone anyhow.
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I agree with you, but people saw a change, did some testing and came up with their own conclusions - some of them being on the conspiracy side. Apple (being Apple) took forever to give out information about the whole thing and even longer to give the option to their users.
Hopefully, people at Apple learned something about the whole thing. Not all kids need training wheels, so give them the option of removing them.
$310M in fees? (Score:2)
settled the nationwide case to avoid the burdens and costs of litigation
I know lawyers aren't cheap but if you settle for 310 million saying its just to avoid legal fees then your refusal to admit you did anything wrong means you aren't confident at all that your actions will hold up under scrutiny.
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I feel like if the lawyers really were out to help people, they would have rejected the settlement to push for a guilty charge. This will change nothing.
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I don't think anyone would be surprised by a statement that newer software on older hardware doesn't run as well, but this just comes down to Apple not informing users of this and trying to take some action without the consent of the user. Apple is pretty notorious for trying to keep things very simple for their users, so it's possible (and I'm sure it's what they'd argue) that there was no malicious intent.
But it doesn't
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Class actions are meant to punish the company not compensate the victims.
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And yet this one managed to do neither....
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Do they have to fix the code? (Score:2)
Are they required to remove the malware?
Oh, okay then (Score:5, Informative)
Fine payout: $0.5 billion
Extra money they made by getting shorter update cycles (probably, pulled straight from my ass): $20 billion
Bad Apple! I hope you've learned your lesson.
Re:Oh, okay then (Score:5, Insightful)
As Li-ion batteries wear out, the maximum amperage they can deliver at any given moment decreases. At some point the max amperage becomes so low that it's not enough to power the device. That's what's happening when you see a laptop report 40% battery life, but then suddenly turns off. The battery does still have 40% charge, it's just unable to provide enough amperage (push that power out fast enough) to keep the laptop operating (the max amperage also decreases with the charge level of the battery, so it could deliver sufficient amps above 40%, but no longer when it hit 40%).
Apple slowed down their iPhones to limit the amperage they were drawing, so you wouldn't run into this problem. If they hadn't done it, the Internet would've been full of stories about old iPhone batteries dying when it still showed 40% charge. (The correct fix for that is a removable battery, but that's another argument - i.e. Jobs was wrong when he decided your phone's battery didn't need be removable.) The only real mistake Apple made was not informing users that their decision to get rid of the removable battery had caused this problem, and give users a choice of which flawed solution they wanted to live with. Did they want a slower phone? Or risk the battery suddenly dying even when it said it had plenty of charge left? But in typical Apple fashion, they chose for you, and forced that choice onto you, without even informing you that there was a choice to be made and that they were making it for you.
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The correct answer is to set the power conservation threshold to 50% battery at that point. Optionally, adjust the battery charge indicator to read more accurately based on the age of the battery.
Normally, it might not hurt to notify the user that a battery replacement was in order, but since Apple made that hard and expensive, they didn't want to do that.
Can the same be done with Microsoft? (Score:3)
Not to shit on your Sunday sundae, son, ... (Score:2)
... but Windows Phone was an abomination that should never have existed in the first place.
(Only slightly in front of iOS and Android, abomination-wise, and way behind ChromeOS/FirefoxOS, but still ...)
Consumer (Score:2)
While Apple is to be blamed for this, we also have to blame the biggest culprit .. the consumer. How shall they be allowed to have willful ignorance? They should pay a $15,000 fine and go take remedial life skills courses.
Get the facts (Score:2, Informative)
Read what actually happened instead of spreading FUD:
https://forums.macrumors.com/t... [macrumors.com]
Apple, Samsung, Google, all of them (Score:2)
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Most of them don't even need a "light weight" firmware. They just need the manufacturer to a) not willfully slow down the phone, b) security updates and c) a replaceable battery.
Unfortunately all 3 of those are in the consumer's best interest, and directly opposed to the manufacturer's interest, so all manufacturers break some combination (if not all) of the above.
Unreasonable ... (Score:2)
Apple should be paying whatever the difference is between a "new phone" and a "new battery". So $950.00 per affected user.
Nice to just ... buy ... indulgence. (Score:2)
I sure wish I could intentionally and willfully commit a crime (e.g. fraud), as long as I pay my bribes from the change in my pockets.
Wonder how much the law firm(s) received? (Score:2)
Risk vs Reward (Score:2)
technically not a bad solution (Score:2)
Don't just charge them... REVERSE the slowness (Score:2)
Look, the basis of the suit was that they slowed older phones down to promote sales of newer phones.
So, what's wrong with REVERSING the slowness, and mandating they can't do that again?
Seems like that would be a bigger hit to the wallet...