Judge clears way for $500M iPhone throttling settlements::Owners of iPhone models who were part of throttling lawsuits that ended up with a $500 settlement from Apple may soon receive their payments, after a judge denied objections against the offer.
We should bear in mind that the level of slow downs were worse on some devices than on others.
I don’t know if it was the different SoCs or just different levels of throttling for different levels of battery wear, but my phone got really slow. There was no information about what was going on, no way to disable the slow down, and Apple support back then would tell you to just get a new phone (which they did to me).
While the idea behind the slow downs is solid and I’ve done it myself on old laptops with bad batteries, doing it behind the scenes without informing anyone and then making money by selling new devices is not something that should be praised. Apple probably made more money than what they’ll have to pay with this settlement, but still… better something than nothing.
While the idea behind the slow downs is solid and I’ve done it myself on old laptops with bad batteries, doing it behind the scenes without informing anyone and then making money by selling new devices
I genuinely believe this was a case of bad comms rather than ill-intent. I say that based on time spent within the company where there was an insane (in a good way) focus on the customer experience.
Apple will fuck around with shit like the App Store and dick-prices for RAM but they won’t risk their image by doing stupid shit slowing down devices to encourage new purchases. New software features are the carrot to encourage upgrades / new purchases. There is no stick. I can’t tell you how much shit got punted to fix things a different time when people cried foul because devices got slow.
The intention was probably good, but at the end of the day my phone still lagged, I couldn’t disable or was aware of the “feature”, the guy at the store still told me to get a new phone, Apple still denied it at the time, etc. Willingly or not, they created a bad experience for some iPhone owners and made money selling new devices.
I’m not getting any of this money and that was my first and last iPhone (I’m still pissed all these years later…), but it’s good that they’re receiving bad PR and have to pay something. Not only customers got cheap battery replacements and a setting to disable this (on newer iPhones) after the lawsuits, but next time they’re more likely to remember to create a help page on their site and to inform their store staff about features like this one.
