With quite the clout in the technology world, Apple events, products, and news gets bloggers, videographers, and reporters talking. This immense coverage can be either positive or negative, deepening on the types of news that falls upon Apple. There’s been a lot of buzz about Apple recently, but its not all good. Its one of the most talked about brands in the world, but lately people have been talking about Apple for the wrong reasons. In the case of Apple throttling performance in late 2017, news sites and Youtube influencers created thousands of negative posts that tumbled their stock price to a one month low in December. In fact, the negative news about “Batterygate” scandal overshadowed one of their most innovative product launches in the past years, the iPhone X reveal, as shown below in the graph.
Apple has been hit with lawsuits from consumers, as well as a wave of criticism wondering how the company could be so deceptive by purposely slowing down older iPhone models to help with battery degradation. Apple admitted its wrongdoing in a public apology given in a press release on their website.
Apple hopes to regain consumer trust by issuing discounted battery replacements in all phone models from the iPhone 6 onward, reducing the price from $79 to $29 until December 2018. This apology and battery replacement has given life to consumer theory that Apple intentionally slows down older iPhones, as a tactic of planned obsolescence, to get customers to purchase the latest flagship model.
Famous Technology YouTuber's Thoughts on Apple
In a recent podcast episode, former MMA fighter and reality show host Joe Rogan talks with arguably YouTube’s most famous technology blogger, Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) on all things tech, as well as Apple’s battery scandal. During the broadcast, Joe Rogan states, “I am so sour on Apple because of what they did with the batteries…that was such a dirty thing to me, because everyone had always suspected, ‘Dude I’m telling you, when the new phones come out your old phone starts moving slower’ I thought it was all a conspiracy, and they your phone is just old…but then when I found out it was real, I was like you a**holes.”
Marques then replies, “the big problem was how they didn’t tell people. They could have avoided the whole [negative] public relations by just telling people, ‘Look…this is what we [Apple] do when your phone is getting older. We need to preserve either the CPU (central processing unit) or the battery, to voltage down the CPU or preserve the battery, pick one’ and give us a choice. But they didn’t tell us until people started suspecting things, and they had to make a statement. And it looked kind of dirty and hidden.”
Joe Rogan continues, “But I don’t buy it. I think it’s a trick to try to get you to buy new phones. There is no way they didn’t think about that. Why else would they just let the CPU be slower?”
MKBHD continues, “the best part about this [scandal] is they give you the choice now, but if you never look for it [in the settings of the phone], you’ll never find it. The phone will still default to saving your battery and under clocking the CPU. So your phone will still slow down, if you don’t know where to find that option in settings.”
Joe Rogan concludes, “as soon as the new phones come out basically? Its just dirty, because its the thing everyone always suspected, some sort of engineered obsolescence. They’re doing this on purpose to get you to keep buying the newest, and latest and greatest. But I wanted to be like, ‘common Apple wouldn’t do that…they’re your friends.’
Marques finishes the debate by stating, “[Apple] paints this picture that’s really upright by saying, ‘we [Apple] want you to have the best experience as long as possible, which involves not replacing your battery, which means we’ll just slow down your phone, just a little bit, so that it lasts longer and the battery can keep up’…it makes sense on paper, but your experience often says the opposite.”
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The entire podcast can be viewed on “The Joe Rogan Experience” wherever you get your podcasts. The duo explain that Apple did not handle this scandal as best they could. If they were transparent from the beginning in their communication with customers, and gave them the option upfront to choose between CPU speed, and battery performance, they could have mitigated the loss of trust customers inevitably showed in Apple.
Senate: Apple "Came Up Short"
In a print article by “Business Insider,” the technology, finance, and politics focused news station weighs in about the differences between what Apple explained to their consumers on the battery drama, and what Apple told congress its reasoning was. After initial inquiries by consumers into the matter, Apple responded to Senate questions about an extremely controversial software update that slowed down older iPhones. In a letter to senate lawmakers, Apple admitted they released a controversial power management feature in January of 2017, but did not publicly acknowledge the update until over a month later. Apple stated this change was only rolled out to all phones months later once it was deemed effective at preventing unexpected battery shutdowns.
Republican Senator John Thune, who chairs the Senate Commitee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, said in a statement that Apple has acknowledged that its initial disclosures of the software update "came up short.” "I appreciate Apple's response to my inquiry and the company's ongoing discussions with the committee," Thune said. "In those conversations, Apple has acknowledged that its initial disclosures came up short.” "Apple has also promised the committee some follow-up information, including an answer about additional steps it may take to address customers who purchased a new battery at full price," he continued.
Apple certainly “came up short” in its communication to consumers and the Senate. The Senate has every right to investigate this matter as it can be seen as deceptive and misleading by not disclosing prompt and necessary information to consumers on the updates that were being rolled out to their phones. In a statement by Apple CEO Tim Cook, he states, "When we did put [the software update] out, we did say what it was, but I don't think a lot of people were paying attention. And maybe we should have been clearer, as well.” By Apple issuing a supplementary statement to go along with their software update explaining to customers in layman’s language what exactly would be occurring to their CPU performance and battery, Apple could have drastically decreased their risk of a nationwide scandal.
Apple's Course of Action Flawed
In a web article by Jordan McMahon of “Wired” a U.S. based blog focusing on all things technology, he explores that Apple had way better options than slowing down your iPhone. Even after their statement to consumers admitting guilt, he explains that Apple could have made plenty of choices that would have benefited consumers instead of penalizing them. “These same choices could have also saved the company from the public shaming it suffered.” In a statement to Wired, Apple explained that in fact it was slowing down the performance of older iPhones, to help save their phone batteries. "Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low battery charge or as they age over time, which can result in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components," Apple says.
“Rather than secretly hamstring the iPhone's CPU, though, Apple could have simply educated users about the limitations of lithium-ion batteries,” says Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, a company that sells repair kits and posts repair guides for consumer electronics. The average user has to dig for information on iPhone batteries, and how they perform over their lifetime.
Apple could also sell user replaceable batteries, offers McMahon. “Letting them pop a fresh battery into their aging iPhone would be an easily understandable solution to an easily understandable problem, rather than software manipulation that feeds into a long-running, planned obsolescence conspiracy theory.” But Apple hesitates on this option to stop device hacking, counterfeiting, and voiding the phone warranty. "Apple won't sell batteries to consumers, people should be furious about that," Wiens says. "Your battery is a maintenance item, and everyone should expect to replace their battery fairly frequently.”
Ultimately, rather than push a software update quietly to older iPhones throttling performance, Apple should have provided an “opt-in” measure that gives consumers the choice performance vs. battery, just as MKBHD stated in the Joe Rogan podcast. By giving users the choice, educating them on the options, and allowing them to make their own decision, Apple could have avoided such negative public relations from this issue. Instead of a deceptive move, consumers would have a sense of control over the situation, instead of being confused as to what is happening to their phones.
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Comments
Adam
- Nick
Adam
For myself I've always been an Apple user even though in the past feew years I've been getting more information from the outside that maybe it isn't the number one phone on the market anymore. For instance my dad uses the google phone now and he's actually a really big proponent of it over the Iphone. I know we all hate the idea that Apple has been throttling their products and forcing us as consumers to stay more up to date with the new iterations of the I phone but do you think that Apple is the only one in the industry that engages in this technique? I have been wondering a lot about that topic and how maybe other companies are doing the same thing in different ways and it is just going unnoticed. What's your thoughts?
Adam
Adam