Business & Tech
Was Apples Iphone update to intentionally slow the device?
Was Apples Iphone update designed to intentionally slow down their phones or was it extend to extend their life?
If you missed the short time it was in the news, it was discovered Apple updated a lot of its older phones software to run the phone slower as they became older. Apple called this a patch, many owners felt this
was tampering with equipment they had paid for with the intention to make it less functional.
What is the big deal with the Apple Battery issue? Actually a lot of money from people who own Apple products.
A hardware maker like Apple makes money when a new product is sold, not a used product. The longer time a product works the less money will be made on a new purchase. Since before the first Iphone apple was created
Apple had made devices sealed to prevent the normal consumers from simply changing a battery to extend the useful life of a device. This resulted in a shorter product lifespan generating more sales of new products. As time goes on it seems like newer generations of batteries last longer than the older designs. This probably had an effect on new product sales. So from the sound of it, Apple intentionally provided patches (were they optional or forced?) which according to them were designed to help with the products older battery efficiency by slowing down the product.
If that was the intention, I had one question –
Did the phones also speedup back to normal when plugged into electricity? When plugged in, the battery is not powering the phone anymore so the phone should not be forced to run slow. If the intention was to extend the usability of the phone by decreasing power consumption, when was the screen also dimmed? The backlight on most phone has a lot of battery drain. On the speed aspect, was the phone slowed, on even simple tasks like opening a file? Why? The speed and power usage of a flash storage is the same regardless of the battery state. Opening a file speed should not be affected unless the processor is being heavily used.
On apples website press release they stated they did this to help customer owning Apple Iphones.
In the Apple statement they stated "We've always wanted our customers to be able to use their iPhones as long as possible." Say what ??? Then why are the batteries not easily replaceable? Replacing a battery could
double a phone's functioning lifespan. Why toss an expensive piece of functioning equipment into the landfills or to electronic waste disposal? Normally Apple does offer a service to replace certain Iphone
batteries for $80+tax. I speculate that price was chosen based upon focus groups asking people what is the most they would pay to replace an Iphone battery or upgrade to a newer model. For a short time, owners
may request to replace their Iphone battery for only $30. A year from now , it will jump up to regular price.
Apple claims the only phones affected were Iphone 6 series, Iphone SE, IPhone 7 series. I wonder is the number of phone affected in the hundreds of millions of devices? Are any computers or tablets also affected? I wonder if there are any quick updates in the works for those devices.
Apple is preparing a new update for the slowed down phones operating system. Expected to be available sometime this year.
So, again when plugged into power are the devices still running slow?
With Lithium batteries the best way to extend life is to NOT completely discharge the battery, but charge it when it reaches 15-20% power left. Also not good to fully charge the battery. Stopping charge cycle at 85%
results in longer life cycle of the battery. Is this incorporated into the original product designs? Apple did claim they wanted the products to last as long as possible in their own statement.
Did the computer programmers laid off from Volkswagen ever work for Apple?
Battery information sourced from: http://batteryuniversity.com/l...
Posted by Steve Walsh
